What is next, or “authentic”, in education?
TORONTO – Minister Calandra’s appointment to the Education portfolio, the province’s second biggest department, started with a bang and great promise last Spring. The message was clear: no nonsense, back to basics, student oriented, accountability to parents, transparency in expenditures and accountability.
The governance structure of school boards was called into question almost immediately. Elected trustees were first on the firing line. Four (now more) Boards were placed “under Supervision”; the Supervisor would now be the final authority for all operational matters – be they academic, structural, human resources or support services. His/her pedagogical credentials and experience ere/are not considered essential to the task at hand.
But he does know that trustees may be responsible for policy/philosophy – at least theoretically, until they were ridiculed, humiliated and stripped of their authority, by the placement under supervision process. Justly so, some argued, given the chaotic social environment to which some formerly venerable schools had been reduced to make room for the counterculture movement.
The Premier and the Minister rushed in a pre-emptive move to signal that they were not interested in overturning constitutionally guaranteed rights for His Majesty’s Catholic subjects, English or French speaking, when they paid a visit to the newly invested Cardinal. They confirmed the denominational rights of Catholics (still the largest single religious community in Ontario according to the last census at 22% of the population) and in a follow-up letter by the Minister to the affected Boards, assured that the Minister could/would still consult with Trustees on matters denominational in nature.
One trustee who thought it all a poor joke retorted that everything we do is “denominational” (emphasis added). Ha! Ha! Maybe. The artisans of construction or erosion of those rights are the Administrators (Directors and senior Staff on down) in charge of the operational responsibilities of the boards and their employees. Guess what. None of these were fired! Yet, the elimination of Trustees freed up many “man hours” of counter-productive, idle nonsensical talk.
The Fraser Institute recently published their rankings of the academic viability of high schools in Ontario. It is to cry! On reading the results, some, Catholic or not, parents should seriously consider launching a class action lawsuit against the Boards and Administrators whose expertise led to those outcomes. Average and Median scores in Math and language used to indicate the achievement or not of Ministerial and societal goals are pitifully low. Those Boards are suing Google and others for harm to their students.
The social cultural goals of the Catholic values at the base of the entrenched denominational/constitutional rights of Catholic parents have been left to the same derelicts who turned a $100 million surplus into a $75 million deficit in one school board over a ten-month period. No, it was not the trustees. They vote on what is presented to them. Trustees and the Archdiocese are the defenders and promoters of the Catholic ethic – for better or for worse.
These last several weeks, as per copy of the letter that you can read clicking here, some Primary Teachers of Our Lady of Sorrows (teachers of children under the age of eight), Catholic school, prepared to “paint the town” with recognition that is authentic (a recent lexicon of inclusion) reflection of the family values in the school community: Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, French Christmas traditions or Ramadan.
This is a Catholic school? No one returned our call at the school. However, the teachers (?) boast that this would be a fantastic opportunity to “bring(ing) our school’s equity goals of providing mirrors, windows, and sliding doors to life”. The reference is to a publication, a metaphorical work on understanding diversity -racism – published in 1990, by Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita [now] at Ohio State University.
One assumes it is never too early for eight-year olds to experience the discrimination directed towards others in inner city America.
