Canada graduates more students from post-secondary than any other nation. This was the objective. Mission accomplished. Point proven.

Do you disagree with the OECD statistics on page 21, Doug? On what basis?

Many countries (Germany would be the essential model) graduate a large number of students from terminal vocational programs. Don’t get me wrong, this can be a very rational decision for a country if you are sending students to high quality appreticeship programs like those at Dailmer-Benz or BMW. Canada it seems, is not interested in competing in high value added manufacturing, possibly a mistake, but the goal is to graduate as many students from both kinds of post-secondary, CAAT and university. In that they are first in the world.

Am I satisfied with that, no, I want to be first in the world in every single educational indicator there is including % of university grads where we are 4th. I don’t really count the USA which is first because they have so many questionable “universities” but Japan and Ireland are real competitors we should benchmark ourselves against and eventually overtake. Of course, this will mean spending a great deal more money but I advocate using all the empty space in our empty secondery schools to add capacity to our CAATs.

If you want to use OECD as your source I welcome it. They seem to represent the “enlightened” part of the business perspective that understands that education spending = human capital development and therefore the sky is the limit on expenditure because whatever is spent is returned 100X over in productivity. Read their section on expenditure.

There are many ways to misallocate education dollars but if we focus them on the highest possible number of teachers, teaching in the smallest possible classes for the highest possible wages in the smallest possible schools, the experts tell us we will have the best possible system.

Who can possibly be against that? OISE says in its polls this is what people want. The polls I work with for Vector Polling say you cannot go wrong politically by advocating more education spending.

Lets get together and make Canada the best educated country in the world by first, buying the best possible system.

Go Canada!

One of my favourite cartoons in the old “Peanuts” series was one where Lucy was taking her little brother Linus around, and expounding on the wonderful world of science. “See those clouds Linus….they hold the sun up so it doesn’t fall out of the sky…“

Along comes Charlie Brown, who asks, “What are you doing?“

“I’m explaining to Linus some little-known facts of science,“ she replies.

“If they are so ‘little-known,‘ how come YOU know them?“  inquires Charlie.

Lucy sidles over to Charlie Brown and whispers in his ear, “I make ‘em up.“

We see a good bit of that here;-)

I don’t think Malkin is making up anything, it is just interpretation.

I hope you don’t mean me. All my figures are very well documented by the OECD and StatsCanada. You want to be specific?

Has it crossed anyone’s mind here when debating education standards that harking back to Finland as the poster-country for high achievement standards, that because that country has no testing, rankings or inspections it fits Doug Little’s spin nicely?

However in order to prove to us here that Canada’s second only to Finland Doug must use those dreaded rankings and testing he claims educators dislike so much.

Of course Chuck i struck my mind right off. The fact is that the PISA test is as good a test as you will find (they are all problemtic)

1) It uses surveys and does not test every kid.
2) It tests problem solving and critical thinking skills it does not use any multiple choice
3) It only publishes the results by country thereby not doing serious damage to schools or individual students. Our tests and the Americans raise the dropout rate and make weak schools weaker.

“Canada graduates more students from post-secondary than any other nation. This was the objective. Mission accomplished. Point proven”

The only point proven is that school boards move kids out the door.  And it seems they keep coming back to repeat a year before graduating. Who knows if they have learned anything that qualifies them to graduate—except maybe those who take IB, AP courses or write exit exams as in Alberta.  Colleges & unis are increasingly providing remedial courses to deal with the loads of kids who have “graduated.“  Means nothing.

You say it is meaningless, OECD says it is very important. Who to believe. I’m going with OECD but maybe that’s just me.