With Good Reason

Robert Fulford has an excellent column in today’s National Post on how “creativity begins with discipline.” When Fulford refers to discipline, he does not necessarily mean discipline as related to behaviour, but as in the ability to persevere in the face of all odds to get a job done to the absolute best of our ability. Why might Fulford be using the term discipline in that way? Perhaps because the concepts of best, outstanding and excellent have been lost or the notion of being excited about learning is too often a thing of the past. While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of excellent or outstanding teachers out there, too often they are limited by the system in which they work.

For example, for some reason, unions, and I am speaking of the teachers’ unions here, when teachers are appraised they now (in McGuinty’s Ontario at least) only use two categories: satisfactory or unsatisfactory. It is as though something were wrong with doing well or better than your peers. While student evaluation is now usually based on a fuzzy system of evaluation, student report cards can say: limited success, some success, considerable success and/or a high degree of success. As Fulford suggests, the change in tone and dumbing down of our education system has been gradual and subtle — to the point where it seems as though we have now settled for mediocrity.

The Fulford piece is a long article but well worth the read. He says that education needs loud, passionate champions. He talks about bringing back the power to suspend students whose antisocial activities cripple education. He also suggests that every school have an “ombudsman, not to defend teachers or students but to stand up for the purposes of education” — in other words, a person who could balance the influence of the unions.

Fulford says:

“Many students coast through elementary and high school and arrive at university without knowing how to read a poem, write a sentence or explain federal-provincial relations. Teacher-dependent, they believe that education is what the schools teach; they never achieve the freedom to think and act for themselves without guidance.”

All of us have been to school. All of us know how important education is. Yet, obviously, not all of us want the excellence and creativity Fulford talks about. For those of us who do want it, let’s be loud, as he suggests, and perhaps if enough of us demand it, we can convince school board trustees and school board administrations, that it is for the good of society as a whole, as well as for every individual in that society, for there to be a return to disciplined learning, spontaneity, excitement, innovation and competence in our schools.

Each one of us needs our own mountain to climb or our own race to win. Each one of us, whether we have a special need or not, needs to succeed in whatever way we can. But, to do that, we need to move away from what Fulford calls mediocrity and rejuvenate the system!

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Note: C/P at Jack’s Newswatch and Crux-of-the-Matter. H/T to Cathy Cove for the Fulford article.