The author makes many acute points, such as: “The system's raison d'etre is to ensure “equity”- equal outcomes for racially defined groups, not high achievement or providing opportunities for individual students to strive for excellence.” Equity means resources and encouragement based on race, not individual needs. Placing a weak student in a higher French or Math or Physics class tends to degrade that child’s confidence, motivation, and achievement. We need to get rid of the race hustlers.
What many fail to point out is that streaming is entirely voluntary. Students are not barred from taking advanced courses. Doing away with streaming ensures chaotic classes and lower achievement for all.
Even while being alienated by both the OP and "her" school as well as the taxpayer "broken system" of family law and its bad actors, I have gleaned a limited glimpse of my son and likely daughter's horrific formative education from BC's radical left 'regressives' over the last 8 years. The new vernacular eluded me until this article, however, what is occurring is obvious to any involved parent, albeit shut out to the detriment of my children and the nefarious convenience of the School Board minions and ringleaders. My gifted children are being deprogrammed, yet reprogrammed for a hegemonic state, that now wants and needs a conforming proletariat class of socially abiding, loyal workers in service of. 'Report for duty and receive your pronoun badge.' Cultural war? Mediocrity bound, we are.
Thanks for writing this. I am new to Ontario, and was raised in Montreal and was in high school around 1980, and certainly had streaming and it was a really good thing. It may only have started in Grade 10, I don't remember. I appreciate all of the points you have made here. We need to get Critical Theory our of our school systems (and society more broadly), because it is social poison.
For those of us who grew up in Ontario in the 70s and 80s, we were already streamed by middle school. You were placed presumably by a mixture of CCAT (Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test) and achievement in classes. The teacher was teaching kids who were roughly at a similar academic level and modified for the whole class. Did we know we were streamed--no, but we figured it out. And what happened when we figured it out? Nothing. Kids were still free to choose their level in high school. We got a good grounding in the basics from streaming and still had the freedom to choose our path.
The author makes many acute points, such as: “The system's raison d'etre is to ensure “equity”- equal outcomes for racially defined groups, not high achievement or providing opportunities for individual students to strive for excellence.” Equity means resources and encouragement based on race, not individual needs. Placing a weak student in a higher French or Math or Physics class tends to degrade that child’s confidence, motivation, and achievement. We need to get rid of the race hustlers.
Kindly desist from the disgusting racist practice of capitalising "black" while not capitalising "white".
I agree although suspect this is more about using the framing of the ideologues deliberately, to make a point, rather than using it out of conviction.
What many fail to point out is that streaming is entirely voluntary. Students are not barred from taking advanced courses. Doing away with streaming ensures chaotic classes and lower achievement for all.
There are a number of systems issues here regarding the autopoiesis of schools.
1. Quality and inequality are incompatible. Equality of opportunity is possible but that is all. Equity and mediocrity are a better combination.
2. Reforms in self-referencing organisations like schools have nearly all been tried and failed.
3. In any event attempts at reform have unpredictable outcomes except for the certainty of disappointment.
Even while being alienated by both the OP and "her" school as well as the taxpayer "broken system" of family law and its bad actors, I have gleaned a limited glimpse of my son and likely daughter's horrific formative education from BC's radical left 'regressives' over the last 8 years. The new vernacular eluded me until this article, however, what is occurring is obvious to any involved parent, albeit shut out to the detriment of my children and the nefarious convenience of the School Board minions and ringleaders. My gifted children are being deprogrammed, yet reprogrammed for a hegemonic state, that now wants and needs a conforming proletariat class of socially abiding, loyal workers in service of. 'Report for duty and receive your pronoun badge.' Cultural war? Mediocrity bound, we are.
Thanks for writing this. I am new to Ontario, and was raised in Montreal and was in high school around 1980, and certainly had streaming and it was a really good thing. It may only have started in Grade 10, I don't remember. I appreciate all of the points you have made here. We need to get Critical Theory our of our school systems (and society more broadly), because it is social poison.
Give parents and students more choices in educational models.
There should be more schools and school boards that offer a wide variety of educational models.
So those who prefer destreaming would have a choice and those who prefer streaming would have a choice.
Parents should be allowed to give their educational taxes to the educational style that they prefer.
For those of us who grew up in Ontario in the 70s and 80s, we were already streamed by middle school. You were placed presumably by a mixture of CCAT (Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test) and achievement in classes. The teacher was teaching kids who were roughly at a similar academic level and modified for the whole class. Did we know we were streamed--no, but we figured it out. And what happened when we figured it out? Nothing. Kids were still free to choose their level in high school. We got a good grounding in the basics from streaming and still had the freedom to choose our path.