With Good Reason

This article will not be politically correct! It will discuss two questions and possible answers to those questions. First, what is wrong with our education system today, no matter where in Canada we live? Second, how did things get that way? In my opinion, the process of change started when the education system responded to the notion that no child should be left behind and that no child should ever fail, no matter what their intellectual ability, how much effort by the students themselves or how much the parents were involved.

That time period was the late 1960’s, when in Ontario for example, the Hall Dennis Report “Living and Learning” was released — with similar reports being hailed all across Canada, the U.S. the U.K. and Australia. Interestingly, I went to teacher’s college in the 1971/72 year and that was all I was taught. 

It was clear then that school administrators or teachers did not decide to do this. It was political and was based on research from the mid to late 1960’s that it was bad for a child’s self-esteem to ever experience failure. The result was the start of social promotion and the watering down of the curriculum from the old skill-based teacher manuals such as “ the Grey Book” to what was, and is still called, “curriculum unit planning.”

Then, a bit later in the 1980’s, there was the emphasis that all exceptional children (whether intellectually disabled, learning disabled or gifted) had a right to the same type of education as average children, a philosophy that would eventually affect colleges and universities and the implementation of special needs departments.

Continued here.

[...] C/P at Crux-of-the-Matter & Jack’s Newswatch.