Should we put an end to streaming?

Re End streaming in high schools, group urges, April 13 Over 22 years of teaching high school, I have always acted on the principle that all the students are of equal value and importance. At the same time, they are not all equal in academic ability.

It is fruitless at this point to discuss why this is so, and what, if anything, could be done about it. We have to accept them as they are, and try to do the best we can for them. By streaming, we steer the less able individuals into courses they are able to handle, and thereby get some feeling of accomplishment.

If these students are steered into the same level of courses that the majority take, they would still not make it to university. The dropout rate would increase, as more of them get discouraged.

Streaming is not the cause of dropping out, or of “failure” to make university. It is a worthwhile (not perfect) attempt to help certain individual students. Alan Craig, Brampton End streaming? Yes, definitely. My son, a visible minority, was deemed above average up to about Grade 5, but progressed downward by the time he reached Grade 9, and was “streamed” to enter high school. It meant he could only go up to Grade 12 and end up as a tradesman. No chance of university.

My wife and I fought very hard with the mid-school principal to send my son to the other stream so he would have a chance of university. Finally the principal allowed my son to go to the Grade 13 stream with the condition that if he did not perform, he would be demoted. My son passed Grade 13 with many A’s and went on to join the Canadian Air Force as an officer, then captain, got his master’s degree in engineering and was posted to the U.S. in a high security area.

Years later, my son confided that he was bullied in school for being a nerd, so decided to be a dud to fit in and be accepted. He was the only minority in his class in Trenton. He felt tremendous peer pressure.

Streaming is a disincentive for students to seek higher education, impacting more low income and visible minorities unfairly. Ontario, please end streaming. Kail T. Rajah, Whitby Advocacy group People for Education calls for ending “streaming” in Ontario education, which they claim would allow more students to go to university.

Yet a column by Carol Goar last week states that too many people are going to university. Which one is it?

Perhaps a sit-down is needed to discuss what the plan is for the future of education in this province. Let’s not keep our heads in the sand and only come up with tar, as in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s economic policies. Julius Olajos, Cambridge