I want to come back to my column from a week ago about the electric car, which is great, but not always. For example on long journeys1.
Posted at 5:00 am
But first I want to tell you about the title of the column.
I have to tell you that one of my talents in life is the title. I don’t know if I give good reviews but I’m sure I get the meaning of the title.
Not so much last Sunday. I’ve worked hard and worked hard to give birth to these dreary words I’m a little ashamed of, apologies for: “The electric car is (sometimes) great”.
And there I was reading the message from Mr. Clément Lalancette at 8:01 am that Sunday when one received a slap across the face: “A suggested title for your column: Borne in the USA…”
The Springsteen fan in me blushed, and the terrifying tracklist that I am met his humility. Terminal in the USA, with the “e” for Electrical Terminal, is reminiscent of the song Born in the USA by Springsteen: Pure Genius.
But unfortunately not mine.
Otherwise, many of you have told me that Tesla is great for the battery, more efficient than the average electric tank. And for its network of charging stations, super fast it seems and well organized, in the US by A.
Known for my next tank, ladies and gentlemen. Even if I find them a bit ugly.
In addition, a million friends of our mother earth have also written to me, accusing me of trying to discourage those around me with this column. That I would delay the ecological transition, or I don’t know what…
Okay, let’s get one thing straight right away: if you’re going to buy an electric tank, buy an electric tank. Personally, like I said, I think we’re screwed on climate. I’m careful not to say it too often, so as not to harm those fighting to keep the climate from suffocating us. But it’s not the engine of our tanks, the problem is our way of life.
No, my electric turn is mostly a matter of hate: I hate the oil companies.
THE HALF COMMA — I want to salute the gentleman who congratulated me at the gym for using very few semicolons in my columns.
I waited for someone to notice.
BACK SCHOOL – You share my desperation about school. Thanks that is good. Many of you have written to me. I feel less alone. But not as alone as the hundred teachers who wrote to me after my column on Wednesday2.
A V-teacher: “It’s really a disaster in our classes. You don’t know the terms of secondary level I. I have a student who mistypes two words. I have 16 out of 35 students with intervention plans and no educational support. »
Hundreds of similar messages from elementary and secondary school teachers. And by a sinister coincidence, on the day the column appeared, Daphné Dion-Viens of the Journal de Québec published this news3: The Federation of School Service Centers proposed adding two students per class to address teacher shortages…
There are already too many students in the classes. With students in difficulties who are thrown into regular classes without the necessary pedagogical support, the teachers are already concerned with climbing Everest in flip-flops.
And what does the merger of the school service centers propose?
Add students to classes! Enough thinking!
Of course, Minister Bernard Drainville dismissed the idea of this gang of extinguished candles believing they were halogen headlights, but nonetheless it conveys an idea of the mediocrity that reigns among educated leaders.
At the same time, it’s perfectly consistent with the logic of the school service centers: they’ll lower the bar even more, put even more pressure on the school management to catch up on the grades and boom, Mr. Minister, all right…
It was also hilarious to see new education secretary Bernard Drainville say he was struggling to get reliable data in a timely manner. Remember, Bernard: no data, no problems. That’s why your department and the clerks don’t fixate on the data.
This is to hide the extent of the problems.
That reminds me of another teacher’s statement: “I teach first grade, and for a few years we’ve been told that in reading, if a student can’t read but understands what I’m reading to them, it’s good, they succeed to read him! »
One day, I swear to you, the Ministère de l’Éducation and School Service Centers will assess students’ French using drawings of dinosaurs.
Quebec: the place where we will all die forgotten in an emergency corridor and where there will be errors on our death certificates.
PUBLIC TELEPHONE – The other day I was waiting at a red light in my neighborhood. On the sidewalk, a woman in a brown cap pauses in front of a symbol from another time: a phone booth.
Even if I drive by there every day in my car, on my bike, or on my white pony, I no longer notice the Bell Telephone booth at the edge of the park.
And then the woman in the brown tuque entered the phone booth.
I hadn’t seen that for 10 years, I think: a person walking into a phone booth. I watched her curiously. I wondered why she was using the phone booth. Doesn’t she have a cell phone like we all do? Did she want to tell her lover that she was coming without leaving a trace? Was it a Russian spy who left an encrypted message in the phone book?
(Are there still phone books?)
But barely two seconds after entering, the woman in the brown cap came out of the phone booth, cigarette in her mouth. She’d gone into the phone booth just to light her cigarette in the windbreak.
The woman in the brown cap left beaming and took a first drag.
The traffic light turned green.