Chaotic Rollout of “De-streamed” High School Courses Continues
Everyone is losing in the new paradigm
By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; Commentator)
Schools are out of the spotlight, but the problems are getting worse
With two major wars underway, in neither case with an end in sight, and plenty of political scandals here at home taking up the headlines, it is easy to forget that the public school system is in serious decline- a situation that will cause incalculable socioeconomic harm here in Ontario in the years to come.
Our students are being indoctrinated into Critical Theory and brainwashed with false historical narratives on a daily basis, and as a result academic standards and student deportment, conduct, and discipline are on the wane. School lockdowns, once a rarity, are now commonplace.
Probably the most destructive single policy in place in schools today is de-streaming.
What exactly is “de-streaming” again?
De-streaming means putting kids of the same age in the same class, regardless of their previous learning or demonstrated learning ability. By grade 9, students are 13 or 14 years old. Due to differences in their inherent intelligence and sociocultural environment, what they know and can do by then varies drastically. Some severely learning disabled kids can barely add and subtract, whereas others students can work with quadratic equations with ease. But the social justice activist proponents of de-steaming still think putting these kids together is for the best because streaming is, according to them, racist.
The de-streaming project is well underway. Is it working?
We are now into our third year of “de-streaming” in Ontario high schools and there is enough evidence on which to base an assessment of its efficacy. But whether you think it’s working or not really depends on your view of the purpose of education and what the desired outcomes should be.
Most teachers will tell you that the most important objective of the schools should be to strive for excellence, in terms of academics and any other endeavors deemed to be of value in which students are engaged, be they sports, the arts, civic engagements, etc.
By this measure, de-streaming has been an unmitigated disaster. Teachers report that everyone is losing in these classes. The work is beyond the abilities of the lower functioning kids and the most able students are bored, presented with an easy, unchallenging curriculum. They will get good marks but never learn the value of sustained hard work. How could they? They don't have to do much thinking. The real world will be a shock.
If it's such a bad idea, why are we doing it?
De-streaming is part and parcel of the adoption of Critical Theory by all of our public institutions (many private entities have also gotten on board for their own, self interested reasons). CT posits that our society is made up of intersecting identity groups, of which heterosexual male white people are the dominant group while other groups trail behind. Multiple identity in "oppressed" ("traditionally marginalized") groups places you in multiple jeopardy. Individual rights and freedoms and personal merit and agency are considered unimportant.
Activists (correctly) observed that black and indigenous kids, as a group, underperform in schools. Following CT, the activists jumped to the conclusion, based on weak, anecdotal evidence, that the reason must be 100% teacher and administrator racism. They say they want to "break down the barriers" but they haven’t been able to identify any. There was never anything to stop black or indigenous kids from signing up for whatever courses they wanted to take. The disproportionate number of these kids in the lower level “applied” courses was a reflection of their lower (average) academic ability and poorer (average) work habits.
Real solutions to academic improvement
Of course, putting all the kids in the same classes dumbs the curriculum down. No one with half a brain would think that it wouldn’t. Clearly, what needs to be done to improve education outcomes is to take steps to ensure that all kids get the environment they need, from age zero, in order to accumulate the knowledge and skills needed to go as far as their inherent abilities will take them in high school and beyond. But to do that, you would have to ask some rather awkward questions. What are the common sociocultural denominators for good (and bad) school achievement? What is it about the environment black and Indigenous kids are growing up in that is impeding their learning at school? Why are Asian kids, regardless of income, doing so well? Kids are only in school 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 10 months a year. Clearly, the different outcomes are largely a result of what kids are doing (or not doing) the rest of the time.
In Indigenous communities, for example, a whole range of social ills are present at levels way out of proportion to Canadian averages. Poverty, substance abuse, unemployment, domestic abuse, violence, etc. etc. Black kids tend to identify with popular culture icons and sports stars and are more often raised by uneducated single mothers. Sure, I'm generalizing here, but we're talking about proportions. For most black boys, school is uncool. The activists will tell you school is "too white". I'm not sure what that means, but it's not holding the Asian kids back.
Why won't the education system leaders admit de-streaming isn't working?
The education system is run by CT activists. They can never admit that CT is wrong, so they aren't likely to admit any initiative spawned by it isn't working either. They argue that teachers (who are mostly white) just don't get it and are still spreading the injustice of colonialism and racism. The answer is more “anti-racist” and “decolonising” professional learning sessions, so we’re told. But these sessions are a broken record. Saying that “colonialism” and “systemic racism” are the problem does not make those things true, no matter how many times you say them. So the chaotic roll-out of de-streaming continues unabated. In fact, education leaders want to double down! While only grade 9 is mandated as de-streamed by the Ministry of Education, most boards are going ahead and de-streaming grade 10 as well.
Why doesn't the government do something?
The fact that all this has transpired during the mandate of a Conservative government is really disconcerting. While the Ford Conservatives have passively allowed CT (wokism) to take over our institutions for political reasons, the other two major political parties are absolutely giddy about it! In the last election, the provincial Liberal party ran on a platform of mandatory de-streaming to grade 10. So there is currently no end in sight and we can expect the system to continue to degrade.
Optics more important than learning
This brings us back to the objectives of the school system. The people running it are CT true believers. As such, fostering an environment in which kids can strive for excellence IS NOT their primary objective. What they want is equal outcomes between white and black and Indigenous identified kids according to any objective measure, such as credit accumulation, graduation rates, and post-secondary (especially university) enrollment. For these education system leaders, how much kids actually know, and know how to do, are distant second-place considerations.
This is not the model that most Ontarians want, but it is what we got. I’m afraid it will have to get a whole lot worse before it becomes politically viable to take action. Anyone who points any of the above out will be pilloried as a racist.
We tend to feel comfortably isolated from all the violence and craziness that we read about in the international news, but as countries like China and India foster and encourage academic excellence among their youth through meritocracy, we wallow in woke-inspired educational mediocrity. This won’t end well for us.
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Peel District School Board’s Director distributes a Cowardly Response to Palestinian Terror Attacks
Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, What age should kids learn about "felching?"
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Other than the EQAO scores, what other metric is there that the de-streamed system is not working?
I ask because I'd like to create a visualization to show people how useless is the de-streamed system.
Just before grade 9 math was de-streamed, I asked the head of the Math Department to let me teach something else, after I had taught grade 9 Academic Math for several years (in Ontario). I had the lessons and several years of tests all prepared, but I knew it was going to be a disaster. I was proven right. My colleague taught de-streamed grade 9 Math in its first year, and he was panicking. Half of his class (HALF!!!) was failing. He was panicking because he knew he would be blamed for the result. The really smart kids were bored out of their minds.
In this case the solution is so easy and it is staring everyone right in the face. Lets all get along and agree with the black race our schools are too white for them so allow them their own schools with their own black teachers absolutely no whites allowed.
The Indians likewise complain about colonials causing all their problems, do the same give them all the same funding per pupil give them their own schools and Indian teachers, again no whites allowed.
Lets have our own schools for whites and only allow all those others that are left to attend only if they get along but in all fairness no blacks or indian pupils or teachers are allowed.
Everyone happy now?