The common sense revolution comes to N.S.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Ford Edsel, invading Russia and changing the taste of Coca-Cola all seemed like a good idea at the time, at least to somebody. More recently, so did eating Tide Pods, sending the Trudeaus on a magical mystery tour of India and the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

So many ideas that seem good at a given time prove, with the corrected vision of hindsight, not so much. Of course, humans being fallible to a fault, ideas don’t die just because history proves them flawed. Each new generation must learn for itself that riding a shipping crate down a flight of stairs doesn’t end well.

Hitler followed Napoleon into Russia; car-makers kick out new klunkers and somebody is already planning the prime minister’s wardrobe for another ethnically-inspired photo-op. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.

Nova Scotia’s Education Minister Zach Churchill has said — aloud, mind you — that nothing has changed in the province’s schools in 20 years, ergo Nova Scotia will try some stuff that seemed like a good idea in Ontario 20 years ago.

The government must like the sound of the “common sense revolution,” so picked it as the rhyme for Nova Scotia’s education system.

Golf pro Mike Harris and his common sense revolution seemed like a good idea at the time when Ontario voters made him premier. That same bunch later thought Mayor Rob Ford seemed like a good idea, which in fact he was, but only for the entertainment value.

Speaking of Mike Harris, and almost no one does anymore, his Ontario government (1995-2002) drove the education reformation that Nova Scotia now seems condemned to rhyme if not repeat.

Like Stephen McNeil’s Liberals, Mike Harris’s Conservatives got elected after an NDP government failed to live up to high expectations.

Harris delivered lower taxes and less government by firing nurses, instituting workfare and privatizing and deregulating water quality testing, which was later cited as contributing to the Walkerton E. coli outbreak that killed seven people and sickened a couple of thousand more.

Post-Harris, Ontarians moved back to the middle of the road and Ontario’s Ministry of Education published the following results of the common sense revolution in education that Nova Scotia is about to emulate:

“The last several years in publicly funded education in Ontario were marked by significant conflict, reflected in widespread disagreement about major policies, a record 25 million learning days lost to students from protest, strikes and lockouts and constant unpredictability in direction and funding.”

Ontario’s common sense revolution in public education was a boom for private schools, which enjoyed a 40 per cent increase in enrolment during the Harris government’s term, so there’s money to be made in private education on Nova Scotia’s horizon.

It has been suggested that the province’s surgery on education administration is necessary to wrest control from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and return it to government, where it belongs.

If indeed, that is the agenda, Mr. Churchill must feel he cannot let the people in on the secret for fear of angering teachers.

Well, teachers are about as angry as they can get, so there is no point in hiding an agenda any longer. The government might as well come clean, because thus far it has failed utterly to make a compelling case for forcing a second successive year of chaos on the schools.

The minister is armed with a report produced by Avis Glaze, an accomplished educator. Nevertheless, her report, and the basis for wholesale change to public education administration, rest on research gleaned from three loaded questions on the internet and 90 meetings with “stakeholders” conducted over a threemonth period that included the year-end holiday season.

Her effort is reminiscent of the story of the ill-equipped med student to whom the biochemistry exam appeared written in a foreign tongue. “God knows everything, I know nothing, Merry Christmas” the future stockbroker wrote to garner a sympathy mark. “God made everything. You made nothing, Happy New Year,” came the inevitable reply from an unmoved professor.

So far, Nova Scotians have an agenda to change just about everything in education, but know nothing of its purpose, except some sketchy references to test scores that are unrelatable to the proposed action.

It’s time for a change, the minister’s key message on TV one day last week, is an election slogan not a reason to disrupt the learning of a generation.

It seemed like a good idea at the time may be the government’s unfortunate message when it next and last faces voters.