BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter from Barrie resident Christopher Mansour discusses potential changes needed in Ontario's education system.
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The New Blue Party of Ontario and their competition, the Ontario Party, propose an educational reform that, were it to be implemented, might raise the quality of instruction and achievement this province has lacked for far too long.
Despite Liberal propaganda of the past, Ontario does not produce the best nor does it particularly inspire students to pursue their dreams.
Common complaints of our educational system often include observations that it is often impractical, ideology-driven, tainted with racial or cultural biases, domineering, and disinterested in students' personal interests.
Both Liberal and PC parties have flooded the schools with notions of what they want taught, not what should be taught combined with what students wish to learn.
We are forced to take math classes when we do not have the desire or knowledge to pursue this discipline. Or we are forced to take arts classes when our particular strengths lie in scientific inquiry.
Charter and private schools remain the sole domain of the rich and privileged, while public schools are often a hodgepodge of survey courses and introductions, often forced upon unwilling students.
What is useful and helpful about the two aforementioned parties is that the New Blues propose alternative schooling credits to whet the appetites of students focused on a particular ambition. The Ontario Party states that they would take the $12,500 funding the province pays for each public school attendee and use it toward a charter school or technical school of the student's own choosing.
A student intent on becoming an actor, for instance, would be given the chance to take schooling preparing him for that career. Students interested in metal-working would have their education funded and attend a technical school.
What makes Ontario such a bad place to get an education is that the schools have a myopic view of what would enhance the life of the learner. That and political lobbying inside the schools by some unscrupulous administrators and teachers is causing our young people harm in that it merely "teaches" them what to think instead of how to think for themselves.
Activism is not a bad thing, because it enhances our moral understanding and accountability. But flooding our schools with the militant agendas of certain advocacy groups does not teach students right from wrong either. To do that, we must show the difference between good and evil, show them the essential worth and dignity of all human beings, but allow them the opportunity to think, grow, and understand for themselves.
For most of my life, Ontario has had loser parties and leaders make catastrophic decisions that have sometimes been criminal and other times incompetent.
And we badly need the input of newer parties to introduce new thinking and a badly needed simplicity to a lacklustre political existence in this province.
Christopher Mansour
Barrie
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