Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘education’

Imagine that: People in Quebec want the right to choose the language of their kids’ education:

A new survey of Quebecers’ attitudes on education shows that two out of three prefer to have the right to send their children to any school in the province they choose, public or private.

The poll, conducted for The Gazette by Léger Marketing, asked whether students other than those now allowed, including franco-phones, should have access to English-language schools if they wish.

A total of 66 per cent of a representative sample of Quebecers agreed that they should – including a 61-per-cent clear majority of francophones.

Non-francophones were even more overwhelmingly in favour, at 87 per cent.

It’s about time that the francophone majority realised that they’re the ones getting most hurt by the current policies. After all, their kids will grow up learning French at home regardless, and without a strong foundation in English, their opportunities will be very limited in today’s world. Then, there are the anglo parents who would prefer to send their kids to French school so that they could grow up fluent in French, but opt instead to send them to English school in fear that their children will lose their right to choose.

This poll is long overdue and I hope the provincial parties will actually take notice, rather than resorting to the same rationalizations as the SSJB. The protectionist stance that the Quebec government has taken with schools has not preserved the status of French; it’s impeded the potential of Quebec. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to change anything in the short term. But in the long term, it may demonstrate that there’s a real willingness to embrace change and institute policies that open doors instead of chaining them shut.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is taking more steps to stamp out dissent and reform in Iran:

Iran’s hard-line president urged students Tuesday to push for a purge of liberal and secular university teachers, another sign of his determination to strengthen Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

With his call echoing the rhetoric of the nation’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad appears determined to remake Iran by reviving the fundamentalist goals pursued under the republic’s late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Iran still has strong moderate factions, and since taking office a year ago Ahmadinejad has moved to replace pragmatic veterans in the government and diplomatic corps with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners. His administration also has launched crackdowns on independent journalists, Web sites and bloggers.

Hey Mahmoud, what’s wrong? Can’t stand the blogging competition?

I’ve read a lot of nonsensical analogies and analyses about the Israel-Lebanon war in the past couple of weeks. But I just had to highlight this editorial, written by a certain Marie Choi of Toronto, because it’s so ridiculous that it actually succeeded in making me laugh aloud:

I think the actions of Stephen Harper’s government leave Canadian children confused and bewildered when they compare political actions against the educational principles taught in this country.

The Canadian education system encourages our children to become citizens who respect justice, equity and multiculturalism. School boards place much importance on non-violence and co-operation.

My son tells me that school kids aren’t allowed to respond with physical violence even if other kids hit them – instead they are told to get a teacher or adult to intervene in these incidents. In the end, the troubled kids pay the consequences, but in a non-violent way.

In a similar vein, Harper’s views on the current crisis in the Middle East are completely contrary to school polices which emphasize avoiding violence and encouraging dialogue and discussion.

Because everyone knows that if Israel just complains to the teacher instead of hitting back, the teacher will send Hezbollah to the corner and then force it to apologize. </Sarcasm>

Something tells me that the problem lies not so much with Harper’s position on Israel, but with the policy of the schoolboards that – apparently – not only fail to teach any context whatsoever in their history classes, but also seemingly fail to teach kids anything about how the world really works.

Something Damian Penny wrote the other day came back to me just now: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Damian was, of course, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial. However, I think the quote is a good one, and it popped into my head when I read about today’s ruling against teaching creationism in schools:

A federal judge on Tuesday banned the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution by Pennsylvania’s Dover Area School District, saying the practice violated the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.

[ . . . ]

The school district was sued by a group of 11 parents who claimed teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional and unscientific and had no place in high school biology classrooms.

Before you jump down my throat, I’m in no way implying that Holocaust denial is comparable to creationism. What I am saying, however, is that there’s a clear difference between fact and invention – as in the case of Holocaust denial – which I think we all recognize fairly easily. What many people fail to recognize, however, is that we must also make a clear distinction between fact and belief.

Evolution is a scientific fact. Creationism (repackaged as “intelligent design” or whatever you rename it) is a belief. It is based on faith, not evidence, and cannot be proven for the simple reason that it cannot be disproven.

Today’s ruling banned the teaching of creationism because it violates the separation of church and state. I think the real reason it ought to be banned from science curricula is because it isn’t science. After all, there is no constitutional ban on teaching Holocaust denial in history class, and yet I’m sure we would all call for the dismissal of any teacher who tried, simply on the grounds that it’s wrong.

I have no objection to the teaching of creationist theory in a course about religion, humanities, or cultural studies. But high school biology teachers who teach creationism as scientific fact are muddling fact and belief. People are entitled to hold a belief, but when teaching science, they need to stick to facts.

And so, to restate Damian’s point, everyone is entitled to his own beliefs, but not his own facts.

These idiotic teenagers won’t be seeing the inside of theirs for a while:

Three students have been expelled from an elite private school for posting pictures of Nazi rallies and Jews being tortured on a Web site and then using anti-Semitic slurs to lash out at a student who objected. The boys, one of whom is Jewish, thrown out of Royal St. George’s College after posting “heinous” images of the Holocaust on a chat board used by several private schools, headmaster Hal Hannaford told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Is it just me or is there some kind of cold comfort to the fact that idiotic teenagers looking to rebel see Nazism as a kind of “worst of the worst” tough image to adopt?

If they were trying to get a reaction, they sure got one. Let’s hope those kids learned their lesson that antisemitism is not, in any way, “cool”.

Since the elimination of denominational schoolboards in Quebec in 1997 in favour of linguistic ones, Roman Catholic and Protestant instruction in public schools has been on the decline. Already, such instruction was optional; students not participating could take a Moral Education class instead. This was seen as a fair compromise on a sensitive issue, though it created scheduling headaches for the schools.

Now, it’s been announced that it will be phased out entirely by 2008.

In sharp contrast to the controversy stirred back in 1997, most people in Quebec seem to be backing this new plan, with polls showing about 75% in favour of the elimination of instruction and replacement of it with a “culturally inclusive” course about religion in general. Quebec is a fairly secular society these days, and it seems most people are inclined to accept that education belongs in the classroom and religious instruction belongs in the home.

As it happens, I agree. Ironically perhaps, since I’m a product of religious school myself.

Many Americans are surprised to know that religious instruction still exists in public schools here. It’s admittedly not been a huge issue since most of Quebec outside Montreal is overwhelmingly Catholic by denomination, even if their level of adherence to the religion varies. The Protestant schoolboards were mostly English and that was where most of the Jewish kids went if they weren’t attending private Jewish schools. By the time my generation attended, they were fairly secular and the religious aspect was mostly nominal.

But the system still created awkward situations. And in some cases even the new linguistic system as it stands can ostracize kids if they’re the only ones opting out of religion classes. That’s not cool. Montreal is a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic city, and even if this diversity isn’t reflected province-wide, schools that offer only Christian instruction are really limiting when we consider how many religions coexist among the student populations.

Religion doesn’t really have a place in public schools, in my opinion. But parents should still have the option to send their kids to (heavily subsidized) private schools if they feel religious instruction is important. That’s what a large portion of the Jewish community does. I think we’ll be seeing more private Christian schools cropping up after 2008, to fill a need that the phasing out of such education in the public system will create. And that’s okay too.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this gets more press in the coming days, or how people will react.

The UK Association of University Teachers has passed an academic boycott of two of Israel’s most prominent academic institutions: Haifa University and Bar Ilan University:

The Israeli Embassy in London released a statement condemning the boycott as a biased and adverse move which, far from promoting peace efforts, it ignores and sabotages progress made between the Israelis and Palestinians.

“The resolutions are as perverse in their content as in the way they were debated and adopted. The AUT ignored overwhelming academic and public rejection of the proposed motions.

“The fact that no AUT member who wanted to argue against this decision was allowed to speak, and the case for the Israeli universities was not presented to delegates, speaks volumes about the relevance and fairness of this debate,” the embassy statement read.

If three years at Concordia taught me something, it was that the notion that academia supports a free exchange of ideas is utter hogwash. The academic milieu is perhaps the most totalitarian, dictatorial, one-sided environment imaginable, where you either toe the party line or find yourself pounding the pavement.

But this goes beyond the pale. A mob of anti-Israel, politically-motivated professors decided that these top-quality, world-renowned Israeli universities are not acceptable to them, and here are some of the reasons why:

Pro-boycott activists were hopeful that their motions stood a better chance of being passed this year after they were turned down in 2003. One reason for their optimism, they said earlier this month, was that they have now received the unequivocal support of the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Teachers and Employees, a sister union of the British association. The Palestinian federation has recently released a statement endorsing the British call to boycott Israeli universities.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post earlier this month, Sue Blackwell, a Birmingham University lecturer and one of the leaders of the boycott proposal, told the Post that she “completely agreed” with comparisons between Israel and the former Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Universities are supposed to teach truth, not propaganda. But with the twisted “truths” currently being taught in Britain and in campuses across Europe and North America, it’s hard to imagine what will soon pass for “truth” among new graduates.

That pretty much sums up the anticlimactic end of the student strike. The Liberals continued their tradition of being utterly incapable of defending an unpopular decision or having any backbone whatsoever. The student unions learned that violence and disruption is effective.

In the meantime, the students continued to make asses of themselves and an unholy mess of things as they protested at Wal-Mart. This was an obvious repayment to the labour unions for all the money they gave them to fund the protests in effort to topple Charest’s government and restore their buddies the PQ into power. Not that it would require much effort at this point. Roadkill would have an easier time getting re-elected than Charest, who is down to a 23% approval rating according to the latest CROP poll.

Anyway, there were reports of women and children shopping at Wal-Mart being pushed and shoved around. The protesters blocked entrance to the store with shopping carts and decided to provoke police yet again. Traffic was tied up on the Decarie Expressway for hours.

The bottom line is that this “victory” for the students is actually a massive loss for Quebec. No government will try again to cut bursaries for years. And nobody will even dare suggest lifting the tuition freeze; they’ll be too scared. That means that Quebec’s postsecondary education will remain chronically underfunded and will continue to fall behind the rest of North America in terms of quality.

What many students fail to understand about education is that it’s an investment. And, like any investment, you have to put in some money and effort up front to get a payoff later. Ironically, if tuition was double or triple what it is (in other words, a bit closer to what it should be), we wouldn’t see such massive strikes and protests. Students who had to cough up serious money for their classes would actually attend rather than engage in a massive strike where the chief victims are themselves.

The unions know exactly what they’re doing. But most of the students who are tacitly or overtly supporting them don’t understand. They think it’s “cool” to fight for the communist ideal, but I can’t imagine any of them would ever want to experience life under true communism. They talk about “accessible” education, but have no concept of the notion of accessible quality education.

To Jean Charest: grow a spine. Quickly. You desperately need one.

To the students: You love communism so much? Fine, go live in a communist country and quit hassling Wal-Mart shoppers and Friday afternoon commuters… you know, people with actual jobs. Come to think of it, just get a friggin’ job and quit griping about a measly $2,000 in university tuition.

Francophone kids in Quebec will still not be allowed to go to English schools, according to the Supreme Court decision that came down today:

The Quebec government is welcoming two Supreme Court decisions on the province’s language laws.

The court ruled against an attempt by francophone parents to win the right to free access to English public schools.This is an English-rights issue in a way… but in reverse. It’s not anglophones in Quebec who are the second-class citizens here, it’s francophones. The oppressive language policy allows us English kids to become fluently bilingual in grade school, but doesn’t allow French kids to learn English at an early age and become fluently bilingual. That’s why so many people feel stuck in Quebec – especially those who live outside Montreal, where English instruction in French schools is often of poor quality.

Quebec is my home but it’s also a very closed, defensive society. Paranoia about English means that restrictive legislation designed to “protect” French actually holds Quebec Francophones hostage here. It’s a policy of fear with no basis in reality, since all evidence indicates that learning a second or third language at a young age helps, rather than hurts, kids’ language skills in their mother tongue.

And of course all the politicians who merrily protect these laws don’t care; they send their kids to private schools, where many of them do learn to be fluently bilingual.

There was a bit of a silver lining, as a second ruling tried to make it easier for immigrants to have access to English schools. I predict that the legislation will be reframed to avoid that as well.

And so, Francophone parents will continue to be restricted by policies intended for the “common good”. Not much changes.

It’s pretty clear that the student strikes no longer have much to do with the students.

Last week, the McGill Daily reported that the PQ youth wing and that major Quebec labour unions were supporting the student strikers, in an effort to topple the Charest Liberal governement and get the PQ re-elected. Yesterday, the Liberals angrily accused the unions of funding the strikers, lashing out at them for mixing issues:

Liberal party whip Norm MacMillan says unions appear to be piggybacking on the student strike in order to advance their own contract negotiations with the government.

“Everybody’s in negotiations right now: civil servants, teachers in universities and CEGEPS,” he notes.

MacMillan says some union money may even have paid for buses to help the students mobilize large demonstrations.

The university students federation doesn’t deny some funding has come from outside groups.

It’s not exactly news that the labour unions in Quebec overwhelmingly support the PQ and have been engaged in a bitter battle with the Liberals since their election. And the student cause seems to be a popular one; a Léger poll conducted two weeks ago found that 24% of people think that the government should cave to the student demands, and another 48% believe that a portion of the $103 million in cuts should be re-invested into the bursaries program. Furthermore, 44% of people said they would be willing to forego a tax cut in order to put the money back into the bursary program.

In the media circus surrounding the protests, rock-throwing at police, arrests and threats of cancelled semesters, the voice of dissenters is getting drowned out.

I’m talking about the students who actually want to go to class. The ones who want to graduate eventually. The ones who recognize the value of their education, and are willing to make an investment into it. Though disorganized and quiet, there are an awful lot of them. And they’re tired of being deprived of classes they paid for, of having their opportunities that they’ve worked hard for yanked away from them, and of the general attitude among their fellow students and even professors that they’re “selfish” or just plain “wrong”.

Times like this, I’m glad I’m not still a student. Because it’s tough enough dealing with the pressure without having to face the Quebec reality: that this is a socialist province where everyone seems to think that society “owes” them. Everyone wants to take out of the system, nobody wants to contribute into it. This is how we end up with massive economic failure. (But of course, the students and the labour unions have a perfect solution to this: tax the rich more. Never mind what happens when all the rich leave the province; they’ll just tax the next richest.)

Or, to quote the CASSEE spokespeople:

Members of the CASSEE say they’ve tried holding demonstrations.

Blocking traffic and offices works better, they say.

“We started by drawing up petitions, we held protests; our pressure tactics have escalated,” said Xavier Lafrance, another CASSEE spokesperson, and a political science student at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

[ . . . ]

Funding for higher education could be raised, they said, by ensuring private corporations pay their taxes – in full.

[ . . . ]

“Aggressive unionism is a Quebec tradition,” added Mathieu Cousineau DeGarie, a third CASSEE spokesperson.

“We at the CASSEE want to revive that tradition.”

So they continue to strike. And I continue to rant. Because nothing will improve while the student unions are allowed to hold the Quebec education system – and its students – hostage. No government has the political capital to change the situation; only the students can make a difference by rallying to oppose their oppressors. Sadly, their voices seem too scattered, and students opposed to the strike have no choice but to grumble and sigh.