Education Levels by Country

[ShadowHM]

I am sorry Skandranon.

I don't buy the argument that recently graduating gives you a whole lot of perspective. So you saw first-hand the events at one series of schools. You attended how many School Board meetings? You reviewed how many budgets? You asked how many educators about overall education policy?

You did point out one absolute turkey of a policy that took place - the 'use it or lose it' part of school budgeting. As far as I know, it is still there too, as stupid as it is. However, the example you used could have other reasons, and you are assuming only the one - i.e. you apparently have not asked.

The tear-down and re-build of old school playgrounds has more than one thing driving it.
First question: is it really on school property? There is a city park adjoining my sons' elementary school, and while it looks like it is part of the school, it is emphatically not, for funding and for liability issues.
Second question: Was it built to safety codes in the first place? The contractor himself might have had to pay for the first re-build.
Third question: Were you aware that the entire T.D.S.B. had to tear down a huge number of playgrounds due to changes in the provincial safety codes and the ensuing liability issues? Some of them were re-built with community fund-raising to match funds. And all of them that were re-built were done so after consulting the community (i.e. home and school association committees for design ideas).

As to the 'can't it wait' question: Liability issues cannot wait. The increasingly litigious nature of our society dictates that one. So, once the playground is gone, there is a ground-swell of community outrage. It isn't just the children who attend a school who use a school playground. The entire community does, and they can and do drive the priorizing of spending, especially when they fund-raise to match costs.

Now that I have, I hope, convinced you that you REALLY need to research some more, I want to address your other comments.

But, and I admit I see this from a econocentric perspective, I see those things as less important right now. I'm not convinced that throwing money at the problem will solve it - especially when we don't have much money to throw.

Throwing money at a problem is seldom a good answer. On that we can agree easily. But the system has been plundered, at least in Toronto. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been sucked out of that system. And my property tax certainly did not go down to match it.

Instead I got a $75 cheque to console me for the governments recanting of its policy on trying to make me personally pay something close to the true cost of energy in this province, instead of absorbing it in my income taxes. And they spent $10 million of tax money to send it out via cheques to the whole province just before Christmas instead of saving the $10 million and merely deducting the $75 from my next bill, which arrived only three weeks after Christmas. Do you start to see why I find it hard to believe in the 'we can't afford it' story?

Investing in education, with the caveat that it has to be investing as opposed to throwing money at it, is the most important investment a society can make. We have agreed that there are systemic problems that need addressing. I don't see them being addressed well at all.

The most cynical way you can look at education is that you are preparing the next round of tax-payers for participation in the economy. Taking money away from E.S.L. (for example) is utterly stupid in that light. We have an unprecedented number of immigrants within the T.D.S.B. - not children of immigrants who started within the system, but children who came here and started within the system afterward. We need them to be able to communicate in at least one of our official languages ASAP, and the sooner we do it, the sooner they will thrive within the system instead of dragging on it.