Ford is good at tapping into anger, but can he actually fix problems?

Although I am not Doug Ford’s biggest fan, I do have some grudging respect for his political prowess. His ability to tap into Ontarians’ frustrations is impressive.

Smart politics, however, doesn’t always equal good policy.

A perfect example is the premier’s crusade against the way Ontario’s schools teach math.

The Tories recently made the surprise announcement that they intend to require new teachers to pass a math test before they can be licensed.

This builds on Ford’s successful efforts during the campaign to weave Ontario’s falling math scores into his “Kathleen Wynne is an out-of-touch lefty elitist” narrative.

According to the PCs, the Liberals turned Ontario’s schools into “social laboratories” where a group of “special interests” and “so-called experts” are “force-feeding our kids experimental curricula like Discovery Math.” Ford promised to fix all by consulting parents and making everything good again. And no one seriously challenged him. The Liberals, who like to brand themselves as the education party, had already invested significant time and resources into improving math scores. Their platform promised even further measures, but buried them in a long shopping list of education promises.

That wasn’t going to cut it with parents fed up with sending their kids to Kumon.

Although it never equalled buck a beer or cutting gasoline prices in importance, improving math teaching became part of Ford’s “help is on the way” narrative. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Experts, so-called and otherwise, will tell you that improving math scores is complicated. Some advocate memorization, testing and intensive instruction. Others want students to learn the fundamentals by problem solving and “discovering” mathematical concepts.

It’s not about choosing one approach over the other. Instead, it’s about emphasis.

Since 2005, Ontario has emphasized the problem-solving approach through its adoption of a Discovery Math curriculum, with a reasonable amount of memorization and focused instruction thrown in for good measure.

Although it is hardly the “experimental” curriculums that Doug Ford claimed during the election, it is clearly not working. Falling math scores demand attention.

A regular government might ask experts to examine the current curriculum and suggest a better mix between Discovery approaches and more back-to-basics techniques. They would presumably also examine other factors that might be dragging down scores.

Such a process would undoubtedly involve parents. But recognizing that parents don’t have the expertise to design curricula, a consultation would have to be designed to allow moms and dads to have meaningful input into what is essentially a technical exercise — no small order.

Is that what the Ford government is doing? No.

Expert is a bit of a bad word at Queen’s Park these days and it doesn’t seem that anyone in the Ford government really wants to hear from them. Instead, it’s all about talking to parents.

And despite the fact that 99 per cent of us don’t have the foggiest idea how to design age-appropriate math programming, we are being asked to weigh in through openended questionnaires with a maximum length for most questions of 500 words, tele-town halls and a meaningless survey full of banal questions.

The Ford campaign did well in harnessing public frustration in the campaign.

Addressing that frustration is a different story. Seeing everything through an ideological lens doesn’t always work.

John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at Martin Luther University College, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfrid Laurier University’s political science department. He is also a lecturer in the University of Waterloo. Email: jmilloy@luther.wlu.ca. Twitter @John Milloy. A version of this column was originally published in the online publication QP Briefing