In his book “But Why School?”, author Simon Bucci-Wheaton, who summoned 17 personalities, attempts to reinvent school and fix the many problems that quickly left him personally disillusioned when he took the plunge into teaching in 2019 .
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Bucci-Wheaton, then 35, became a teacher overnight after falling in love with the profession.
However, he quickly went from “love at first sight” to “crush” and began taking daily notes about the ups and downs of his new job.
“Every day I was confronted with aberrations that contradicted my values,” explains the author and teacher.
“There are so many inconsistencies in the system that make the days long and difficult despite love at first sight,” he adds.
Simon Bucci-Wheaton counts one of the many annoyances of the job as a busy schedule filled with unforeseen tasks.
“There are always little things that add up […] Even if it's just looking for a child's glove for five minutes during break when you're supposed to be doing something else. It's all little things like that that seem like a small triviality at the end of the day, but they're still difficult,” he mentions.
Invitation to Minister Drainville
Mr Bucci-Wheaton claims to have nothing to hide and also wants to invite Education Minister Bernard Drainville to come to his class without warning to learn the realities of the teaching profession.
“Come on, no camera and especially no cleaning team to come and do a blitz before the minister arrives,” says the author.
“What would shock him most would certainly be the students’ indiscipline towards the people on the school team. “We see a pretty blatant lack of respect that causes the teacher-student relationship to lose its meaning,” he adds.
Rethink the system
When Simon Bucci-Wheaton quickly realized that his daily notes were accumulating on very many pages, he began to interview various personalities such as Emmanuel Bilodeau, David Goudreault, Jean-Charles Lajoie, Josée Scalabrini, Claudia Larochelle and Ricardo Larrivee to express their point of view , what needs to change in the educational network.
“I tried to set up my own Parent 2.0 Commission to try to rethink the system,” says the author.
Mr Bucci-Wheaton particularly believes that parents need to be more involved in their children's education.
“It’s not even understandable to know that a parent can’t take care of their children’s studies,” he complains.
For every copy of the book “But Why School” sold, one dollar is donated to the organization
$1 per book to Je Passe Partout, an organization that fights high school dropouts