Multiple Division

At the cégep, or college, where I teach just outside of Montreal, a few students each semester confide in me which secondary school they attended, as though this information should explain all their triumphs or failures. They may as well be speaking in code. I grew up in the prairies, and while I’ve learned the basics of Quebec’s educational system, where the equivalent of high school includes grades 7 to 11, I know little about the reputations of specific establishments. That said, these teenagers are right to think that there’s a hierarchy. Quebec may have some of the cheapest university tuition in Canada, but it also has the secondary school system that’s the most unequal.

Christophe Allaire Sévigny denounces this state of affairs in Séparés mais égaux: Enquête sur la ségrégation scolaire au Québec (Separate but equal: Investigation into school segregation in Quebec), which recently won the Prix Pierre-Vadeboncoeur. His target is the “école à trois...