Controversy in Ghent: Cancelled Arrival of “Queen Nikkolah” and Decline in Educational Levels in Belgium – Latest News and Debates

2023-12-05 18:22:00

”Queen Nikkolah” was due to come to Ghent on December 6. The feminine and black version of Saint Nicholas will ultimately not be there. “It is in the name of freedom of artistic expression and inclusiveness that Alderwoman Groen of international solidarity Hafsa El-Bazioui invited Queen Nikkolah,” explains Alain Kupchik, artist. This invitation quickly sparked a reaction on social networks. The college of aldermen therefore decided to cancel his visit. In his editorial, the artist believes that reappropriating Saint-Nicolas “in the name of decolonialism and inclusiveness” would correspond to a form of “cultural appropriation”, which “would be highly decried and singled out if it were due to of a non-racialized person”.

Controversy: the arrival of a Saint Nicholas, “Queen Nikkolah”, canceled in Ghent

Other news of the day: the decline in educational levels in Belgium. The OECD has published the latest results of its PISA study. French-speaking Belgian students obtained even lower performances in mathematics (-21), reading (-7) and science (-6) in 2022 compared to 2018. Results which raise questions regarding the state of teaching following the Covid-19 crisis. François De Waele, director of the Saint-Joseph Institute in Charleroi, is not surprised by these results: “I think we might expect it, the students who were tested this year in the PISA survey suffered the full brunt of the effects of the Covid crisis”. According to him, another aspect must also be taken into account, namely the state of mind of certain students, who are in psychological suffering.

PISA results: our teaching did not “resist better than expected”, it just collapsed a little less strongly…

The latest debate concerns artificial intelligence. Is our government taking the threat seriously? Tomorrow, an important negotiation will take place at European level to try to legislate on this subject. There are particular fears regarding the potential threat of AI to employment. According to Xavier Dupret, economist at the Joseph Jacquemotte Foundation, there is an “increase in unemployment linked to artificial intelligence”.

To better confront the excesses of artificial intelligence, Mathieu Michel calls for digital citizenship courses

Watch the entire show in the video at the top of the article.

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