In the last newsletter I contributed a short piece entitled “Education, Who Needs It?” in which I argued for the importance of private education based upon the fact that alternatives to public education as well as different approaches enriched educational opportunities rather than reduced them. In trying to be all things to all people and in substituting politicizing for education, I personally believe that public education has lost its direction. I recently picked up a book in which the main argument of the authors was that private education represented a conspiracy of big business and right-wing elements to take over publicly funded schools in pursuit of profit. The authors were responding to the growth of private and charter schools in the USA as well as to the introduction of ‘vouchers’ in some US States whereby parents could use a voucher equal to their tax contribution to a State school towards any school they wished to support. They believed these measures would and are undermining the public educational system and in so doing undermine the egalitarian values underlying it. Many people leaning to the left politically seem to believe this and I think that they are not only sorely mistaken but would argue that the reverse of this is true. The inherently monolithic nature of public education undermines diversity and indeed imposes political values and programs that many parents disagree with. Long gone are programs reflective of the values of the majority of parents and in their stead increasingly have appeared imposed values reflective of militant minorities. The assumption that this is reflective of diversity does not stand close scrutiny for such practices imply either the implicit removal or accentuation of differences rather than their tolerance.
Educational theory and practice wherever it is practiced through government agencies in Canada or the USA touts its successes and improvements over all previously existing approaches. We apparently move constantly forward in self-acknowledged progress having never been wrong in the immediate past but only better. The systems that exist now are presented as a radical improvement over the distant past. But are they and what demonstrable proof is there of this? When rhetoric replaces reason, constantly touting self-identified progress and success surpasses hubris to become pure delusion. There exists no meaningful accountability in terms of demonstrable results within this system or the government branches of education that govern them. Is the public educational system better than it was 50 years ago and are its products better educated, better adjusted and more successful in their transition to adult life? Are children better behaved? Are there fewer instances of depression and mental health now that we have abandoned the concept of failure, reduced competition and emphasized success at every turn? The reader can answer these questions for themselves.
Some years ago, the Ontario provincial conservatives introduced a $500.00 tax credit that could be used as a deduction for parents electing to send their child to a private school. Despite the minimal amount involved, this was met with intense opposition from left wing elements and the teachers’ union as being the thin edge of the wedge leading to the undermining of public education by ‘elitist’ elements within our society. Sure enough, when a liberal provincial government came to power this tax deduction was eliminated. Given the heavy political influence and lobbying brought about by the teachers’ union and their pension funds, this was predictable. However, I think that the argument that elitist elements were or are attempting to take over public education is a shallow one and the real reason lies n the fear of competition and the reluctance for the educational system to be held accountable. In short, self-interest rules. The Fraser Institute has published numerous polls indicating that the vast majority of Canadians are in favor of standardized testing, but these efforts have been fiercely resisted. The growth of private schools in Ontario and elsewhere is not an index of growing elitism but rather one of growing dissatisfaction. The underlying reason for the militant opposition to private schools is fear, fear that if given a choice thousands of parents would support alternatives if they were financially able to. A voucher system such as has been applied in some US states would arguably initiate a massive exodus from the public system. The resistance to private education is therefore at its core a desire to protect a virtual monopoly and has nothing whatever to do with social justice.
Unions protect the interests of union members and not their clients. While acting as the principal of a private school in Toronto whose teaching staff were covered by one of the major unions, I unwittingly ran afoul of the union by offering summer employment to a part time teacher highly qualified to teach math and in need of the money. I was instructed that I had to offer the job to the most senior teacher on staff who happened to be the head of the English department. Fortunately, she refused the job as she was not only unwilling to work during the summer but was also aware that she was totally unqualified to teach math. She could, however, have taken the assignment had she wished to and I would have been powerless to intervene. It was very clear from this that the delivery of a quality education to students was of little importance compared to that of the financial interest and employment status of union members. Such incidents help to destroy the credibility of unions even among those sympathetic to their objectives.
A recent issue has arisen in Ontario where the government put forward a proposal for a requirement that elementary school teachers be able to pass a basic test in mathematics. One would think that this would not be a problem for what educated adult who is an educator and expected to teach mathematics would consider a demonstration of basic competence at an elementary level to be unreasonable? However, this is a matter of intense dispute. True to say that teachers are largely unaccountable for their own knowledge but so increasingly are their students. Failure in the elementary panel has been eliminated in Ontario and also to the best of my knowledge throughout the rest of Canada. If one might think that this solely a Canadian phenomenon, it is not. Indeed, it is movement started in the USA in the1960’s with books such as Schools without Failure. Canada also followed the USA in the abandonment of teaching cursive writing, a decision that some states have now sought to reverse. What is curious is the uniformity of philosophy evident in public education in both the USA and Canada as well as the complete absence of any verifiability of the efficacy of the programs emanating from these operational philosophies. The USA at least acknowledges the woeful lack of consistent standards in its secondary system by insisting on a battery of standardized tests for university and college admission. Canadian provinces in general and in particular Ontario, have resisted such measures for reasons that one can only speculate about. However, it has been suggested that the introduction of such tests held at the end of high school would reveal discrepancies in marks relative to performance of such a magnitude that a virtual tsunami of public opinion would result. It could become evident that student admissions and scholarships had been granted or denied on the basis of flawed and inaccurate information for years. At minimum, the entire process would be judged to be unfair and perhaps knowingly perpetuated.
It is ironic that countries such as Singapore whose educational systems do everything wrong according to our current approach to education still have such excellent results. I operated a university preparatory school for almost a decade that dealt exclusively with students from Singapore and Malaysia who were purportedly victims of these inferior educational systems. Their basic literacy skills as well as knowledge of spelling and grammar much exceeded that of Canadian students of their age. Their math skills also were at the very least a full year ahead. Entering an Ontario Grade 12 program they floated through with very high grades and entered university effortlessly and successfully graduated. The only initial weakness that I detected was in their reluctance to express personal opinions on topics and to effectively argue for them. They had the facts but were reluctant to express their opinions. However, this was a weakness that was capable of being easily redressed. It is a comparatively simple matter to teach students to form opinions when they already have command of the facts. On the other hand, Canadian students that I encountered, demonstrated the reverse problem that was not so easily addressed. They were full of opinions but had few facts and indeed often felt that facts were unimportant. Their opinions were grounded upon emotions rather than intellect or as one wit put it “generated by much heat but little light”. That was and is a growing problem and has become increasingly difficult to confront. It is now reflected in our society at large as the new norm. It has encouraged polarization and a lack of civil discourse both in Canada and the USA. People increasingly believe that they are right as opposed to thinking that they are right.
There has been much discussion recently regarding the mathematics curriculum in Ontario both in terms of its content, delivery and the fact that a disproportionate number of students of color are among those entering high school in modified mathematics streams prohibiting university and many college post graduate opportunities. The fact that a disproportionate number of males compared to females also numbered in this category was conveniently ignored for that apparently did not require political action. Needless to say, however that ever since the abandonment of failure in the elementary panel and the removal of immediate consequences for lack of effort, increasing numbers of students, predominantly male, have been entering high school with numeracy and literacy levels that should be an embarrassment to any Western industrialized nation. They have then been released upon an unsuspecting workplace.
The crucible of free and open competition in our society is still active at the post-secondary level of education as well as the job market in general, not to say international politics. It is a fact of life not reflected in a system that is purportedly devoted to the preparation of youth for adulthood. If diversity is said to be a strength, it is in the implicit competition that diversity entails that this strength lies. Diversity means differences not only in terms of race, religion and sexual orientation but also in terms of individual skills and abilities. If diversity is now meant to entail all being equally the same, we have entered George Orwell’s world of linguistic doublethink.