Of course it doesn’t help when the federal government and its policies that reduces Canada’s ability to complete with the international competitors.

“The report is the latest in a series of biennial reviews from the Science, Technology and Innovation Council, an 18-member panel that the Harper government created in 2007 to replace a range of science policy advisers and bodies. Its findings indicate that Canada has dropped in rank from 16th to 23rd in overall expenditures on research and development relative to GDP compared to other economically developed countries.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/canada-losing-ground-in-global-science-race-report-says/article12052990/

An inconvenient fact, but nevertheless should be stated as one of the realities.

On the other side, the realities in the K to 12, is the sad fact that approximately 20 % of grade 12 graduates have the skills, abilities and the knowledge to enter the STEM fields of study in the post-secondary institutes.

Are kids turned off by science and math in the early grades?  Some would viewed it as the main problem. However, I see it differently based on my experiences and observations. I see it as a planning in advance, the future needs of high schools, their resources to reduced costs and control funding of the STEM classes at the high school level.

What better way is there by working to the percentages, where only 30 % of high school students in grade 9, will be entering the STEM courses of the kind that are the required secondary courses to entered any STEM program at the post-secondary level.

What is the common factor that 30 % of the grade 9 students share?  Strong math skills coupled with a solid foundation in basic math and arithmetic. It enables the 30 % of the high school students to select advance math, calculus, trig, physics, chemistry to robotics. The other 70 % of students are already discouraged by grade 9, finding science and math difficult subjects, and would be so, when there is huge knowledge gaps to overcome coupled with weak foundation skills in areas of math.

A natural flow of traffic leads away from the STEM courses of students volunteering on their own, to say NO to STEM subjects. All made easier, when budgets for STEM subjects have been reduced steadily over the years in areas of resources, even though overall funding of the STEM subjects have increased to pay the salaries of the educators and to provide the minimum resources beyond the textbooks.

Gone are the days of fully equipped science and technology labs. The children of today, views the stories of their parents and grandparents that went to school in the 1960s and 1970s as myths, and exaggeration on the parents’ part.  Now, school administrators pay Peter by robbing Paul, and usually it is the STEM subjects that are being robbed.

Yep, as the left-wing educrats dismantle our economy by not producing quality graduates, how are these latte liberals and champagne socialists going to continue living off of us?  They’re milking the system for all it’s worth, but are blind to the fact that we’re all in this together, and if they don’t do their part, they’ll eventually pay the price by having to accept lower salaries, benefits, and pensions.  They have to stop putting their puppets into office and start toeing the line.

But Bev, on the other side of the political spectrum they too are not doing right either. For example the STEM graduates are now completing for Canadian jobs with the temporary foreign workers.

It really peeves me off, that the young Canadian adults leaving university with some type of a science degree, are now being pushed out of their jobs in labs in private and the public sector by temporary foreign workers of cheaper wages. Throw in the austerity budgets of slash and burn models, coming in from the usual collection of politics from the right, the underlying science of which policy is built on is cut in favour of deciding and formulating policy on political ideologies.

My point there has to be a balance struck. There is no balance and hasn’t been since the 1990s, global wide. Between the political and economic powers, its favouring the few at the expense of the welfare and health of the people.

Our social institutions, are not leading and in particular the public education model, by ensuring that all children are education to a standard that enables them to have the essential skills and abilities as adults. Instead the public education system educates by percentages using the 19th century knowledge of learning science as their bible in the 21st century.

So yes, we are in it together, and if there was a just world, choice would be the operative word in a public education system, that refuses to educate all children to their potential. Instead they play games to have the public to served their self-serving interests, and to which it really pisses me off. If an education system is willing to sacrificed kids like my youngest child who is a dyslexic, what is the percentage of lost potential to Canadian society and for that matter any country are they willing to sacrificed to gain advantage for the minority?

Games such as the latest in NL, and one very courageous and smart 19 year old who happens to be the president of the Federation of School Councils in NL. He let another secret out of the bag of secrets which was common knowledge. A report that the school board officials would have like to kept private and away from the prying eyes of the public. “The 29-page workplace assessment was commissioned by the Labrador School Board, and was received in January.

The report says staff are “disrespectful” to one another, “kids are treated with disrespect, especially low-income,” and “morale is very poor.”

Most of the grievances outlined in the report point to problems with how administrators treat staff and handle conflict.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2013/05/21/nl-labrador-school-workplace-assessment-522.html

As for the STEM subjects in the NL K to 12 - don’t asked. High school students are lucky enough to have working labs without the resources and supplies.

Bev:  I thought it was the right-wing ideologues and religious nutters who were dismantling our science programs.  Who knew?

I just read your post, Nancy.  We all know where the money is going that should be spent on science labs—greedy unions and bureaucrats.  Years ago my grade school (one—eight) had a state-of-the-art science lab, a gym, a library, an art room, a music room with band instruments (and volunteers from the symphony directed our band).  In the mid 50’s to the early 60’s, we had music lessons (all of us could easily sing the solfege), art, science, gym, drama, library.  This was in the poorest school district in Windsor, ON.  Although many children didn’t own a pair of shoes, and many spoke other languages at home (like my husband who’s a chemist) we were all literate, and had good numeracy skills.  Why was it so good back then?  This was before the mountains of bureaucrats (desk pilots) and powerful teachers unions got their hands in the cooky jar/tax dollars.  Nowadays there is so much over-staffing, and inflated salaries, benefits and gold-plated pensions that there’s no money left for what schools are supposed to be providing. 
I don’t recommend sending a child into the Ontario system.  Parents, homeschool if at all possible, and even if you send your child because you have to work, be prepared to educate them at home; because schools don’t teach phonics, grammar, cursive writing, spelling, algorhithms, and I’ve heard that the teachers’ unions are now trying to do away with teaching fractions.  In other words, they’re getting nothing academically worthwhile.

Yes, and the public education system and its stakeholders have full control of the education funding.Therefore the buck stops there, and any outside influences such as text publishers to government policies can work the education system and its stakeholders to their best interests. Of course it works both ways, so my anger is mostly directed at the public education system. The reason being, if children had a proper education and each one reaching their full potential - there would be no need for temporary foreign workers, and unemployment would be a very low number.

To add, there is another trend, that is here to stay and slowly being embedded into the education system. Self-learning on all the stuff that the public K to 12 education system don’t bother to teach. They actually expect parents to accept this task as well. By the way, its the worst kind that actually requires kids to have a solid foundation in the 3 Rs. So many parents would be better off, keeping their kids at home, instead of sending them to a school, where they are not learning and progressing.

I lived in a rural Southern Ontario community near Hamilton, and in 1960, there was a TV in each classroom. All brought and paid for by the local business community. Mind you the TV was only turned on for a CBC program that had education value, and once a year to watch the prime minister on TV. I still remembered the face of Diefenbaker in grade 1. So by grade 4, all the kids were quite aware and knowledgeable about the government of Canada. I was surrounded by different European languages, but everyone spoke, read and wrote English. On Saturdays, the different churches had some language class on the go for the children to learned their native language. Walking into high school, I entered into a different world, of a fully equipped school, a very impressive school library, and six sciences labs that could hold 40 students. There was no fees to be on sports teams and oodles of extracurricular activities. All equipment and uniforms were supplied. Today, a parent needs to shell out $1000 if you want your teen to be on a sports team. I remembered when I and my other friends got our first close up of other schools in the nearby cities. We realized we had it pretty good, and being much older now, there was a strong engagement of business and other individuals from the various communities, who made sure the dollars were there for the kids at the public high school. I did not appreciated that back when I was a teen, but then what teen does? 

It all started to fall apart in the 1980s, and it probably began when the public education stakeholders chased out the strong PTAs and business associations out of the schools.

Its really a pity…..over at the WISE math site an interesting post.

“My friend (a high school teacher of English) of thirty years ago told me then that the students coming out of high school were horribly unprepared for entering the work force. He warned me to be careful in hiring people with high school diplomas dated after 1984. These days I hear many stories from business owners and their frustration with low skilled employees. Time to get back to rigorous grade school / high school education that focuses on the basics: reading, writing and ‘rithmatic.”
http://wisemath.org/join/

Nancy, when you talk about the temporary foreign workers pushing out the Canadian workers, are you thinking about what happened recently at the RBC?  That was a loophole that business found which has been closed.  Canadian business does need to bring in skilled people because there aren’t enough skilled Canadians to fill the needed jobs, but replacing qualified Canadians because they’re cheaper isn’t allowed now. 
I also agree that the educational system has deteriorated terribly, and in Ontario the teachers’ unions want to get rid of tests, and I’ve also heard they no longer want to teach fractions (not that they were successful!).  I’ve also heard many times that teachers will dump the day’s schoolwork on parents to teach their kids.  These same parents unless they’re teachers themselves work much longer days.  They also charge for children to play sports??  I can’t believe that parents are as gullible as they are!  The system is so obviously self-serving and amoral that it should be completely dismantled.  It’s a very unhealthy environment for children to say the least.  I’ll say it again to parents:  don’t send your children into this completely uncaring, unhealthy environment.  On top of having to teach your kids yourself, your children will stand a very good chance of being bullied in front of adults who will do nothing to stop it.

Bev, the realities on the ground are very different than what is being presented by the government, and the business communities. The rules may have been tightened up, but the temporary workers are still being paid much cheaper wages than the going Canadian average. However, I see it close up, as most people on the Atlantic provinces and in the province BC. Its not a pretty picture, and most employers are using the temporary foreign worker program as a way to reduced the cost of wages, and is no longer confined to the lower skilled jobs, and has now entered the high skilled jobs and the typical middle management jobs. Its not only Canada it is happening. Check out the other Commonwealth countries, Europe and in particular Germany. By the way, in England, the news accounts will state it in black and white, the differences in pay of the foreign workers versus the pay of the domestic workers.

I believed the foreign worker program would not have been developed as it currently is, if the public education systems in the Western developed countries did their job, by ensuring an educated work force, where each and every individual has reached their academic potential. Instead, parents have to fight tooth and nail for the basic remediation services in the 3 Rs, and the downloading of education services to the parents continues unabated by the public education model, that decides who will and who will not received a quality education. Worse yet, they actually expect parents to pick up the tab, for education components that are no longer being taught.or being received.

Its not fair to the students and for society. The long term costs to society can’t even be calculated, but a pretty good gauge are the negative outcomes in the data streams. The data streams will tell the narratives of what the costs are when children do not received a quality education that meets their needs and more importantly meet the needs of society, its government and its economic systems.

Another narrative is the politicization of the public education model, and how its been embedded in the education model. Education services are delivered according to the political stripe and ideologies, rather than being delivered in according to the needs of the children, their families and by extension society needs minus the political BS.

Its why, I rather pay a tuition to a private school, and skipped the BS occurring in the public education system. A monopoly that is no longer educating all children to their full potential. Choice is the operative word and sooner or later it will become a reality across Canada, when the cost of $12,000 per student only buys a person - a desk, a set of books but no guarantee to access the educational opportunities and more importantly to be taught the skills and tools needed to access the educational opportunities.