I've worked in the private education system in Ontario for 14 years and have two elementary-aged children in the public system. A decade ago, the only difference between public and private schools was the class sizes, connections, and access to better facilities. The academic standards were essentially the same (i.e. the same curriculum, just better-performing students).
Today, with the injection of identity politics into everything, we're participating in a race to the bottom. Even private schools are not immune to ideology, and without proper vetting, parents could be paying to indoctrinate their kids (unfortunately, I've seen this firsthand).
Good teachers recognize the situation and are either bailing out early via retirement or applying to positions that get them out of the classroom (or at least out of the spotlight). Our school hired 3 teachers from Peel DSB this year. They all forfeited 20+ years of seniority to escape that hot mess.
For those who have the time and money, homeschooling is an option. For the rest of us, the only choice is to take a more active role in our children's education. Read the curriculum, take the time to get to know your kid's teacher and be brave and call bullish*t when you see it. As a teacher, I always intentionally give a metaphorical wink and a nod to parents by saying that my classroom will be non-political and focus on innovation and learning. I've only ever received a heartfelt thank you. Internally, when dealing with the school, I have a line that I will not cross. Calling 11-year-olds by different pronouns is an example. I've received zero pushback from anyone on this.
There are great educators out there who genuinely wish the best for kids. We need to figure out how to find each other and start our own school!
Amen Igor. Thanks for shining a bright light on the elephant.
Retired last year after watching my school climate be destroyed post Covid. Students and parents recognized quickly the power they had been given in the name of DEI. Repeatedly begged admin for the ability to do what I had always done as a competent teacher (and parent). Create structure with clear expectations, boundaries and consequences for ALL students in my classes. Each of whom arrives with a unique profile of nature and nurture. 30 years, not one one interaction with the union, innumerable spotless TPAs, thousands of volunteer hours outside the classroom, hundreds of former students grateful to have me as a caring adult and in the end…..I was told to shut up and recognize I was the problem. I would describe my feelings as insulted, betrayed and demoralized.
This has all the hallmarks of a religion. It demands that I believe things (on faith) that are completely contrary to my own education and experience with a baked in mechanism to silence opposition. The zealots occupy the high ground in any organization it seems. Good people are cowed and silenced under threat of personal and professional censure.
A major societal course correction away from DEI is necessary or this can’t help but devolve into chaos.
Home school your children folks these kids get zero help in learning the basics at these awful places.
The system is broken all they want today is to teach them transgender crap and how its all the white settlers fault. The TDSB is even going so far as to tell their students to hate whites and drive them out of their communities in which we live.
Well said, Igor. I can tell you are very familiar with how schools work in Ontario today.
Yes, Canada has "freedom of speech" on paper, but if you want a job (in education, healthcare, etc.) so you can feed your family, you'd better get used to the idea that you will have absolutely zero freedom of speech. It's 1984, everywhere, all the time.
Many teachers know that their Boards have been ideologically captured, but they also know that speaking out about it will result in severe punishment. Indeterminate leave of absence while the Grand Inquisitors investigate.
The fact that not a single working teacher had spoken out publicly about the terrible things going on in schools today does not mean that we are unanimously thrilled with the system. It means we've been perfectly muzzled. The closest most of us get to expressing our thoughts freely happens at a staff meeting when we are told, yet again, by a P/VP that "settler-colonialism" is the real problem and we throw a nervous sideways glance at a trusted colleague.
For those who had hoped that the omnipotent teachers unions will save their skin, forget it. The unions are even more wacked out (i.e. institutionally captured by woke ideology) than the school Boards.
We all hope "the pendulum will swing back" towards sanity soon, but after many years of this, it seems only to get worse. Maybe this isn't a pendulum that can swing back. Maybe this is a bus heading over a cliff.
Well said! In a recent union mail out, I noticed an image that filled half the page, of various coloured fists raised in the air, with a bunch of woke mumbo jumbo, a call to protest whatever current social justice cause. I thought, whatever happened to unions making sure teachers got paid correctly, got their breaks, had necessary support, etc.
Would permitting charter schools help? My hunch is that they would make for a much better education for the kids. But, then again, who cares about the damn kids, right?
The problem with schools is best summed up here: “Diversity...means absolute ideological conformity, equity means equality of identity-based group outcomes, and inclusion means exclusion of “privileged” people, the apex of privilege being white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and male (biologically actually male, that is). It should be noted, however, that Asians, who are high academic achievers (on average) are now described as “white adjacent” and are also subject to exclusion.”
How in the world did this claptrap get adopted by any institution?
Yes both Asians and Jews are considered "white adjacent" and are undeserving of DEI initiatives. That explains how Jews have lost their minority status and the DEI folks are compelled to side with Hamas too. The mental gymnastics required to understand this perspective is mind boggling.
You mentioned that the DEI folks have sided with Hamas. You're right. At a PD day session some time after October 7th, I saw that our Board's "Equity Officer" decided to show up in one of those keffiyehs. I was mostly stunned by the fact that everyone had to pretend they didn't notice.
After teaching experience in three different countries and in a public school for over 20 years at the largest school board in Canada, and admittedly never the ladder-climber, always on the ground with my students I might add; I can freely share that here in Toronto where I am born, sports elite, movie stars, developers, politicians, then educators (the sheep of the flock) surrendered freely the good true and beautiful in ignorance, greed power and envy. Organic local communities are not respected, not even on our radar, save for Kensington Market. There are no visual reminders contained in our choice of landscpaces and architecture to preserve (accept for that ugly LCBO 'heritage building' on Front St) and the still intact by a hair our Farmers Market that might point to our collective histories, our cultures our diversity. No not Casa Loma. Our drive for accumulated wealth, the lack of discernment and the appreciation of the 'other' no matter when where why and how is not integrated into the day to day curriculum of the classroom. The simple celebration of learning is now only marks, short quizzes, anything that can be measured to justify funding. This deadly Pavlovian deed was stamped-in finally with COVID-19 lockdown quarantine of 2020 -2021 and continues to this day. Seeing many times obnoxious behaviours of our teens emerging unchecked and supported by principals is actually not their fault. It is ours and our school board's. Pandering to emotional teen outbursts while direct disrespect to the teacher's voice is quite effective. Administrations hell-bent on shoving weird science on top of common sense drives this hidden agenda forward. Adults using and hiding behind students is bluntly child abuse. Polarization of races stops the sovereignty of the individual. We are more than our array of skin-tones. We lose our focus when we identify and sacrifice ourselves to belong to any group too tightly. Don't be fooled thinking all those outside yourself are rooting for you.
It is a nasty world with the beauty of the sunset free to all of us. Hold all things gently, lightly, not in a strangle hold. One just stops the process in its tracks and freezes into parrot-talk. Now you have lost the living moment. We do not teach our children to debate, discuss, see directly without thought, take on difficult questions contrary to one's own beliefs without blame, without closing down. This is difficult but necessary work for the secondary school student, the emerging adult. We do not like these difficulties in the classroom for this is not supported by administrators at school boards. We are headed to 'marketability' for our children. Just players in the game no matter if it is coding or construction. We are all at fault. No one's hands are clean. Mine included. We are a lazy bunch of dreamy people trapped in the flat horizontal plane of existence. Ever wondered how we arrived at world famine and five or more genocides happening on the planet right now? Stop contributing to all this nonsense we have bought into. Tease it out carefully. Stand on your own two feet. You need those initial supports before you can climb out. This is very difficult but necessary inward work that alters our direction. Don't do it for the other; do it for yourself. The sanity one earns can never be taken away. It is yours. You earned it.
I taught in private schools in Toronto and Montreal then in high school and college in Northern Ontario for thirty years. I have been retired for over twenty years and can only half imagine how terrible things are now. Even when I left the system the administration was becoming an empire of fools and the P/VPs were all hoping to climb the ladder into the board office. Their interest in supporting the teachers was their last concern. The DEI and Woke world we live in, like communism, will eventually collapse but the destruction it is leaving behind is enormous. It seems like we need two school systems; one for children whose parents want them to work hard and succeed and another for kids who want to attend , play sports and hang out. And the so-called teachers who buy into this 'something for nothing' farce are a disgrace to the profession.
"DEI is the socio-economic axis of evil that is destroying Western liberal democracy and Canada is a hotbed of it. It is deeply entrenched in the schools at this point and teachers know it is not going anywhere anytime soon. They want out."
Feb 23 2024 By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)
The Elephant in the Room
Your thorough synopsis is chillingly accurate.
It is so similar to my own narrative, gathered experientially, 'on-the-ground' with TDSB Teens. This is very accurate and wish your readers pass this to others.
News that is worthy of sharing.
For more than 30 or so years, in two public school systems, two private school teaching experiences, a volunteer art lesson with teenagers with severe mental and kinesthetic challenges,Ventura CA. one art class Home Schooling Art Class at the Atrium Ojai CA then another in the UK.
Then came COVID-19 Virtual ONLY.
This began the awakening to how vile, low-down and straight-out mean this institution can be.
Really, the answer is to give parents the choice of where to spend their school dollars. Why don't we have Charter Schools (for instance)? It is a rhetorical question, because the Teacher's Unions would go ape-shit and no government wants to have to confront them. IMHO, the PC's, who are currently in power, know the Teacher's Unions hate them, so they have just decided to not care and let the schools disintegrate. With respect to banking sick days; I agree, but I think teachers were the last group to still be able to do that. I believe all (or most) other public servants had that perk taken away years ago. From the government's point of view, it was an unfunded liability (whether that is a fair assessment or not I will leave for others to decide).
Igor makes some very good points, but errs on student debt and is too extreme in my view. Figures for debt normally refer only to students who have debt. Happily, many students in Canada graduate without any debt and even some debt is "free" (e.g., parents). Moreover, they are young and a few years before entering the classroom might allow some maturation.
I do object, however, to views that appear as extreme and ideological as those on the left. There are over 400,000 public school teachers in Canada, many from our own generation or earlier. The problems raised are not so pervasive that we need to condemn them all and what happens in their classrooms. Moreover, Canadian students do very well on PISA and other international tests of reading, mathematics, and science, although we certainly want to strengthen teaching as much as possible. Teaching is only one aspect of school success. Home is another, as is student aptitude and interest. Surely we can promote change where needed without eliciting attitudes like "kids get zero help in learning the basics at these awful places."
Jim, you are an eternal optimist I think when you say, " Surely we can promote change." I am afraid the Woke activists are the tail wagging the dog now. It will take some powerful grass-roots energy to set things straight. For many teachers the prudent thing is to move on. When I see the way young folks behave on the streets and in the malls it would have to be at gunpoint to get me back in a regular classroom.
Interesting. I would note that while recently doing an English MA and being a T.A. in english lit. classes over a 2-year period, it was my observation that seemingly "everyone" in English was planning to go into teaching.
Alarm Sounds. English Grade 11 Academic now alter English Core Curriculum. International Students and Parents pay TDSB for English language Switches without notification to Canadian Indigenous Authors. What's the problem? Non-Notification of International Parents paying $15,000.00 for something they will NOT receive. Buyers Beware.
I've worked in the private education system in Ontario for 14 years and have two elementary-aged children in the public system. A decade ago, the only difference between public and private schools was the class sizes, connections, and access to better facilities. The academic standards were essentially the same (i.e. the same curriculum, just better-performing students).
Today, with the injection of identity politics into everything, we're participating in a race to the bottom. Even private schools are not immune to ideology, and without proper vetting, parents could be paying to indoctrinate their kids (unfortunately, I've seen this firsthand).
Good teachers recognize the situation and are either bailing out early via retirement or applying to positions that get them out of the classroom (or at least out of the spotlight). Our school hired 3 teachers from Peel DSB this year. They all forfeited 20+ years of seniority to escape that hot mess.
For those who have the time and money, homeschooling is an option. For the rest of us, the only choice is to take a more active role in our children's education. Read the curriculum, take the time to get to know your kid's teacher and be brave and call bullish*t when you see it. As a teacher, I always intentionally give a metaphorical wink and a nod to parents by saying that my classroom will be non-political and focus on innovation and learning. I've only ever received a heartfelt thank you. Internally, when dealing with the school, I have a line that I will not cross. Calling 11-year-olds by different pronouns is an example. I've received zero pushback from anyone on this.
There are great educators out there who genuinely wish the best for kids. We need to figure out how to find each other and start our own school!
Amen Igor. Thanks for shining a bright light on the elephant.
Retired last year after watching my school climate be destroyed post Covid. Students and parents recognized quickly the power they had been given in the name of DEI. Repeatedly begged admin for the ability to do what I had always done as a competent teacher (and parent). Create structure with clear expectations, boundaries and consequences for ALL students in my classes. Each of whom arrives with a unique profile of nature and nurture. 30 years, not one one interaction with the union, innumerable spotless TPAs, thousands of volunteer hours outside the classroom, hundreds of former students grateful to have me as a caring adult and in the end…..I was told to shut up and recognize I was the problem. I would describe my feelings as insulted, betrayed and demoralized.
This has all the hallmarks of a religion. It demands that I believe things (on faith) that are completely contrary to my own education and experience with a baked in mechanism to silence opposition. The zealots occupy the high ground in any organization it seems. Good people are cowed and silenced under threat of personal and professional censure.
A major societal course correction away from DEI is necessary or this can’t help but devolve into chaos.
"hallmarks of a shitty religion," you mean, you anti-religious bigot!
Home school your children folks these kids get zero help in learning the basics at these awful places.
The system is broken all they want today is to teach them transgender crap and how its all the white settlers fault. The TDSB is even going so far as to tell their students to hate whites and drive them out of their communities in which we live.
Well said, Igor. I can tell you are very familiar with how schools work in Ontario today.
Yes, Canada has "freedom of speech" on paper, but if you want a job (in education, healthcare, etc.) so you can feed your family, you'd better get used to the idea that you will have absolutely zero freedom of speech. It's 1984, everywhere, all the time.
Many teachers know that their Boards have been ideologically captured, but they also know that speaking out about it will result in severe punishment. Indeterminate leave of absence while the Grand Inquisitors investigate.
The fact that not a single working teacher had spoken out publicly about the terrible things going on in schools today does not mean that we are unanimously thrilled with the system. It means we've been perfectly muzzled. The closest most of us get to expressing our thoughts freely happens at a staff meeting when we are told, yet again, by a P/VP that "settler-colonialism" is the real problem and we throw a nervous sideways glance at a trusted colleague.
For those who had hoped that the omnipotent teachers unions will save their skin, forget it. The unions are even more wacked out (i.e. institutionally captured by woke ideology) than the school Boards.
We all hope "the pendulum will swing back" towards sanity soon, but after many years of this, it seems only to get worse. Maybe this isn't a pendulum that can swing back. Maybe this is a bus heading over a cliff.
Well said! In a recent union mail out, I noticed an image that filled half the page, of various coloured fists raised in the air, with a bunch of woke mumbo jumbo, a call to protest whatever current social justice cause. I thought, whatever happened to unions making sure teachers got paid correctly, got their breaks, had necessary support, etc.
Would permitting charter schools help? My hunch is that they would make for a much better education for the kids. But, then again, who cares about the damn kids, right?
Sure it would help.
The problem with schools is best summed up here: “Diversity...means absolute ideological conformity, equity means equality of identity-based group outcomes, and inclusion means exclusion of “privileged” people, the apex of privilege being white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and male (biologically actually male, that is). It should be noted, however, that Asians, who are high academic achievers (on average) are now described as “white adjacent” and are also subject to exclusion.”
How in the world did this claptrap get adopted by any institution?
Yes both Asians and Jews are considered "white adjacent" and are undeserving of DEI initiatives. That explains how Jews have lost their minority status and the DEI folks are compelled to side with Hamas too. The mental gymnastics required to understand this perspective is mind boggling.
You mentioned that the DEI folks have sided with Hamas. You're right. At a PD day session some time after October 7th, I saw that our Board's "Equity Officer" decided to show up in one of those keffiyehs. I was mostly stunned by the fact that everyone had to pretend they didn't notice.
After teaching experience in three different countries and in a public school for over 20 years at the largest school board in Canada, and admittedly never the ladder-climber, always on the ground with my students I might add; I can freely share that here in Toronto where I am born, sports elite, movie stars, developers, politicians, then educators (the sheep of the flock) surrendered freely the good true and beautiful in ignorance, greed power and envy. Organic local communities are not respected, not even on our radar, save for Kensington Market. There are no visual reminders contained in our choice of landscpaces and architecture to preserve (accept for that ugly LCBO 'heritage building' on Front St) and the still intact by a hair our Farmers Market that might point to our collective histories, our cultures our diversity. No not Casa Loma. Our drive for accumulated wealth, the lack of discernment and the appreciation of the 'other' no matter when where why and how is not integrated into the day to day curriculum of the classroom. The simple celebration of learning is now only marks, short quizzes, anything that can be measured to justify funding. This deadly Pavlovian deed was stamped-in finally with COVID-19 lockdown quarantine of 2020 -2021 and continues to this day. Seeing many times obnoxious behaviours of our teens emerging unchecked and supported by principals is actually not their fault. It is ours and our school board's. Pandering to emotional teen outbursts while direct disrespect to the teacher's voice is quite effective. Administrations hell-bent on shoving weird science on top of common sense drives this hidden agenda forward. Adults using and hiding behind students is bluntly child abuse. Polarization of races stops the sovereignty of the individual. We are more than our array of skin-tones. We lose our focus when we identify and sacrifice ourselves to belong to any group too tightly. Don't be fooled thinking all those outside yourself are rooting for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK7cOz13wMQ
It is a nasty world with the beauty of the sunset free to all of us. Hold all things gently, lightly, not in a strangle hold. One just stops the process in its tracks and freezes into parrot-talk. Now you have lost the living moment. We do not teach our children to debate, discuss, see directly without thought, take on difficult questions contrary to one's own beliefs without blame, without closing down. This is difficult but necessary work for the secondary school student, the emerging adult. We do not like these difficulties in the classroom for this is not supported by administrators at school boards. We are headed to 'marketability' for our children. Just players in the game no matter if it is coding or construction. We are all at fault. No one's hands are clean. Mine included. We are a lazy bunch of dreamy people trapped in the flat horizontal plane of existence. Ever wondered how we arrived at world famine and five or more genocides happening on the planet right now? Stop contributing to all this nonsense we have bought into. Tease it out carefully. Stand on your own two feet. You need those initial supports before you can climb out. This is very difficult but necessary inward work that alters our direction. Don't do it for the other; do it for yourself. The sanity one earns can never be taken away. It is yours. You earned it.
Gaslighting good teachers because of a dysfunctional system they didn't create, doesn't help either.
I taught in private schools in Toronto and Montreal then in high school and college in Northern Ontario for thirty years. I have been retired for over twenty years and can only half imagine how terrible things are now. Even when I left the system the administration was becoming an empire of fools and the P/VPs were all hoping to climb the ladder into the board office. Their interest in supporting the teachers was their last concern. The DEI and Woke world we live in, like communism, will eventually collapse but the destruction it is leaving behind is enormous. It seems like we need two school systems; one for children whose parents want them to work hard and succeed and another for kids who want to attend , play sports and hang out. And the so-called teachers who buy into this 'something for nothing' farce are a disgrace to the profession.
"DEI is the socio-economic axis of evil that is destroying Western liberal democracy and Canada is a hotbed of it. It is deeply entrenched in the schools at this point and teachers know it is not going anywhere anytime soon. They want out."
Normal people don't want to become commissars.
Feb 23 2024 By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)
The Elephant in the Room
Your thorough synopsis is chillingly accurate.
It is so similar to my own narrative, gathered experientially, 'on-the-ground' with TDSB Teens. This is very accurate and wish your readers pass this to others.
News that is worthy of sharing.
For more than 30 or so years, in two public school systems, two private school teaching experiences, a volunteer art lesson with teenagers with severe mental and kinesthetic challenges,Ventura CA. one art class Home Schooling Art Class at the Atrium Ojai CA then another in the UK.
Then came COVID-19 Virtual ONLY.
This began the awakening to how vile, low-down and straight-out mean this institution can be.
dTb (OCT)
This is good. My sense is the DEI pushback is really starting.
Really, the answer is to give parents the choice of where to spend their school dollars. Why don't we have Charter Schools (for instance)? It is a rhetorical question, because the Teacher's Unions would go ape-shit and no government wants to have to confront them. IMHO, the PC's, who are currently in power, know the Teacher's Unions hate them, so they have just decided to not care and let the schools disintegrate. With respect to banking sick days; I agree, but I think teachers were the last group to still be able to do that. I believe all (or most) other public servants had that perk taken away years ago. From the government's point of view, it was an unfunded liability (whether that is a fair assessment or not I will leave for others to decide).
Igor makes some very good points, but errs on student debt and is too extreme in my view. Figures for debt normally refer only to students who have debt. Happily, many students in Canada graduate without any debt and even some debt is "free" (e.g., parents). Moreover, they are young and a few years before entering the classroom might allow some maturation.
I do object, however, to views that appear as extreme and ideological as those on the left. There are over 400,000 public school teachers in Canada, many from our own generation or earlier. The problems raised are not so pervasive that we need to condemn them all and what happens in their classrooms. Moreover, Canadian students do very well on PISA and other international tests of reading, mathematics, and science, although we certainly want to strengthen teaching as much as possible. Teaching is only one aspect of school success. Home is another, as is student aptitude and interest. Surely we can promote change where needed without eliciting attitudes like "kids get zero help in learning the basics at these awful places."
Jim, you are an eternal optimist I think when you say, " Surely we can promote change." I am afraid the Woke activists are the tail wagging the dog now. It will take some powerful grass-roots energy to set things straight. For many teachers the prudent thing is to move on. When I see the way young folks behave on the streets and in the malls it would have to be at gunpoint to get me back in a regular classroom.
Interesting. I would note that while recently doing an English MA and being a T.A. in english lit. classes over a 2-year period, it was my observation that seemingly "everyone" in English was planning to go into teaching.
Alarm Sounds. English Grade 11 Academic now alter English Core Curriculum. International Students and Parents pay TDSB for English language Switches without notification to Canadian Indigenous Authors. What's the problem? Non-Notification of International Parents paying $15,000.00 for something they will NOT receive. Buyers Beware.