SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Not a perfect world

In response to yesterday’s posting, John made a comment that I would like to examine more closely - to wit, why does SQE use American stories and assume they apply to Canada.

It is true that there are important differences between the US and Canada - the huge racial problems there, the greater achievement disparities, the terrible inner city schools, the federal presence - but there are also a lot of similarities. In both countries, the students and teachers breathe oxygen, the school boards are organized similarly, the teachers are supposed to be teaching more or less the same things, the teachers’ unions are very powerful, and so on.

My point is - you are never going to find educational jurisdictions that correspond one to one. Even within Canada there are differences among provinces - Alberta with all its school choice programs, Quebec with its majority French speakers, Newfoundland with its sparse population… And what about Finland, often cited on this blog by certain commenters? The Finnish written language is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn, and comparing the reading ability of Finnish students to the reading ability of English-speaking students is like comparing apples to oranges.

If we demand perfect correspondence before we start to make comparisons, then we will probably never make comparisons - and that generally leads to insularity and complacency. My point is - we have to make comparisons and try to learn from others, even though we realize that there are pitfalls. So we will continue to write about American (and Canadian and international) phenomena - while doing our best to make sense out of what is inevitably an imperfect example. And of course I’m confident that we can rely on our faithful readers to point out any problems with our comparisons. You do keep us grounded, that’s for sure.