SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Schools can’t see the forest for the trees

Have you ever noticed how often troubling news is followed by cries for something or other to be taught in school?

• Household debt?   -   Financial literacy should be taught in school.
• Global warming?   -   Schools should encourage kids to think green.
• Fire-related deaths?   -   Kids ought to learn how to escape from a fire!
• Teen pregnancy?   -   Sex education is the answer!
• Gullible citizens?   -   Media literacy should be added to the curriculum.
• Obesity?   -   More school-based exercise programs should be introduced and also lessons on nutrition.
• Drug abuse?   -   Schools should educate students about substance abuse.

A recent example of this genre comes from the London Free Press which is recommending mandatory swimming lessons in response to 45 water-related deaths in southwestern Ontario so far this year. Of course, this is a knee-jerk reaction, but a moment’s thought should lead to the realization that schools cannot teach everything.

There are nominally 178 days of mandated instruction in Ontario. At 300 instructional minutes a day, that translated into a maximum of 890 hours available for teaching. Of course, much time is lost to transitions, administrative chores, announcements, and activities like popcorn parties, assemblies, field days, and we can pretty much write off the entire month of June. Realisticallly, that leaves no more than about 700 hours of learning time a year. By the time you subtract all the units on homophobia and so forth, there isn’t a whole lot of time left over for academics.

A further issue is the overabundance of curricular objectives. Teachers have so many equally-important missions that it is very easy for one or two (like, say, reading and math) to get lost in the shuffle. 

A final question is - why ever would we expect schools to do a good job teaching, say computer literacy or anti-smoking when they are demonstrably failing to teach what some see as the core subjects.