Not your daddy’s education system
Re Be wary of graduation rates, Opinion July 23
Sachin Maharaj’s viewpoint on education is always informative and thought-provoking. Many retired educators will agree that Ontario’s chest-thumping statistics reflecting an ever-increasing high school graduation rate are the result of a changed approach to education, something to be taken “with a grain of salt.”
Telling teens what high school was like in the 1950s is as futile as an old duffer boring me about how tough school was in the 1890s. Ice Age recollections.
Some senior readers will remember the High School Entrance Exam, which ended in 1949. Failure meant one’s formal education ended at Grade 8. But menial jobs were plentiful then, and after a few years such young people in places like Toronto could find employment in one of the many industries that dotted the city. Few with severe learning disabilities would have entered Grade 9.
A few generations ago, a junior matriculation (Grade 12) meant instant employment, and those who completed senior matriculation were considered the academic crème de la crème. They had to weather the stressful Grade 13 departmental examinations.
The credits earned by those senior students were printed in the local press in mid-August, so graduating from high school in those days was an accomplishment. Individual averages approaching perfection, an eye-popping achievement by a few Toronto scholars highlighted recently in the Star, would have been unheard of.
The flaw in the old system was that those June exams were the be-all-and-end-all. Teachers taught solely for those tests, a criticism by many educators today of EQAO testing, and we blessed Coles Notes for printing exams from previous years to give us an edge. Writing those damn exams, sometimes twice, was a gut-wrenching experience. Good riddance.
Today, a veritable smorgasbord of courses ensures that teens with a modicum of effort, and reasonably satisfactory attendance, can “graduate.” In Maharaj’s stirring words, “it is the job of teachers and schools to unlock the potential of all students, especially those who are not doing well.” In days of yore, many of those students struggling in school would have dropped out at age 16.
But the academic courses, particularly math and science, are demanding. And computer technology has introduced another dimension that my age cohort would have struggled to even imagine.
For some, secondary school is enjoyable, a place to be with friends. But as Maharaj warns, if the academic bar is set too low to keep all adolescents attending, then “achieving a high school diploma will lose all meaning.” Garry Burke, Coldwater