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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Lack of attendance at Ontario schools no surprise!
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
A report came out recently that lamented the fact that Canadian students had a much higher absentee rate than most other countries. The author of the report as well as several Ministry of Education officials seemed rather shocked and taken aback at these findings. I was not.Let us take the example of the educational system of Ontario as a microcosm of the whole educational system in Canada. In the last eight years, there has been a definite right-wing swing to most educational systems in Canada but especially in Ontario under the Harris regime.
Under this "common-sense revolution" the issue of "accountability" was brought to the forefront and tests of all sorts were created to test everything in the educational system from teachers, students, cafeteria staff, shrubs out in the yard and virtually anything that constituted an aspect of the educational stem.
After all, the Harris Government was a business-oriented government and in business every little widget must be tested and re-tested to ensure maximum productivity and to achieve maximum profit. They felt that since the Ontario taxpayers were paying "so much" (??) into education they had a right to have valid evaluators in place to determine whether they were getting their money's worth or not. Every little widget or student should be able to get 90% if the teachers were doing their jobs.
How do you test a student's progress? Well, the Harris MBAs had an answer for that as well. Test them on literacy and mathematics. After all, every student in Ontario should be able to read, write, add and subtract as well as "that there Margaret Atwood" and "that Stephen Hawking fellow" and if not, well....damn it.....keep testing them until they do!
Of course once teachers (as the government knew these dutiful little souls would) started teaching "to the test" and preparing them to pass it and students started to figure out the test, their test scores would, miraculously improve. Of course the Ontario Government took full credit for this superior improvement and now had "hard, facts and figures" to prove that the students in Ontario were much better now than before. They were all now "literate mathematicians" or would soon or.....they would not be allowed to graduate! Wow!! Was this government slick or what??
The only problem is that students are not widgets and the real profits from education are not always readily evident. In fact, probably the real impact of a teacher and/or teaching does not have an impact upon the student for ten, fifteen or twenty years later. The Ontario Conservatives did not have that kind of time. They wanted to prove their success quickly and with aspects that could be easily taught, stored in a student's short memory bank and then, after the test was over and it no longer served political ends, quickly forgotten.
Who were the real victims in this "MBA approach" to education? The teacher, the student and the entire educational system were the real victims.
Teachers lost who lost the ability as well as the time to teach what he or she knew was important as way too much time was spent teaching to the test. After all, you did not want to be the teacher who had the class that brought down the school's average on the literacy or math test. Administrators frown on things like that. It makes them look bad.
The student had even more class time taken away from real learning of the things that matter in life. The ability to be creative, thoughtful, critical, and to, most of, revel in the joy of learning for learningís sake.
The educational system under the Harris Regime was now full of teachers who were teaching out of their subject areas. Department Heads in secondary schools, who truly loved their subject areas and could offer insights to new teachers, were gone. Teachers in all areas faced classes of immense proportions. Schools that were not huge, over-crowded teaching factories were quickly closed. Little time could realistically be given to the art of teaching students to be life-long learners and to develop critical and creative thinking skills.
And....of course that is exactly what the Ontario Government of Mike Harris/Ernie Eves wanted. They wanted an unthinking populace who could be easily controlled and who were simply excellent ,but mindless, "consumers".
Is it any wonder then that students in Ontario have lost their desire to attend school? School no longer is about them. Unless the teacher is very creative, hard working and inventive, students have little input into their own education. They are truly, in the finest sense of the phrase; merely "widgets on an assembly line" headed no where. Education is now a very important political football. Students as well as teachers no longer wish to be there and both groups, as soon as they are given a chance, escape from the school as if they were the proverbial rats fleeing a sinking ship. Private schools who maintain smaller schools and smaller class sizes and try to develop creative, thinking students flourish.
What has happened to one of the finest, most innovative, most efficient and dynamic public educational systems in the world? Once we were the envy of the civilized world. Now our educational system is a mere shadow of its former self.
The real shock to me is that not that there are so many students not showing up for class but that there are as many as there are continuing to attend this "lost institution". An institution demoralized and corrupted of its true purpose which used to be to educate the entire person and to produce thoughtful, creative and energized citizens for the betterment of our community's future.
I weep for a lost generation!
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
