Télé-Québec unveiled Tuesday the contents of its educational kit based on the show Passe-Partout, which will be distributed starting next February to preschool children from immigrant families.
In total, 10,000 kits will be distributed over a period of one year to families arriving in Quebec by air at Montreal-Trudeau airport. This educational project was set up at the request of the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) to promote “the awakening and curiosity of young people about the French language”.
To carry out this project funded to the tune of 2.7 million by the MIFI, the director of youth and family content at Télé-Québec, Marysol Charbonneau, created 140 capsules of less than five minutes which promote language learning. These capsules, accessible free of charge on the broadcaster’s website, will be put online gradually over the next year. Around thirty of them are on the broadcaster’s website.
To design these short episodes produced by Attraction, Télé-Québec drew on the existing content of Passe-Partout programs for around sixty of them. To complete, the other 80 were filmed exclusively for this project by the show’s actors.
In a first extract presented to the media on Tuesday, we see Passe-Montagne (Jean-François Pronovost) gathering objects that start with the letter P and putting them in a box. In a second extract, it is the character of Fardoche (Widemir Normil) who feeds his goats with carrots and cabbage, provided to him by Passe-Carreau (Gabrielle Fontaine).
Concretely, immigrant families, who will arrive in Quebec starting next February, will be given, upon their arrival at the airport, a backpack with fun educational content bearing the Passe-Partout brand. In some cases, we can speak here of products derived from the show, such as this seal plush (associated with the character of Cannelle) or this “story factory”, a device which contains songs and stories interspersed with musical segments of the Metropolitan Orchestra.
There is also a special issue of the magazine Naître et grandi, S’establisher au Québec, which focuses on the challenges that await newcomers; a “Passe-Partout” activity book designed in collaboration with Bayard; and another quiz game called “I’m going to the market.”
This initiative could of course encourage young people (and their parents) to watch the youth show, which is already the most watched on the channel.
The MIFI project is announced as the Institut de la tourisme du Québec (ISQ) deplores a growing number of “vulnerable” children (29%), who are entering 5-year-old kindergarten with increasing difficulties. As our colleague Henri Ouellette-Vézina reported, “young people born outside the country are also strongly over-represented (37.3%) compared to children born in Canada (28%).”
Asked whether this “educational kit” could be given to current immigrant families or to community groups, the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette, indicated that she first wanted to wait and see the results of the campaign which will be carried out among new arrivals from February, while specifying that the online capsules were accessible to all.