SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Home-Schooling is Back

Those of us who have home-schooled our children know how good it is for them - personally, academically, morally, and - yes - socially. A few days ago, I posted a link to a blog that told about an excellent home-schooling web-site but then withdrew it because of other material in the blog. Back by popular demand, here is the link to the home-schooling site. It leads to all kinds of interesting and helpful resources.

The Shorty List

At present, most parents choose their children’s daycare centre and elementary school on a wing and a prayer - its location, maybe talking to other parents, first impressions - not a whole lot to go on. This CBC news story describes The Shorty List, a web-based service that soon to be provided in the Vancouver area, with plans to extend it to other major Canadian cities like Calgary and Toronto, where parents can post anonymous comments about their children’s daycare centres and elementary schools. 

The usual suspects are weighing in, deploring the anonymity aspect, but it seems as though the project will go ahead. After all, Internet users are pretty sophisticated these days, what with all the customer reviews of hotels, restaurants, doctors, and so forth, and they know that one or two bad reviews aren’t necessarily the kiss of death. But ten bad reviews? Hmmmm. And that’s the way it should be.

We say: The more information parents have when making important decisions about their kids’ lives, the better. Vive the Shorty List!

Competition for Better and Less Expensive Textbooks

We have often complained about school textbooks in Ontario, on the grounds that they are bulky, untested, expensive, poorly-written, and trendy (other than that, they’re great). At least part of the reason for these problems is the virtual monopoly of a few big publishing companies over the supply of textbooks to Ontario schools. The publishing companies enjoy their monopoly because of the province’s list of approved books - The Trillium List - which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for small and foreign publishers to place their books on the list. Here’s an article from our archives that gives some background information.

But there may be light at the end of the tunnel! The Internet, which is revolutionizing so many things, has made it possible to produce free textbooks - as this article from the Hamilton Spectator attests. Curriki is an on-line hub for open-source textbooks and other materials that can be downloaded free of charge. Inroads of Curriki materials into schools have been slow to date, but this is likely to speed up, and already publishers are sitting up and taking notice. It seems likely that they will be forced into providing better textbooks, perhaps along the lines suggested in this article from our archives (about the much-superior textbooks used in Europe).

Big Union

It’s common to characterize big business as greedy, power-drunk, and sneaky, but rare to portray big union in the same light - even though the unions are really just big corporations themselves, the only difference being that on average they appear to be less troubled by ethical considerations than big business.

Always good value, Jay Greene’s posting Teachers’ Unions Will Do Absolutely Anything to Win is of exceptional interest. Quoting Jay: “Truth, consistency, educational excellence, the well-being of children - none of this matters to the teacher unions. The only thing that matters is winning so that they can extract as much money from the public as possible.” Jay’s posting includes some amazing videos.