Mr. Bachman, I don’t see how eliminating current teaching programmes ‘would have the most positive impact on the future quality of education in Canada’.
We would still have teachers’ unions; moe’s and monopolies spending huge numbers of tax dollars on ineffective programmes.  Would you kindly explain?

Should add, in Finland teachers are well versed on oral and written language in their training, so unlike the Canadian teachers are. The problem I have with Salutin,  the romanticizing of education, waxing from a philosopher stance, rather than within the science.  Describing school is this way: ” But public school classrooms are also places where those attitudes get formed. Donald Eckler says: “Parents forget what school was like, they think it’s about learning things. But it’s far more a community. I can’t really define what I’m doing, but I want it to be an environment that’s comfortable and respectful. What it feels like to me is a family. People get hurt, others open up space for them. Kids are so kind to the kid who has Asperger’s. All that is far more important than curriculum. What they’re really learning is how to coexist in that environment and what learning means.”

I would wonder how he would feel, if their kid came home, feeling beaten down and stupid, because of the curriculum and progressive teaching methods. Having a respectful and comfortable school environment helps to facilitate learning in students, and curriculum and teaching pedagogy/methods are the tools of the trade where learning is based on. One cannot have one without the other, and in healthy doses because one day the students will become adults, and where getting along with their co-workers is not as important as having the skills to do their job.

In his next article, called Saving Public Education: Too many choices is another article that raises valid points, but once again he is waxing about empathy of students from public education.

“This goes for kids with behavioural and discipline problems, too. I once saw a kid kill a butterfly in a schoolyard after school. It had been bred in his class. Parents looking on were furious and said so. But his classmates were less judgmental; they knew his home situation and his constant need for attention. Making an issue of his act, they said, would only aggravate things. It’s that kind of empathetic insight into your society that an inclusive school can deliver.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/960557

Issues such as killing a butterfly by a student without consequences, only breeds more bad behaviour from a student, What the student is learning in the long run, that his behaviour is justified based on his lousy personal life. Empathy is one thing to have to understand the bad behaviour, in order to based the type of consequences for the action. In a lot of schools empathy is placed at a higher level, than the consequences. for actions or inactions of students.

Further down in the article, “As a parent, you do what seems best for your kids. But as a citizen, you should support the public system and strengthen it where it’s weak. The question is: how do you do that? Is it by cutting it up into bite-size pieces and trying to accommodate every taste separately? Or is it by emphasizing the unique strength of the public system: its inclusiveness, the stimulating variety it provides to all kids when they meet and get to know each other? Trying to save public schools by chopping them to bits and “privatizing from within” is like destroying the village in order to save it. Maybe there should be an oath for educators, like the Hippocratic oath for doctors: First, do no harm.”

In my eyes, through my experience and observations, inclusiveness of the public education that is being practiced, brought nothing but grief and confusion for my child. It told her in so many different ways, to hide the shame of her learning weaknesses, and to pretend she was as normal as her other classmates.  It further brought more reasons by the board, why my child was not entitled to have her reading and writing issues addressed effectively. I wonder here if Salutin ever stood in the same shoes as a parent with a LD child?  If he did, waxing on philosophy would be the last thing on his mind.

I think I heard Doug Little’s head explode from way over here:-)

Nice catch John.

I wonder if we could delve further into what the Finnish teacher education curriculum includes?

Teachers college are the really big elephant in the room in Ontario. Add to that their coalition with the teacher unions and it’s all very neatly tied up - some would say straight-jacketed but to each his own.

Dr Reid Lyon says,“if I had it my way I would blow them all up.”

This something that is at the CORE of education problems in Canada and the U.S.and greatly affects our children and our economy.Even our correctional institutes are flooded with people who never learned to read and resort to crime to survive.

The foundations on which to build an education are not taught to our eager,idealistic teachers.They may not be great mathematicians but they need to teach kids math K-3 and they are sadly left out on a limb when it comes to teaching young children to read and spell.Flawed instruction is rampant and they don`t realize the harm that sight reading and guessing does to children.

When and if they ever do learn to teach every child to read and spell,they are truly dismayed that they ever got a degree allowing them to be in charge of 20-25 young children.They were “clueless’.
It is true that 40% of children will survive that instruction style but as many as 60% will suffer from literacy problems in their life,as many as 40% of those will find it difficult to get a job in the language economy.
I am not offering links here,we`ve done it ad nauseum.

Also,I am not referring to curriculum experts,in the early years,we discuss pedagogy.

I aplogize, I meant knowledge economy.

Here is an example of teaching training in Finland.

http://www.see-educoop.net/education_in/pdf/workshop/tesee/dokumenti/monografija/Tula.pdf

“The education of teachers varies according to the level and type of education or institution they want to be qualified for. In general education class teachers have a Master’s degree with a major in pedagogy, whereas subject teachers major in the subject that they teach. Teachers in vocational education and training in turn take pedagogical studies after first having completed a degree in the relevant vocational field. Special needs teachers as well as guidance and student counsellors specialise after having completed their teacher education. In higher education, in polytechnics and universities teachers are generally required to have a post-graduate research degree.”

http://www.oph.fi/english/education/teachers

Well done Nancy!
Teachers in Special Ed tell me they go and get Sp Ed 1 and then 2 and STILL no one teaches them;you know why don`t you,they`re invested in the word disability,it gets them off the hook.

Meanwhile,the professor is CLUELESS on how to teach kids at risk to read.I just corrected an entire document from a CEA site where a Canadian document being disseminated to all the Universities,Malkin and Doretta will remember it well,had all the phonemes listed and 90% of them were wrong.
It`s a fraud I`m afraid.If I am going to get sued for saying this,PLEASE delete the statement.

Bev,
I truly believe that if we had more teachers taking a route into our schools that stresses subject knowledge degrees and bypasses the FOEs, that we will quickly build up a cadre of true “professionals” who will openly challenge the latest educational “theories” being hatched in our faculties and disseminated down to the classrooms through MOEs and school boards.
Currently these kind of people can’t get into our schools because they’re being screened out of the applicant pool at the FOE level because of their “poor attitudes” and various politically correct reasons.  Many other good potential teacher candidates don’t even bother applying because of the need to spend a year and usually much more pretending to learn at an FOE.  (In my one year at teacher’s college I learned far more in my 6 weeks “student teaching” under the guidance of some fabulous teachers than I did in my 20+ weeks in the FOE building interacting with “profs”.)
It’s certainly not the only thing that needs to happen to deal with the very real problems you list in your question.  But it will be a big step in the right direction.
I hope that makes my statement a little clearer.