Yesterday, when having lunch with my daughters at a café after a mid-morning bike ride, I added yet another reason to the repertoire of why we homeschool. I picked up a copy of the Toronto Star—something I only do when it is free—and found a glowing article about the three bills that high school students have put forward to the Ontario legislature.
The kids were ecstatic. The Star even quoted one: “I was like, wow! This is so amazing!”. Like, wow, what do they teach you in English class? But more importantly, what do they teach you in social studies? Here are the issues that these kids felt were of utmost importance to their fellow teenagers. Number one: blue boxes must be made mandatory in every classroom. Number two: employers should be required to inform student employees of their rights. And number three: schools must inform students of healthy eating choices.
Where to begin? Recycling can be achieved without a law. Requiring employers to tell students of their rights may work for large employers, but will almost guarantee to dry up the demand for student labour from smaller employers. I don’t know what students’ right are. Do you? That doesn’t mean I’d violate them; I’m a fair and generous person. But if I’m afraid I might inadvertently break a law, I just won’t go there. As for healthy eating, that’s just what we need: schools spending even more time on things that are peripheral to education, instead of ensuring that kids are literate.
All of this makes me wonder if kids in school are just being taught fads, and don’t really understand what are the most serious things affecting them. So here are my suggestions of three bills I’d like to see to aid high school students as they launch their lives.
Number one: require all parents with children under the age of 18 who want to get divorced to take a six week marriage counseling course for the purpose of reconciling differences, not just acquainting yourself with life after divorce (as they do in Alberta). No divorce without trying to work it out. If you want to look at what really affects the outcome of teens, it’s not whether or not they’ve recycled their old math tests. It’s whether they grow up with both parents in the house.
Here’s another one: institute a standardized test for university acceptance that truly measures aptitude. Using high school marks is aribitrary and discriminatory. Some schools mark easier than others, and while universities try to rank schools to get an idea of whether a 95 from Sir Winston Churchill Secondary is the same as an 89 from Laura Second High, it’s inefficient and subject to too much human error.
Besides that, an SAT would help uncover those kids who may be smart but didn’t do as well in high school because they had to hold down jobs to help support families, or they weren’t challenged by the curriculum, or they had a bad year. We lose so many of our very bright kids because school turns them off. Basing admittance on an SAT-like test would allow those smart kids to shine.
And you can do well on an SAT whether you come from a poorer, inner-city school or an elite private school. It’s inherently egalitarian. Of course, the United States has used SAT scores for years and has now decided that they are racist because Asians score better than whites who score better than Hispanics who score better than African-Americans. And since there can’t possibly be cultural reasons why IQ would be disparate like that, the test itself must be labeled racist. I doubt Ontario could avoid a similar fight, but it’s a fight worth having in order to be able to discern who really will succeed in university. They have yet to find a better predictor for university success in the United States than the SAT, and we should adopt it, too.
Finally, if we really wanted to improve the lives of students in Ontario, we’d implement school choice. Break the public school monopoly, and hand the control over to parents who will know when a high school isn’t working for their kids. Give them the control to find the right school—or even start a new school—that will best meet their children’s needs. Pretending that a monolithic school that serves 1,500 kids is going to be the best place for each and every one of them is ridiculous. Give parents the choice of smaller, more diverse schools, and we would see more kids being interested, engaged, and hence succeeding in the education process.
Of course, they may not be recycling, and they may not know about healthy eating choices. But their parents will stay together, getting into university will become more of a level playing field, and they’ll learn more at high school. Which do you think would be better?
- FAMILY VALUES: Don’t Follow Your Heart - Friday June 25, 2010 at 9:39 am
- A Graduation Speech - Friday June 18, 2010 at 8:35 am
- FAMILY VALUES: Too Young to Be Hot - Friday June 4, 2010 at 9:50 am
