But then there is a small band of bearded leftists who show the UQAM to prevent tuition increases. OK, "small band of bearded leftists", you say that old fart that I am now going to to spit on our beautiful youth.
Well no. I'm for that, youth - it is not because I lost mine in a dusty library corner it gives me a reason to be cons. Worse yet, I'm rather sympathetic to their claims. In fact, their problems come from the same source as mine: It's the same underfunding of the university system that grows with an increase in tuition and pushes me to stay in the U.S. because it does There is no job for me in Quebec (I am a brain drain, and it runs more towards the right). As long as there are no resources to share, we remain victims of the executioner. After, I hope that the university authorities put their priorities in the right place for me to pick up the Motton.
Except me, you know me, I do not really like to agree with people - even temporarily. And luckily I managed to find something that bothers me in the speech of students at UQAM. Flashback
two generations. Two of my grandparents growing up in rural families huge, forced to leave school before high school for economic reasons. Nothing very original for its time, the only tragedy personal and resigned two brilliant, hardworking, which would have gone to university with great enthusiasm and success only if the system in which they were born had made this possible. But no, go work at the workshop, help your mother to keep house, otherwise the whole family will collapse under its own weight. Small tragedies like there were millions of others in Quebec, then, and as there are billions of others around the world.
Fast-forward seventy years. Quebec has become the place in North America, where university education is more affordable. A university McGill, United States, would impose fees of $ 20,000 per year. Here is ten times less.
I do not think we should necessarily take the American university system as an example, even if he is the best in the world in terms of academic level. Still. You still have to see the extraordinary opportunity we have, the extraordinary gift that Quebec society has given itself. And this is where I have my little irritation. Yes, the proposed increase in tuition fees will make life even harder for people to university are already in financial precarious. But these same people around the world or in the generation of my grandparents would never have dared imagine having access to university education.
What I am talking about is a sense of responsibility. Simple respect for those who do not have our chance. Quebec should be, by far the most educated society in North America. Quebec university students should have the gratitude tattooed on the forehead and work like crazy to enjoy the gift that makes them the system.
But a gift is a gift. It is always cheaper when we gave it. What makes me mad, in fact, is that the quality of student work Quebecois would probably increase if we increased tuition. At $ 20,000 per year, it would become much harder to say bah, you know, is not there if I pass that course, well I'm gonna get another, should not derail, there there, just not super chus motivated, it's not my fault ...
OK, green light, you can now start calling me a fascist. But I have nothing against the claims of the small bearded leftists. I just kind of feel that gratitude motivates them as radically as the strike for the rest of the school year.
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