Archive

• Education Media/Blogosphere Roundup

  May 20, 2011 3:26 PM Comments Off on Education Media/Blogosphere Roundup

  There were a lot of education-related stories in the media this week covering a wide range of issues, from curriculum reform to cellphones in the classroom to the extinction of school librarians, and homophobia in the hallways.  Get caught up on what’s happening by clicking through the stories during this nice long weekend.  

  What news are we missing? Please e-mail me at mcooke@cea-ace.ca or better yet, use the comment box to suggest additional articles happening in your neck of the woods so that others can check it out.  

  Curriculum reform results not positive so far – Montreal Gazette

  Discrimination in the hallways – Slurs a daily school occurrence: report – Winnipeg Free Press

  Librarians fight for a role in a digital world – Globe and Mail

  Black Students to get roadmap to success – Halifax Chronicle Herald

  Battle over exemption from Quebec religious course reaches Supreme Court – Montreal Gazette

  Toronto school board lifts cellphone ban – Toronto Star

  University students fare better with interactive learning, study finds – Globe and Mail

  EDU-BLOGOSPHERE HIGHLIGHTS

  A Discussion With Education Minister George Abbott  – The Wejr Board (Chris Wejr)
  A few weeks ago, a teacher whom I have come to know very well and whom I highly respect, David Wees, sent me a message on Twitter that he had an exciting opportunity to share.  The following day, we caught up on the phone and he asked me if I would like to help moderate a discussion on Twitter with the Education Minister George Abbott!  What a fantastic opportunity for people to engage Mr. Abbott in dialogue around education in British Columbia.  I want to thank David for this opportunity and encourage all you to follow along on June 13th at 4:00pm PST on Twitter (hashtag #bced).

  The special momentum of the status quo – Joe Bower
  Have you ever noticed how little schooling has changed since your parents or even grandparents’ classroom days? I’ve often wondered how a classroom in 1985 Communist Russia would differ from one in 2011 Canada or America. Oh sure, there would be nuances with what kids were learning, but I fear how they were expected to do so would look freakishly similar. Regardless of time, place and political affiliation, behavioral conformity, worksheet completion and pre-test memorization would be the name of both games.

  Kids Are Learning…Just Not in Ways We Want Them To – User Generated Education
  Kids are learning . . . just not in the ways expected of them through formal education.  Young people have always engaged in informal learning based on their interests and passions.  Kids have found and initiated these opportunities in the past through school clubs, reading, local community centers, and neighborhood kids’ ballgames and performances.  These informal learning opportunities have taken an astronomical metaphorical leap due to social networking and ease of access of interest-based information via online means.  I am that not sure if those involved in the institutionalized education of young people are unaware or choose to ignore that young people are often learning more outside of the school than within that learning environment.

  So…What do you do for a living? The Clever Sheep (Rodd Lucier)
  For me, the most apt time for me to use a short, engaging presentation, is in introducing myself. Whether meeting educators for the first time, or striking up a conversation with fellow golfers on the tee block, I’d prefer to pitch myself as something more than ‘teacher’. I just don’t appreciate the baggage that sometimes comes with the job title, especially when I’m not sure about the other person’s past scholastic experience. Maybe that’s why my most recent name badge listed my job title as ‘Education Change Agent’.

   

   

• Schooling for Democracy

  May 11, 2011 9:00 PM Comments Off on Schooling for Democracy

  A lot of persuasion is needed to make the case for community engagement by students as the best way to enhance future citizenship. For many reasons, it’s a very hard sell:

  • most parents are comfortable with the status quo;
  • school officials and their lawyers worry a lot about safety and security issues;
  • unionized teachers are opposed to para-professionals and “ordinary” citizens engaged in any teaching role;
  • the central education authorities in the provinces and territories insist on full control of the curriculum as the condition for grant support of school boards;
  • businesses, community agencies, and citizens are often uninterested in having kids around to complicate their busy lives;
  • school graduates can learn what they need to know about citizenship from the school of “hard knocks ” after they graduate.

  These arguments for keeping students wrapped in the schoolhouse cocoon until age 18 are not persuasive. Let’s concede that most children younger than age 15, with exceptions, are not ready for organized community learning. For that large segment of students at or after Grade 10, the case for planned learning experiences outside the school is overwhelming:

  • the burgeoning of private schools in Canada (more than 3,000) attests to the dissatisfaction of many parents with the character development of their children in the public school milieu;
  • private school education tends to exacerbate the inequality of social classes in our multicultural country;
  • democracy is a tender reed best served by excellent, inclusive public education;
  • many publicly-supported-school students and their parents deplore education by numbers; (e.g., the overwhelming value placed on marks, the unseemly scramble for higher marks, standardized test results, percentages of diplomas granted, admissions to post-secondary education). None of these numbers is inherently bad. They simply over-emphasize numerical records that have very little if anything to do with readiness for democratic citizenship which should be first and foremost a matter of character development. School sports can be helpful but cannot be a substitute for broad community involvement;
  • students on the cusp of adulthood are able to contribute substantially to the improvement of health services, the mentoring of younger children, the sprightliness of life in private homes where domestic skills can be passed on, where the idea of service in the company of adults can become ingrained.

  As I see it, reform of public education is overdue but not likely to be achieved by the interested parties now in charge. How then to do it?

• Citizenship Education is More About Process than Content

  May 2, 2011 9:36 PM Comments Off on Citizenship Education is More About Process than Content

  A piece in The Globe and Mail, April 29, 2011, featured advice from five smart people about how to get more citizens out to vote, thus to improve the health of our democracy. In light of my work on citizenship education since the 1950s, I avidly read their offerings.

  One of them suggested adoption of the American system of primary elections as a means of ensuring that candidates for public office are tested in advance for their popularity. Another argued for digital involvement at the grassroots level. That is, leaders at all levels from the Prime Minister down to the Mayor would regularly engage citizens in digital conversation about everything from staying in Afghanistan to building that new bridge. That way, more ordinary folks would become engaged in politics and policy. Still another said that students should be required to pass a civics test as a condition of high school graduation A fourth one thought that giving everyone ten dollars for voting would improve turnout and be a powerful incentive for low income people.

  These suggestions all have some merit. They declare in their different ways that citizen participation in the political process is seriously deficient in our democratic country. Only one of them directly involves the schools which came as a surprise to me since civic sensitivity is powerfully affected by the school experience.

  Let me explain. Becoming aware of the obligations of citizenship is much more than the cumulative effect of supper table conversation and genetic inheritance. More significant is the atmospheric effect of a dozen years in the schoolhouse, six hours a day. Fixed in a seat most of that time amidst two or three dozen seat mates, all passively ingesting information to be regurgitated later is no way to encourage active citizenship. Indeed, it has a powerful dampening effect.

  That is to say: Citizenship education is more about process than content; more about daily life experience than about subjects of the curriculum. One of the five contributors to the Globe article believed that a compulsory course in Canadian history before graduation would help. Maybe. Canadian history poorly taught to passive students would more likely be destructive of the intended aim.

  The key to student civic sensitivity is in the community, not the schoolhouse. In 1982, I spent a day at Miami Central High School in the heart of Little Havana. The school had a full-time staffer who coordinated the community work of the students where they helped in hospitals, schools for disabled children, homes for the aged, social service agencies, to name a few. Most of them volunteered for 200 hours or more each year in contrast to the token 40 hours required over four years before graduation in Ontario.

  Miami Central was one of scores of schools in North America where community engagement was the forerunner of social responsibility in adulthood. Isn’t that the essence of citizenship education?

• Mandated Community Involvement: A Question of Equity

  March 24, 2011 8:39 PM Comments Off on Mandated Community Involvement: A Question of Equity

  Contemporary education discourse makes widespread (at times, even panicked) reference to a “crisis” in citizenship among youth, commonly describing young citizens as ignorant of basic civic knowledge, alienated from political participation, and sceptical of the values of democratic citizenship. The assumption is that civic engagement is a “marker of maturity”, and civic inactivity is attributed to youths’ lack of interest, knowledge, or cognitive sophistication.[1] If adolescent populations are perceived to have withdrawn from their civic duties (for example, by not volunteering or voting in elections), these actions (or lack thereof) may be considered an indicator of young people’s indifference or “bankrupt sense of citizenship”.[2]

  Mandated Community Involvement

  Some educators argue that community involvement activities can decrease young people’s so-called democratic deficit by imbuing them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for participation in a vibrant democracy. For example, Conrad and Hedin’s oft-cited review of community involvement research in K-12 educational settings provides evidence that such educational programming is associated with students’ civic-related learning outcomes – notably, self-esteem, appreciation for diversity, responsibility toward the community, political efficacy, understanding of socio-historical contexts, and willingness to volunteer in future.[3] Furthermore, youths’ active engagement in the local community is hypothesized to have a “trickle-up” effect, whereby students’ experiences completing community involvement are generalized into a greater sense of duty towards the national and global communities.[4] This theory also presumes that wider social problems (such as poverty and environmental degradation) can be mitigated by young peoples’ active participation in society.

  Community involvement activities are typically described as dual-purposed: benefiting both the individual server and the larger community. As Volunteer Canada notes, “By caring and contributing to change, volunteers decrease suffering and disparity, while they gain skills, self-esteem and change their lives. People work to improve the lives of their neighbours and, in return, enhance their own.”[5]

  Based on the assumption that all young people and their communities would benefit from students’ active participation in community endeavours, some Canadian provinces and U.S. states have mandated completion of community involvement activities as a condition of secondary school graduation. British Columbia, for example, has required secondary school students to participate in at least 30 hours of work experience and/or community involvement as part of their “Graduation Transitions Program” since 1995. Similarly, eight states provide secondary school credits for students who complete service-learning activities; in Maryland, secondary school students have been required to perform 75 hours of community involvement since 1992.[6]

  In September 1999, the Government of Ontario began requiring all secondary students to complete 40 hours of community involvement in order to graduate. Ushered in during the Progressive Conservative era of Premier Mike Harris, the policy language suggested that this requirement was primarily designed to build students’ personal responsibility and to strengthen the qualities assumed to drive individual success: “the requirement will benefit communities, but its primary purpose is to contribute to students’ development.”[7] Students are seen as independent individuals who are responsible for, and capable of, making beneficial contributions within their neighbourhoods and beyond.

  Debates continue over whether students should be “forced” to volunteer, as mandated community involvement is not necessarily equivalent (in process or in outcome) to voluntary service. One argument in favour of mandated community involvement is that such policies engage the students who would not have volunteered on their own accord. This appears to be the case in Ontario, where a 2007 study of students who had recently graduated from an Ontario secondary school found that, on average, they did not harbour negative attitudes toward the compulsory nature of the community involvement requirement, and that the program had been successful in mobilizing students who otherwise would not have volunteered.[8]

  Unlike Ontario’s community involvement initiative, the paramount concern of “service-learning” programs is to further students’ understanding of social problems through community-based and classroom learning opportunities.

  Ontario’s 40-hour community involvement requirement is an interesting case study because of the level of autonomy it affords to students. Students are given the freedom to choose how they will complete their community involvement hours, provided their proposed placement type is listed on the school board’s catalogue of approved activities. They may choose to complete all 40 hours at one location or to accumulate hours through a smorgasbord of activities. They may spread their community involvement activities over the four-year span of secondary school, or hurry through the bulk of their requirement in a few weekends. Since these activities are performed outside of school hours without teacher supervision, accounting for community involvement hours runs somewhat on the honour system. When students finish their contracts at each community involvement placement, they fill out their school board’s prescribed completion form and provide verifying signatures from placement supervisors.

  The “service-learning” model frequently adopted in the United States sits in sharp contrast to Ontario’s approach, and is often heralded as the “best practice” of citizenship education. Unlike Ontario’s community involvement initiative, the paramount concern of “service-learning” programs is to further students’ understanding of social problems through community-based and classroom learning opportunities. In addition to the service experience itself, such programs incorporate preparatory orientation (such as researching the problem or conducting a needs-analysis) and follow-up activities (such as self-assessing the work completed or arranging future programming) directly into classroom curriculum. Additionally, service-learning diverges from other community involvement initiatives by incorporating structured reflection (often in the form of journals, short papers, and/or discussion groups). Advocates of the service-learning model suggest that the inclusion of such structural elements provides a platform for students to think about, and make sense of, their personal experiences, as well as an avenue to explore the social problems underlying the need for community involvement.

  Equal Opportunities for Citizenship Learning?

  I entered secondary school as a member of the “double cohort year”, a term that was used to describe the convergence of two graduating secondary school classes during Ontario’s 2002-2003 school year. The “double cohort” was the result of then-Premier Mike Harris’ policy decision to phase out the OAC year (Ontario Academic Credit, or Grade 13) in favour of a four-year secondary school diploma. This restructuring was one part of a series of secondary school reforms (colloquially referred to as “the new curriculum”), which also involved a number of changes to students’ diploma requirements, including the addition of the 40-hour community involvement requirement. I was grouped in the elder half of the “double cohort”, and consequently I experienced Ontario’s educational reforms from an interesting vantage point: I witnessed the changes unfold during their seminal year, but was not personally affected by the incoming policies.

  Initially, I was enthusiastic about the 40-hour community involvement requirement, based on my own (largely positive) experiences participating in school councils and community youth organizations. In my view at the time, the requirement would provide a refreshing modification to the academic focus of the formal school system, and help connect students with the social world beyond their classroom. However, my later professional experiences in priority neighbourhoods and my exploration of the research literature suggested that students’ opportunities for citizenship-related learning are not distributed equally. Specifically, privileged students may have disproportionate access to community involvement activities based on their greater access to resources and social networks. Thus, my own research focused on the role of social class – a powerful factor influencing young people’s civic engagement – in relation to students’ community involvement experiences.

  My analysis of surveys and focus groups among 50 current and recently graduated secondary school students from widely contrasting socio-economic settings focused on the ways participants reported their school staff members’ support (or lack thereof) for community involvement activities; participants’ direct or distant relationships with service recipients; and participants’ sense of their own individual and collective agency to effect social change. (The full thesis can be accessed online at: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/25654)

  This study found that high- and low-income participants, on average, met their community involvement requirements with different types of community involvement activities. High-income participants tended to complete a more diverse range of activities at a greater variety of locations than low-income participants. Furthermore, 46 percent of the low-income participants admitted to forging or exaggerating their community involvement hours, while only one high-income participant reported falsification. High-income participants’ wider breadth of community involvement activities and low-income participants’ relatively limited (and sometimes negative) community involvement experiences were consistently spoken about throughout the qualitative focus group discussions.

  Participants described the level of school staff members’ support as an important factor mediating the entire process of finding and completing community involvement hours. High-income participants most often described their school staff members as positive role models and reported receiving ample support in identifying placements and completing their community involvement hours. In contrast, most low-income participants reported receiving virtually no guidance in locating a community involvement placement and perceived this lack of support as indicative of a wider lack of concern for their civic engagement.

  High- and low-income participants’ opportunities to develop relationships with service recipients varied considerably as well: some (mostly high-income) participants heralded their newfound bonds with community members as the chief benefit and main positive memory of their community involvement experience, while others (mostly low-income) reported seldom having exposure to anyone outside of their project supervisors or other volunteers. Some high-income participants spoke about overcoming stereotypes, reflecting on their own circumstances, and becoming aware of social problems to varying extents as a result of their direct interactions with service recipients. Low-income participants, by contrast, expressed an expectation of encountering social problems through their own lived experiences, and did not usually describe their community involvement placements as having broadened their horizons.

  While mandatory community involvement may require all students to donate equal amounts of their time, it cannot guarantee equal access to meaningful community involvement placements.

  Finally, when reflecting on their personal sense of agency to “make a difference”, high-income participants tended to view themselves as capable social actors who were responsible for improving their communities. On the other hand, low-income participants more often spoke about needing to prioritize income-generating opportunities over community involvement hours in order to meet their own basic needs. Furthermore, high-income participants spoke about feeling obligated to participate in community involvement as an expression of gratitude for their fortunate status, whereas low-income participants did not often articulate a sense of indebtedness to their communities. While high- and low-income participants spoke differently about their individual agency to effect change, only one participant believed that students’ short-term community involvement activities would actually solve underlying social problems.

  While this study design does not support broad or predictive generalizations, it does show that high- and low-income participants differed in the ways they spoke about virtually every aspect of their experiences completing the Ontario community involvement requirement. So, while mandatory community involvement may require all students to donate equal amounts of their time, it cannot guarantee equal access to meaningful community involvement placements. Differential access to time, resources, and social networks may markedly influence the types of community involvement activities in which high- and low-income students participate.

  On the surface, the flexible choice available within Ontario’s community involvement requirement would seem to be responsive to individual needs. However, downloading the responsibility for securing community involvement placements onto students may actually exacerbate educational inequalities. Students’ choices, after all, are constrained by their awareness of, and access to, desired volunteer placements as well as by other social, cultural, educational, and economic factors. As a result, all students (perhaps especially those of less privileged backgrounds) may benefit from structured and/or teacher-guided community involvement activities, similar to those described in the service-learning model.

  As of this writing, Ontario’s Ministry of Education has not allocated funding to support the community involvement requirement in individual schools, raising questions about the government’s commitment to all students’ opportunities to learn and to practice active citizenship. If all students had greater access to resources and support for their community involvement activities, the apparent disparities between high- and low-income students’ experiences could potentially decrease. In particular, the Government of Ontario could place greater priority on making the community involvement requirement more explicitly educative and responsive to the needs of an economically diverse population.

  While I continue to question the structure and merits of the 40-hour requirement as implemented, this questioning should not be construed as cynicism or contempt. Even though I believe Ontario’s approach requires considerable revision in order to facilitate students’ constructive citizenship learning, I consider the requirement to be worthy of preservation and extension. I base my support on the fact that some participants in my research study had encountered opportunities to complete personally meaningful community involvement activities in which they developed strong partnerships with other people (school staff members and service recipients), and reflected positively on their personal agency to “make a difference”. Given the context in which this requirement was introduced and its potential positive consequences for students and communities, I hope to stimulate a dialogue among educators that re-imagines citizenship education strategies for a diverse student population.

  EN BREF – En se fondant sur l’hypothèse que tous les jeunes – et leurs collectivités – pourraient profiter de leur participation active à des initiatives communautaires, des provinces canadiennes et des États américains exigent maintenant qu’ils participent à des activités communautaires pour obtenir leur diplôme. On débat encore s’il est pertinent de « forcer » les élèves à faire du bénévolat. En Ontario, les 40 heures obligatoires de services communautaires constituent une intéressante étude de cas, car les élèves ont l’autonomie de décider à quoi consacrer ces heures. À l’opposé, le modèle d’apprentissage du service civique de la plupart des programmes américains approfondit la compréhension qu’ont les élèves des problèmes sociaux au moyen d’activités communautaires et d’apprentissage en classe. Une étude menée auprès de 50 élèves actuels et ayant récemment obtenu leur diplôme d’études secondaires en Ontario, provenant de milieux socioéconomiques très diversifiés, a constaté que, à temps bénévole égal, les élèves n’ont pas également accès à un placement de bénévolat porteur de sens. Le statut socioéconomique influe sur le temps, les ressources et les réseaux sociaux des élèves, et donc sur les types de bénévolat communautaire qu’ils peuvent faire.

  ---

  [1] S. Condor and S. Gibson, “Everybody’s Entitled to their Own Opinion: Ideological Dilemmas of Liberal Individualism and Active Citizenship,” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 17, no. 2 (2007): 115-140.

  [2] J. E. Kahne and J. Westheimer, “In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning,” Phi Delta Kappan 77, no. 9 (1996): 592-599.

  [3] D. Conrad and D. Hedin, High School Community Service: A Review of Research and Programs (Madison, WI: National Center on Effective Secondary Schools, 1989).

  [4] Condor and Gibson.

  [5] Volunteer Canada, “Message from the Board Chair” (2010). Retrieved from http://volunteer.ca/about-us/board-and-staff/message-board-chair

  [6] National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, “State and School District Policy for K-12 Service-learning” (2008). Retrieved from www.servicelearning.org/filemanager/download/twopage_fs/Policy_in_K-12_SL_Short_FS_FINAL__Mar08.pdf

  [7] Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, Ontario Secondary Schools Grades 9 to 12 Program and Diploma Requirements (Toronto, ON: MET, 1999).

  [8] A. Henderson, S. D. Brown, S. M. Pancer, and K. Ellis-Hale, “Mandated Community Service in High School and Subsequent Civic Engagement: The Case of the “Double Cohort” in Ontario, Canada,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36, no. 7 (2007): 849-860.

• Ethical Parenting: “Doing Right Takes Work”

  8:30 PM Comments Off on Ethical Parenting: “Doing Right Takes Work”

  A review of Good Kids, Tough Choices: How Parents Can Help Their Children Do the Right Thing by Rushworth M. Kidder, Jossey-Bass, 2010. ISBN-13: 9780470547625

  “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” – Thomas Jefferson

  This book applies the lenses of core values, ethical decision-making, and moral courage to assist the “… many parents [who], facing ethical issues with their children and not knowing what to say, either come at their kids with moral sledgehammers or tiptoe past on eggshells” (p. ix). Kidder presents an approach to “ethical fitness” that will prepare parents to seize on such issues as opportunities to develop their children’s moral sensibilities and skills “with sure-footed immediacy and unlabored grace” (p. 56).

  He assures them that “[y]ou can develop your ethical fitness by thinking through every situation that makes you morally uncomfortable, even if you never talk to your child about it” (p. 70). Of course, this is not easy. “Like many other things in life, doing right takes work. Ethics is often inconvenient and sometimes tough” (p. 42). However, the effort is worthwhile, not only for your own children but for the greater good. “Ethical parenting takes moral courage, persistence, and commitment. But it brings with it a lasting fulfillment: the moral nurturing of children who know what’s right, make tough choices, and stand for conscience. If parents truly help the next generation learn those qualities – not as ornaments but as practical, productive talents – there isn’t a single problem facing the world that they won’t find the way to address and the confidence to master” (p. 218).

  The book consists largely of commentaries on a series of extended anecdotes gleaned from Kidder’s discussions with parents over many years of work with The Institute for Global Ethics. Through these commentaries, he introduces principles for developmentally appropriate approaches to ethical parenting for kids in five age clusters running from birth through age 23. While the anecdotes are sometimes slightly saccharine and the commentary occasionally a bit credulous, the method is effective, the overall message sound, and the impact encouraging.

  The foundation for Kidder’s ethical parenting framework is “the five shared moral values that are common to cultures around the world: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion” (p. 1). For young children, he advocates overt instruction in the meaning and importance of these values, but as children mature he moves beyond obedience and introduces more sophisticated methods for resolving moral dilemmas that arise when it is not clear how, or even if, these values can be applied – particularly in the face of what Kidder calls “right-versus-right” dilemmas. As children become youth, Kidder adds a discussion of the challenge of developing their moral courage and a family culture of integrity.

  The most useful and powerful aspect of this book, aside from the reassurance it provides about the possibility of ethical parenting for moral development, are the three “resolution principles” that Kidder has distilled from normative ethical philosophy, which he claims “appear to account for a great majority of decisions that parents describe as ethical” (p. 100). He calls these popularized forms the ends-based principle, the rule-based principle, and the care-based principle. It is by employing these principles that parents strengthen their children’s ability to apply the values that have been inculcated in their early years to the vexing issues of teenage and later life. In most cases, these principles do not help one to resolve an ethical issue. In fact, they often reveal its complexity; but by providing a shared logical framework for discussion, they enable ethical reasoning, and it is this reasoning that helps children to learn, and parents to teach them, to live according to their values.

  Kidder asserts that “if, as you correct the behavior, you carry the discussion far enough to expose the child’s fundamental misconception about right and wrong [rather than simply demanding compliance], he may have to rethink his notion that the only wrong thing is getting caught” (p. 122). Moreover, this shifts the discussion from mere moralizing to inquiry-based learning about ethical issues. “What kids need as they move forward aren’t multilayered rationalities but clear frameworks. They don’t need advice on what to do so much as coaching on how to think … The task of good parenting … is to subject the vast, roiling tempest of the teen universe to a few simple, enabling ideas” (p. 136).

  Although this book is written for parents it would also be useful for teachers, coaches, and others who stand in loco parentis. One may not agree with everything that it says, but it would be hard to imagine anyone not benefitting from the significant but simply stated insight and thoughtful advice that it provides.

• Can Music in Schools Live Up To Its Promise?

  7:25 PM Comments Off on Can Music in Schools Live Up To Its Promise?

  Hussein B. is an ESL student in Grade 9. He speaks very little English and is nervous and shy in his classes. But when he enters the band room, his eyes light up. He takes up his trumpet, and for an inspiring hour he is united with his peers in the universal language of music.

  Amy T. is a very quiet Grade 4 student. She lacks confidence and rarely raises her hand to answer questions in class. But there’s been a real change in Amy. The school started a choir recently, and Amy’s clear voice sails alongside her classmates. She smiles broadly when asked to sing a solo part and does so with a gusto that she is beginning to exhibit in other areas of learning.

  “I know my son is really keen to come to school now, and that’s really surprising from being a kid that didn’t want to get up to being at school by 7:30 for band practice.” – Michelle, Parent 

  Hunter D. is in Grade 12 and about to graduate. He almost dropped out of school in Grade 10, but his music teacher encouraged him to get involved in a stage band where he’s been playing guitar for the past two years. School is still a challenge, but music has helped him not only get through it but graduate with an average that could get him into college or university.

  “You can see engagement, you can see teamwork, you can see pride, commitment, dedication, all of those things that we know are important to how successful they are outside of school.” – Jan Unwin, School Superintendent

  These students are out there in schools right across the country. You know them – or kids like them. Music really does help to bring out the best in young people. It nourishes self-esteem, keeps them engaged, and creates a respectful community. Clearly, our communities benefit when schools engage students in music. Interestingly, most education ministries across the country seem to recognize the importance of arts education in their curricula. But, somehow, many gaps appear between the official stand – as expressed in speeches and curriculum documents – and classroom practice.

  The Coalition for Music Education recently undertook a survey of Canadian school principals to map out the musical landscape in schools across the country.[1] If music education can reap such important benefits to our children, it’s important to understand what’s happening at the grassroots; and public education is the only way to ensure that all children have access to quality music programs, regardless of geography, social status, or family income. But, as our survey found, the delivery of quality music education varies considerably across the regions and for many reasons. In this article, we will focus on one particular challenge, the use of qualified music teachers. (The survey also yields surprising information in other areas, including school board support, fundraising pressures, timetabling, and resources.)

  “Four years ago, we were able to hire a specialized music teacher (preptime delivery). What an improvement. Having a well qualified, dedicated teacher brought music to the school, from Senior Kindergarten to Grade 8!”[2]

  The starting point for any good school program is the teacher, whether that program teaches English, math, science, history, arts – or music. So why is it that, at the elementary level, we have so many generalist classroom teachers – with no background in music or music education – attempting to deliver the music curriculum?  In response to the question “Who teaches music in your school?”, 38 percent of responding elementary schools across the country indicated that they have a classroom teacher with no music background in that role! Not surprisingly, the provincial picture varies widely. In the Atlantic provinces, four out of five responding schools have a music specialist delivering the curriculum. In stark contrast, in Ontario, our most populous province, 58 percent of those teaching elementary music have no music background.

  This situation raises a number of questions:

  • Without proper training or support, can curriculum expectations be met?
  • Can students really be given the opportunity to maximize their success at school if they have no music program, or if it’s being poorly taught?
  • Could we envisage math or science being taught by people who had no training or expertise in these subjects?

  “The scary part is, without any musical background, you could just photocopy sheets about music notation for the kids to fill in all year and claim to be delivering the curriculum. But that’s like teaching kids the alphabet without showing them the joy of reading a book.”[3]

  If we are to maximize the benefits of music education to students, it’s important to offer a variety of musical opportunities – activities that go well beyond passive listening to the minds-on, hands-on music making that creation-and-performance type learning can provide. Yet, in elementary schools, listening is the most common form of music education.

  Music really does help to bring out the best in young people. It nourishes self-esteem, keeps them engaged, and creates a respectful community.

  Why is listening ranked so high – well ahead of activities such as choir and instrumental music that truly reap the benefits for children? Could it be a symptom of the lack of knowledgeable music specialists in the classroom, who find it easier to put a CD into a player than to teach the rudiments of music theory? Listening is important, but it is active music making that has the strongest impact on kids.

  “Musical training has a profound impact on other skills including speech and language, memory and attention, and even the ability to convey emotions vocally…What’s more, children who have had music lessons tend to have a larger vocabulary and better reading ability than youngsters who haven’t had any musical training. And children with learning disabilities, who often have a hard time focusing when there’s a lot of background noise, may be especially helped by music lessons.”[4]

  So where do we go from here?

  The survey points out that, for most of the past decade, student participation in music has been rising while overall funding for music education has been falling. Clearly, as a community of stakeholders that includes teachers, parents, administrators, and policy-makers, we must continue to promote the value of music for children in our schools and ask for the resources – not just the material resources but more importantly the human resources – that will strengthen those programs.  Given the importance of having a qualified music teacher in the classroom, what strategies can be deployed to make sure that the talent at the head of the classroom is equipped to create the best learning environment for students?

  1. We not only need more qualified teachers in our classrooms; once they are there, we need to keep them there. Some education ministers claim there are more music specialist teachers now than there were five years ago. This may be true, but many such specialists are teaching other subjects.

  “It is really sad that I have a music specialist on staff who is not teaching music. Unfortunately, we are so short of qualified personnel to teach French (we are an immersion school) that I cannot afford to use her as a music specialist at this time.”[5]

  2. Ministries of education and school boards need to do a better job of promoting and supporting professional development among those who are required to teach music but may not have a strong music background. One principal took the time to respond in the survey with this savvy recommendation, “I would like to see a whole year set aside at our board with funds attached (from the Ministry) for systematic professional development for generalist teachers from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6 for the following purposes: 1) to show them how much joy music brings to our lives; 2) to boost their confidence levels by providing tools to make their understanding of musical terms easier and their access to a variety of music activities to do with their students easier; 3) to build ‘teacher music networks’ with a mix of different ability levels in each group (perhaps these networks could meet once a term, with release funds, to share successful teaching strategies in teaching music to their students).”[6]

  3. Our universities in general need to be doing a better job of providing teachers with the necessary skills to teach music effectively. While we firmly believe that more schools across the country should be hiring music specialists, we know this is not going to happen, at least not in the short term. But with better training for generalist teachers, more children in more schools will reap the benefits that a quality music education can bring. We owe it to this generation of students to move past the point where, as one teacher described it, “Music is the ‘extra’ that is done when there is time, and for which there is no space other than the classroom.”[7]

  Hussein, Amy, and Hunter are among the fortunate students whose lives have been enriched by music. Their parents might even go further and say that music changed their children’s entire experience with learning and with school. Strengthening music programs may require resources, but more fundamentally, it requires a will and a belief that music can change young lives.

  “It is my belief that every principal, through creative timetabling, can have a music specialist teach all the students in the school.… If a principal values music education, he/she can find a way to ensure it happens.”[8]

  EN BREF – La musique aide les jeunes à se réaliser, nourrissant leur estime de soi et maintenant leur intérêt. L’enseignante ou l’enseignant constitue le point de départ de tout bon programme scolaire, que ce soit en anglais, en math, en sciences, en histoire, en art – ou en musique. Alors pourquoi, au primaire, y a-t-il tant d’enseignants généralistes – sans formation ni expérience en musique – qui tentent de livrer en classe des programmes de musique? Bien que jouer activement de la musique ait le plus solide impact sur les enfants, un sondage de la Coalition pour l’éducation en musique a révélé que l’écoute se situait au premier rang des activités musicales des écoles. Serait-ce le symptôme d’une pénurie de spécialistes en musique dans les écoles, où il est plus simple de glisser un cédérom dans un lecteur que d’enseigner les rudiments de la théorie musicale ou d’organiser une chorale ou un orchestre? Renforcer les programmes de musique peut nécessiter des ressources, mais plus fondamentalement, la volonté doit y être et il faut détenir la conviction que la musique peut changer la vie des jeunes.

  ---

  [1] A Delicate Balance: Music Education in Canadian Schools, (study commissioned by the Coalition for Music Education, conducted by Hill Strategies Research Inc., 2010).

  [2] Ibid.

  [3] Kevin Merkley, York Region District School Board, as quoted in Louise Brown, “Majority of Music Teachers Lack Musical Background: Survey” Toronto Star (4 November 2010).

  [4] S.L. Baker on a study by Northwestern University Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory. From “Music Benefits the Brain, Research Reveals,” naturalnews.com, July 30, 2010,

  [5] A Delicate Balance.

  [6] Ibid.

  [7] Ibid.

  [8] Ibid.

• Prudence L. Carter: Want to Achieve Educational Equity?

  February 17, 2011 8:52 PM Comments Off on Prudence L. Carter: Want to Achieve Educational Equity?

  A presentation by Prudence L. Carter of Stanford University at CEA’s 2010 colloquium on equity.

• High Touch for High Tech

  January 28, 2011 6:24 PM Comments Off on High Touch for High Tech

  Have you noticed that nobody advocates for 21st Century Knowledge?  Well of course not.  Much of what our students will need to know 20 years from now, which is when the educational chickens really come home to roost, is not yet known and much of what we think we know now will be irrelevant or wrong within their lifetime.  So, knowledge is not the key to the future.  That is not to say it is unimportant, but only that it is not the determining factor in a strong education or a successful future, and it is not what separates the economic winners from the also rans or what creates a healthy society.

  So everyone turns to skills.  Surely “know how” will be more important as “know what” becomes both more universally accessible and more volatile.  Well, skills are more durable than knowledge but they are still not stable, particularly when skills are seen as specific scripts that can be trained – such as knowing how to use computer software efficiently or even to program computer applications directly.  This stuff is changing so fast that what one really needs to understand is not the specific procedures for doing things but the principles behind those procedures so that one is better equipped to keep up as they rapidly evolve.  Fortran was essential when I was a graduate student but it doesn’t do me much good now.  So even specific skills are not sufficient to carry you into the future.

  Unless, of course, we are talking about social skills.  These are changing as the world becomes more diverse and multicultural but they are still far more stable than technical skills and increasingly essential for employment success, just as they have always been critical to social engagement, citizenship, personal fulfillment and happiness – the seldom mentioned ‘other half’ of educational purposes.

  21st Century Skills should include technical prowess for obvious practical reasons but the truly essential skills are not the ‘hard’ technical ones; they are the ‘soft’ human ones – communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking for example.  These have always been important to us, and they have always been buried somewhere in the nether regions of educational mission statements, but as the pace of change accelerates, diversity increases, and interconnection and interdependence intensify in our ‘shrinking’ global village, the soft human skills must be brought into the foreground and given the full attention they deserve.

  And underlying skills there are attitudes, which may be an even stronger determinant of success – curiosity, confidence and courage for example – and dispositions like empathy and ethics.  These too need to be taken out of the closet and put into the middle of the classroom.

  Now there are some problems in doing so.  We know how to present students with knowledge and figure out with reasonable accuracy if they have absorbed it.  We can also determine if they have understood it, although that is a bit harder.  And we are fairly good at skill development – at least technical skill development – but its much harder to evaluate.  However, when it comes to social skills and attitudes, not only are we poor at teaching them – if “teaching” is the term – but we are flat out lousy at assessing them and we have no agreed upon standards that would allow us to evaluate them even if we could assess effectively.

  This is the real challenge of 21st Century Learning.  How do we inculcate in our students the soft skills and personal attitudes that will empower them to thrive in the future that is already upon us, and how do we assess, evaluate and report them?  Yes, students also need knowledge and technical skills, but if we allow ourselves to focus on these easier tasks we will fail to understand or address the real need.

  Developing social skills and personal attitudes starts to sound like character development – a term that inevitably raises some hackles and concerns.  This kind of character development, however, should not be confused with moral development because to the extent that it is concerned with values they are the common core values that underlie a democratic society and are central to all moral systems – things like honesty, respect and responsibility for example.

  So, IMHO we should reframe the 21st Century Skills discourse in terms of character development for a diverse and dynamic world rather than as a simple matter of technological mastery.  Now what sort of schooling would it take to accomplish that – or should we be talking about schooling at all?

  
  

• Finding Place in Education

  January 12, 2011 8:38 PM Comments Off on Finding Place in Education

  In other words we must apprentice ourselves to an experience of place, if place is to become our teacher.[1]

  At five to eight, with the shadows of spruce and fir lengthening into disproportionately long fingers of dark, I became aware that two students were missing.

  It had been twenty-five minutes since the last of the stragglers had pushed into camp. Now I was suddenly aware that I alone among the leaders held any back-country credentials and experience, that the responsibility for the missing students fell squarely upon my shoulders. Fighting to maintain a facade of calm, I quickly delegated camp responsibilities, grabbed my first aid kit, headlamp, and cell phone – which proved useless as I was within a cellular blackout zone that hugs the rugged coastline of Newfoundland even today – and hurried off. They couldn’t be, I was sure, more than ten minutes or so away. I ran through the deepening dusk, hyper-aware of the way the trail hugged the rugged coastline, cliffs jutting off suddenly – a fall of a hundred feet and often more over grey-red rock into the swirling cold of the North Atlantic. My eyes betrayed my worst fears, searching out for the billowing white of a t-shirt, so akin to a jellyfish, that would mark disaster.

  As a society, we are less and less comfortable in our localities. We have embraced the idea of a globalized placelessness, where everything, everywhere, resonates with a sameness.

  But after running back nearly two kilometers, my shins scraped raw and bloody, I had to stop. Re-evaluate. My brain tripped over itself, trying to formulate a plan. I wondered how well the students knew the outdoors. If they were comfortable, had set up camp. To be lost is an awful sensation, especially in one’s own backyard.

  As it would turn out, the students had come to a fork in the trail at five in the afternoon. Tired, their feet blistered, they had stopped and phoned for help. Had they been more comfortable in the woods, in their ability to read a trail, I wonder if they wouldn’t have been able to press on without incident.

  As a society, we are less and less comfortable in our localities. We have embraced the idea of a globalized placelessness, where everything, everywhere, resonates with a sameness. Wendell Berry considers this the result of seeing in places nothing of value save what can be mined, stripped, or drilled from them.[2] What do we lose, educationally and in society at large, when we reduce our inhabited places to those components that provide material wealth alone? One result is that our scholastic curricula, by and large, avoid teaching specific places. They turn instead to the “mandates of a standardized, ‘placeless’ curriculum and settle for the abstractions and simulations of classroom learning.”[3] Yet if students and teachers do not have the opportunity to work within and develop a relationship with place, how can we ask them to take on the challenges of climate change, of finite fresh water supplies, and the burgeoning necessity of weaning ourselves from oil. All of these challenges demand a respect, indeed a love for place, wherein lessons can be learned and knowledge stored away so that we can transform society for the better. Edmund O’Sullivan asks that we bear in mind the totality of life that acknowledges we are but “one species living on planet ‘Earth.’” This is the context of the planet, housed within specific localities, that will give students and teachers the opportunity to meaningfully see and interact with the world.[4]

  Is this asking too much from schools, from teachers overburdened with curricular objectives to meet and from students swimming against a strong rip-tide of subjects and the overarching needs of homework and tests? Sheila Geisbrecht argues that, as educators, we need to fuse various curricular objectives to incorporate local places into our teaching. “Localism allows students to explore their worlds through hands-on participatory learning experiences which build on core curricular areas…”[5] Rather than distracting from the mandated curriculum, embedding place within our teaching allows students to see the connections between classroom learning and the world beyond school, to make the learning truly meaningful. Students and teachers in this light begin to create maps of their localities that make them resonate with meaning.

  “This is where Ruth kissed Johnny. Or that’s what he said anyway. And over there, behind the convenience store, that’s where I found a fifty dollar bill once.”

  These are story maps, housed in geographical places but extending beyond and into them in a manner known best by the storyteller.[6] Such story-maps challenge the idea of places as mere sources of economic opportunity. Looking back, this is the kind of resource that would have made my teaching internship, done in Grand Bank, Newfoundland more palatable. Teaching World Geography 3202, a public examination course, I understood the course material but often had a hard time linking it meaningfully to students. After a particularly long class where I met the usual symptoms of student apathy, pronounced yawns, background chatting, shrugs of passive indifference when called upon, my cooperating teacher suggested I try to make the class more meaningful locally.

  “Bring the curriculum to them,” she suggested. “Make the global local.”

  The men and women who once worked the land are becoming marginalized, their story maps lost. It is through their stories that students can find the point of beginning their own maps, to find new directions locally and by extension, globally.

  I nodded but found the idea off-putting, a practiced cliché. How could I make a curriculum based on global inequalities in farming and food production resonate in a community still suffering from the plight of a cod fishing moratorium? When I looked out the window all I saw was snow blasted along by the infernal winds. There was, I decided, no point of connection between the two. Partly, I was too immature to see the possibilities. More to the point, I was willing to sacrifice student understanding for the banality of what became a largely boring intellectual exercise because I found comfort in global ideas rather than local realities. How much richer would that class have been with the presence of local fishermen, talking about the collapse of the cod fishery, the myriad variables that plague commercial fisheries in the global world, giving global resonance to the local historical narrative of dependence on the cod fishery. Grand Bank’s history – indeed, its name tells much of this narrative, cultural and socio-economic, perched as it was atop one of the richest cod fishing banks in the world.

  Such a lesson was not beyond the scope of possibility. And the lessons of Grand Bank, of localities being mined and stripped for economic gain, are becoming increasingly commonplace. The men and women who once worked the land are becoming marginalized, their story maps lost. It is through their stories that students can find the point of beginning their own maps, to find new directions locally and by extension, globally.

  The local knowledge of place, its temperaments and possibilities, is still known where people live in working harmony with it. In the summer of 2007, my wife and I ventured out to Fogo Island, slung nine rocky, shoal-strewn miles off the north-east coast of Newfoundland by the retreat of the last ice age. My wife was studying the island’s cultural heritage. As part of her work we were invited to attend the annual mass on Little Fogo Island, a further six miles across from the community of Joe Batt’s Arm. At one time a thriving community of four hundred, largely employed in the cod fishery, today it is home to a handful of summertime residents. It was a calm July day, the sun high in a washed out blue sky. We rode the six miles on waters barely rippled by any wind in a newly made trap-skiff, once the heart and soul of the Newfoundland inshore fishery. The refurbished Acadia engine puttered in fickle opposition to being worked so hard after thirty odd years of accumulating dust in a store, and consequently cut out frequently. A salty-lipped fisherman, shrouded in a perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke, squeezed his sinewy torso into the narrow confines of the engine hold to restart the motor. In fits and starts we made our way across, the frequent breaks just another opportunity to enjoy the day, the sun strong across our faces as we bit into another slice of homemade partridgeberry lassie tart. The sermon was almost anti-climactic after the leisure of the trip, and I made ready, after more pieces of tart and sandwiches, to explore the island. I was aware that the men – largely ex-fishermen – had congregated, but I thought little of it.

  We’re going, I was told as I crested the first hill, my wife waving me back. Indeed, everyone seemed to be on the move. Picnic boxes were being hastily packed, carried down rickety, greying spruce-wood ladders to the temporary fleet of boats that were docked in the narrow confines of the harbour.

  Surprised, I inquired why.

  Storm’s coming, came the answer. Though I squinted across the Labrador Sea, I could see nothing more ominous than a few clouds scattered at the horizon line. The sun still shone bright in a brilliantly blue sky. But I was there at their behest, so I got back into the boat. The wind had picked up some and we crested the waves with a heavy slap of the bow. Conversation was difficult over the roar of the engine. But never once did we seem in any danger. It was only after successfully navigating the tricky shoals that mark Joe Batt’s harbour mouth that I glanced back at Little Fogo. It had disappeared. In its stead a black sky edging to a mauve-red at the waterline, rain lines visible, slanting nearly horizontal, shrouded the island. Lightning punctuated an already apocalyptic scene.

  Such knowledge fosters “a sense of cultural responsibility” to one’s inhabited place.

  To know a place so well as to see a storm coming from the minutia of clues offered that day has stuck with me. Clearly, these were men who had generations of knowledge, as well as their own experiences to build upon. We don’t value such knowledge anymore because there is no economic merit to it at first glance. But such knowledge fosters “a sense of cultural responsibility” to one’s inhabited place. Therein we need to grapple, as Newfoundlanders and as Canadians, with what our localities mean to us and, through such discoveries to “forge more ethical, reparative attachments to place as a practice of renewal and hope.”[7] In becoming more comfortable with our localities, hopefully we can find a way forward wherein we can restore places as meaningful interactions between human life and the natural world that surrounds us. But to do so we need to make place part of our scholastic mandate. It is not test scores we are worried about, but the viability of our communities and places for tomorrow’s generation.

  EN BREF – En tant que société, nous sentons de moins en moins notre appartenance à notre localité. Nous avons adopté l’idée d’une sorte d’existence anonyme mondialisée, où tout, partout, est essentiellement pareil. Que perdons-nous, sur le plan de l’éducation et dans la société, quand nous réduisons nos espaces habités aux éléments qui assurent uniquement la fortune matérielle? Si les élèves et les enseignants ne peuvent travailler de l’intérieur et développer une relation avec le lieu, comment pouvons-nous leur demander de relever les défis du réchauffement planétaire, des quantités limitées d’eau potable et de la nécessité croissante de nous sevrer du pétrole. Tous ces défis requièrent un respect – en fait un amour – du lieu, où les leçons peuvent être apprises et les connaissances peuvent être retenues pour que nous puissions transformer la société en mieux. Nous devons intégrer le lieu à notre mandat de scolarisation. Il ne s’agit pas de s’inquiéter de résultats d’examens, mais bien de la viabilité de nos collectivités et des lieux de la génération de demain.

  ---

  [1] BrianWattchow, “Experience of Place: Lessons on Teaching Cultural Attachment ot Place,” in Nature First: Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way, eds. Bob Henderson and Nils Vikander (Toronto, Natural Heritage: 2007): 263.

  [2] Wendell Berry, “Preserving Wildness,” in American Earth (Library of America: 2008): 525.

  [3] David Grueneweld, “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place,” Educational Researcher 32, no, 4 (2003): 8.

  [4] O’Sullivan, Edmund. “The Project and Vision of Transformative Education,” in Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning, eds, Edmund O’Sullivan, Amish Morrell, and Mary Ann O’Connor (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002): 8.

  [5] Sheila Giesbrecht “The 100-Mile Curriculum,” Education Canada (Spring, 2008): 27.

  [6] Robert MacFarlane, The Wild Places (London: Granta Books, 2008): 15.

  [7] Ursula Kelly, “Where Biography Meets Ecology,” in Narrating Transformative Learning in Education, eds. M. Garder and U. Kelly (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 46.

• Injury, Inequality and Schooling in the United States and Canada

  January 6, 2011 8:54 PM Comments Off on Injury, Inequality and Schooling in the United States and Canada

  A review of Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture by Kirsten Olson, Teachers College Press, 2009. ISBN: 0807749559; and The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine our Future by Linda Darling Hammond, Teachers College Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-8077-4962-3

  “Tout est bien sortant des mains de l’Auteur des choses, tout dégénère entre les mains de l’homme,” wrote Rousseau (“Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things, everything degenerates in the hands of man.”) 

  Injury and inequality are, respectively, the topics of Kirsten Olson’s Wounded by School and Linda Darling-Hammond’s The Flat World and Education.  Both authors are imbued by the spirit of romantic education, the genealogy of which can be traced from Rousseau’s Emile to Francis Parker, John Dewey, and Sir Ken Robinson – whose TED talk about schools killing creativity has been widely circulated (www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html). 

  In one of the two forewords to Olson’s book, Parker Palmer writes of “the hidden and long-lasting wounds that result from the structural violence inherent in the ways we organize and evaluate learning.”  In one of the many lists dispersed throughout the book, Olson answers the question “What are school wounds?” with a catalogue of injuries she links to schooling with anecdotal evidence: 

  • “everyday” losses of pleasure
  • belief that we are not smart, not competent in learning
  • belief that our abilities are fixed, and cannot be improved with effort, coaching, intervention, or self-understanding.
  • belief that we are “just average” in ways that feel diminishing
  • painful, burning memories of shaming experiences in school that produce generalized anxiety
  • chronic, habitual anger toward teachers, and those in authority, due to past experiences of injustice, of not being “seen” in school
  • belief that we are intellectually or cognitively “less than” due to experiences in school
  • low appetite for risk-taking intellectually, wanting to be right or “just get the assignments done”
  • over-attachment to “right” answers, correctness
  • tendency to classify others, and ourselves, into dualistic, diminishing “smart/dumb,” “artistic/not artistic” categories
  • unprocessed, powerful feeling about education and learning that we become aware of as adults, in our interactions with our own children or students in school (p. 19)

  Darling-Hammond’s is the more tightly argued of the two books.  She reveals what would likely have been her agenda for education reform in the United States had she received Obama’s approval as Secretary of Education instead of Arne Duncan.  Her thesis is that, in order to prepare all students for success in a knowledge-based society, the United States must establish a “purposeful, equitable education system.” Using as her references management guru Peter Drucker and Harvard Change Management team member Tony Wagner, Darling-Hammond enumerates the capacities one requires to be part of a knowledge-based society:

  • Design, evaluate, and manage one’s own work so that it continually improves.
  • Frame, investigate, and solve problems using a wide range of tools and resources.
  • Collaborate strategically with others.
  • Communicate effectively in many forms.
  • Find, analyze, and use information for many purposes.
  • Develop new products and ideas.

  Though both Olson and Darling-Hammond appear to be adherents of progressivism, Darling-Hammond is closer to George S. Counts than to John Dewey.  Counts, a sociologist and what in today’s parlance would be called a “critical friend” of the Progressive movement, believed that society could be reconstructed through education. His critique of progressive education asserted that its accomplishments – its attention to children and the interests of the learner; its defence of activity as the root of education; its conception of learning in relation to life situations and character growth; and its advocacy for the rights of children – reflected an excellent but inadequate conception of learning.

  Counts believed that a great weakness of progressive education was its failure to elaborate a “theory of social welfare, unless it be that of anarchy or extreme individualism.”  To be genuinely progressive, education would need to emancipate itself from the influence of the liberal-minded upper middle class, to:

  face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all of its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become somewhat less frightened than it is today at the bogeys of imposition and indoctrination.[1]  

  Although he wrote almost 80 years prior to Wounded by School, Counts would find that Olson’s vision was not emancipated from its liberal-minded upper middle class individualism and its fear of imposition and indoctrination. Indeed, Olson quotes Roland Meighan’s argument that “an education fit for democracy” relies on “learning by invitation rather than indoctrination,”[2] claiming that:

  • Schooling needs to be reorganized for participation rather than imposition.
  • Procedures for monitoring education must celebrate learning rather than incessant and stultifying testing.
  • Schools must adopt a learner-directed, learner-centered approach to all education (p. 201).

  On the other hand, Counts would approve of Darling-Hammond’s candid acknowledgement that “throughout 200 years of slavery, a century of court-sanctioned discrimination based on race, and a half-century of differential access to education by race, class, language background, and geographical location, we have become accustomed in the United States to educational inequality.”  He would also commend her attentiveness to the need for complementary social policies to support the ones she advocates for education, including:

  • secure housing, food, and health care, so that children can come to school ready to learn each day
  • supportive early learning environments
  • equitably funded schools which provide equitable access to high-quality teaching (p. 26)

  As an unrepentant socialist and “social reconstructionist”, Counts would likely condemn as nativistic both Olson and Darling-Hammond for dressing up their arguments in appeals to national economic productivity and competitiveness.  He’d look askance at Darling-Hammond’s acknowledgement of charter schools and school choice, and would be dismayed by the rampant individualism and romanticism in the Olson book.  

  There is little reason to dispute either Darling-Hammond’s assertion of deeply ingrained inequalities between groups of students in the United States or Olson’s case studies of persons who have been wounded by the schools they have attended.  The influence of the progressives on schooling in the United States has been pervasive.  Project-based learning; integrated curricula; an emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking; collaborative working groups; community-based learning; portfolio assessment; and a focus on citizenship and social responsibility are educational practices heavily influenced by progressive education and its emphasis on child-centered and experience-based learning.

  Counts foresaw the danger in today’s progressivism that benefits individuals at the expense of community, cultivates a sense of individual entitlement, and places confidence in markets and privatization as mechanisms for addressing social problems. As he might have predicted, today Canadian and American schools are the foci of debates among policymakers, scholars, media, and the public.  There are debates between advocates of schooling as a means of exploiting individual capital and those who see schooling as primarily serving the development of social capital; between promoters of choice versus promoters of common values promoting social cohesion; and between advocates of private versus public control of schooling.

  My own thinking about education has been influenced by progressivism.  I am a graduate of Teachers College where Dewey worked out the fundamentals of progressivism in the early part of the last century.  In Failing our Kids: How We are Ruining our Public Schools, I argued that the curriculum of the public school should exhibit four attributes. It should be meaningful, challenging, prompt curiosity, and require mental effort.  Citizenship and social responsibility also figure prominently in my thinking about schooling:

  Public schools should be the place where democratic citizenship is learned. They should be places in which cultural, religious, and linguistic differences can be both understood and appreciated. Public schools should foster healthy inter-group relations by eroding cultural stereotypes. Schools should try to imbue in all students an appreciation for Canada’s values, traditions, and institutions through instruction in language, literature, art, history, music, and in other curricular areas. And teachers should work to overcome the barriers to success that some students face because of the characteristics they bring with them when they come to school.[3]

  While I continue to hold strongly to those values, it is incumbent upon me and others influenced by progressivism to question – as Counts questioned the progressivism of his day – its contribution to these problems.  Olson’s and Darling-Hammond’s works prompt us to question the role of progressivism in supporting a system of injury and inequality. Darling-Hammond’s treatise captures the spirit of progressivism envisioned by Counts, but it is less tough-minded than I think is necessary to address the problem of inequality. The progressive influence is evident in the Olson book as well, but it is of the romantic, individualistic variety of which Counts was so critical in reflecting on what early progressivism had become.

  Despite their exclusive focus on schooling in the United States, these books will receive attention in Canada because Canada and Canadians are not immune to educational inequality and injury. Since the Second World War, Canadian public schools have made strides toward ensuring that a student’s educational success cannot be predicted by the social conditions in which the student lives, but it would be wrong for Canadians to be complacent about the inequalities faced and the injuries endured by students in Canada.  Although they are not, in the aggregate, as egregious as those in the United States, they are as significant in the lives of those who must endure them and consequential for the larger society. A consortium of researchers investigating graduation rates of students in Canada’s three largest cities have found significant variation among students of different ethno-linguistic backgrounds.[4] The poor school performance of, and outcomes achieved by, Aboriginal Canadians and Haitian-Canadians – to mention just two demographic groups – is visible evidence of the failure of Canadian education to deliver on a core promise: that who one is, with whom one lives, and where one lives should not limit one’s educational achievements.

  ---

  [1] G. S. Counts, “Dare Progressive Education be Progressive?” Progressive Education 9, no. 4 (1932): 257-63.

  [2] Roland Meighan, “An Education Fit for a Democracy,” 2006.

  [3] C. S. Ungerleider, Failing Our Kids: How We are Ruining our Public Schools (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003), 114.

  [4] M. McAndrew, et. al., Educational Pathways and Academic Performance of Youth of Immigrant Origin (Ottawa: Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), 2009).

• Viewpoint: The Key to John

  December 10, 2010 9:07 PM Comments Off on Viewpoint: The Key to John

  I have always been haunted by the memory of one of my former students sitting alone in a school office. The image remains frozen in my mind. With book in hand, he waits for his mother to pick him up for an afternoon appointment with his doctor. His book is closed – it is the same title he has been carrying to school for months, opening and closing during silent reading, mouthing the words that elude his full comprehension. John is a special educational student, a fluent reader who does not understand the meaning in the books he has read.

  The book seems a magic key to him. It will unlock the door to his future, where his mother holds the expectation that John will graduate from school and someday enter a college or university, fulfilling his promise for a bright future. As his teacher, I will continue encouraging the use of strategies that will help him read between the lines and draw a deeper meaning from his book. John will continue to see no further than the details in the story.

  I understand now that if John held the key to his own success, I was the lock.

  I understand now that if John held the key to his own success, I was the lock. In my desire to awaken a greater reader in John, I imposed obstacles in the form of academic goals that were beyond his grasp. My commitment to curriculum duped me into thinking that scholarly excellence was the main objective to my teaching profession. So I was just teaching John the skills of reading as opposed to reinforcing the joy he had already found in reading.

  What are teachers if we fail to recognize the whole student? We provide tight restrictions in our curriculum, as if academic content were the panacea for a happy and fulfilling life. We set barriers for students – assignments upon assignment, test upon test – demanding they compete with their peers for the highest possible marks, and set high academic standards so that failure makes “weaker” students feel like pariahs among their peers. In our desire to isolate the intellect, we abandon the human essence of character, our ability to be fully human, the capacity to be adjusted in our intellectual and emotional needs – and to those of others living within our communities.

  Here is the report card comment I should have presented to John: John has consistently demonstrated strong organizational skills in class, ready for each lesson and eager to participate. His independent working skills continue to exceed expectation, showing a student willing to learn new concepts at every given opportunity. John places a lot of pressure on himself to succeed in his academic endeavours. He is encouraged to seek help whenever his academic work is challenging so that he may experience greater success. During peer projects, students enjoy working with John, given his ability to work hard and cooperatively with every member in our classroom. 

  It is a comment I never gave John because report cards concentrate primarily on academic results; held in less esteem is the measure of character through which we determine our ability to be productive and happy individuals. My fear is that, if we only succeed in academic work, we aspire to less in ourselves, becoming as it were, mechanical cogs in the machinery of society.

  If schools are to cultivate a better society, curriculum needs to move beyond the academic. Where is the expectation for who I am in this world? What is my purpose? What is my goal? What is my responsibility? These questions initiate a challenge that urges us to build a bridge between understanding the world and understanding our place in it. Limiting a student’s success to the intellect is based on the same reasoning that kept me from writing the report card comment I should have written for John.

  I could not entirely surmise what motivated John as a student, but I have a suspicion that he burdened himself with the aspiration to excel in his academic subjects: pressure for high grades from his parents, a self-image based on pleasing them, a feeling of inadequacy among his peers. My own wish to optimize his academic abilities may have urged him to accomplish what was beyond his capabilities. Despite his limitations, John tapped into his own natural abilities with patience and a diligence to detail. Those qualities, and his interpersonal skills with peers and teachers at school, were often overlooked because they weren’t part of the curriculum. It is to John’s credit that, in spite of ourselves, we didn’t undermine his motivation to grow as an individual inside our educational system.

  If schools are to cultivate a better society, curriculum needs to move beyond the academic. Where is the expectation for who am I in this world? What is my purpose? What is my goal? What is my responsibility?

  I am not suggesting we move away from the academic component of curriculum, but rather that we expand the definition of curriculum so that it may be inclusive enough to bear all students within a complex society facing challenges in its future. As technology takes over more and more of our learning and our lives, we have to ask: Is the key to our hi-tech future any more sound than the key we left John holding in the office with the book he did not fully comprehend?

  I have lost track of John over the years. I find myself wondering: Did he sit through his Grade 8 graduation as an observer, watching his peers receive awards beyond his expectations? Did secondary education further alienate him from school, subjecting him to a litany of rotary classes where teachers have even less contact with students?

  In my career as a teacher, I have learned many lessons. The most important has been to look beyond the official curriculum document. Is the student with the quiet demeanour avoiding eye contact because he or she is a target of bullying? Is the student who acts out in a classroom frustrated by the academic workload that is either too easy or difficult? John is always there for me – a scathing indictment of the inadequacy of curriculum, which failed to give credit for all the efforts, skills, and behaviour already in his possession.

  John will one day leave school and take up an occupation judged by our educational standards to be inferior to jobs requiring a university degree – reflecting an elitism that perpetuates a myth about its own high regard and threatens to undermine our diverse democracy.

  Thanks to John, I am no longer a teacher of a subject, but a teacher of students. Through his initiative alone, he has set a standard of excellence to which all our curriculum documents have yet to catch up.

  EN BREF – Que sont les enseignants si nous omettons de reconnaître l’élève dans sa globalité? Nous restreignons sévèrement le curriculum, comme si le contenu scolaire était la panacée assurant une vie heureuse et enrichissante. Nous posons des obstacles aux élèves – travail par-dessus travail, examen sur examen – exigeant qu’ils luttent contre leurs pairs pour obtenir les meilleurs notes possible et nous établissons des normes scolaires élevées, de sorte que les élèves « plus faibles » qui échouent se sentent rejetés par leurs pairs. Dans notre désir d’isoler l’intellect, nous abandonnons l’essence humaine du caractère, notre capacité d’être totalement humains, la capacité de nous adapter à nos besoins intellectuels et émotionnels – et à ceux d’autres personnes dans nos collectivités.

• Financial Literacy: Getting Beyond the Markets

  September 22, 2010 7:21 PM Comments Off on Financial Literacy: Getting Beyond the Markets

  In the wake of the global financial meltdown, there have been many discussions in Canada about the need for greater “financial literacy”. In response to the crisis and its many painful consequences, educators and NGOs have redoubled their calls for financial literacy training among average Canadians. The financial industry itself has long sponsored numerous “investor education” programs (although the objectivity of these initiatives can be rightly questioned). More recently, several Canadian provinces have added financial literacy into core curriculum for high school students (including B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, and P.E.I.). We can expect more such initiatives aimed at introducing financial education into school curricula, even in the lower grades.

  Even the federal government is getting in on the act. In his 2009 budget, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the creation of a Task Force to evaluate current financial literacy initiatives and make recommendations for a stronger, more integrated national financial literacy strategy. That Task Force has issued an initial consultation paper (available at www.financialliteracyincanada.com) and plans to issue a final report by the end of the year.

  In announcing the Task Force, Mr. Flaherty suggested it was motivated by the desire “to enable consumers to look after their best interests.”[1] After all, his government had been beset by complaints from individual investors who lost big in the meltdown. In response to these complaints, this budget initiative would equip individual investors to look after their own finances prudently – rather than expecting government to protect them. More broadly, it was suggested, a financially literate public would contribute to a more smoothly functioning and stable financial system.

  This implicit theme of “individual responsibility” is also evident in the consultation report subsequently issued by the federal Task Force. The report argues that “a financially educated population will be better able to weather economic downturns.”[2] Indeed, the Task Force claims that financial literacy will benefit all Canadians (not just investors) by promoting more economic self-sufficiency, less pressure on social programs, enhanced economic stability, and stronger public markets. In other words, if Canadians learn to handle their personal finances better, they won’t need to rely on governments to protect them and financial markets will work better. In short, the whole country will be stronger.

  It is fantasy to hope that greater knowledge on the part of individual “mom and pop” investors could somehow stabilize the workings of macro financial markets.

  Some individuals will do better if they make better financial choices – just as some individuals will find a job more quickly, if they learn how to prepare a better resumé. But would more prudent financial behaviour by Canadians in aggregate really produce more stable financial markets, and even a stronger overall economy? Teaching everyone to prepare a good resumé cannot eliminate unemployment. And teaching Canadians how to plan their household budgets, live within their means, and make wise investment decisions cannot prevent the next financial collapse – let alone solve deeper-rooted problems of poverty and economic hardship that afflict millions of Canadian households.

  In this regard, the timing of this redoubled emphasis on financial literacy is ironic. The Canadian economy, and the global economy, are still trying to recover from a catastrophic failure of the private financial industry. That failure was rooted not in individual ignorance, short-sightedness, or irresponsibility. It was rooted in the sophisticated efforts of major financial institutions to profit from the creation and trade of fundamentally unproductive financial assets. If individual investors had been more aware of the risks involved in their investments, and perhaps more skeptical of the questionable economic underpinning for the whole process, perhaps some could have avoided losses.[3] But it is fantasy to hope that greater knowledge on the part of individual “mom and pop” investors could somehow stabilize the workings of macro financial markets. If this current emphasis on financial literacy steers policymakers away from a badly-needed re-evaluation of the practices of the private financial industry, and of the inadequacies of public financial regulation, then it will have been counterproductive.

  Canadians should indeed learn, in an honest and objective way, about the financial industry: warts and all. We should learn what high finance does, what it doesn’t do, the risks, the costs, and the vested interests associated with this hyperactive world:

  • Let’s learn how shockingly little the typical Canadian saves and how unlikely it is that average Canadians could possibly save enough in an RRSP to pay for a decent pension.

  • Let’s learn how public pensions are far more important to the prosperity of seniors than their personal investments and how those pensions are by far the most secure (and the least costly to administer) of all sources of seniors’ income.

  • Let’s learn, more fundamentally, about how the whole system of personal investing through mutual funds is one step removed from the real processes of investment, innovation, and capital accumulation that generate genuine economic progress.

  • In a similar vein, let’s learn how expensive our overdeveloped system of financial intermediation has become, with layers on layers of interest spreads, commissions, management expense fees, service charges, and other costs.

  • Let’s learn about the enormous (and unprotected) risks of personal financial investing, and that there is no guarantee that expected asset values will be realized when it comes time for us all to start living off our RRSP funds.

  • Finally, let’s learn how skewed and concentrated is the distribution of financial wealth in Canada (and thus the distribution of tax subsidies for personal investing). The richest 10 percent of Canadian households own close to two-thirds of all financial wealth. The richest 1 percent likely owns close to one-third. The bottom 50 percent has essentially no net financial wealth.

  These are relevant, real-world financial topics about which Canadians’ current knowledge is sadly inadequate. And for the most part, the financial industry would like to keep it this way. It has thrived off the current state of affairs, in which Canadians are encouraged, pressured, misled, and heavily subsidized to buy pieces of paper with no inherent worth, paying 2 or 3 percent of their value each year in management fees – all in hopes that the paper will be worth a lot more when they decide to cash it in. A truly financially literate population would likely reject the risks and costs of this system altogether and find a more sensible and productive way to support its elder members at an acceptable standard of living.

  But given the context and tone of Mr. Flaherty’s mandate to the Task Force, it seems clear that the current financial literacy “push” is likely to reinforce the existing culture and practices of personal investing. The discourse of financial literacy locates the root cause of Canadians’ financial distress in individual actions, choices, and failings: not saving enough, not planning ahead, not reading the fine print on those risky investments. It assumes that financial education alone (rather than a more concrete change in the real circumstances of Canadians’ economic lives) will be enough to change those outcomes. It endorses the current practices and culture of personal investing, and in fact stresses that we need more of it. Most dangerously, it begins to create a context in which governments can shrug off their responsibilities (whether that be regulating financial industries or providing for basic income security for Canadians of all ages) by establishing the expectation that Canadians should be able “to look after their own best interests”.

  There’s certainly no doubt that Canadian households are experiencing increasing financial stress – and not just because of the financial crisis. Household debt levels have risen dramatically over the last two decades, facilitated by easier access to a broader range of debt products; total personal debt now equals almost 150 percent of Canadians’ disposable income. Household spending grew twice as fast since 1990 as household income. Personal bankruptcy rates have quadrupled in the same time. In survey evidence cited by the Task Force, one third of Canadians report struggling or being unable to keep up with monthly expenses, and 60 percent of Canadians worry about their financial future – almost a quarter worry enough to lose sleep over it.

  Does this financial distress result, to any meaningful degree, from a lack of financial literacy? Would financial literacy education significantly change any of those outcomes?

  The federal Task Force, and other financial literacy advocates, clearly think so. I fundamentally beg to differ. The reason more Canadian households are in financial distress is not because of their individual behaviour and choices. It is because our economy, and our society, have evolved in ways that have resulted in greater inequality, greater insecurity, and greater hardship for many (not all) Canadians.

  Two recent research reports from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have tried to put hard numbers on the day-to-day minimal requirements of household life. [4] They have documented a fundamental mismatch between the earnings generated in Canada’s increasingly flexible, rugged, and unequal labour market, and the minimal costs of supporting a family. Addressing that mismatch (through policies to increase wages, and/or reduce costs for low-income families) is essential for alleviating personal financial distress. Learning to budget carefully, avoid financial fraud, reduce credit costs, and other helpful lessons from financial literacy training can certainly help hard-pressed families survive the difficult economic world they inhabit. But they cannot alleviate the more fundamental, structural causes of their financial problems.

  The Task Force report admits that the changing labour market is a key reason that financial literacy is more necessary today than it was, say, 40 years ago. Back then, the report suggests, “many Canadians had seemingly secure lifelong employment, with predictable pensions.”[5] Not so anymore, and that’s why financial literacy is important – to help Canadians to grapple with a world that has become fundamentally less secure. But what if we asked a prior question ­– why should we take as inevitable or permanent the present, increasingly polarized circumstances of economic life for Canadians? Why can’t we make jobs more secure, or pensions more predictable? We want financial literacy to genuinely educate Canadians about the causes and potential solutions to their financial problems, rather than encouraging them to accept the fundamental dimensions of an unfair, unequal world, and then adjust themselves to it.

  Financial literacy, in principle, should be a great thing… It’s a prerequisite for effective democracy that average people learn more about how the economy really works.

  Obviously, regardless of how difficult one’s personal economic circumstances may be, some practices and problems can make them even worse. It pays to avoid loan sharks and payday loan shops. It pays to avoid regular credit card debt. It pays to own your own home, if you can save a down payment and crack the market. Investors of all stripes, big and small, should be fully cognizant that when they purchase anything other than a term deposit or a government bond, what they are buying could be worthless next week. They should also be aware that 2 or 3 percent of their painfully-saved wealth is creamed off the top by money managers who, economically, fulfil no productive function whatsoever.

  Financial literacy, in principle, should be a great thing. I spend a large portion of my time conducting grass-roots economics education courses for working adults, and writing and disseminating educational materials about the economy, finance, and other topics. I think it’s a prerequisite for effective democracy that average people learn more about how the economy really works. That means cutting through the phony, pseudo-technical mystique that economists so often wrap around their profession. It means showing that real economic progress depends on work and productivity and innovation – not the mindless, repetitive ups and downs of the stock market.

  So financial literacy can be a welcome addition to curriculum, but it should be reviewed and used with caution. Teachers should make sure that it is promoting a genuine, complete, and balanced understanding of personal finances and broader financial issues. Some financial literacy tools (especially those provided “free of charge” by financial institutions and associations) are little more than disguised advertisements for the mutual fund industry, admonishing people to save more, and to always consult their financial advisor. Instead of genuinely acknowledging the deep risks associated with most of the products they sell, they disguise these problems in abstract discussions about “knowing your own tolerance for risk.”

  In contrast, a good financial literacy program should provide a complete description of all of the sources of Canadians’ financial well-being, and a well-rounded, arms-length depiction of how the private financial industry functions. A complete curriculum should do the following:

  • Explain the full range and relative importance of income sources for Canadians, both before and after retirement. Explain that most lifetime income for most Canadians comes from employment. Income from personal investments is a small share of total income, even after retirement.

  • Explain that boosting lifetime employment income is the most important way for most Canadians to become better off. Explain the determinants of employment income, including a worker’s occupation, industry, level of education, whether or not the job is unionized, and the impact of regulatory and institutional factors (like minimum wages).

  • Explain that public pensions are the most important source of post-retirement income and how different types of pensions are funded and secured.

  • Discuss average incomes in Canada, the average cost of living in Canada, and the difficulty that most Canadian households have in balancing their household finances.

  • Explain the difference between income and wealth, the different forms of wealth (non-financial as well as financial) and the importance of home ownership in Canadians’ net worth.

  • Provide information on household wealth in Canada, average levels, and its distribution. This will allow Canadians to position themselves within the spectrum of actual wealth outcomes – as opposed to the idealized scenarios of mutual fund brochures (where everyone is a potential millionaire).

  • Explain the functions of the financial industry. Consider the orthodox claim that financial markets are “intermediaries” which facilitate capital accumulation. Contrast that to more critical accounts of what the financial industry does, how it performs, and how much it costs. Discuss the history and role of financial regulation.

  • Explain the costs and risks of personal investing. Explain that the value of your mutual fund 20 or 30 years from now depends on factors over which you have no control. Explain which assets are guaranteed by government (and why), and which are not. Explain how money managers are paid (including in so-called “no-load” products).

  • Explain that it is not always appropriate at the individual level to accumulate personal savings (especially when there is no guarantee that personal investments will be realized when they are needed). At the macroeconomic level, more saving can actually be harmful: in fact, the recent recession was caused in part by a sudden increase in personal saving (the flip side of the sudden decrease in consumer spending).

  By all means, let’s encourage Canadians to avoid risky or costly financial practices (be they payday loan shops or the latest ill-founded financial fad). But let’s not lose sight of the big picture that explains why Canadians are financially pressured. And let’s stay focused on the macro-level solutions (from higher wages to financial regulations to stronger public pensions) that would address those challenges more realistically and effectively – rather than fruitlessly trying to pick the right mutual fund. Our students, and all Canadians, deserve an arms-length and critical education in financial affairs and financial issues.

  EN BREF – Plusieurs provinces canadiennes ont récemment ajouté la littératie financière au curriculum de base des élèves du secondaire. Dans son budget de 2009, le ministre des Finances, Jim Flaherty, a annoncé la mise sur pied d’un groupe de travail chargé d’évaluer ces initiatives de littératie financière, lesquelles mettent typiquement l’accent sur la « responsabilité individuelle », laissant entendre que, si les Canadiens apprenaient à mieux gérer leurs finances personnelles et n’ont plus à compter sur le gouvernement pour les protéger, les marchés financiers fonctionneront mieux et le pays sera plus fort. Il est pourtant chimérique d’espérer que l’acquisition de meilleures connaissances par les investisseurs individuels stabilisera les macromarchés financiers. La littératie financière peut constituer un élément légitime du curriculum, mais elle devrait porter sur les causes et les solutions possibles aux problèmes financiers des Canadiens, notamment en examinant honnêtement le secteur financier, plutôt que d’inciter la population à accepter un monde injuste, inéquitable et à s’y adapter.

  ---

  [1] Dept. of Finance, Budget Plan 2010, p. 89.

  [2] Task Force on Financial Literacy, Leveraging Excellence: Charting a Course of Action to Strengthen Financial Literacy in Canada, February 2010, p. 5.

  [3] On the other hand, I expect that even educated investors will be lured by greed, envy, and herd behaviour to jump into the next ill-founded financial mania – financial literacy or no. Perhaps the main benefit of financial literacy in that event, is in promoting the resigned conclusion that those investors have no one to blame but themselves. That doesn’t leave those households, or the economy as a whole, any better off.

  [4] These basic living costs did not include personal savings or pension contributions. Both studies are available at www.policyalternatives.ca: see Hugh Mackenzie and Jim Stanford (2009), A Living Wage for Toronto (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), 28 pp.; and Tim Richards, Marcy Cohen, Seth Klein, and Deborah Littman (2008), Working for Living Wage: Making Paid Work Meet Basic Family Needs in Vancouver and Victoria (Vancouver, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), 52 pp.

  [5] Task Force Report, 11.

• Democracy Education Network

  August 5, 2010 7:11 PM Comments Off on Democracy Education Network

  Established in 1993, the Democracy Education Network (DEN) was founded to address the need for Canadians to develop their democratic skills, especially in the areas of problem-solving and decision-making. The DEN website features a number of lessons, resources, and publications.
  Democracy Education Network

• No child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canada’s Schools

  11:43 AM Comments Off on No child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canada’s Schools

  No child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canada’s Schools

• At the Heart of Teaching

  11:43 AM Comments Off on At the Heart of Teaching

  At the Heart of Teaching

• Challenging the Status Quo

  11:43 AM Comments Off on Challenging the Status Quo

  Challenging the Status Quo

• School Boards: Emerging Governance Challenges

  11:43 AM Comments Off on School Boards: Emerging Governance Challenges

  School Boards: Emerging Governance Challenges

• Nourishing the Learning Spirit: Living our Way to New Thinking

  11:43 AM Comments Off on Nourishing the Learning Spirit: Living our Way to New Thinking

  Nourishing the Learning Spirit: Living our Way to New Thinking

• Online ATM Helps Youth Smarten Up Around Spending

  11:42 AM Comments Off on Online ATM Helps Youth Smarten Up Around Spending

  Online ATM Helps Youth Smarten Up Around Spending

• Those Who Know, Teach

  11:42 AM Comments Off on Those Who Know, Teach

  Those Who Know, Teach

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