They could add one more to the list…

Impediment to reforming the school System… is that it’s a SYSTEM.

“Education” has flipped on to its back, like a helpless beetle.

At one time, it was meant to deliver, by various means (seminar, tutorial, one-room schoolhouse, lecture hall, academy, private tutor) a set of core skills and knowledge, known to have value in the pursuit of some practical goal.

The SYSTEM, in these various settings, consisted of an authoritative teacher, knowledgeable and himself well-trained, passing on the tradition by means of association, repetition, practice, feedback—usually combining judicious doses of Socratic method with indispensable Direct Instruction. In the best teachers, Deduction did not replace, but complement, Induction. Practice and Drill were essential tools, not Drill and Kill. Creativity and innovation and “Problem Solving” and “Critical Thinking”  were all demanded and inevitable.

Now, none of these are part of the “System”; rather, the system is a massive entity that in order to continue its existence and pursue its own internal logic, sucks the life of its so-called “stakeholders”, while discouraging or forbidding or marginalizing as deviant, the very practices that made the previous “systems” successful.

The Fraser Institute thinks we need more competition! You don’t say! Somebody stop the presses!!!

“The Fraser Institute thinks we need more competition! You don’t say? Somebody stop the presses?”

Seriously Doug - if this is the best you can offer then the whole idea of competition must have you running scared because it puts that power in the one place that the unions can not control…...smack dab in the hands of parents. That kind of power must be huge otherwise you wouldn’t fight it so strongly.

Nice hook but I’m sure not buying your bait!

Power to the Parent!

What makes you think I am worried about this? OSSTF for example is signing up private schools at a pretty fast clip. Private does not mean unorganized. Private only means elitist or religious but it is the “I’m so special” option. National development requires a high quality public education system for the vast majority of students. It has since the 1870s and always will. The teacher unions only wish they had the influence you say they have. I’m sure you know that between them the teacher unions donate hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to both the Liberals and the NDP, more in an election year. They also marshall hundreds of teachers to work in all of the marginal ridings which means any ridings won by thin margins, all to keep the PCs out. Over 200 teachers helped Kathleen Wynne defeat John Tory. Foe all of that their influence is marginal. There is still an EQAO, they want it gone. There is still a College of Teachers. They want it gone. Ontario still seriously underfunds education. They want MUCH more. We still have the God aweful Harris funding formula, hopefully it will change this year.

Private schools have to compete for good teachers too. 

One of the reasons parents choose private, is it get away from labour strife.  Our own study showed that 76% of parents who sent their kids to religiously defined private schools and 65% of parents in academically definded private schools chose them because there was no danger of teachers striking.
And 73% of religious and (71%) of non-religious school parents chose their schools because they had dedicated teachers.

From experience, if a private school ever went on strike, parents would be out of there so fast and they’d never come back.

“I’m sure you know that between them the teacher unions donate hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to both the Liberals and the NDP, more in an election year.”

I echo your comments Mr. Little “You don’t say? Somebody stop the presses!”

Why stop their sir? Let’s tell all of the truth and remind folks that the unions have a hold on some chosen parents groups too. Remember is the early goings how “helpful” OSSTF was?? Some parents can influenced to see things the OSSTF way….recipients of the Lamp of Learning haven’t let you down either. Well done!

Further parents don’t give a hoot about how rich or powerful are the unions. They fight that elephant in the room each and every time they look for elements of accountability or search for that elusive “partnership” that was promised first under the NDP then brought home by the Harris gov’t.

Oddly enough some of those same donations found their way to the Ontario PCs when the message was clear about raising the bar and expectations for students to meet the requirements Ontario parents were demanding at the time.

While we’re taking a trip down memory lane Mr. Little let’s not also forget that Mike Harris didn’t land two majorities via conservative loyalists alone. Many, MANY rank and file educators had something to do with that.

If private is of absolutely no consequence of threat to the unions, why the full-court-press of a show of force?

How about instead of the usual pap you coax OSSTF members to have confidence in themselves and take on the competition with a show of skill, achievement, and accountability?

One would think that with all the focus on developing character in students that meeting a challenge and supporting the very system you help to create would be worth a considersation, no?

They (not we I am retired) are pretty sanguine. Labour conflict? There is really only labour conflict when the PCs win. Tories have never understood that education is an investment not a cost. The more you spend the more you get back and the better off society is with rich fullfilled lives at higher standards of living.

Do some organized teachers vote Tory? Of course but some CEOs vote NDP as well. There are always some chickens who will vote for Col Sanders no matter what. We just tell them if you want longer hours for lower pay with larger classes, feel free to vote for the PCs but don’t cry to us when they whack you.

Some parents realize that teachers are their natural allies. Both want smaller classes, enriched programs, more money bigger grants, clean safe buildings, the higher quality teachers that come when you pay more, and so on. P4E was formed when parents were forced to fund-raise for basics like textbooks and pencils.

PCs just don’t seem to get what education is all about. Hudak is so far off he wants a return to phonics! Have you ever heard of such nonsense? It is almost 2010 and he is stuck in the 1950s when the graduation record was so low.

Is Peter Cowley a teacher? People who are not teachers don’t know what they are talking about in education. Unless you have actually had to make it work, you are just blowing smoke.

Return to phonics is nonsense? Not when educrats ignore nearly 50 years of research on effective reading instruction.  Not when there are no effective reading programs on the Trillium list.  Not when SQE’s most popular pages are our remedial phonics lessons—sought after by thousands of parents and teachers every year. Not when parents have to find and pay for tutoring to make sure kids can read.Not when parents end up teaching their own kids to read and do fundamental arithmetic. Not when colleges and universities have to provide remedial courses in literacy.  Do I need to go on?

A good investment?  Parents who have lived through their own nightmares know that throwing more money into education practices that are not effective is like investing in a badly run company—no dividends and bankruptcy is around the corner. 

Parents and kids who have fallen through the cracks have been the ones who’ve been burned.

There is ONE (not 2 one) better education system on Earth than Ontario’s, Finland. Lets emulate them! It will mean we have to;

1) spend much more
2) Test much less (none in fact)
3) eliminate streaming

Sounds good to me. Lets emulate Finland and create the world’s best system right here.

“Some parents realize that teachers are their natural allies.”

“People who are not teachers don’t know what they are talking about in education”

===========================================

Dear Mr. Little,

You are now retired?  Did you ever have cause to tell a parent worried about Johnny’s progress in school, what you have written here:  viz, since parents are not teachers, they “don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to education”?

That must be why only “some” parents realize teachers are their “natural allies”.

And makes one question why the rest of the parents were allowed to participate in such high level educational activities, so crucial to classroom success as fundraising for school supplies.

Useful idiots?

As for those who are betrayers of National Development,  by putting their children in private education; you readily conclude it’s for either “religious or elitist” reasons.  You really think that explains the vast education “aftermarket”, which includes everything from “unapproved” resources such as phonics workbooks, to tutoring franchises to adult literacy agencies, as well as of course the private schools—all these can be subsumed under these two categories?

Mr. Little, you need to acquaint yourself with the considerable and growing literature on homeschooling, and the fruits of this parental labour of love.

But then again, you already know, don’t you, that the only good program is a government-run program, and that the only way to improve it is to spend more money than last year or last week, and that the vast body of literature and research dealing with effective teaching methods in mathematics, reading and writing are irrelevant.  Because they don’t come from ministries or boards or faculties of education; which makes them by definition “non-educational resources”.

Your broadsides against non-conformists are offensive on a number of levels, but for simplicity’s sake:

1)  You confirm in spades my conclusion above: that the “system” has a vested interest in making deviants out of those that disagree with the system in any way;

2) Your observations are quasi-Marxist in their inference that the only “socially friendly elements” are those in unconditional support of government control of education.

“Some parents realize that teachers are their natural allies.”

“People who are not teachers don’t know what they are talking about in education”

They’re just “unCanadian” aren’t they Mr. Little?

Mr. Litttle again:

With respect to Mr. Cowley:  However you choose to define “teacher” and “education”, perhaps it would be better if you read what Mr. Cowley has to say, how he arrived at his conclusions and so on.  The fact you chose instead to dismiss him in such a facile manner suggests that you as a teacher would graduate more bigots than scholars.

“Do I need to go on?”
===========================

A thousand times,  “Yes!”

Because in the worst of times,  “The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity”

T. S. Elliott?

“A little leaven leavens the whole loaf”

-Jesus of Nazareth

The overwhelming majority of Canadians are very happy with the publicly funded systems. Yet I also remain a critic because I want the public system to be even better. Naturally that will take even more money in Ontario than the serious underfunding we presently experience. It is amazing that at only $9000 per student we graduate more students from post-secondary education than any nation on Earth. Just think what we could do with $15000 per student like New Jersey.

You can Red-bait all you want in a McCarthyist style but if supporting public education, public medicare, public transit, public libraries, etc makes one a socialist in your world make sure you include me and the vast majority of Canadians.

Now if we could just have public dental care, public pharmacare, we would really be on the right track.

Mr. Little - you make one of the clearest cases for Ontario to moved to increased parental choice that I’ve seen on this blog so far.

I find it interesting that you took my comment about how the OSSTF “helped” some parent groups, and raised that it was P4E and not any other. I note that you didn’t deny the “help”.

That they developed because they had to raise funds might be the going story, but the mistakenly posted minutes of an arm of P4E on our board’s website in 1998 says something very different. But, you believe what you want, and I’ll stick with the document.

I have no clue what notasheep is talking about but have the teachers’ federations helped P4E in the past? I have no doubt but there is no ongoing support. There are serious disagreements with P4E over testing etc but slowly they are coming around to the feds way of thinking as testing becomes much less popular with them. The feds also help other parents groups all over the place. No big secret.

Charters or vouchers in Ontario? Not going to happen even under a Hudak regime.  All parties know the forces against such a move are more than 10X the size of the forces in favour. Please don’t say “parents” the vast majority of parents support the public system. They see all funding of private options as money stolen from them.

“The overwhelming majority of Canadians are very happy with the publicly funded systems.”
Please The overwhelming majority of Canadians are afraid to piss off the babysitter.

My grade 3 boy can NOT spell or print his own name.
We spent 6 weeks last summer with Stairway to Reading and he was doing great, printing improved and he could print his name. We couldn’t home school at that time so we had to send him back to school.
My grade 3 can NOT spell or print his own name….again.

My girl has an IEP, her precious 2 hours a week have been squandered on useless computer programs that the teachers didn’t know how to use. We made them (shamed is a better word) to teach Stairway to Reading and My wife went in and taught the IEP teacher how to use StoR, They had nothing even close to S&R, no real plan,  no follow through and to me the definition of incompetence.  Although she and the 3 other IEP children did better, it was too little too late for our child.
Home school is our only option.
I’ve quit my job, we’re in full economy mode to afford it and we’re now homeschooling. The Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB total lack of remedial English and math is shameful. I don’t know how they can look parents in the eye, let alone cash their pay cheques. I don’t know how how so many smart people can be so stupid as a collective, I guess it’s the herd mentality. 

BTW I’m male, an ex-IEP student, “slow learner” and I have absolutely no doubt I can do a better job teaching my two children.

It is an excellent SYSTEM. A system cannot be judged on anedotal evidence. The vast majority in polling I see every few months, are overwhelmingly satisfied because they are well served.

We have a marvelous medicare system thanks to Tommy Douglas but some patients still die. We have a marvelous legal system yet some people do not receive justice. We have by some measures the best or second best education system in the world but some people do not feel well served. That is why I have always maintained an oppositional position. The difference is that I approach the system’s shortcomings from the left.

It is seriously underfunded, The Harris legacy was so brutal that it is difficult to recover in a generation but this government is no doing enough on the spending side.

Mr. Little, everyone dies in the end, well-educated or not.

What a terrible analogy, to Mr. Douglas.

People go to doctors, to the health care system,  because something isn’t quite right with one or more systems or tissues of the body.

Mr Little, schoolchildren are not patients in need of a cure!

That’s what real people are to you?  Anecdotes?  Until you can demonstrate some ability to engage with the reality of ideas and experience in teaching and learning, you sir are yourself an anecdote.  Why go on about “systems”?  Real education is about real people with real ideologies and real skills and real knowledge, working in classrooms with real children of real parents with real desire to learn.  It’s just classical that politicians and bureaucrats want only to speak in terms of systems, and of “what happened” , and not of real, personal, human accountability in every transaction involving other human beings.

Frankly, we don’t care to hear much more about the system and what it wants or what is does it what it is going to do.  We want to know what meaningful work the children are doing, what results they are attaining, what they are able to do that will be of lasting value to them in the future.

Children have been learning since before Mike Harris was born, Mr. Little.  In fact, for thousands of years.  It’s time to let go of Mr. Harris.  Public education still has the billions and the property and the power, but can’t make up its mind from one year to the next what exactly education is.

I think one is taught very early in academic work that there can be an acadote to prove every situation and therefore they are ruled out of serious discussion unless they are backed up by serious data to make the point.

The Ontario system is far from perfect or even ideal but it is, depending on your criteria the best or second best in the world. We bsolutely must understand that on none of us is arguing from the real standpoint of what to do.

Our system is far more literate than when “Phonics was king” for exmple. There was no golden age when we did better than now. The further back you go decade by decade, the worse we did in terms of literacy.

You are a critic and so am I, the difference is that I say the current government is too conservtive and you say they are not conservative enough.

I stand at least a metre to the left of the most leftward of the Liberal MPPs which just might be the education minister but I know her well. Our friendship goes back to the days of parent and teacher organizing to fight back against the Harris-Snobelen education wrecking crew. I applaude her efforts on primary class size and the ELP. I hope she fixes the funding formula soon but I am not optimistic that we will see much improvement. I am not happy about Bill 177. either you want local government or you don’t but local governent so fettered like Gulliver is not able to function.

You are an academic are you Mr. Litttle?

How about answering some of the questions here instead of repeating your talking points in endless array.

I do not have a PhD just a Masters but I have taught at university and consider myself academic as well as an activist. Didn’t see any questions Charles, just tired old, inaccurate privatization rhetoric. SQE needs to determine for themselves if they favour public school reform or privatization. It is hard to be taken seriously on the former if yur actual agenda is the latter.

Here again are some of the direct questions posed in these pages, to you, or suggested lines of enquiry you could comment on.

QUESTIONS FOR MR. LITTLE

Q   You compared education to medicine, and educational failure by a student to death in medicine; unavoidable. 

IS IT AN APT COMPARISON, TO COMPARE STUDENTS BEING TAUGHT, TO PATIENTS WHO USE DOCTORS BECAUSE THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM?

Q   As for those who are betrayers of National Development,  by putting their children in private education; you readily conclude it’s for either “religious or elitist” reasons.  You really think that explains the vast education “aftermarket”, which includes everything from “unapproved” resources such as phonics workbooks, to tutoring franchises to adult literacy agencies, as well as of course the private schools—

all these can be subsumed under these two categories?

Q   Did you ever have cause to tell a parent worried about Johnny’s progress in school, what you have written here:  viz, since parents are not teachers, they “don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to education”? (That must be why only “some” parents realize teachers are their “natural allies”.?)

Q   (From Doretta)  Return to phonics is nonsense? Not when educrats ignore nearly 50 years of research on effective reading instruction.  Not when there are no effective reading programs on the Trillium list.  Not when SQE’s most popular pages are our remedial phonics lessons—sought after by thousands of parents and teachers every year. Not when parents have to find and pay for tutoring to make sure kids can read.Not when parents end up teaching their own kids to read and do fundamental arithmetic. Not when colleges and universities have to provide remedial courses in literacy.  Do I need to go on?

Any answers for Doretta?

Q   With respect to Mr. Cowley:  However you choose to define “teacher” and “education”, perhaps it would be better if you read what Mr. Cowley has to say, how he arrived at his conclusions and so on.  The fact you chose instead to dismiss him in such a facile manner suggests that you as a teacher would graduate more bigots than scholars.

How’s the research on Mr. Cowley coming along?

Q   Are there no conceivable situations in which the state acknowledges the right of an individual to make “private” decisions which result in claims against the state?

Q   “the situation is that some children are very difficult to educate due to their special situation”...

  Is it that simple?

Q   Are you opposed to public alternatives on only ldeological grounds, or because the public system is demonstrably and significantly superior?  And if so, where is the concrete evidence?

Q   And home schooling;  should parents have the right?  Or should their children be removed from home by the state and forced to attend a public school?

What are the rights of these folk under the education act?  What are the obligations of parents in this case?  And who defines, under the Act, what is satisfactory “education”?  Is it you Mr. Little?  Is it the local school principle?  Children’s Aid?  The minister of education? The school board trustees?  Superintendents of education?

Q   Graduation from high school does not indicate academic or practical skill necessary to cope with life.  Ask employers.  Ask literacy guilds.  Ask Universities about the abilities of incoming students.  In other words, what can these students actually do, by objective standards?

Moreover, what has happened to an incoming cohort of university freshman by the time their class graduates?

(SEE the post by Malkin Dare on Dec 11, Not Doing the Math

I have read and debated the FI o TV more than once, they are profoundly uninformed about education including Claudia Hepburn who I mopped the floor with.

If you want state money you need to be in a state (read democratically controlled) school, full stop.

Some children are very difficult to educate and everybody knows that.

Public alternatives? Sure I helped establish two of them in my ward when on the Toronto Board and supported all but two that came forward since they were based on religion and gender.

Homeschooling? Knock yourself out, just don’t ask for public money or public resources.

Worried about litercy levels? Everybody is but I have taught at the university level, class of 50, maybe 4-5 below level but 2-3 are ESL and will do fine, 2-3 have long Spec Ed history.

I’ll try to put this to good use imemidatley.