ISSN-1201-2157            Volume 13, Number 1                 www.oqe.org               June 2004
 
INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Practice Does Not Make Perfect

(the low-down on long-term memory)

Only in Alberta — Pity!

(important news about what happens when school choice comes to town)

Low Self of Steam

(free career advice for students who don’t wish to end up flipping burgers)

Every Day a Field Day

(a book review of a most unusual book and its unorthodox proposition)

Striving for Success

(the profile of a delightful Islamic school)

Ontario College of Unions

(an eloquent plea to Ontario’s new minister of education)

Doing More With Less

(recommendations for Ontario on how to save education money and get better results)

Cafeteria Connoisseurs

(mouth-watering menus that appeal to  high school students)

Dead Horse Lore

(useful tactics for those who are sick of beating a dead horse)

My Conversion

(straight-from-the-heart testimony about the effect of child-centred learning on families)

Number Facts

(practical tips on teaching the tables)

Dyslexia or Dysteachia?

(a challenge to the widespread belief that reading disabilities are organic)

The Teen Tightrope

(been-there-done-that guidance on how much responsibility to give adolescents)
And lots more - Publications of Interest, What’s New?, OQE Stuff, Letters to the Editor, etc.

From the President
A Real Eye-Opener

Readers of the OQE Forum are well aware that educational choice is front and centre in these pages. A recent experience highlighted this need as never before.

For the last few years, I have not had a personal investment in the education wars. My youngest had graduated, and I no longer needed to worry about teacher strikes, classroom politics, or educational fads affecting my children. That ended with the birth of my grandson, who is now a year old.

Instead of mainly monitoring the education system as whole, I am doing what the majority of OQE members do every day — paying attention to the results of neighbourhood schools in the area where I live.

A few weeks ago, I was invited by a relative to visit her son’s Montessori classroom. I agreed, mainly out of fondness for her son rather than any particular interest in the Montessori system, about which I knew virtually nothing. My only previous exposure to schooling for very young children was my own kids’ nursery school and their five-year-old kindergarten classes.

What greeted me was a class of 20 three-, four- and five-year-olds busily engaged in various activities and monitored by a teacher and her assistant. What shocked me was the calm and order before me. The quiet was unlike anything I had ever experienced in the presence of so many young children.

It soon became clear that the children were allowed a lot of freedom to choose what interested them, while understanding there were strict rules of behaviour that they must obey. The classroom was highly-organized. The walls were relatively unadorned (too distracting).

I watched in amazement as these students pushed their chairs in when leaving a table or waited their turn in line to use the sink. One little boy politely lectured me when I returned some equipment to the wrong spot on the shelf. I saw the teacher correct an older child who tried to interrupt.

I actually left the school with a heavy heart.

  • Was it because I thought our public schools should convert to the Montessori system? Not at all.
  • Was it because I believe there are no classrooms within the public system led by teachers who run a very organized and calm room? Wrong again.
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    Looking for Help

    My heart was heavy because I was remembering a phone call I had received a few years earlier. A single dad had called looking for assistance for his young son. The child’s IPRC...

    continued...