Background: Preliminary evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on children's mental health. Given these problems can have significant impacts throughout the lifespan, preventing the negative repercussions of COVID-19 on children's mental health is essential. Philosophy for children (P4C) and mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) show promise in this regard. Objective: The goal of the present study was to compare the impact of online MBI and P4C interventions on mental health, within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used a randomized cluster trial to assess and compare the impact of both interventions on elementary school students' (N = 37) anxiety and inattention symptoms as well as on their basic psychological need satisfaction (BPN). Results: ANCOVAs revealed a significant effect of the P4C intervention on mental health difficulties, controlling for baseline levels. Participants in the P4C group showed lower scores on the measured symptoms at post-test than participants in the MBI group. Significant effects of the MBI on levels of BPN were also found. Participants in the MBI intervention reported greater BPN satisfaction at post-test than participants in the P4C intervention. Conclusion:Results from this study suggest that, in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a P4C intervention centered around COVID-19 related themes may be helpful to reduce mental health difficulties, that a MBI may be useful to satisfy BPN, and that both interventions were easy to offer online to elementary school students. Future work including a larger sample size and follow-up measures is warranted. Public significance: Practice: Philosophy for children (P4C) and mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can be used to foster mental health in elementary school students, in the current COVID-19 context. Policy: As we do not anticipate that facilitators will be allowed in schools during the 2020-2021 school year and that children will, most likely, be attending school in the current COVID-19 context, policymakers who want to implement psychological support measures in elementary schools should consider an online modality, which has shown in this study to work well, be feasible, and yield positive results on youth mental health.

Background Emerging literature on the current COVID-19 crisis suggests that children may experience increased anxiety and depression as a result of the pandemic. To prevent such school and mental health-related problems, there is a timely need to develop preventive strategies and interventions to address potential negative impacts of COVID-19 on children’s mental health, especially in school settings. Results from previous child clinical research indicate that art-based therapies, including mindfulness-based art therapy, have shown promise to increase children’s well-being and reduce psychological distress. Objective The goal of the present pilot and feasibility study was to compare the impact of an emotion-based directed drawing intervention and a mandala drawing intervention, on mental health in elementary school children (N = 22), in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both interventions were group-based and delivered online and remotely. A pilot study using a randomized cluster design was implemented to evaluate and compare both interventions in relation to child anxiety, depression, inattention and hyperactivity symptoms. Results Analyses of covariance revealed a significant effect of the type of drawing intervention on levels of inattention, after controlling for baseline levels. Participants in the emotion-based directed drawing group showed lower inattention scores at post-test, when compared to participants in the mandala group. Post-hoc sensitivity analyses showed significant decreases in pre-to-post scores for levels of hyperactivity for the complete sample. Conclusion Overall, results from this pilot and feasibility study showed that both an emotion-based directed drawing intervention and a mandala drawing intervention may be beneficial to improve mental health in elementary school children, in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. From a feasibility standpoint, results indicate that the implementation of both interventions online and remotely, through a videoconference platform, is feasible and adequate in school-based settings. Further work incorporating larger sample sizes, longitudinal data and ensuring sufficient statistical power is warranted to evaluate the long-term impact of both interventions on children’s mental health.

Is the idea that the self-determination of all citizens influences progress towards democracy not merely a dream that breaks itself against the hard historical reality of political societies? Is not the same fate reserved for all pedagogical innovations in democratic education that depend on this great dream? It is commonplace to assert this logic to demonstrate the inapplicability of the ideas of both democracy and of democratic education. Though this argument is prominent and recurring in the history of political and educative ideas, in response we can ask ourselves if the gap between the ideal and the reality is effectively insuperable and must be considered an incontestable fact. The double objective of this articleis to determine explicitly the meaning and extent of this gap in the context of democracy and of education and to demonstrate that this gap is neither static nor permanent, but is susceptible to being narrowed, from generation to generation.

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RésuméCet article traite de l’expression des tensions entre la politique du passé et la politique de la reconnaissance dans l’enseignement des questions controversées en histoire au Québec et en France. L’histoire à enseigner y a connu d’importantes évolutions. Ces évolutions concernent la conception même de l’histoire et son rôle dans la société. Elles sont porteuses de tensions quant à ce qui est légitime pour « dire/faire l’histoire », donc à la part de récit commun et de critique ou à la part de cohésion des groupes nationaux pluriculturels et de transmission de mémoires, ainsi que d’expériences historiques spécifiques.

In the 1980s, in Québec history textbooks, authors presented history through linear, monocausal designs and attributed most social, political or economic changes favourable to democracy to unstable external causes or to stable external causes. They seldom attributed the evolution of democracy to 'unstable internal causes'. These textbooks presented citizens as having almost no active role in socio-historical changes. This invited students to analyse past controversial social issues from a fatalistic perspective or through subjective moral criteria, while reinforcing the assumption that people from the past had bad ideas that good people have fortunately refuted since. Québec history programmes were reformed, in the 2000s, for middle and high schools. This article presents the results of a content analysis of the new history textbooks used in Québec, to see whether they still present such a deterministic and relativist perspective of social change. The preliminary results show that they do.

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Afin de s’acquitter de sa mission, l’école québécoise doit s’assurer du développement psychosocial optimal et de l’autodétermination de ses élèves. La pratique de la présence attentive a récemment fait l’objet d’une attention soutenue en recherche et se veut très prometteuse pour favoriser l’autodétermination des jeunes. Dans un même ordre d’idées, l’implantation d’ateliers de philosophie pour enfants gagne également en popularité en milieu scolaire. En s’appuyant sur la théorie de l’autodétermination et les recherches en psychologie existentielle, cet article propose d’explorer les cadres théoriques pertinents à l’application de la présence attentive et de la philosophie pour enfants auprès d’élèves du primaire, ainsi que les contextes dans lesquels ces deux pratiques ont été appliquées au Québec.