EDUCATION REBOOT
Conservative government making waves
Hang onto your backpack — it could be a wild ride as Ontario’s two million schoolchildren head back to the classroom next week. For the first time in a generation, the Progressive Conservatives are in charge of education, a $29-billion system that was racked by turmoil — from fights with teachers’ unions, to structural upheaval and a funding formula critics say beggars many schools — the last time the Tories were in charge. Already, a mere three months after the Doug Ford-led Tories snapped the Liberals’ 15-year ruling streak in the June election, the new government is making waves in education — setting up a snitch line for parents with concerns about the classroom and planning a new sexual education curriculum that many call a naive throwback meant to appease social conservatives, but which won’t serve students well.
Hanging out there, too, as school resumes, is the fate of hundreds of half-empty schools, casualties of shifting demographics and falling enrolment in many rural areas and even in cities.
In Southwestern Ontario alone, there are enough empty student spaces in schools — about 55,000 — to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Education Minister Lisa Thompson, the first London-region MPP to hold the job in nearly 30 years, isn’t talking about the potential flashpoints ahead for the government. She was unavailable for an interview, despite repeated requests.
But that hasn’t silenced critics with memories of the turmoil in schools under Ontario’s last Tory governments, especially under Mike Harris.
“There appears to be an attempt to turn classrooms into ideological battlegrounds. I don’t know who that is supposed to serve, but certainly it isn’t the students,” said Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, the union for public high school teachers.
“All of this we are seeing is the fallout of education policy being done on the fly as a knee-jerk reaction to political circumstance . . . that’s not the way to do education policy,” he said.
Under Harris, who swept to power in 1995, schools were plunged into turmoil. The number of Ontario school boards was chopped in half, creating mega-boards, trustees were stripped of their taxing powers, a new system to regulate teachers was created and there were strikes in the classroom and squabbles over the withdrawal of after-school sports and clubs that so many students prize in school. Infamously, in 1995, then-education minister John Snobelen set the stage for what was to come when he declared to senior bureaucrats that the way to achieve major change was to “invent a crisis.”
Now, a generation later, the Tories are returning with educational reforms, including a controversial sexual education curriculum and a website for parents to tattle on teachers who refuse to stop using the Tory-repealed modernized version brought in by the Liberals three years ago, the first major update to sex ed in a digital era fraught with issues such as sexting and online bullying. But if you think the Ford government’s early moves in education are reminiscent of the Harris era, think again, says one veteran education consultant.
Ford’s ideas are night and day compared to Harris’s carefully constructed and polished reforms, said Paul W. Bennett, founding director of Halifax-based Schoolhouse Consulting. Bennett describes Ford as “a bull in a china shop,” trying to make “incredible changes all at once.” While the changes to the sex-ed curriculum — confusing for many teachers, though the government has posted an interim plan about what teachers can and cannot tell students — aren’t planned for high school students so far, Bischof said the fallout affects high school teachers by causing “unnecessary and unproductive uncertainty.” “Instead of recognizing there was a problem in their approach and then moderate the way to go forward, they double down with things like the snitch line,” he said. “I would love for everyone, including government, to take a step back and leave the original curriculum in place and if a consultation is required we calmly go about that instead of creating this politically charged atmosphere around this curriculum kids need to stay safe and well.”
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario has hinted in a statement at the potential for conflict with the new government. “While school boards may provide further guidance, ETFO educators will use their professional judgment to ensure they are creating safe and healthy classrooms for all students and providing the information that students need to deal with the realities of 2018,” the union said.
Critics of Ford Nation say they ’re fearful that Ontario’s education system is headed toward a return to the Wild West of the Harris years.
“My father always said the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour,” said interim Liberal leader John Fraser.
“We’ve seen this before,” he said. “The premier is almost personally picking a fight with teachers.” Susan MacKenzie of London, co-founder of the Ontario Alliance Against School Closures, agrees uncertainty hangs in the air as school resumes, pointing to the early controversy generated by sex ed.
During the summer election campaign, Ford and his supporters pledged to “take back” schools with a “promise package” that also included scrapping discovery math and inquiry-based learning, reforming standardized testing in schools, making math mandatory in teachers college programs and banning cellphones in all classrooms.
Ford also pledged to consult more with parents, boost autism funding and uphold the Liberals’ recent moratorium slapped on school closings. “Promises made, promises kept. That was their slogan, but we have gotten none of that,” MacKenzie said.
“If we go back to the pre-election, they were in our camp. Now, the PCs are ignoring us.
“We have made five attempts to get some attention that have all gone unanswered. To me that’s an indication that they don’t want to work with us.”