For Grumpy

An online book that you may find interesting...just look past the conspiacy theory materials and see the meat of the argument.

The Underground History of American Education

Yes it is US based, but then look carefully at all of your children's books.

Do they all come from US authors and US printing houses in NY or Boston?

Are we really giving a "Canadian" education in our schools?

One size fits all...

Well, Nick, you seem like someone who has been around the block a few times within the school system.

The depressing aspect of schooling from an individual's perspective (either student or teacher) is the tremendous pressure toward sameness.

Students face the same standards in the form of (too many) standardized tests and the usual battery of assignments that is given every kid within the confines of a class. Even when some variety is provided within the assignment (read this novel OR that novel, etc.), after ten or twelve years of it, students must find that the desks and the pens and the lessons and the sense of being judged rather than appreciated must get to them.

Teachers, too, are pressed into molds. "Use 'best practice'," they are told, which would be fine if the definition of 'best practice' didn't change with the breezes of educational fads wafted in from Ministry hacks who couldn't wait to get out of the classroom and into some comparatively cushy and better remunerated research or advisory position. Further, increasing workloads make any teacher's experimenting with novel approaches (some of the true fun of teaching) increasingly unlikely.

"Big Box" was an apt title. Our schools are becoming more and more like a downscale department store without the freedom to shop or to query the staff about where to find that gadget that we don't seem to be able to find on the shelves.

Good luck! Stay with it, if you have the stamina.

French Immersion/elitism

Of course French Immersion is elitist. Class sizes? Commonly lower. Spread of ability? Commonly narrower. Place where most administrators place their children? Commonly French Immersion.

Set up to fail?

There are arguments that the entire compulsory school system was created to eliminate intelect, not celebrate it.

Henry Holt, the publisher, speaking in 1908, said there was "too much enterprise." The only effective plan was to put whole industries under central control; the school industry was no exception. Excessive overproduction of brains is the root cause of the overproduction of everything else, he said.

Three major obstacles stood in the way of the great goal of using American schools to realize a scientifically programmed society.

1st: schooling was locally controlled
In 1930 out of 70 million adults between the ages of thirty and sixty-five, one in every sixty-three was on a school board (thirty years earlier, the figure had been one in twenty). Contrast either ratio with today’s figure of one in five thousand.

2nd: the historic influence of teachers as role models.
Two solutions were proposed around 1903 to suppress teacher influence and make instruction teacher-proof. The first was to grow a heretofore unknown administrative hierarchy of nonteaching principals, assistant principals, subject coordinators and the rest, to drop the teacher’s status rank. And if degrading teacher status proved inadequate, another weapon, the standardized test, was soon to be available. By displacing the judgmental function from a visible teacher to a remote bastion of educational scientists somewhere, no mere classroom person could stray very far from approved texts without falling test scores among his or her students signaling the presence of such a deviant.

3rd: the intimate neighborhood context of most American schools, one where school procedures could never escape organic oversight by parents and other local interests.
Only large schools, it was argued in the 1950's, could have faculty and facilities large enough to cover the math and science we (presumably) lacked and Russia (presumably) had. The bigger the better.

Thus we have the society shaping and intellect devouring machine known as a "skool sistem".

No more local control or parent influence (try volunteering to do anything in a large modern high-school = you will be looked at like a patch of poison ivy).

No more 'teacher power' or 'influence' over the students (witness the complaints of Nick Smith above lots of administrators and tests to 'keep him in line').

Enormous, gigantic, prison-like school buildings in which split-classes, Weird curriculum and, Too much computer nonsense abound and where children are not allowed to compete since being 'it' in a game of tag is too demeaning!

Four Kinds of Classroom

because it needs to be said again:

Jean Anyon, a professor at Rutgers, recently examined four major types of covert career preparation going on simultaneously in the school world, all traveling together under the label "public education."

In the first type of classroom, students are prepared for future wage labor that is mechanical and routine. Of course neither students nor parents are told this, and almost certainly teachers are not consciously aware of it themselves. The training regimen is this: all work is done in sequential fashion starting with simple tasks, working very slowly and progressing gradually to more difficult ones (but never to very difficult work). When explanations are undertaken they are shallow and platitudinous. "You’ll need this later in life." Teachers spend most of their day at school controlling the time and space of children, and giving commands.

In the second type of classroom, students are prepared for low-level bureaucratic work, work with little creative element to it, work which does not reward critical appraisals of management. Directions are followed just as in the first type of classroom, but those directions often call for some deductive thinking, offer some selection, and leave a bit of room for student decision-making.

The third type of classroom finds students being trained for work that requires them to be producers of artistic, intellectual, scientific, and other kinds of productive enterprise. Often children work creatively and independently here. Through this experience, children learn how to interpret and evaluate reality, how to become their own best critics and supporters. Anyon concludes: "In their schooling these children are acquiring symbolic capital, they are given opportunity to develop skills of linguistic, artistic, and scientific expression and creative elaboration of ideas in concrete form."

The fourth type of public school classroom trains students for ownership, leadership, and control. Every hot social issue is discussed, students are urged to look at a point from all sides. A leader, after all, has to understand every possible shade of human nature in order to effectively mobilize, organize, or defeat any possible opponent. In this kind of schoolroom bells are not used to begin and end periods. This classroom offers something none of the others do: "knowledge of and practice in manipulating socially legitimated tools of systems analysis."

Which classroom is your child in?

lowest common denominator

great article!

Nice to see that a teacher who actually cares and brings the situation to our attention.

My impression is that most educators eventually go for the lowest common denominator, because they get tired of fighting the system.

Our entire society is based on these diplomas, as if it proves anything except that John Doe was awake long enough to pick up what the teacher told him needs to be on the examination papers.

We have a surplus of university grads who barely made it, and now practice whatever it is, rather badly.
When was the last time you asked your doctor what his percentage was, or if he has done any follow-up studying?

At the same time we have people who for whatever reason did not fit the norm, and thus do not have the "qualifications" to do anything besides sweeping the floors.

In fact, the ones who rebelled against the schools most likely did so because they were smart enough to realize that it is a scam!
A scam where well-to-do families can keep an overgrown kid at university forever or untill he managed to make the grade by luck or by cheating.

So in schools as well as in society, this country would be better off, if we recognized abilities that may not exactly fit into those guidelines we are stuck with now!

Education?

What we call public schools in Canada (UK Public schools are really private schools - yes and they drive on the wrong side of the road too!) were created in the UK to get children an occupation so as not to take jobs in factories.

At the turn of the century in England is was not uncommon for 13 year olds to finish primary school and enter work in the mines.

The more educated of the 'common' classes were the nautical types because sailors, with much time on their hands, simply educated themselves in makeshift classes on board sailing ships. Ship's masters soon found out that if a sailors spare time was taken for educational purposes, there was much less time for mutinous thoughts on the long voyages.

It seems our political masters are now treating our public schools as a warehouse to put children in for 12 or more years and only dealing with the cream. The elites can afford a private education where much more time can be spent on individual children, providing them with the education they need to carry on to university.

Universities have now turned from institutions of higher learning into a sorta job mill, where if one can pay for four years they get at least a BA; the more money you cough up, a MA, and if you are really rolling in the dough, a doctorate. But are they truly educated or have they just jumped through bureaucratic hoops.

As regular readers of these posts know, I have a penchant for 'rail' transit and as a layman on the subject, I am always amazed by the fact that planners and engineers graduating from UBC and SFU have such little knowledge of the subject and I can hold my own in any debate. Good god, these guys haven't a clue about rail history, or even the basics of rail operation and these guys are planning for future transit in Vancouver? We haven't a hope!

Boot camp.

After having twelve years of my life utterly wasted by the public school system, I can do nothing but conclude that it is not really about education at all but rather about making kids conform. This forced conformity does not reflect the pluralistic society outside the school walls, and it demonstrates a big gap between school and reality.

The school system in North America was originally based on the Prussian system whose purpose was to prepare children for military service. It seems nothing has changed since then except the fact that the buildings are now contrete and painted pastel instead of being made of wood.

That's not to say the rest of the world is faring any better. Chinese schools are far, far worse in this regard and the ideology behind the way they're run predates communism.

There's no doubt that excessive political correctness is a problem, but excessive "tradition" can be a problem too. Both encourage conformity, and both are not appropriate solutions. A better idea would be to simply demolish the existing system and start over from scratch.

Which classroom is your child in?

A good posting, reminded me of a book by Ivan Illich on the public education 'factory' system. Manufacturing or training consumers and workers.

Also have to wonder why persons would choose the field of education when governments appear to want to make budget cuts (same a nursing profession) often at education's expense, or the system is not really about educating critical thinkers, but rather widget makers and widget consumers!

keep the faith

Schooling is doomed to fail if it's meant to prepare all kids for any possible future.

It's easy to be cynical and declaim that education is a series of filters to sift out the able from the unable that maintain an unfortunate caste system but I personally would rather be optimistic and think of prescribed learning outcomes as a smorgasbord of things for kids to sample and an opportunity for kids to discover their gifts.

It's important to remember that education is about enculturation, leading kids into the adult world. Teachers do much more than transfer curricular knowledge from their brain to the students'. More importantly, they're modelling how to be curious, how to solve problems, how to take turns, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with frustration, ultimately, how to act like an adult. Kids don't magically acquire these skills, they have to be taught them by kind and patient adults.

Keep up the good work!

French Immersion

Great article and good insights that could be applied across the system. As a French Immersion teacher I feel compelled to dispell the myth of the elitist notion of FI. Although some of you cranky teacher/public education haters will no doubt refuse to believe me... MANY of our students are either ESL, former ESL and/or learning disabled (e.g. struggle in writing output, reading skills etc). Our students come from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and also display the varied motivation level one finds in any school program (or in any life endeavour, for that matter). This does not mean that they are not successful in FI, but it does mean we are not teaching an "elite" aka privileged, group of kids. And next year, some of our classes are OVER 30 as high school has no class size limits. These are facts, not opinions about what is, in my opinion, a great experience and program for our kids.

Great Article!

I wish you would have put in something about our First Nations students however. The number of students of First Nations ancestory that the regular system does not work for is quite large.

As for French Immersion, how many ministry designated students are in that program? Look at the average numbers of designated students in regular classes compared to the FI program in the same district. One is fairly close to zero. Any guess which one? FI definitely has a place in our public system, but we shouldn't pretend it is something that it isn't.

All this, and the Three Rs too...

Responding to Speedo's post above.

The PLOS often are, as I have heard from experienced public school teachers and have discovered for myself, a hodge-podge of really obvious skills translated into "educationalese" (the language of the Ministry which can transform "count to one hundred" to something like "demonstrate familiarity with the sequential arrangement of whole numbers to the total of ten sets of ten" - Ok, yes, I'm being a bit facetious but, really, have you READ the PLOs?)- where was I? - oh yes, a hodge-podge of obvious, concrete, measurable skills and much more elusive, un-measurable concepts.

For inspiration and overview the PLOs are a marvelous tool but if the poor teacher attempts to address each and every prescribed outcome for every subject with each and every student the school day would need to be ten hours long. And the classes a whole lot smaller.

In reality, as Nick Smith has no doubt discovered, teachers are doing well if they manage to hit the high points and push their struggling students through. Students whose personal skill sets enable them to cope well within the school system will have no trouble demonstrating sufficient understanding to guarantee their Dogwoods. For the rest, well, the lucky ones find their way into the alternative programs.

What really got my attention was Speedo's comment that teachers are supposed to provide the role modelling for "how to be curious, how to solve problems, how take turns ... solve conflicts ... deal with frustration ... act like adults ..."

I personally believe that this is most emphatically NOT the teacher's primary role, and the fact that society has come to expect this of teachers is a symptom of much of what ails our public school system, and, to a much greater extent, our society as a whole.

All of these things are the job of the PARENT. If the child comes to school with these concepts at least introduced by his/her parents, the teacher's primary and most important job, to facilitate the student gaining academic knowledge, suddenly becomes feasible.

Teachers are very often expected to "parent" their students. This is very, very wrong, and unfair to all parties concerned. I think this is an explanation for the underlying chaos of even the most (superficially) "successful" public school classroom.

While teachers should be, and in most cases are, admirable role models, I think we lose sight of the basic fact that the most important role models are those who are there for the hours children aren't in school - that is, their parents (or, to be politically correct, their adult, fulltime caregivers.) Looking to their school teachers for guidance and not finding it may lead to increased importance of the peer group in influencing juvenile behaviour. Not always with the best results ...

Having strong views on all things educational, I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.

Great article, Nick.

Square pegs & useful citizens

A colleague recently reminded me that Canada's public education system was originally supposed to be about preparing "useful citizens", a much broader concept than the university prep or employment prep that it's become today.

We've narrowed the goals and narrowed definitions of success. In the effort to adapt models that make for successful enterprises, we've standardized approaches with standardized curriculum, standardized testing, etc. This would all be great if we were dealing with a standardized population in which all members were heading for the same narrow destination. But as we can see from all the "square pegs" who instead end up being labelled and viewing themselves as failures, we are not dealing with a standardized population, and they don't all have the same goals and aspirations.

So the system works very well for some, while sabotaging others before they've even begun.

We need to reassess our expectations of K-12 education and its role in preparing "useful citizens", and we need to reconsider the part that's clearly not working--education of different learners, teaching that accommodates diversity and that nourishes the whole range of skills and talents that make people useful citizens, along with real inclusion, and supports for vulnerable students or students who are just riding the roller coaster of youth's often dramatic ups & downs. And we need to do this without playing God and pre-determining people's destinies for them. Not an easy task, but a worthwhile one that benefits all of society in the end.

We also need to celebrate the many aspects that are working very well, and to build on successes and innovations. It's still one of the finest public education systems in the world and we devalue it by often forgetting to put the very real shortcomings in context.

a potential solution set:

or at least:
Dismiss the army of reading and arithmetic specialists and the commercial empire they represent.

Let no school exceed a few hundred in size. Even that’s far too big. And make them local. End all unnecessary transportation of students at once; transportation is what the British used to do with hardened criminals. We don’t need it, we need neighborhood schools.

Make everybody teach. Don’t let anybody get paid for schooling kids without actually spending time with them. The industrial model, with pyramidal management and plenty of hori-zontal featherbedding niches, is based on ignorance of how things get done, or indifference to results.

Measure performance with individualized instruments. Standardized tests, like schools themselves, have lost their moral legitimacy. They correlate with nothing of human value and their very existence perverts curriculum into a preparation for these extravagant rituals. Indeed, all paper and pencil tests are a waste of time, useless as predictors of anything important unless the competition is rigged. As a casual guide they are probably harmless, but as a sorting tool they are corrupt and deceitful. A test of whether you can drive is driving. Performance testing is where genuine evaluation will always be found. There surely can’t be a normal parent on earth who doesn’t judge his or her child’s progress by performance.

Shut down district school boards.

Install permanent parent facilities in every school with appropriate equipment to allow parent partnerships with their own kids and others.

Recognize that total schooling is psychologically and procedurally unsound. Wasteful and horrendously expensive. Give children some private time and space, some choice of subjects, methods, and associations, and freedom from constant surveillance.

Admit there is no one right way to grow up successfully.

Arrange much of schooling around complex themes instead of subjects.

Force the school structure to provide flex-time, flex-space, flex-sequencing, and flex-content so that every study can be personalized to fit the whole range of individual styles and performance.

Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this.

But murdock

A middle class or lower middle class working family living in the lower mainland or in most other urban areas of this country simply does not HAVE THE TIME (or the money) to be the kind of parent you think we all should be.

We have created an insane system and breaking the 'teaching' monopoly isn't the big problem. Public education with its warts and the things you so accurately point out are symptoms of a much larger problem. Only the independently wealthy can afford to live the kind of life you think (and I agree) we all should live. As a matter of fact, the government we have now would really rather we all started competing for health services so we could return to the bad old days of the first half of the last century when people who got really sick stayed at home with relatives until they DIED because they couldn’t afford medical care.

Neither breaking away from the rest of Canada, nor destroying public education, will do anything about these fundamentals. You're goring the wrong ox. In my view.

Wow, Murdock ...

While agreeing (mostly) with your point of view, I have to say that in my ever-so-humble opinion it will never come to pass.

Simply because most families, as GW points out, cannot afford the time & $$$ investment such a utopian alternative would require and because parents are conditioned to look to the "experts" for everything from feeding their babies to "educating" them.

I don't have a problem with the concept of the public school system. It works all right much of the time for many of the participants. For some it is superb. For others, sheer hell. But I don't think it should be dismantled. It *could* certainly use some changes.

Return neighbourhood and rural primary and junior high schools to the physical location of the students. Create a stronger trades stream in the high schools (but DO NOT discourage students from taking courses outside of their chosen "stream".)

Convince administrators, teachers, parents and students that a university education is not a "must" for most; definitely encourage post secondary studies but remove the stigma attached to community college and trade school certificates & diplomas versus full-blown (and much too often useless) university degrees.

University-educated teachers often push (maybe unintentionally?) the idea that university is the ultimate goal after high school graduation; that everything else is kinda, well, second best. For people not "smart" enough to pass their provincial exams.

Heck, make it a requirement that every "academic" university require incoming students to have at least two years (just chucking that number out there) real world work experience before their first year of classes. This in itself would tighten things up; nothing like a stint at a minimum wage entry level job to make one analyze one's educational objectives!

GW, you don't need to be independently wealthy to be an involved parent. You just need to care. (OK, care a lot. That dirty word, "sacrifice", comes into play here.)Step off the treadmill, at least for a breathing space, and examine the important things in life and make your decisions accordingly. (A bout with a potentially fatal disease helps here, LOL - nothing like a personal brush with cancer or the like to pare down your desires and sort out your family priorities!)

Life isn't fair; people aren't equal. A successful education system will admit these things up front, and work with strengths. Broaden the viewpoints and increase the options for all.

We need way more "alternative" schools.

Just a few thoughts.

shepherdess

Well.

RBC says that just owning an 'average' home for a family with a combined income of $70,000. in the lower mainland will mean devoting between 68 and 70 percent of that pretax income to paying the mortgage. Therefore, that's out. So is being able to help your kids go to university or trade school. So is living anywhere but a minimum of 1.5 to 2 hours from Vancouver (where, let's say hypothetically) our little ‘family’ lives while Mom (and Dad too if our little family is lucky - I mean if Dad's still around) works in the city - say as a paralegal – who’s expected to be in the office at 8am each morning and never leaves before, say 7pm. Why do you suppose so many women are deciding NOT to have a family.

Here's a study you might be interested in:
http://policyalternatives.ca/documents/National_Office_Pubs/2007/The_Rich_and_the_Rest_of_Us.pdf

You'll need Adobe to open it, it was published in March of this year.

Anyway, there's a limit to how many sacrifices folks will make; how much time and energy they have left at the end of every long day to even read a story to their kids without falling asleep; how engaged they can be as a coach or member of the PAC.

It's not so much a question of priorities - it's a question of realities. And a question of little or no affordable quality childcare in the early childhood years too. But of course that’s not a problem for the masters of the universe.

And we can't all move to the country and become independent contractors - as much as the Campbell Government seems to think that's a good idea.

Even having the time to respond to articles like this is a luxury for most: An impossibility for many.

One big improvement would be to put administrators back into classrooms as part of the teaching team - the last thing our education system needs is more management.

Interesting thoughts - btw - I haven't even addressed all the young women (and there are lots of them) struggling to bring up kids entirely on their own because so many men just don't hang around for the tough stuff any more.

Cheers.

real good suggestion

Now, there is a real good suggestion!

Cutting the neighbours lawn or babysitting does not make for real life working experiences.

I have seen teens show up for a job with their walkmans blasting and their only question would be about lunchtime and benefits.

No wonder if Educators at time despair at the lack of interest in the curriculum.

Of course, parents could help if they quit pampering their kids from teens all the way to their forties, and instead instilled a sense values in life.

Note to GW

Fair enough, your point is well taken. I read an article just a few days ago in the Van Sun about the 70% of income going to mortgage payments.

Far be it from me to tell others how they should live their lives. I am far from the lower mainland and after every visit to the big smoke appreciate the relatively pristine Interior even more.

We live on a combined after tax family income of about $30,000 per year. We are still paying off our property, which we bought almost 20 years ago. We built (are still building) our own house, not being able (or willing) to borrow any additional money for construction. I have not worked for wages since our first child was born, 13 years ago, but I do generate a certain amount of self-employed farm income, most of which gets plunked right back into the farm. We keep two vehicles insured & running and my spouse commutes about 80 miles a day to his "real job".

Since our closest rural school closed 7 years ago we homeschool our children, initially in order to save them from said 80 mile commute but after a few years by combined, oft-discussed and re-analysed choice.

Our kids will have to do as we did and get their post secondary educations via working for wages and student loans. One child is likely to go for trade school/apprenticeship; the other is likely to need a university education. They have our moral support but that's likely all they will get! The $$$ will need to be self-generated.

Sacrifice for our chosen lifestyle and to support our principles is a daily reality here.

Contrary to what many urbanites believe, living in the country is not cheap and easy; the difficulties inherent with being a rural family are just different than those faced by our urban counterparts.

We have city friends (by which I refer to Vancouver area & Victoria as "city") who come to visit us during their summer vacations for "country time", so we are well aware of the issues professional, "upwardly mobile", double-income, city familes face. A comment that we have received more than once is that they would like to live our lifestyle but that they aren't "brave" enough to try it.

Bravery never entered into it (maybe stupidity/stubborness, though? - LOL)- we just kept putting one foot after the other, and when the children came we went with what felt intuitively right, rather than what a larger society viewed as the "norm".

Why am I sharing all this personal info with you? I dunno, just to lend credibility and context to my previous statements, I guess.

We are still affiliated with the public education system, using our school district's distance ed program as an "umbrella" to our homeschooling, and numbering many teachers among our close personal friends.

What we personally see and hear allows us to form our own opinions as to the direction of public education in B.C.

So there you go.

Good on you and yours

I come from a farm background and wasn't in any way judging the quality of your choices.

I think forced (or otherwise) urbanization has been a fraught exercise for many. Even in places (outside BC) where cities have been relatively livable and cheap options for people who couldn't cope with Vancouver (for one reason or another) the trend is moving the wrong way now as well.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that I was being critical...I just see so many people these days for whom the choices have all become very difficult - if not impossible. And felt I had to make that observation.

In 30 years we've managed pretty thoroughly to mess things up. I hope the crash, when it comes (and it will if we don't change as a society) won't hurt too many innocent folks. I think you and yours will survive it better than most and I'm glad of that.

I hope the reason you felt comfortable enough to write what you did was at least partly a result of the fact that you didn't see me as being someone who'd jump all over you for being honest.

Good luck.

Alternative/homeschool taught everywhere

So-called "non-formal" education is offered at independent (private) schools, community centres, homes (e.g. mentoring or tutoring), or even at festivals (Solar Power Road Show does edu-fun science activities) at events, too.

Cheers,
Rob Mathies