An All-Out Attack

On the surface, the ructions in education occurring in Ontario may hold little interest to those living in other jurisdictions. However, those residing elsewhere would be well-advised to keep an eye on this province, watching us carefully to see whether the Ford government succeeds in dealing a lethal blow to public education here. If he does, you can be sure such methodology will find its way into other provinces looking for 'new efficiencies.'

Two items in today's Star are worth noting as warnings to all who realize that a healthy, well-supported public education is essential to the present and future of functional, growing societies

Kristin Rushowy reports of distress in the Halton Board:

The Halton public school board is warning that classes could balloon to 46 students as the Ford government cuts the number of high school teachers over the next four years.

A letter sent to Education Minister Lisa Thompson says

... to go from the current average of 22 up to the planned 28, “specialized courses with lower enrolment or smaller classes with students who have high needs that have a 10-to-20-student class size will mean that other courses have very high class sizes of 36 to 46 students.”

... actual class sizes will end up much higher — and 36 to 46, while extreme, is “not out of the realm of possibility,” said Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association.

Halton District School Board chair Andréa Grebenc said the bigger classes will likely be core credits such as math, English, history and geography — “all those required courses that don’t need machinery or anything like that.

Those kinds of numbers would be extraordinarily difficult to work with, both in the allocation of individual time with students and the sheer volume of assignments that would have to marked. In my former life as an English teacher, I had to spend a fair amount of time on each essay I was evaluating. To see numbers go as high as 46 would require substantial cutbacks in the number of assignments given.

Halton is not the only very worried jurisdiction:

Other boards have already written to the province with their concerns over the changes, including recent correspondence from the Durham District School Board that says course option will “diminish drastically — especially in the area of the arts, trades and specialty subjects.”

I will close this post with a very thoughtful letter from a concerned parent who attended the rally for education that I wrote about the other day.

Thousands join rally at Queen’s Park over schools, April 7

My family and I were at Saturday’s rally at Queen’s Park — not because we are puppets of union organizers as suggested by the Minister of Education, Lisa Thompson, and the premier. We were there because we care deeply about education.

Our children are growing up in extremely complex times, facing technological, economic, political and environmental challenges that are unprecedented — challenges that our generation has failed to manage competently — and the Ontario government is cutting education. Our children will be forced to either help solve complex global problems or suffer the consequences of failing to meet the challenges. The government is pulling the rug out from underneath their feet.

What is at stake? Investing in education is about building strong communities and a successful nation, one that can manage change with competence and integrity.

Look at what happens in countries that lack strong social supports like public education — look at Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Sudan, to name just a few. Poverty and violence goes hand in hand with a population that is uneducated.

Couldn’t happen here? Try talking to a family of residential school survivors or Indigenous students today who face violence when they have to leave home to go to high school in Thunder Bay. Come talk to the families in my downtown Toronto community who are refugees, whose children are absent from school for half the year. Talk to the families of children with special needs, children who are frustrated to the point of acting out because they lack adequate support in school.

Too often the choice is to quit school because support for a positive education experience is lacking. The cycle of poverty continues.

When the government cuts education resources, real people in Ontario suffer real poverty and violence. Meanwhile, we make very little progress in tackling other important and challenging issues.

I am there in my kids' school regularly, and it is plain to see that teachers and students need more, not less. That is why I was at Saturday’s rally and I will continue to support teachers as they fight for our children and our future.

Erika Westman, Toronto

I am long-retired from the classroom; however, that does not mean I am retired from the issues that can make or break a society. It is time we understand that this battle to resist the virtual dismantling of public education is everyone's fight. Whether or not we realize it, we all have skin in this game.