Category Archives: Education

Sep 05 2013
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Economy, Education

Learning life’s lessons early and often

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Apart from global warming, few issues in Canada provide readier cannon fodder for partisan warfare than early childhood education. That’s because, when it comes to her kids, every mum is willing to fight to the death on the battlefields of ideology.

When should the state intervene with structured pedagogy? When a tyke is five years old, or four or three? When she’s a toddler? What’s wrong with private daycare? For that matter, what’s wrong keeping your youngster tethered to your apron strings for as long as possible?

Politicians on the right side of the continuum love to make hay with this. They frame the debate, literally, as a motherhood issue. And the strategy works to marvelous effect within a certain important segment of the voting public.

The reform-minded Tory team – before it became the federal government – launched a terrific salvo into the camp of the reigning Liberals in 2005 when, as the CBC reported at the time, “Stephen Harper unveiled a Conservative plan on Monday that would give parents of young children $100 a month for child care. The. . .leader made the announcement at a noisy day-care centre in Ottawa. ‘This is just like a caucus meeting,’ he said on a campaign stop for the Jan. 23 federal election.”

The item continued: “Addressing the challenges parents face in raising kids while trying to earn a living, Harper said, ‘The Conservative plan for families will help parents find that balance.’ The Conservatives’ two-part plan includes money to help create child-care spaces as well as the $100-a-month ‘choice in child-care allowance.’ With the new allowance, families would receive $1,200 a year for each child under the age of six. . . .In fact, the only people who should be making these choices are parents, not politicians, not the government.’”

In fact, all the evidence suggested, contrarily, that early childhood education –  universally accessible, structured, and integrated into the public school system – is a boon to kids, their parents and, in fact, society at large.

A new study – reportedly the largest of its kind in Canada – seems to bear this out. The report, released earlier this week, by Queen’s and McMaster Universities found that children who attend full-day kindergarten are “better prepared to enter Grade 1 and to be more successful in school” than those who don’t.

That’s according to a blurb on the Ontario government’s website, which also states: “Comparisons of children with two years of FDK instruction and children with no FDK instruction showed that FDK reduced risks in social competence development from 10.5 per cent to 5.2 per cent; reduced risks in language and cognitive development from 16.4 per cent to 4.3 per cent; reduced risks in communication skills and general knowledge development from 10.5 per cent to 5.6 per cent.”

How much better prepared would they be if they had access to a national early childhood education (pre-kindergarten) system shouldn’t be a matter of conjecture. A seminal report on the subject, The Early Years Study 3, published in 2011, is both categorical and convincing: “Researchers have found that parents whose children attend programs that are integrated into their school are much less anxious than their neighbours whose kids are in the regular jumbled system. Direct gains have also been documented for children. Evaluations of Sure Start in the UK, Communities for Children in Australia and Toronto First Duty found children in neighbourhoods with integrated children’s services showed better social development, more positive social behaviour and greater independence/self-regulation compared with children living in similar areas without an integrated program.”

Naturally, there is a cost. But there’s also a reward. And as The Early Years Study 3 points out, the return far outweighs the investment: “Economist Robert Fairholm. . . (shows) how investing in educational child care (is) a handsdown winner. Investing $1 million in child care would create at least 40 jobs, 43 per cent more jobs than the next highest industry and four times the number of jobs generated by $1 million in construction spending. Every dollar invested in child care increases the economy’s output (GDP) by $2.30.”

These considerations, alongside the evidence of improving outcomes for kids, makes you wonder not whether our society can afford early childhood education, but whether we can afford our society without it.

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Sep 04 2013
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Education

Good teachers are society’s golden geese

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In school, everything came easily to me. Everything, I  should say, except math, a subject at which I was utterly hopeless. In this, I was in good family company. One of my forbears failed algebra so many times, he abandoned any thought of attending an Ontario university.

My Waterloo arrived in Grade Eight when, having scored a two out of a possible 100 on a quiz, my teacher – a woman who seemed to my 12-year-old eyes to be as old as Methuselah, but who was probably only as wizened as I am now – openly wondered whether some administrator had committed a grievous error by placing me in her class.

“What are you?” she squinted at me. “Stupid?”

She genuinely wanted to know. She had never before detected such an obvious and spectacular deficiency in any of her pupils. My mere presence vexed her almost viscerally, like a foul odor.

In those days – the early 1970s – Canadian public schools were not well equipped to manage problems like mine. The phrase, “learning disability”, had not yet entered the academic lexicon. And since no authority seemed inclined either to mitigate my circumstances or, in the alternative, prevent me from matriculating, I carried my handicap – mysterious, undiagnosed – into high school.

Some weeks into my first term, my freshman year trigonometry teacher turned to me and queried, “You’re not really getting any of this, are you?” With a palpable sense of relief, I admitted, “No, I’m not into math.” He grinned: “Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet. See me after class.”

With that, he embarked on what was, for the day, an unprecedented course of personal tutelage. And when he was done with me, not only did I get it; I loved it. He had identified the glitch in my software and repaired it. Thanks to him, I spent the next three years actually enjoying myself.

All of which, it seems to me, underscores the enormous importance of the one academic resource many members of the public – and, to their eternal shame, some politicians – routinely vituperate: the teacher.

For every hellion who calls a kid a dummy (not something any pedagogue is likely to get away with these days), there are at least two who know better and do better.  In fact, the role that good teachers play in the lives of their charges is almost immeasurable.

Writing for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) a couple of years ago educator Brian Keeley declared, “It’s hard to overstate the importance of teachers. Strip away the other things that determine how well students do – such as social background and individual capacity – and you’re pretty much left with teaching as the major factor that can be shaped by education policy.”

And, around the world, the happiest results correlate with the earliest starts.

A recent OECD report states that in Sweden “The system of pre-school education is outstanding: (a) in its fidelity to societal values and in its attendant commitment to and respect for children; (b) in its systemic approach while respecting programmatic integrity and diversity; and (c) in its respect for teachers, parents, and the public. In each of these categories, the word ‘respect’ appears. There was trust in children and in their abilities, trust in the adults who work with them, trust in decentralised governmental processes, and trust in the state’s commitment to respect the rights of children and to do right by them.”

In Finland, the OECD concludes, “The early childhood education workforce has several strengths, such as a high qualification level of staff with teaching responsibilities, advanced professional development opportunities and favourable working environments. Staff with teaching responsibilities are well educated and trained with high initial qualification requirements. Professional development is mandatory for all staff; and training costs are shared between individual staff members, the government and employers. Working conditions in terms of staff-child ratio are among the best of OECD countries.”

In international surveys, Canada ranks reasonably well in the quality of its teachers and in the support it provides to them. But if the benefit of a good education is a tolerant, literate, productive, innovative and just citizenry, then the return on investing in teachers is priceless.

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Jun 14 2013
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Education

Focus on educating the very young

He's better off wondering how balloons rise than how fortunes fall

As New Brunswick’s chief, honourary pedagogue, Jody Carr, shops around his draft blueprint to improve the educational denouement of this province, he must realize that his best weapon against creeping academic morbidity rests not with trundling grade-schoolers, but with toddling infants.

Mr. Carr’s title gives him away. He is not only the Minister of Education; he is also the minister responsible for Early Childhood Development. As such, he clearly appreciates what every field researcher has been telling public officials with near nauseating regularity over the past several years: The best, and most cost-effective, way to ensure a child does well in later grades is to invest in his or her education as early and as often as possible.

Indeed, as Mr. Carr acknowledges in his own government’s plan on the subject, titled “Putting Children First: Positioning Early Childhood for the Future,” the experts are definitive: “Their research clearly shows the correlation between the quality of a child’s experience in the early years and his or her success in school – even throughout life. “Eventually, the broader impact of healthy development for our children is stronger families and communities and a stronger, more vibrant province.The foundation of (our) plan is the integration of early childhood development services and

education for children from birth to eight years of age.

“The quality, affordability and accessibility of childcare and other services are built into the plan. We will also focus on ensuring services and education are inclusive – that all children have the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.”

In fact, he’s so convinced of the efficacy of this approach that he has authorized $38 million of the government’s vanishing resources to “create new early learning and childcare spaces, bringing the total increase to 10,000,” subsidize the salaries of childcare workers, increase the number of support staff, and broaden the system’s accessibility, among other measures.

Still, politics insist that elected representatives must know both how to walk and chew gum. And so, Mr. Carr now spends a good deal of his time putting the finishing touches on a new educational plan for elementary and secondary school systems that, according to news reports, sets specific performance standards for pupils.

According to a recent Telegraph-Journal story, “The department wants 90 per cent of elementary students achieving the expected level of language arts, math and science proficiency on provincial assessments, and 85 per cent of middle school and and high school students attaining the expected levels for their grades.”

This well-intentioned effort is laudable. It may even be necessary. But I can’t help feeling that the emphasis on “outcomes” pegged to rigid performance standards in public schools merely transforms teachers and administrators into mechanics who spend their days fixing broken cars. Ideally, their professional exertions should flow, and receive succour, from a structured, integrated, evidence-based system of pre-school – one that nurtures abilities and identifies problems among kids at the earliest possible stages of their development.

The implications for society extend far beyond the education system.

In a recent syllabus on the broad effects of early years instruction, TD Bank Group’s senior vice president and chief economist Craig Alexander had this to say: “There is a great deal of evidence showing overwhelming benefits of high-quality, early childhood education. For parents, access to quality and affordable programming can help to foster greater labour force participation. But more importantly, for children, greater essential skills development makes it more likely that children will complete high school, go on to post‐secondary education and succeed at that education. This raises employment prospects and reduces duration of unemployment if it occurs.”

In fact, according to his research, for every public dollar invested in early childhood development, the return ranges from roughly $1.5 to almost $3, with the benefit ratio for disadvantaged children being in the double digits.”

When it comes to caring for the youngest in our midst – who will secure the most durable achievements for the province in the future – Mr. Carr’s government is already on the right track. Let it stay there.

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May 02 2013
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Economy, Education, Politics

Time to quit the Mickey Mouse Club

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Banding together in common purpose was once the stuff of boys’ adventure stories and early morning kids’ television programming. In the zeitgeist of popular culture, you could either be a mouseketeer or a muskateer; but never both.

It’s a little like that today in the real, hardscrabble world of Atlantic regional politics, where two distinct “groups of four” are forming to promote two competing conceptions of what it means to be a citizen of Canada’s most easterly realm.

In one corner, lately nestled along the white beaches of a certain Nova Scotia south shore resort, is the Council of Atlantic Premiers whose members seem to think that the most productive use of their time and energy is to issue stern denunciations of federal government labour market policies, and little else.

In another is the brand, spanking new “U4 League”, a group of mostly Maritime superheroes masquerading as university presidents whose initiates actually believe that the only way to improve life in this relentlessly unpromising pasture of the Great White North is to cooperate and. . .gasp! . . .get things done.

The League comprises Mount Allison University’s Robert Campbell, Acadia’s Ray Ivany, St. Francis Xavier’s Sean Riley and Bishop University’s Michael Goldbloom. Yesterday’s Globe and Mail story explains the unlikely collaboration as a marriage of virtue and necessity: “With public funding under strain and concerns about the quality of undergraduate education getting louder across Canada, the partnership is meant to get the most out of each school’s strengths.

Specifically, “The schools’ leaders aim to make it easier for students to tap the expertise of each university from their home campus, encourage faculty to work together across campuses, share ideas and find back-office savings – all without growing enrolments or eroding the intimate campus experience that is their hallmark.”

Does this suggest that these small institutions of higher learning are plotting a formal merger? Hardly. The point their head masters seem to be making is that forging closer ties – judiciously selected – will, in fact, strengthen their institutions’ individuality and independence. The approach could even cut costs without undermining the quality of the education they provide.

After all, as Mr. Goldbloom told the Globe, “At a time of limited public resources for public education, you had better be really good at what you do.” Meanwhile, added Mr. Campbell, “We’ll remain autonomous. It’s the competition that keeps us all sharp.”

Naturally, there is some tongue-in-cheekery in all of this, but there is a broadly good example to draw, as well: It has something to do with lemons and the making and serving of a tasty, refreshing drink, when one finds oneself in hot water.

Now, flash to Atlantic Canada’s sullen band of premiers, whose sole contribution to the process of transforming the region’s economy is their threadbare, bankrupt argument that bad dad Ottawa is determined to keep our seasonal workers under his hob-nailed jack boot until we run out of fish to catch or trees to cut or tourists to bed and breakfast.

Even if that were true (it is not), there’s nothing they can do about federal reforms to employment insurance or joint labour market agreements. And in their disingenuous hearts, they know this. But it’s a whole lot easier to take pot shots at the unfeeling “center”, than it is to roll up their sleeves and get down to the tough, necessary business of building, with the private sector, a competitive, durable, sustainable East Coast – one where home-grown innovation replaces tax-funded dependency in the lingua franca of the region.

The premiers’ implicit argument that changes to EI will make Atlantic Canada even less competitive than it is already relies, for its premise, on the absurd calculation that seasonal unemployment fuels economic growth.

But what, in fact, do they know about it? Which entrepreneurs have they consulted? How many full-time professionals and wage-earners have they tapped for advice lately?

The choice for Atlantic Canadians twas ever thus:

We can remain as mousketeers, or become, instead, musketeers.

Pick one; not both.

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