It’s no illusion, youth violence is on the rise in Quebec’s schools, says Marwah Rizqy, Liberal MP for Saint-Laurent in an interview with LCN.
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“Violence has doubled, sometimes even tripled, in several school service centers,” she said.
“There is a lot of fighting, but above all it is the level of violence,” said the Quebec Liberal Party’s spokesman for education.
“Listen, there’s a young person who was stabbed in a schoolyard! No child can learn with fear in their stomach.
Ms. Rizqy therefore took the initiative to apply for access to information in the 72 school service centers, confirming the increase recently reflected by the media.
In addition to the children and their parents, the employees also have reason to worry: 911 of them were injured in school violence in 2021.
What the number of violent incidents reveals are often the videos of students, who often have the reflex to film before intervening what the Liberal MP wants to change.
“It seems to me that we should train people to react to attacks,” she said.
The pandemic would have been a tipping point in that surge, according to Ms Rizqy, who suggests isolation, lack of exercise and screen time could be factors behind the rise in assaults.
At the Center des services scolaire des Mille-Îles, the number of violent incidents would have increased from around 2,500 cases in 2018-2019 to 4,200 in 2021-2022; in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, a smaller municipality, they rose from 5 to 40 cases.
According to some school service centers, these numbers represent a change in the way incidents are counted rather than the number of incidents as such.
Marwah Rizqy is skeptical of such explanations, insisting that solutions must be found as soon as possible “before it’s too late”.
“Do the teachers who are being subjected to this violence have the help they need?” she asks.
“I, Marwah Rizqy of Saint-Laurent, alone do not have all the answers. But I don’t think the minister has them either.”