Think of the children
Re: Decertify teachers’ unions before our society fails, Conrad Black, Nov. 4
Conrad Black is justified in rebuking the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation’s attitude toward the standardized testing that reveals the declining mathematics achievements of the province’s students. But he misses the underlying problem: the Ontario Ministry of Education’s promotion of “discovery” teaching methods in the critical Grades 1- 6.
As opposed to a “bottomup” approach emphasizing development of basic skills, discovery methods promote a “top-down” approach using problem- solving, including encouraging students to develop their own arithmetical techniques. Yet it has long been known that they are — at best — controversial. For most students, direct instruction of standard techniques, together with practice in developing both understanding and facility in these techniques, is far superior.
Discovery methods are advocated by schools of education, yet I and many of my colleagues have difficulty in understanding why. Informed critics have even suggested that, absent advocacy of such techniques, education schools would have no j ustification for existence.
The province needs to revise both curriculum and textbooks, as well as to return to direct instruction by competent teachers. Philip A. Sullivan, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto Conrad Black suggests abolishing the right to strike for public unions. That won’t happen a nytime soon. Abolishing that right is the public’s nuclear option to mitigate the union’s nuclear option to strike; but for the public to utilize its option would be nearly impossible.
The sober checks and balances of government debate weigh enormously against timely action, while public unions enjoy the efficiency of a small coterie of likeminded ideologues who can quickly deploy their nuclear option over a few beers in a local eatery.
The power of the nuclear option is an enormous responsibility, a concept that public t eachers’ unions can’t seem to grasp. That’s because they are public sector unions, not private. The thing that checks and balances private sector unions is the reality of the business cycle which doesn’t exist in the public sector. That is an imbalance of powers, which I fully agree with Conrad Black’s diagnosis of the math crisis in Ontario, and his suggestion to de-bureaucratize the Ontario education system sounds really nice.
In the meantime, I’m not sacrificing my children’s intellects or their futures while I wait around for the government to solve ( or exacerbate) the problem and have chosen to educate my children at home, where merely 20 minutes of math and phonics drill per day for my five-year-old puts her a grade ahead and leaves hours upon hours of truly investigative, discovery-based, child-led play.
If the Ontario Homeschoolers Facebook group, which is over 3,200 strong and growing by the dozen many days, is any indication, more and more parents are becoming dissatisfied with government education and have opted to take their children’s futures into their own hands. Nadine Smith, Hamilton, Ont.