Anyone who has gone through the education system in Canada has had a mixed bag of teachers. My own public high school education in central Vancouver consisted of great math teachers, an incredible Physics teacher, and some very dedicated shop teachers. But I also experienced an English teacher who was drunk every morning and some Chemistry and French teachers who clearly should have never been teaching children.
Conrad Black pokes a few holes in the neverending union & media narrative that the Ontario education system is perfect, if only it weren’t for the stingy Ford government not giving them endless amounts of money:
The renewed agitation by teachers in Ontario highlights the debacle of the whole public teaching and school administration apparatus that is possibly the greatest and most universal public policy failing in modern Western civilization. It is one of the richest and most distressing ironies of our times that all of our Western societies consecrate more and more funding resources to education to produce steadily less educated and ostensibly less informed and less usefully intelligent graduates of secondary schools and graduate university programs. Not surprisingly, we are also focusing on fewer and fewer real subjects of authentic study. As my learned and much-harassed friend Jordan Peterson has often said, any course calling itself something that ends with the word “studies” is not a real subject. It is just a part of a larger subject and generally implies the exclusion of most of the real subject (and I write this as a former lecturer at McGill University in “French Canada Studies,” which was in fact the history of Quebec).
Both the best and worst of my high school teachers were English teachers. English 11 – teacher was a go-get-em, build up school spirit, learn as much as you can, and here’s the rules you have to follow to communicate effectively. And here’s some historic examples of great stories, so you know what you’ll have to measure up to if you want to do this professionally.
The worse one was English 12. I would regularly take the devils advocate opinion with him in class (just as I had the prior year), and it turns out the grade 12 teacher was a petty little man who had no interest in hearing anything new. This was in BC, so standardized testing after grade 12 showed that my 63% average with him should have been in the low 90% range. My average for the year was a B.
Rural education, no private schools as an option without moving to a city. Unionized, mandatory, monopolies are evil IMHO.
Bad schools are a feature not a bug.
A long time ago when the earth was new I had (mostly) pretty damned good teachers. A good thing too – because I was a lazy little bastard and they wouldn’t let me get away with it. Today, I’d be screwed.
Today, I’d be screwed.
Today, you’d graduate with highest honours, never having done a shred of work to earn them. Then you’d go to some post-secondary institution, end up in one of the courses I used to teach, and proceed to make my life living hell for expecting you to actually earn your rewards. That living hell would receive the full support of the administration.
You are partially correct. He would graduate with high honors from both. I have a child in college. Nobody flunks… even if you only attend 10% of the classes. Everything is done in group work (including exams). You basically get 40% for knowing and putting down your name. Not a single person was lost after the Christmas break (no culling allowed).
That sounds like what my former department head did. Nobody, absolutely nobody, failed his courses.
Many years ago, we had a student who was a serial drop-out. First, she tried university for a year or so. After she decided she didn’t like that, she tried our department and dropped out part-way through. My ex-boss let her back in the following year, much to the chagrin of her academic colleagues.
Then, sure enough, she dropped out of our department again, never to return this time. She was enrolled in one of his courses when she pulled the ejection handle, but, like he always did, he made sure she got 50%.
The last time I saw her on campus, she had enrolled in a different department, though no word on whether she ever graduated.
My ex-boss always made sure nobody failed. The institution had a policy that if the overall course grade fell between 47% and 50%, the individual instructor could raise the grade at his or her own discretion. Eventually, I simply submitted the class results and let him make the decision, thereby taking full responsibility.
But we also had the policy that if the grade was from 40% to 46%, the student had the option of writing a supplemental exam, but that had to be requested. One year, I made arrangements with one student for that. When the kid came back the following term, he told me he didn’t need it because he “passed” the course. In other words, my scumbag boss faked the kid’s marks.
I had that happen to me as well with a service course I once taught to a different department.
And people wondered why I quit my teaching job…..
(Group exams? Huh?)
Group Exams? Huh?
Exactly my response. They are allowed to partner for the exams.
“Today, you’d graduate with highest honours, never having done a shred of work to earn them…”
Yup. I’d be screwed.
*
teachers today need serious martial arts skillz…
“Five-year-old boy Kingsley Corson was taken to a hospital
where he was diagnosed with a mild concussion.”
*
Government teachers are way over paid. The true market value is what a local private school pays. They can set whatever price they want but true cost of good education is what the market can bear and that is way less than government teachers and their extortion demands thru their parasitic unions.
The problem is spelled : MONOPOLY.
No competition, and the customers/victims are forced to buy the product.
Only solution is vouchers – give the parents vouchers, and miracles would be seen.
Fire half the teachers and bureaucrats and see if the other half figures it out.
My Grade 9 teacher was such a bitch, if I saw her crossing the street today, I’d take a run at her 110 year old body with my truck. I’m sure she damaged kids that weren’t as tough as me.
Mr MacDonald. Economics teacher in my high school. He was a true master at teaching.
He didn’t just teach economics, he made it so fun, so entertaining, it was incredible what he did. He got equal participation from the back of the room as the front of the room. Economics, the driest subject … he has us laughing every day, as well as fully explaining such things as fractional reserve banking. His tests were pretty tough though.
He deserved three times what other teachers earned.
It used to be that universities complaiend that students required a year remedial basic education for their courses. Now the universities have dumbed down their courses and introduced lots of fau disciplines so that they needn’t do the remedial work on thei intake each year from public schools.
That sounds familiar. I often spent close to a quarter of my lecture time in my courses teaching things that they should have learned either in high school or the preceding courses at my institution.
And I was often severely reprimanded for not doing so. Sorry, but remedial teaching was not in any of my course outlines.
I faced a situation like that when I started an advanced calculus course in my sophomore year. The prof started using terms I never heard before because I did my freshman year at a university transfer college. (Partial derivatives? What are those?) When I asked him what to do, he gave me short shrift and said it wasn’t his responsibility.
I went to my department’s undergrad advisor and told him what happened. He told me to get a copy of a Schaum’s Outline on the subject, take a weekend to go through it, and I would have enough information from that to continue with the course. I still have that book on my shelf. It saved my bacon more than once in my subsequent studies.
My point is that I knew I was going to have a problem and I took the initiative to find a solution. The university didn’t do anything for me until I made the effort. Then again, that was one thing that was expected of me–a valuable lesson in how real life worked.
But that was back in prehistoric times when we used to hunt woolly mammoths for breakfast.
Public education is a toxic environment with scant benefit to any one other than unionists. Bullying is rampant.
Micro schools (modeled after the venerable one room school house) might well be the future of elementary and middle school education. No lengthy bus trips, smaller classroom sizes – along with the very real benefit of older students mentoring younger ones.
A hybrid of home schooling and public education without burdensome autocratic administration, if you will.
I think Thomas is on the right track…don’t fire half of them fire them all then take applications for teachers who want and know how to teach. Sounds like something President Ragen did back in the day with the ATC. When I was in High school I had a great Math teacher he was Mr. Neff, he was also the football coach. I got to play jr. mustang foot ball and and got a very good grounding in math which has helped me to this day. I am sick and tired of being told by the teachers unions that we have a world class education system when 40% or so of graduates can’t read, spell, do simple math or comprehend simple science facts. A friend of mine who is an admissions coordinator at Mac told me that the first term for all new students is to bring them up to speed in reading, math and science so they can at least have a chance in University, I am sure a voucher system would solve a lot of the problems you would also have to get rid of the unions and also have a system of checks and balances to track a teachers performance and promote and give pay raises on how well their students do…….Just my 2 cents worth…Steve O
Given that academia is now largely one integral segment (another being journalism) of the institutional left that masquerades as education, their standards only require educational enlightenment necessary for graduates up to the level required to ensure stimulation by such low bars as Trudeau, Singh, May and just for balance, the reddest of the Tories. Where our graduates likely excel is in pseudo subjects related to post modern nihilism, environmental hysteria, and totalitarian studies.
Public sector unions ensure that, through political action, they will not only be represented on one side of the negotiating table but on both, displacing someone who should be there on behalf of the taxpayers.
I was really fortunate. In 12 years between AB and BC I had two good teachers, four mean bastards, two who sold me pot, and one really creepy dude in junior high.
So just enough to turn out okay.
It’s always been such, bored unionists demanding more to deliver less.
Of course, it really comes down to the parents. The entire family was academically focused. That’s really why I was fortunate.
Truly as has been stated otherwise, the teachers we encountered were a mixed bag, some really good, others that were either indifferent, awful, distracted or to be ignored as much as possible.
Had one in Grade 8, who as it turns out was a very good basketball coach and had accomplished championships, but, was intense (no surprise) an old school type. Though, most of us at that time, needed a disciplinarian like him to wake us up and help us grow up whether we needed it or not. I heard he was turfed out a few years later, he didn’t fit the new model of teaching in the 80s.
I remember a couple of grade school teachers, one who preferred a pingpong paddle, another the cricket bat, to dish out…..discipline. I did not have the fortune to participate in that….
A math teacher in Grade 9 who would throw chalk and brushes at us from across the room. That should never have been tolerated. He was also sent packing a few years later. Indifferent arts and socials teachers, overqualified for their tenure, probably playing out the string. An old drunk English 11/12 teacher, who was retired on purpose due to same.
And the best one of all, Bill Bell, advanced Math 11 and 12. Sense of humour, smart as hell, and would challenge us, but in a good way, he was one of few who really got it.
It didnt hurt that he had a 67 Red Fairlane GTA BigBlock either for cred amongst us wannabe gearheads. He dressed and looked nerdy, but there was a cool guy under the surface.
Anyways, yup, most teachers are legends in their own minds, the union rhetoric is tiresome and nauseating. Its long overdue to clean house of this antiquated, backward education system, that produces more and more semi-literate flunkees, year after year.
Government is complicit too. They lower the graduation standards, to keep kids in school, and then proudly pronounce how grad rates are higher and higher every year. Yet, its worth less and less.
I (on Vancouver Island, at the time) had a snotty, arrogant, French (parisian) teacher, and he tried his best to indoctrinate us on how the French PM at the time, PET was the second coming of the Lord savior and how the Liberal government making French mandatory in schools was going to enlighten us all. I still feel the same way now as I did then – take your Liberal government mandated French and shove it.
I have yet to come across any teacher that does not whine about how they are underpaid, overworked, not appreciated or respected, yet bewildered why they are unable to convince the pee-ons that smaller class sizes, more pay, and better benefits, will benefit the kids. Cut them by 50% and roll back their taxpayer funded wages. Then get serious about curriculum reforms.
I remain baffled.if we want illiterate,ignorant graduates with none of those basic skills necessary to begin the real school, that being the universal school of hard knocks,what do we need government education for?
By simply not bothering to “school” these kids they would meet that criteria.
Although I suspect an unschooled child would be a whole lot smarter than our high school graduates.
When will parents wake up?
They are paying through the nose,for government drones, to produce a result they could accomplish for free.
If that is the result desired.
The time serving aspect of “School” is its only real utility.
Somewhere to park children until they can be kicked out of their parents homes.
12 years..for the crime of being born.
Funny how home schooled children learn so much more,in so much less time.
Q. What do you call a person who is last in his class at medical school?
A. Doctor.
It’s a great column, which has the added value of being true — in its entirety.
When the full cost of the McGuinty-Wynne-Butts green energy “plan” is known, along with their fifteen years’ of annual deficits (which they promised, in 2003, to the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation — a truly useless organization — that they would never run; the timid Ford administration might — might — get it under control by the end of their next term in office), Ontario will be somewhere around $600 billion in debt, and (probably) more.
Lots of people in this spot don’t like Bill Davis, and that’s fine, but when he left office in 1985 (a scant 35 years ago) the total debt of the Province was about $50 billion, including Ontario Hydro and the municipalities.
There is this perception among the “teaching” element that they are exempt from the pain that will — not maybe — come: I know; I have many of them in my family. They seem to believe that the printing press is in the basement of Queen’s Park.
My eldest nephew (aged 17) has decided he wants to become an electrician — an idea I fully support. The “teaching” element, of course, are not so sure: “He ought to have one year of University!” Why? I have two degrees from Western, and if I had the chance to do it again, I’d go for the trades, without hesitation. He’ll learn all about strategy, tactics, and history from his customers, while he designs complicated and deliverable stuff — and makes money!
One of my truly memorable experiences concerned a recent situation, wherein I was building a studio for my sister, and we had contracted the services of a local electrical contractor (a great man of about 40 years of age, well known in the community for his business acumen and his consistent development of young talent for the trade). I had been out putting up lawn signs for my local Tory Candidate, John Nater, M.P., in the late federal election, and returned home a bit late for the appointment. My wife let these two kids, practically (not the owner) in, and I went and spoke to them, which I thought was the polite thing to do (I had my Conservative T-shirt on):
“Wow! Are you a Conservative?”
“Yes.”
“We’re all voting Conservative!”
Equal in importance to the license for a tradesman is personal integrity, and what that means for his particular trade. ( Keeping your word etc. ) This, the trade schools never teach. That, and how to keep your hand out of the till/managing a business during good times and bad.
Fire. Them. All.
Leftists know that schools are the key to destruction, that’s why we have the system we do.
Hopefully not too late to save the civilized countries.
How ironic that they who teach Grievance Studies have grieved a 1% limit. If they were paid by results they’d be as deeply in debt as the Province of Ontario.
group exams.
?
when I got my comp sci BSc from Brock U in 85 it was known as cheating.
I cheated a different way. buddy showed me how to submit the tasks bypassing the normal queue,
put it right into the active processing group.
my HUGE issue with primary school was the teacher’s pet system.
I just called up the local school bd sarcastically inquiring if it was still tolerated.
pointed out how curious it was always the really really cute ones were the favorites; they never got whalloped either.
in previous calls I also sarcastically suggested if hitting kids made them learn faster, why not put group beatings in the weekly schedule? imagine graduating hundreds of black-and-blue Einsteins.
then I pointed out the ‘discipline’ CRAP was just an excuse for teacherrrrrs to take out their frustrations on
THE most vulnerable sector in society, the children.
then THIS showed up in the news:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/education/article-as-teachers-report-more-violent-incidents-in-schools-boards-struggle/
halleluah halleluhah. the little darlings finally figured out all they need to do is HIT BACK.
seems to be catching on too !!!
bottom line, after YEARS of bullying and abuse at the hands of teacherrrrrrs I have *less than zero* sympathy for them.
beating up children since the beginning of public edjukaySHUN.
generations subjected to criminal assault.
except the cute ones.