A parents letter to People for Education
Who is advocating for the Kids?
Fed up with the ideological take-over of Canada’s education system, a parent and retired teacher, has written a letter to People for Education, explaining why they are withdrawing support.
Read the letter below:
I received a solicitation from People for Education in the mail today.
I am a former supporter. I appreciate the good work your organization has done over the years to protect public education. But I do not support you financially anymore. Here's why:
I am a recently retired teacher and have two grown children who went through the education system in Ontario. This twin perspective gave me a good vantage point from which to observe the general decline of public education here in Ontario over the last 30 years, especially the drastic collapse (implosion?) that has taken place over the last three years. The system is in free-fall.
While there are many factors that have combined to get us to where we are today, the biggest single one, the "elephant in the room", has been the ideological takeover of school boards, education unions, and community based organizations like yours by Critical Theory activists. The result has been unquestioned entrenchment of certain beliefs which are not fact or evidence based, but rather a matter of feelings and experiences (anecdotal evidence).
Still reading? I'm impressed!
Since the policy resulting from this ideology is not evidence based there is no way to determine if it is in fact working in any objective way. In fact, objectivity itself is contrary to the ideology!
Allow me to give you an example: De-streaming. This practice of placing students into classes appropriate to their level of skill and knowledge is the standard for all types of learning in our society. For example, when students learn to swim, skate, ski, play musical instruments, etc. they start in a beginner group and move through levels as they improve (at different rates).
My daughter learned to play the violin in the Suzuki method. Each student took private lessons and was also placed into a group class according to their ability. Some students, for whatever reason, got off to a very quick start and were soon in group classes with older kids. Others started out more slowly and ended up in group classes with younger kids. But this turned out to be a poor predictor of how far kids would go and how well they would end up playing ten years down the road. Some of the slow starters actually ended up as professional musicians whereas some of the quicker starters quit after a few years.
Back to school de-streaming. In all modesty I can tell you I am an expert in it. That is because I taught the same course (grade 9 Geography) for 20 years at 5 different levels: Vocational Level 1, Vocational Level 2, Applied, Academic, and International Baccalaureate, over and over again.
As of this year, the Vocational Level 2 and Applied have been combined with the Academic. This means you have up to 30 kids in the room who, in terms of basic literacy and numeracy, are functioning anywhere from the grade 4 up to the grade 9 (or higher) level.
I learned, over the years, what kind of lessons I could bring to engage kids at these five different levels. There is absolutely no way the Vocational Level 2 kids could touch the stuff my IB kids were doing. They just weren't ready for it. That does not mean they never will be able to. But for the present it is beyond them.
When I drop into a school to do supply teaching a couple of times a week I talk to the teachers and ask them how it is going. The look on their faces says it all. The destreamed classes are a disaster. You have to either dumb it way down or accept the fact that many of the kids just won't get it. That of course leads to poor attendance and behaviour problems.
De-streaming was tried before and it did not work. Now, a generation later, we're failing kids once again. Why? Ideology.
Critical Theory has taken over the school boards, according to which the unequal outcomes of groups of kids identified by race are proof of systemic racism. No other possible cause is even considered, such as socio-economic conditions. Even if you accept that there is no difference in academic strength between race based groups of kids there are still vast individual differences. Many of those kids, black, white, Asian, whatever, struggle in school and are not ready for academic level classes when they reach high school.
Putting them all in the same classes makes no sense at all, unless you are singularly focused on the optics of having kids from all racial groups proportionally represented in the same classes and are not concerned about how much learning is going to happen.
The reason I am not supporting you anymore is because I think you knew all that and decided to keep quiet about it because you're afraid of the activists. Well that is what all the union leaders, teachers, and school administrators are doing too. So who is advocating for the kids?
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Thanks for reading. For more letters from parents concerning ideology in Canadian schools read School Stonewalls Parent Concerned with Gender Ideology
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Schools have been captured by race hustlers. A policy like destreaming is implanted uncritically.
I enjoyed reading this very well written article but let me give you my perspective. I was for lack of a better description the class clown and having grown up in many schools abroad & in England was a little behind due to different reasons. While at my last school in England at age 15 was offered 6 strokes of the cane for disruptive actions which I declined so was thrown out of school.
With the equivalent of a grade 8 I made why way through life and became a very active reader so educated myself in that manner.
I can add subtract & divide numbers without any device very accurately and quickly, I can read & write without any issues other than some spelling errors on occasion can debate issues with the best of them. I have traveled widely speak & understand three languages and have owned several businesses over the years managing staff of up to 30 people. i was you might say one of the lower group of students however I know that today I would be capable of attending a University. Enough about me.
Several years ago when I started to slow down & took things slowly I became interested with our grandchildren while playing simple card games with them i noticed some but not all were having extreme difficulty with math i.e. at ages 11-15 simple addition was out of the question and even using pencil & paper they were making mistakes with even small numbers, we began remedial math at home with Mom & Dads help and guess what within weeks there was improvement.
We took the time to look back over their report cards and noticed the same thing time and again, at the beginning of the school year it showed some slow learning skills and as the year progresses they seemed to do so much better obviously under the guidance of the individual teachers. They were all passed on to higher grades at the end of the school year with mostly A,s & B,s, how could this be? How can children attain grade 8 & 9 without the ability to even add 7 & 15 without getting it correct?
Fast forward to today and the absolute disgusting trash talk as well as graphics, teaching perverted ways of acting to these young minds there is only one answer and that is to yank your children out before irreversible damage is done and home teach them.