Ontario is in a bad situation right now. The Liberals are currently in charge, and they are beset by scandal and have been in power long enough to have the public wanting to give them the heave ho. The issue isn't that the Liberals are on the way out - it is that the polling suggests that the Conservatives are headed into power in the election that is coming up soon.
I always expect Conservatives to come into power with visions of doling out money to the rich and stomping on the poor. They will try to fill the prisons with people who are harmless and encourage cars as the default mode of transport. That is all awful but I know it is coming every time the pendulum swings to the Conservative side.
I just saw that the newly minted Conservative leader Doug Ford (Yes, he is the brother of the famous crack smoking mayor of Toronto) has some new talking points, and they include his desire to roll back the public school curriculum to the 'good ole days'. He wants to get rid of the updated sex ed curriculum to go back to the old style where children are taught that sex is bad, queer people don't exist, and the only thing we should be teaching is making babies. Ontario's new curriculum is a huge improvement over the 'good ole days' because it openly talks about all kinds of different people and addresses consent even with young children. Unfortunately religious groups don't like children having information and don't want them taught that being gay is ok, so they campaign against it under the guise of wanting more consultation.
"I want more consultation" is, as always, code for "I want things my way". No matter who is saying it.
Ford also wants to go back to old style mathematics. Rote learning and drills are the way of the future, he thinks. The fact that endless drills don't provide the best learning for anyone doesn't seem to dissuade him. Neither does the fact that inflexible styles are terrible for many students who don't fit neatly into a factory teaching style. Usually the pitch is that drills make students more prepared for the real world, but there aren't employers out there desperately clamoring for workers who can sit at a desk and fill out worksheets full of arithmetic problems. There are employers out there who want workers who can tackle problems creatively though, but that isn't Ford's concern. Let's be frank: This is about conformity and obedience, a desire to have children who do as they are fucking told and are convenient. It has nothing to do with effective education.
These potential changes to education are really getting to me. I know all the economic insanity the Conservatives will get up to if they win, but knowing that they intend to step in and trash education makes me so ANGRY.
This election the Conservatives are openly and brazenly appealing to people's desires for conformity and obedience. They are making it clear they want everyone to be religious, straight, and deliver shareholder value. We can do better than that, and we should.
The Liberals have screwed up big time in plenty of ways. The Conservatives are actively campaigning for dystopia. I am going to support the NDP in this upcoming election as they are the party that closest aligns with my values, and if you are in Ontario I hope you do the same.
Liberals have been in bed with the unions long enough that too much of Ontario is employed by the Government, with a healthy share of those not employed by them being employed simply to help their employers keep up with regulations. The PCs on the other hand are too much in bed with the social wing. The NDP still give me nightmares about Rae-days as I was in High School and early University when they were last in power. I am sitting this one out.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my current prediction is NDP minority government (despite generally voting centre-right myself). I am envisioning Doug Ford's BIG mouth getting him in trouble sometime between now and June 7, costing him the premiership.
Well, an NDP minority would be a great result as far as I can see. That isn't what the numbers show at the moment though.
DeleteThe thing about regulation is this: It is all well and good to decry regulations in the general sense, but unless you actually know what regulations you want to get rid of it is a pointless thing to talk about. Do you know why our water and air are far cleaner today than they have been for decades or even centuries? Regulations. Schools have to report abuse instead of ignoring it because of regulations. Car pollution is down 95% because of regulations. Those regulations save lives, and yes the businesses that operate in those areas will complain but since nobody wants to live in an area without those regulations I don't think the complaints of businesses should take precedence. Are there tons of specific regulations that are bogus? Sure! But *no* political party has reduced regulations in a consistently good way in the modern era, so suggesting that one party is responsible for that is wildly incorrect. They have all stacked up more regulations when they were in power, and look to continue to do so.
So if you have specific regulations that you want gone, I would happily discuss those. I am sure there are some. But the problem is that if a party isn't specific and just says 'reduce regulations' then they probably mean 'trash the environment for profits' or 'dump the cost of coping with this stuff on the public sector to increase profits' and neither of those things is good governance.
Rote learning and drills are terribly effective at learning specifics. I was amused that my daughter's class does not have worksheets of drills except for the month before the standardized test. It works to get higher scores; except it kills the joy of learning for many students.
ReplyDeleteYeah, drills can teach you specific things, but I don't think those specific things are actually the things we most want to be teaching children.
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