SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Sunday at the Movies (Reality check for Ontario)

This clip should be watched by everyone who lives in Ontario, especially those who are skeptical about the recently-released Drummond report and its recommendations for drastic cuts to government spending. The clip is 16 minutes long and, if you’re short of time, you could start watching at the 8-minute mark. I guarantee you will watch the rest. YouTube link

What is the state’s role in children’s upbringing?

On the one hand, Canada is a signatory to the United Nation’s Article 26(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms, which states that “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”.

On the other hand, the Canadian Supreme Court recently restricted people’s right to challenge programs they find personally offensive or intrusive. The Supreme Court challenge was mounted by two Quebec parents who were concerned about the effect that a mandatory school course on ethics and religion was having on their Grade 4 son. 

There has always been a tension between the authority of parents to raise their children as they see fit and the overall needs of the society in which the children will take their place. I have never been able to settle this question in my own mind, and so I would welcome discussion on this point. Obviously, the state has a responsibility to step in and rescue children in abusive or negligent situations and of course exemplary parents should be left alone to do their thing unhindered, but there is a large grey area in between that I would like to see explored. H/T CC

Time to Give Equitable Schooling More Than Lip Service

There’s an article in today’s Globe and Mail about school choice entitled “Inequitable Schooling”. The thesis is that the trouble with school choice is that only the more savvy, educated parents will take advantage of it, and the rest of the kids will be left out in the cold. 

In fact, this description accurately describes the situation that exists today in most school districts. Well-educated, affluent parents are either working the system to get good service for their children (perhaps by asking for a particular teacher or by buying a house in the catchment area of an excellent school or by paying for private lessons or by seeking out special programs like French immersion) or else they are enrolling their children in independent schools. In contrast, less sophisticated parents are forced to settle for whatever comes their way, in most cases sending their children to the school assigned by their school board. 
When school boards make it easier for less-affluent parents to work the system, nothing changes for the savvy parents - but more less-sophisticated parents gain access to currently-unattainable alternatives. If the goal is to make things fairer, school boards should expand the range and number of alternative schools and programs and make it easier for less affluent parents to access them. H/T LDA

The chickens are coming home to roost

How do you spell vindication? The much-awaited Drummond report on the drastic spending cuts Ontario needs to make might as well have been written by SQE. Virtually everything on the chopping block is something that we have deplored - all-day kindergarten, class size reductions, overproduction of teachers, excessive non-teaching positions, victory lap, rich pensions, and on and on.

Near the end of the linked-to article, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) condemns the recommendations as “extremely confrontational”. Of course, no one can do confrontational better than the OSSTF, and this is but a hint of the whirlwind the Ontario government will reap if it tries to implement the Drummond recommendations. This interesting column in the K/W Record opines that the Ontario government doesn’t have the stomach to do so - pointing out that at the height of Mike Harris’ slashing he cut only about 4% of government spending, while the Drummond Commission calls for 17% cuts in order to achieve the seemingly-modest goal of balancing Ontario’s budget in five years.

This is going to be interesting.

Tin foil hats for the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association

Here's a strange story out of Ontario. According to The Globe and Mail, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association has taken the position that schools should stop installing wireless Internet systems, due to fears about the effect of electromagnetic radiation on children's health. Yet it has been proven beyond a doubt that WiFi poses no dangers to people, children included (this column from the excellent site Skeptic North provides links to the research). 

In the Globe article, a parent says her son's headaches stopped this fall after she moved him to a new wireless-free school. The Skeptic North column provides several possible explanations for this phenomenon, and I will add another possible cause - mould. These two articles (here and here) from our archives deal with this mostly-ignored but very real health threat. 

One thing is sure - history will show that the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association is making a big mistake here. Let's hope they don't start issuing tin foil hats to teachers and children in the meantime!

All Day Kindergarten? - NEW SQE Poll Question

With the Ontario Drummond report's expected release tomorrow, there is all kinds of speculation as to what he will recommend the government cut or amend.  This may be the worst-kept secret or there may be some surprises.

However, the very expensive all-day junior and senior kindergarten program is promised not to be on the chopping block.  Regardless, I am still hearing from many people that I come in contact with on a daily basis, that they do not like this program.   

There is no doubt that early intervention makes a difference.  There is lots of research showing that lower income kids do better in school if they get effective intervention.  If the original purpose was to close the SES achievement gap by giving lower income children a head start so that they could be as ready for formal schooling as their more affluent peers, then making it universal cancels that out.  So readers, what do you think?  Take our poll question and we will publish the results.

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P.S.:  Margaret Wente weighs in on the topic in her Globe and Mail column here.  She points out that the biggest experiment in early learning, Head Start, was a bust.  The kids lost any gains by the end of grade one.  SQE has always said that proven effective instructional methods are the best preventative medicine.

The limitations of phonics

Time for a breather from the heavy stuff. Here's a look at why being able to decode English takes you only so far.

Let’s face it
English is a stupid language.
There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England
French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don’t fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn’t the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn’t the preacher praught.

If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn’t a race at all)

That is why
When the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible
And why it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this observation,
It ends.

Sunday at the Movies (Speed of change)

I'm sure you've seen wake-up calls like this before, but still.... Once you've watched the five-minute video, take a minute to think about the implications for schooling. Some would probably say the bottom line is that schools should focus on things like higher-order thinking skills and creativity and team work. Others might think the message is that schools should focus on foundational skills and knowledge because students with a good grounding in the basics will be equipped to cope with whatever new learning requirements come their way. Is there a middle way? For sure, these are things we should be thinking about! YouTube link

1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

In the comments thread of Really Thinking About Thinking, Stephen questions the connection between drill and higher thinking. Here are two articles from our archives. One of the articles deals with the connection between math drills and improvements in students’ grasp of “math concepts and applications, including logical thinking”. The other article deals with the connection in the arts between rigorous training in the fundamentals of the discipline and creativity. 

The author of the math article writes: “When a student is freed up from the laborious task of decoding most of the words in a passage, his comprehension improves. So in math: when basic computation can be done with speed and accuracy, more attention can be given to the process or problem.”

The author of the arts article writes: “The originality of Mozart’s music is inseparable from its rule-guided objectivity. It has a logic and an orderliness that come from the supreme grasp of musical grammar. Real originality does not defy convention but depends on it.”

In my opinion, this principle extends to virtually every facet of human endeavour: world-class performance is always the result of thousands of hours of drudgery. Maybe even ten thousand hours.

People have to master a dscipline before they can transcend it.

Really thinking about thinking

Our favourite cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has presented this very logical and non-hysterical discussion of higher-order skills in a past issue of American Educator, the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers. You really have to read the whole thing to get the full value of his very sophisticated argument, but here is his summary.

“The point of our argument is not to say that teaching students how to think, work together better, or use new information more rigorously is not a worthy and attainable goal Rather, we seek to call attention to the magnitude of the challenge and to sound a note of caution amidst the sirens calling our political leaders once again to the rocky shoals of past education reform failures. Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on “21st-century skills” will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains for the appearance of short-term progress.”