Education Levels by Country

[ShadowHM]

Hi Skan,


Forgive me for saying so, but your post reads like that of a man who has no personal involvement with the system.

And, I am staggered to hear you say that you know doctors (I will assume Medical Doctors and not Ph.D.'s in History) and lawyers who would love to make $35 K per year.

I urge you, before you vote next time on such limited information, please do as Nico suggested. Find a teacher and ask. Find an experienced teacher - one that has been in the system for a good 20 years. Ask your friends to recommend one - surely you know somebody with kids?

I don't know enough about education elsewhere. (Hence this thread in the first place.) But I am fairly familiar with the Ontario system in general and the Toronto situation in particular. I also have a passing familiarity with the Michigan and upper New York State systems, due to cottage neighbours.

The teachers are not the problem. Their discontent is a symptom of the problem.

I will make a feeble attempt at a list of the things that have gone wrong.

We have a government in Ontario right now that is both paternalistic and evangelical about 'their' solutions to problems. So we have a 'funding formula' that assumes that all schools and school boards are the same. This poses serious problems to urban schools, in a myriad of ways, mostly to do with E.S.L. issues, but also fringing on multi-cultural issues, poverty, crime, etc. Rural schools get shafted on transportation costs.

The 'system' has become increasingly inclusive. This sounds great in principle. Keep 'em all, eh? But a lot of the kids that were not even in the system before are now being kept there, and they cost. They cost money, they cost energy and they need resources. Some of them are violent; some are learning disabled; some are physically disabled.

Discipline in schools is problematic. Years of political correctness have made a situation where there are really only two possibilities - suspend the kid or deal with their disruptions and take time away from other children. When I was a kid (hehe - tottering on my cane here, eh?) the problem kids that remained in the school got physical punishment. There was a graduated response set that took place before a kid got out of the system, and they could be sent out of the system. Now they HAVE to be there, in some way or form. And if the local school is unable to deal with them, then we have to pay to transport them elsewhere. I could rant on and on about this problem. The world is full of dual working parents now, especially in the cities. Who minds the suspended kid? Who is responsible at all, because the average Joe doesn't seem to think they should be. I will stop myself there before I wander too far down that tangent. The point is that we have dumped a lot of discipline issues on teachers and they have no recourses.

Curriculum is an issue. Society has deemed that a lot of things should be added to it, and nothing has ever been removed. So now we have drug education, civic responsibility education, street-proofing education, etc. That takes time away from the core subjects.

Paperwork.......bureaucracy runs on paperwork. Instead of *merely* teaching, preparing lesson plans and marking (you know, those things that teachers are supposed to do?) there are forms to fill in......whopping reams of them and they HAVE increased dramatically in the past few years.


I need more coffee and am running out of steam now. So.....

Yes....a rough ride ahead, because all of these things have been building for a long time. And, I seriously urge you to talk to an experienced teacher before you make more pronouncements about the state of Ontario's education system.