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SQE Newsletter
Vol. 22, No. 4. December 2013.
ISSN-1201-215
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Help Us Get our Message Out!
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FROM THE PRESIDENT
Free speakers' bureau
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Free advice - Ask Aunt Malkin
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Please take advantage of our free services and resources and, if you are motivated to pay it forward, here's a link to our donations page.
Merry Christmas from Malkin
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 A veteran of the school wars herself, with the scars to prove it, Malkin Dare has had lots of experience dealing with education problems. If you want some been-there-done-that advice, give Malkin a call at 519-884-3166 or e-mail her at [email protected].
Question
I have four children and all of them are struggling with attitude, lack of motivation, poor attention and listening skills, and lack of work ethic. I have tried switching public schools, private schools, French immersion, home tutoring, paid tutors, and prayer. Nothing is working. In addition to all this, I work three days a week. Help! Nancy, Mississauga
Answer
Have you considered home-schooling your kids? It seems to me that you're kind of home-schooling already, except that you're doing it the hard way. Home-schooling can work very very well, improving not only kids' academics but also their attitudes and socialization.
Home-schooled kids are awesome, and their parents have a tremendous support network - providing curriculum, resources, and group activities for the kids. Plus home-schooling offers a great deal of flexibility, meaning that you can easily work around your three work days. For example, you could perhaps make an arrangement with another home-schooling family to take your kids on the days you work and then you take their kids on other days. Or you could home-school on the four days you're not working and have your 13-year-old look after your kids on the other days. Perhaps your 13-year-old could be in charge of the home-schooling on those days.
The first step would be to talk to a home-schooler in your area and find out what's available. Here are a couple of lists for Ontario home-school networks: Ontario Home School Support Groups and OCHEC.
A lot of people hesitate to try home-schooling because they worry that they lack the necessary skills. And of course no one does a perfect job. However, just ask yourself the question - could I possibly do a worse job than my kids' schools are doing already? Chances are the answer is no. In most cases, parents have nothing to lose and lots to gain.
Regards, Aunt Malkin
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Math is Important
A local newspaper has been lamenting the descent in standards of students in mathematics, as measured by the EQAO tests. Various experts in the subject have claimed that this problem is country-wide and nobody seems to have an answer for it. As reassurance, it was pointed out that the reading and writing results have been showing a steady improvement. Several CBC broadcasters cheerfully admit to mathematical incompetence, perhaps indicating that such a lack of skill is a condition of employment at the CBC. In fact, major errors in simple arithmetic abound in the federal government, with its confusion over the price of F35 fighter jets and in the Senate over the costs of maintaining multiple dwellings on the taxpayer's tab. Mr. McGuinty had trouble over e-Health, power stations, and the value of corn as a source of alcohol for automobile fuel, and his successor sees generous bonuses to the organizers of the PanAm Games as the appropriate price to pay for international entertainment. So perhaps we ought to take the math score decline more seriously.... Peterborough, ON
A Very Expensive Boondoggle
Ontario is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a full-day kindergarten program, money it can ill afford. The government commissioned two research teams - one from Queen's and one from McMaster - to evaluate whether its full-day early education program is better preparing young children for grade 1. The best the Queen's folks could say was "there is some support in these findings that at least in high need schools full-day early learning kindergarten is having a positive impact" for the English-speaking schools, while for the French-speaking schools the researchers found basically no positive effects. The McMaster researchers found that "most of the outcomes are inconclusive or even opposite to expectations". Given that any positive effects of preschool programs in other jurisdictions have been found to fade out by grade 3, it seems likely that Ontario taxpayers are getting little or nothing for this expensive program. Waterloo, ON
Florida on my Mind
I was privileged to be in the audience when Governor Jeb Bush addressed the Economic Club of Canada in October. As governor, he brought in education reforms that dramatically improved the academic achievement of Florida students. In addition to listing the six main measures that wrought the improvement (focus on early literacy, elimination of social promotion at the end of grade 3, school choice, accountability measures, merit pay, and higher standards), Governor Bush had lots of advice for politicians. 1. Be up front during the campaign about what you propose to do. 2. Be big, be bold, take the risk. 3. Go outside your comfort zone. 4. Do what you promised. 5. Continue to push the ball forward. Words to the unwise when it comes to Ontario politicians, I suspect. Toronto, ON
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The two preceding letters provide an excellent segue into this month's food for thought. When SQE, Project Maranatha, and the Economic Club of Canada brought Governor Jeb Bush to Canada, the room was hushed as Governor Bush told the audience exactly what he did to raise the academic achievement of Florida students to near the top of the international standings.
It is worth noting that the government of Ontario has not shown any interest whatsoever in any of Governor Bush's focal measures - focus on early literacy, elimination of social promotion at the end of grade 3, school choice, accountability measures, merit pay, and higher standards.
Very tellingly, not one of Ontario's big-ticket initiatives (smaller class sizes, full-day junior kindergarten, and higher salaries) was mentioned by Governor Bush as being part of Florida's miraculous improvement. So far, of course, none of the Ontario initiatives has increased student learning - in fact, quite the contrary. The achievement of Ontario students has been steadily dropping on international comparisons of student assessment and, in math, even on the provincial tests. Things like smaller class sizes full-day junior kindergarten, and higher educator salaries have not increased student learning in other jurisdictions and they aren't doing it in Ontario either.
All of which begs the questions - why is the Ontario government spending billions of dollars on initiatives that aren't working and why is the Ontario government refusing to invest in proven reforms that are relatively inexpensive?
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Intelligence and How to Get It: Why schools and cultures count. Richard E. Nisbett.
Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? Can schools eliminate class and racial gaps in academic achievement? Distinguished social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett refutes the idea of intelligence as biologically determined and impervious to culture, with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. This book demonstrates that intellect is not primarily genetic but is principally determined by societal influences. The excerpts (pp. 182-192) list some of the things you can do to raise your child's intelligence . . . and your own.
"First, the things you probably do instinctively with your child, without much conscious consideration of strategy, can increase intelligence: Talk to your child, using high-level vocabulary. Include your child in adult conversations. Read to your child. Minimize reprimands and maximize comments that will encourage your child to explore the environment"...
"Though pregnant mothers may worry about whether exercise is risky, there is evidence that exercise increases the intelligence of the newborn without risk to mother or child....
"Several types of activities can improve fluid intelligence, and not just for children. The activities that increase fluid intelligence include computer games that teach attention control and exercise working-memory capacity....
"The best evidence we have indicates that children with above average self-control have higher intelligence and higher academic achievement whatever their level of intelligence....
"It is crucial for parents to teach children that their intelligence is under their control....
"It is not a great idea to promise your child a reward for doing something you want to encourage, if your child already has some interest in it....
"To the extent you can, try to get your child into classrooms with the best teachers, especially for the first grade. Avoid rookie teachers...." |
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The Smartest Kids in the World and how they got that way. Amanda Ripley.
The author is a magazine journalist who wanted to find answers for her own children's education, and so she followed three American teenagers who were embedded in three different countries - countries that had recently improved their education systems dramatically: Poland, Finland, and South Korea. The book tells the stories of the students' year away, with many interesting anecdotes. Some of the commonalities in the three countries were that teaching had become more rigorous, parents had begun to focus on the things that mattered, and the children had bought into the promise of education. The excerpt (pp. 191-192) deals with the author's conclusion that American schools need to introduce more rigour.
"High school in Finland, Korea, and Poland had a purpose, just like high-school football practice in America. There was a big, important contest at the end, and the score counted. Their teachers were more serious, too: highly educated, well-trained, and carefully chosen. They had enough autonomy to do serious work; that meant they had a better chance of adapting and changing along with their students and the economy. The students had independence, too, which made school more bearable and cultivated more driven, self-sufficient high school graduates. The closer they got to adulthood, the more they got to act like adults.
"In the United States and other countries, we'd put off this reckoning, convinced that our kids would always get second and third chances until well into adulthood. We had the same attitude toward teachers: Anyone and everyone could become a teacher, as long as they showed up for class, followed the rules, and had good intentions. We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools, demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that the kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports.
"That mindset had worked alright for most American kids, historically speaking. Most hadn't needed a very rigorous education, and they hadn't gotten it. Wealth had made rigor optional in America. But everything had changed. In an automated, global economy, kids needed to be driven; they need to know how to adapt, since they would be doing it all their lives. They needed a culture of rigor." |
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| And Now for Something Completely Different |
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| Proving that a high-quality education can be completely free, the Freely Educate website links to hundreds of wonderful free resources - from free science projects and activities to art appreciation lessons to DVDs on current events to free children's books to be read online to free paper structures of world landmarks and on and on. |
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