More thoughts on educational streaming

Re Should we put an end to streaming? Letters

April 20 Comments about the People for Education report on streaming missed the most important point of the report: delaying the age at which students have to make decisions that have such a huge impact on their future lives, both as citizens and as future workers.

When students, rather than courses, are seen as “applied,” this label limits the potential for them to develop the skills and knowledge that will allow them to be critical thinkers who can participate and contribute to society. It also limits their post-secondary options, whether those are direct entry to the workforce, apprenticeship, college or university.

The report mentions a Kingston-area school that has incorporated applied math and academic math, and provided extra support for students who need it to meet the academic expectations. The experiment has produced dramatic results in student performance.

It is very important for us to have a broader public discussion about whether this is the type of policy that we need in all of our schools so that students’ potential can be fully realized. Margaret Wells, instructor, Initial Teacher Education Program, OISE, Toronto The letter about a boy being put in a non-academic stream, whose parents fought for him to be placed in a university stream where he went on to academic success, is not a story about streaming at all. It’s a story about bullying.

The boy did well in the first few grades and then his performance fell off in later years. That is why he was streamed into a non-university path. It came out later that he was being bullied when his academic achievements declined.

Even if the boy said nothing, which appears to be the case at the time, why did his teachers and parents not recognize that they had a problem on their hands? Solving that problem was what that boy needed. Streaming had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I was streamed, long before Grade 13 disappeared. I went on to university and a degree in engineering. It works. David Kister, Toronto