The Joy of Learning

 

Remarks from a Beaches-East York All-Candidates Meeting on May 12, 2022:

I have spent my life in and around education. You’d think by now I would have learned something.

More than that, I’m a father. Education matters to me deeply. 

Simply spending more money on schools is not much help.

As of 2022, Ontario spends $14,821 per pupil. That’s in line with other provinces, more than the US, more than Finland or Korea or Singapore, all of which do better on the OECD’s measures of student success. 

Yet the schools are in crisis.

Why do the rich send their children to private schools? Why do private schools consistently get better results with less money? Why do homeschoolers get better results?

The most urgent matter is to get Critical Theory out of the schools, and keep it out. 

New Blue has been the leader in alerting us to this issue. Every other party endorsed Bill 67 on second reading, and Bill 67 would actually mandate Critical Theory in our schools and colleges at every level.

Aside from destroying civil society, Critical Theory makes education itself meaningless. If you believe there is no objective truth, there is nothing to teach, and nothing to learn. Everyone just makes up whatever they want to believe, and tries to impose it on others. 

Or their students.

This is the emergency. But over the longer term, the way to improve education is to introduce competition.

New Blue wants tax credits to allow more parents to choose their children’s education. 

Since at least the early 20th century, our public schools have not been designed to produce excellence. They have been designed to produce workers for industry. The rich can sent their kids to private schools that teach leadership, and this perpetuates class divisions.

Most of the work of my own online academy is teaching students the skills the public schools will not teach.

We need to level this playing field. 

Could we not fix the public system? To some extent, no doubt; but this will take more time, tears, and sweat. The forces against this are entrenched and powerful. In the meantime, too many young minds will be wasted. 

And even if we can, school choice is needed in a pluralistic society. 

Our founders and our constitution understood this. Diversity is our strength. So we have the separate school system, originally one system for Catholics, and another for Protestants. 

But two systems are hardly adequate any longer. They are laughably inadequate. We need to extend equal rights to other faiths and life philosophies. Values are the core of education, and parents must be able to pass their values on to the next generation. This is what parenting is about.

Let’s bring the joy of true learning to the schools.