Let's suppose your kid has been labeled as bright by the Educational Experts. What does that kid need to succeed in classes for the gifted and beyond them, as a Leader of Tomorrow?

Sixty years ago, the answer to that question was (cue drum roll) ... A set of encyclopedias!

https://beatcrave.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-the-encyclopedia-salesman-by-reese-lansangan/

Let's just say that back then, educators believed in streaming not mainstreaming, and in enrichment not homogenization. And while those long-ago Educational Experts might now be tossing and turning in their graves if they knew what some of us had become, I can see upsides and downsides to both approaches, depending on the particular child.

Anyway, sixty years ago, my parents did indeed buy the World Book Encyclopedia. Those green-and-white volumes made the journey to my mother's retirement home and after she died, they came into my possession. I still have a sentimental attachment to them which is probably just as well, since the places that will accept your discarded books mostly stipulate NO ENCYCLOPEDIAS OR TEXTBOOKS!!! Still, once I shuffle off this mortal coil, I suspect they are doomed to end up in the great graveyard in the landfill, and my grandchildren will have to pay the dumping fees!

So the encyclopedia was actually not a bad investment, though perhaps not quite for the same reasons as those touted by Encyclopedia Salesman of the Year 1964, or by those Educational Experts who decided via the black magic (or at the very least grey magic) of I.Q. tests that I showed promise.

Fortunately I was the kind of kid who loved reading encyclopedias and dictionaries and almanacs, picking up useless bits of random information that my much-more-learned older siblings might not know.

So as a tribute to the World Book Encyclopedia and to encyclopaediae in general, allow me to present a few selected excerpts.

First off, from the entry for EDUCATION. It begins as follows:

"EDUCATION includes all the ways in which one person deliberately tries to influence the behavior of another person."

The entry goes on to distinguish between formal education and informal education. In terms of people and institutions (other than actual schools and teachers) that educate, the article credits: parents; libraries and museums; churches; and governments.

The entire article takes up nine pages, including various illustrations, tables, diagrams, a map of world literacy rates, and a list of suggested further reading. Of course, it has to be borne in mind that it's an encyclopedia aimed at children and deals in much more detail with the American context. There are nine sections to the article: three for education in general, three for education in the U.S., and one each for Canada, "Other countries" and "International education".

One feature of the encyclopedia that always fascinated me as a child was the trade-named Trans-vision maps. Under the entry for CANADA, Its Changing Frontiers, there was a map of Canada showing its physical topography. On top of it were 6 transparent pages showing the political divisions in 1763, 1812 ("Brave explorers probe the far Northwest" it informed me),1846, 1873, 1914, and "Canada Today" [i.e. 1964].

The entry under HUMAN BODY also had Trans-vision overlays, beginning with a skeleton over which you could (just by turning the page!) gradually overlay the various internal organs, veins and arteries, and so forth, all of them meticulously labelled. If you remember the buildable 3D models of The Invisible Man that used to be sold in hobby shops (maybe they still are), this was basically a 2D version of it. Mind you, I'm hard-pressed even as an adult to determine whether it's an invisible man or woman or intersex person - they do seem to have done their utmost to keep them gender-neutral!

Obviously an encyclopedia geared to kids - or any encyclopedia, for that matter - is not going to fulfil all of a person's homework-related or research-related needs for long. But 60 years ago, it was not a bad starting point. And it's interesting to note that World Book is one of the few encyclopedias that continues to publish in print, in hardcover, and on genuine glossy (and Trans-Vision) paper:

https://www.theledger.com/story/business/columns/2024/01/06/yes-world-book-encyclopedia-still-publishes-in-print-gadget-daddy/72110891007/
To the teachers who helped build me... I offer my thanks. All of them: the excellent teachers, the dreadful ones and the the OK ones, influenced me in some way or other. Then as now, sexism was alive and well. Girls took sewing classes while boys did woodwork. Girls took home economics while boys took metalwork. In high school, girls who wanted to go into pre-med at university were told they would need higher marks than boys who aspired to the same course of study. Women were ineligible for Rhodes scholarships.

Not that I had planned on a medical career, at least not in human medicine. I did want to go to veterinary college at one stage but abandoned the idea some time in grade nine, when we were required to dissect frogs and other pickled dead creatures.

But at least it was pretty much universally accepted that girls as well as boys should, at a minimum, graduate from secondary school and in most cases do further training, working towards some sort of postsecondary degree or diploma. In many parts of the world, education is viewed as an optional, unseemly or even illegal luxury for the female of our species.

This is back to school season. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban and other terrorist groups are committing some appalling and horrendous acts of violence.

So for many reasons, this week's donation goes to the Malala fund:

https://malala.org/
An article in the National Post pages of today's Citizen led me to contemplate how charities use the money that is donated to them:

https://epaper.nationalpost.com/ottawa-citizen/20210806/281925956066432

Of course, the National Post tends to promote rather right-of-centre viewpoints and I don't know that I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed in the above article. Nonetheless, since things started opening up here a little more, I've been making a concerted effort to support our local businesses and other organizations, many of which have sustained substantial losses during the extended months of lockdown. Last week, I went with friends to see the Queens of Egypt exhibit at the Museum of History, after which we enjoyed an excellent lunch at Fairouz in the Byward Market. It was outdoors, but nicely sheltered from the rain. Then this morning, I did a Merivale Road crawl to patronize the various local businesses along the golden mile. Even the Book Market is now open! I made it to Nicastros and an interesting Asian-oriented kitchen supply place in the Bleeker Mall, very reminiscent of Global Homeware in Chinatown. But I digress.

One item in today's paper that really impressed me was about the Society of Photographic Arts Ottawa. They are an independent nonprofit educational organization which will be providing free tuition to its students for the 2021-22 academic year. They also have public gallery space and offer some other interesting-sounding events like public lectures:

https://spao.ca/

We are all getting tired of doing everything via Zoom, even the highly cyberwise young adult population aspiring to a career in the arts, or anything else for that matter! The SPAO is to be commended and that's where this week's donation is directed.
Today's donation goes to Sharing in Student Success, which falls under the umbrella of the Caring and Sharing Exchange:

https://www.caringandsharing.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39&Itemid=115

I felt this was particularly appropriate for this week, when the majority of Ottawa-based kids returned to school, whether in person or virtually. But first a little background.

The Caring and Sharing Exchange started out life as the Christmas Exchange, helping the working poor by providing hampers of food and gifts during the holiday season. When I was a kid, my parents regularly donated to them and often the gift was a pair or two of nylons, something that was relatively expensive back in the day. Once I joined the workforce, our office would sometimes symbolically "adopt" a family, pooling donations from a particular division to buy a hamper or two. Then as I got a little more prosperous, I started making personal donations each year, usually around November or early December. I often would also support them by buying their tree ornaments.

When they expanded in 2011 into the back-to-school area, I was rather more hesitant. While not questioning the need, I felt that really that task should not fall to the charitable sector at all. After all, education is supposed to be free up to grade 12 - that's why we have a provincial Ministry of Education and why we pay for universal public education out of our property taxes. So up to now, I have limited my donations to the seasonal hamper program.

This year, however, I recognize that there are unprecedented demands on schools, teachers, students and their families arising from pandemic conditions so I have decided to make an exception. I do like that it is a secular, Ottawa-based charity and the money will remain within my own community.

Eagle-eyed followers of this blog may have noticed that there was no entry for yesterday, for the first time since lockdown began. That's because we were thoroughly preoccupied with tracking down the whereabouts of our little foster-cat, who had disappeared into the bowels of our basement. I'm happy to report that he is alive and well but still skittish and reluctant to emerge from his basement lair.
School has been starting up again in most Canadian cities over the past couple of weeks. For some, it's a hopeful sign that things may be returning to normal. For others, all the complex pandemic provisions and restrictions may be causing more anxiety than they alleviate.

I think it must be particularly hard for young people in transitional years - like those entering their first year of high school or university or some sort of special program.

Take, for example, the International Baccalaureate program. The Ottawa-Carleton school boards have apparently decided that no online version will be offered:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/no-online-learning-for-students-in-the-international-baccalaureate-program

I kind of understand where they're coming from. The dynamics of the program probably work much better, at least in the initial stages, when participants - both students and teachers - are able to get together in person and get to know one another. Trouble is, there are only two high schools in the city offering the program and kids commute from all over the city, many of them on public transit. If they or anyone in their family happen to be immune-compromised, they probably would not be willing to risk the in-person thing. And what if at some point the entire school has to close its doors on account of the virus? Then there'll be nothing to fall back on! It seems to me there should be some sort of online alternative. Keep in mind too that these students are supposed to be highly motivated and able to work well independently, as they will need to be if they hope to pursue the postsecondary and postgraduate programs of their choice. Perhaps to some extent they could play a part in crafting their own course of study, in collaboration with key educational advisors?

There's another high school in Ottawa, Canterbury, that is unique in the city for its arts programs: music, drama, visual arts and so forth. To its credit, it seems that Canterbury does intend to provide some online options, although I don't think anyone would deny that it will we quite different from pre-pandemic programming:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/extracurriuclar-covid-19-pandemic-ottawa-1.5712524

And as is also mentioned in that article, even non-specialized schools generally offer an array of extracurricular sports, clubs and activities, not all which will be possible in the Coronal universe.

To what extent does all this matter? It's hard to say at this point. One the one hand, everyone is somewhat in the same boat and some day we'll have a vaccine, an effective treatment or a cure. On the other hand, a year or two is a large portion of a young person's life and can have a huge influence on their future.

The most resilient of them will survive and even thrive. Those who are less so may be in for a long and difficult period of recovery.
Is mean-spiritedness an inevitable outcome of months of enforced social distancing? I'm beginning to think so. Two recent cases involving bylaw enforcement officers, one in Ottawa and the other in Toronto, have me shaking my head in disbelief at the pettiness of human nature and city hall.

Here is the first story:

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/plot-thickens-in-old-ottawa-south-shakespeare-drama-1.5085851

A family of five in Old Ottawa South sets up a makeshift stage in their backyard and involves their kids and a few friends in rehearsing the Shakespeare play A Comedy of Errors. All necessary safety precautions are taken and opening night was scheduled for this past weekend. The audience is limited to twenty people. It promised the young people a fun and educational in-person experience, something that has been far too rare in recent months. It wasn't conceived as a profit-making venture either. It was strictly pass-the-hat, with all proceeds donated to the Ottawa Food Bank. Surely a win-win kind of venture, don't you think?

Not so fast, said the Ottawa Bylaw folks. Your backyard isn't zoned for that. Even the mayor stepped in to offer Windsor Park for the performance, but that just didn't work for them because they would have to re-build all the stage sets over there. The latest madness is that By-law want to inspect the structure in the backyard, probably so they can maintain it was never legal in the first place and justify a hefty fine of some sort.

A comedy of errors indeed. I'd like to think next year's performance might be All's Well that Ends Well, but I rather suspect it's more likely to be Much Ado About Nothing for all those poor 'ados' and their families and friends!

Moving from "ados" to elders, many folks are having to modify their housing arrangements during this pandemic, often under less than ideal conditions. Many people see granny flats and coach houses as a sensible alternative to unhealthy and overcrowded long-term care and retirement homes, at least for some. This Toronto-area father and son felt it would work well for them. The City of Toronto, however, wasted no time in nixing the idea:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-coach-houses-illegal-city-rules-1.5703790?cmp=rss

I think back to the days when I worked with my colleagues on recruiting new people. In working out what job qualifications we required, we always allocated a bit - maybe 15% or so - to the Personal Suitability factor. This generally included things like good judgement, discretion, tact, flexibility, ability to negotiate... all qualities I find to be sorely lacking in the aforementioned bylaw enforcement officers!
On Thursday, September 3, many Ontario kids will head back to the classroom, where they will learn not to share, not to play well with others, and not to ask a grown-up for help unless that grown-up is wearing plenty of personal protective equipment.

There's plenty of anxiety to go around for parents, kids, educators and other school staff, and some public health experts too. About the only thing that's clear is that the classroom experience in the fall of 2020 will be very different from how it was in 2019. Apparently the Danish model is seen as one to emulate, while the Israeli one is to be avoided. In Ontario, a group of stakeholders is advocating the notion of going slow to go fast:

https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Gentle-Re-opening-of-Ontario-Schools.pdf

Some parents feel they simply have no choice but to send their kids back to school if their family is to survive. On the other hand, many others are fairly optimistic and look forward to a return to modified normalcy.

I honestly don't know what I would do if I still had school-aged children to consider. Parents are being given very little time to make rather crucial decisions. I've always been interested in the phenomenon of home-schooling, although it never seemed practical for us. For that matter, it's impractical for a lot of modern-day families. But since the pandemic struck, in-school schooling has come to rival it in impracticality! Education has become one big ad hoc experiment.

The main consolation is that everyone in the education system is at least to some degree in the same boat. So we all have a vested interest in putting appropriate measures in place to keep that boat afloat!
Somebody once said "My education was interrupted by my schooling." Or words to that effect. It may have been Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill. Maybe it was none of the above. In any case, a better truism for this day and age might be "My schooling was interrupted by my education." An education in real life under a pandemic. A school-aged child might also say "This is the way my world ended. Not with a whimper but a BANG!"

Even families who had embraced home schooling to some extent in pre-pandemic days are feeling the strain. At CHEO, Alex Munter has joined the chorus of public health officials in proclaiming that keeping schools closed during a pandemic is much more injurious to our kids' health than re-opening them full-time with a few sensible safety precautions in place. I'm inclined to agree and so, it seems, are plenty of harried Ontario parents, especially if their kids have special needs.

Way back in the 1960s, schools were bursting at the seams. Every classroom typically had 40 students, often more. The schoolyard often had a little village of portable classrooms. When new schools could not be built quickly enough - think Canterbury, for example - plans were occasionally crafted to have two shifts a day (say, 7AM to noon and 1PM to 6PM) of students in one school until the new one was ready. Then after the baby-boomers graduated, schools closed en masse.

The issues facing educators today are a bit different from those of 60 years ago, but one thing remains the same: we don't have enough school-space for the number of kids enrolled. Back then, it was a matter of sheer numbers; now it's a problem of lack of the space required for physical distancing.

Could we not re-open a few schools that were closed for under-enrolment? Repurpose buildings that are currently unused or under-used? And even bring back portable classrooms and build new ones? It seems to me that if an outbreak were to occur in a portable classroom, it would be much easier to keep it contained. And cleaning could occur during school hours too - just move the remaining students to a different classroom.

Does anyone remember the days when every school had a nurse on site? Why not have the nurse located in a portable? Why not put testing sites in portables too?

Fewer kids in a classroom would presumably mean more teachers would be required, or perhaps other adults to supervise independent work or study. I don't think that's an insurmountable problem, though. After all, plenty of working parents have been struggling these past few months to telecommute, teach and look after their kids and look after all the household chores with no access to any kind of outside help.

We've been footing the bill for public education even during the lockdown and while I know most teachers are doing their best and have had their own lives and families and problems to deal with, is it really too much to ask that we get our kids back in real-life school in September?
... and Sally, sometimes referred to in those books as "Baby". This pandemic has dramatically changed how We Look and See; where We Work and Play; and whether We Come and Go.

In my home library, I have a book called Storybook Treasury of Dick and Jane and Friends. It contains the complete text of the three pre-primers that ageing boomers and WWII-era babies and even some Gen-Xers and Millennials know (but maybe don't love) so well: We Look and See, c1946 (copyright renewed 1974); We Come and Go, c1940 (copyright renewed 1968); and The New We Work and Play, c1956 (copyright renewed 1984). They formed a large part of my early schooling and they are an even more interesting read today.

I'm really not sure who is under the most stress these days. Is it the harried parent who's multi-tasking like crazy, trying to simultaneously look after the kids (and maybe an elderly parent who also lives on-site), teach them their school curriculum, maintain the household and telecommute to the pre-pandemic day job? Or is it the Covid-19 (or prospective Covid-19) invalid stuck at home alone in enforced idleness and self-isolation? I'll readily admit that it's not us, a couple in our sixties who can keep each other's spirits up, bake our own bread and put in an online order at the local Petsmart for OUR Puff, which we can then have delivered to the trunk of our car an hour later in the pet store's parking lot.

Still, worry can sap one's energy, so I think this is about all I'll write for today. But if you'd like to take a look at these literary classics I've just mentioned, you can "look inside" the book here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Storybook-Treasury-Dick-Jane-Friends/dp/0448433400/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=storybook+treasury+of+dick+and+jane&qid=1586278711&sr=8-1
I recently wrote about the Amber Alert system, arguing that while children certainly deserve to live in a safe environment, there has got to be a better way of accomplishing this. But while children may indeed be at risk of being harmed by the significant adults in their lives, sometimes it's a two-way street. School-aged kids are more violent than they were a decade or two ago, to the point that some teachers and other school staff are resorting to Kevlar vests and shin-guards to protect themselves!

How did it all come to this? Is society going to hell in a hand basket? Is it the fault of liberalized divorce laws, "illegitimate" kids and "broken homes"? Should we bring back dress codes and detentions? What about The Strap, The Ruler, and all the other torturous weapons of corporal punishment of yesteryear?

There are no easy answers. But I think a lot of the problem is that we have moved from an isolationist or segregationist model to an integrationist one. Neither is good or bad in itself - it's just that it's unrealistic to suppose we can have a one-size-fits-all model under which all kids can thrive.

Here's how the segregated model worked. When I was at school in the 1960s, it was the era of the Cold War and the "space race". There was an "accelerated" program whereby kids completed grades one through four in three years and it seems to me at least half the kids in our school were doing that. There were also a few decelerated, remedial or "opportunity" classes for those who were progressing more slowly. Then there were "enrichment" or "gifted" programs in subsequent grades and for grades seven and eight (in some schools, grades six through eight), we rotated classes through the day with subject teachers and home-room teachers and for these grades students were "streamed" into A-stream, B-stream or C-stream classes. High school was a little different again and we actually got to pick from a few options (though there were rather more compulsory courses in those days than there are now). There was an accelerated program here too, although it wasn't as prevalent as the ones at the elementary level.

And that was just the kids who were basically "normal" as we would have said in those days. If you were physically, mentally or behaviourally aberrant in some way, you likely wouldn't attend a regular public school at all - you would go to some sort of special school, either as a day-student commuting from your own home or in some kind of a residential setting. Anyway, the point I'm making is that the old system grouped together those kids who were expected to progress through the curriculum at a similar rate for whatever reason: past achievements, scores on standardized tests, diligence or even just the capacity to sit in a classroom and obey the teacher's instructions.

To be sure, there was probably some damage done by labelling and categorizing some kids at too early an age, or making unwarranted assumptions about them or being oblivious to their particular learning style.

But now we have a kind of integrational mania. We seem to have this notion that every child should enter a particular grade at a particular age. In Ontario at least, it seems few kids are being held either held back a grade or bumped up a grade, regardless of whether they have mastered their grade-level material. Even kids who have highly intensive educational, intellectual and emotional needs are being integrated into regular classrooms. It puts a huge strain on the teachers, aides, social workers and other school staff, not to mention the majority of other students - the fairly-neurotypical-kids of taxpaying parents who surely are just as deserving of an effective and stimulating educational environment. And that's before we even get into the financial considerations, whether they are borne privately by individual families or collectively by the system as a whole.

I'd like to think we live in a more enlightened age. And I do certainly see the value of kids retaining strong ties to their families and their communities. On the other hand, we shouldn't toss out what was good about the "good old days". We should preserve a range of options within our educational system. Because kids are not all the same.
In a Staples commercial, that time isn't Christmas. In fact, Christmas seems to be a bit of a dirty word these days, even though most people I know celebrate Christmas and not primarily in a religious way, either! No, it refers to back-to-school.

Actually, autumn, back-to-school time and Thanksgiving have long been my favourite time of year. They feel like a time of renewal, even though the leaves are getting ready to fall off the trees, the geese and other migratory birds are flying south, and nature is hibernating and going dormant.

Is it a good time for most families? The implication of the commercial seems to be that the adults are tired of having their kids around, that there's been just a bit too much family togetherness for their liking.

Staples is not the only organization making the link between Christmas and back-to-school. Ottawa's Christmas Exchange has rebranded itself as the "Caring and Sharing Exchange" and started providing school supplies to low-income families. Because for most families, if fall is the most wonderful time of the year, it's also the most expensive time.

I've donated to the Christmas Exchange for a number of years now, following a family tradition. I recall as a kid, my mother would pick up a few extra packages of nylon stockings - a luxury in those days - to donate. The charity has always been non-denominational although I think at one time, they had a policy of dispensing their largesse only to the "working poor", not those on welfare - this notion of "deserving" versus "undeserving" poverty and helping those who help themselves. Or maybe I've got that wrong and the philosophy behind the policy was that the state was already looking after those on public assistance, whereas the working poor tended to get lost in the shuffle.

Although I'm still sending them annual donations, I have to say that I'm seriously conflicted about their expanded role. While it's undeniable that back-to-school can be a heavy financial burden for many families, I firmly believe that most school supplies should be provided by the schools themselves, at least for the elementary and perhaps intermediate grades. After all, half of our property taxes in this province are earmarked to support public education - and I've always considered that to be a valid price to pay to support a public good like that.

When I was at school, notebooks and pencils and paper and textbooks were all provided to us up to grade eight. They even provided ink and pens too, if you didn't mind scratching away with a straight pen - the type with cod-liver-oil on the nib that you had to lick off before the nib would work properly. In grade eight, we actually had a somewhat eccentric home-room teacher who demanded that we use these nefarious pens until our handwriting was good enough that we could "graduate" to a fountain or cartridge pen. Ballpoint pens were strictly taboo, though - perhaps not surprising since in those days, they were very messy and blotchy and leaky things. Anyway, I'm not sure what the rationale was for thinking we'd have neater penmanship wielding a straight pen than if we were allowed to use the more user-friendly fountain or cartridge pens. Whatever the case, I seem to recall he told us some time between Christmas and Easter that we could all start using fountain pens, since if we hadn't perfected our straight-penmanship by now, there was no hope for us!

Nowadays, of course, kids hunch over keyboards and no one worries about their handwriting any more. As for adults, we have fewer and fewer occasions to sign our names and more and more PINs to forget!

But I digress. By the time I reached high school, we had to provide all of our school supplies except the textbooks - but there WERE school fees to cover at least a portion of the textbook cost. And if we lost any of them, we had to replace them at our own (or really, our parents') expense. Only in grade 13 did we have to buy all our own texts (this, I believe, was a change from when my siblings had been in high school a few years earlier, and textbooks were the family's responsibility right from grade nine onwards).

If we went back to having school supplies provided in elementary school, this would make for better standardization - the kids would have the supplies that the teachers wanted them to - and the school board could take advantage of bulk purchasing and economies of scale. And there would be far less stigma and embarrassment for the children of low-income families.

But, you might protest, we don't have unlimited funds here. Well, no. So I'll briefly outline a few of my ideas as to how the school system could save money.

First of all, it's tremendously wasteful that we have TWO school systems in Ontario - one for the "public" schools and one for the Roman Catholics. But I realize that can't be changed overnight, so I'll leave it aside for now.

Secondly, what's with all the bussing? On the one hand, we lament the growing obesity rate of today's children but on the other, we bus children far from their neighbourhoods and supply the transportation at public expense. I couldn't believe it when I read that the public school board was thinking of providing those yellow buses even to high school students - as the Catholic schools apparently already do. Couldn't we reframe how we think about this, and consider it a basic right of most elementary school-age kids to live within walking distance of their schools, and high school students perhaps at a farther distance, but still accessible by public transit? That would save the boards considerable money on transportation. Yes, in some areas it would mean some sparsely-populated classrooms but given that teachers have been bellyaching about high teacher-pupil ratios for decades, is that really such a bad thing? I also think that split grades are not such a bad thing. After all, the old-fashioned one-room schoolhouses were the ultimate in split grades - the older children helped the younger ones and learned responsibility, and many subjects can be tackled by children of various ages, just with a greater or lesser degree of sophistication. I was very impressed recently, for example, with a project on photography that the students (of all ages, K-6 or possibly K-8) at Brooke Valley School in Perth had done. Mind you, I'm not suggesting a return to rote learning and corporal punishment or some of the other aspects of old-fashioned education.

I also have some reservations about full-day kindergarten. It's very expensive. Early childhood education is certainly important, but does it have to be in a classroom setting? There's probably no going back on that one but at the very least, it seems to me that it shouldn't entirely supercede half-day kindergarten for parents who prefer the half-day model. More important, in my view, is preparing teenagers for what they'll do after leaving high school. That includes possible attendance at university, although that should NOT be presented as the only socially acceptable option, and not necessarily something to be done right away, either. What about encouraging a "gap year" as they do in many parts of Europe?

Lots of issues. Lots of possible future blog entries here!
When I joined the federal public service in the mid-1970s, it was much more credentials-based than it is now. If you had a 3-year general Bachelor's degree, an honours (4-year) degree, a Master's degree-without-thesis or degree-with-thesis, or a PhD, you were guaranteed a specific minimum starting salary. And it was expected that for the first few years at least, you would have a good chance of getting regular raises and promotions based on your increasing value to your employer. Even somewhere around the late 1980s or early 1990s, I recall being asked, when I applied for a competitive process, for "certified copies" of my degrees, a request which even the degree-granting academic institutions were unsure how to handle! (The eventual solution? I was to bring the original degrees in when I came for my interview and someone from Human Resources would photocopy them and attach a note stating that she had seen the originals.)

Nowadays, it seems everyone is into "competencies". Sounds great in theory, right? After all, no one wants incompetent employees, especially when even the competent ones are stretched much too thinly to cover the work that needs to be done.

Parallel to that is the demand for "generic" job descriptions to streamline the recruitment and hiring processes. Again, most people would love to shorten the time required to get qualified staff in place. (Though as an aside which merits a blog entry all on its own,I think it must be said that safeguarding the merit principle takes a certain amount of time and energy. An equitable public service with a composition reflecting that of the country as a whole is a value worth striving to protect. Private sector employers, while they might do well to emulate the public sector in some respects, simply do not face the same constraints.)

The problem is that the skill set of knowledge workers is NOT made up primarily of generic skills, and that's precisely what makes those workers so valuable in the first place.

Faced with demands for "competency-based" recruitment and "generic" job descriptions in order to expedite staffing, overburdened human resources officers are understandably inclined to craft job descriptions based mainly on what we used to call the "soft skills", things like being a team player, having a superior service orientation, having good communication skills, being committed to life-long learning, and so on. Certainly these skills are important. But how do you measure them? And should they be valued at the expense of that body of scarce professional and technical knowledge and expertise that is implied by an advanced degree?

What seems to me to be happening is that the "personal suitability" cluster of attributes, which used to be weighted at about ten or at most fifteen percent of the ultimate hiring decision for a professional employee, is now accorded more like eighty-five or ninety percent weight in the decision. The relative weights of the "hard skills" and "soft skills" have been effectively reversed.

But is that just a question of different needs in today's workplace, I hear you ask?

Well, look at it this way. Supposing doctors were chosen strictly on the basis of their "bedside manner" with no regard to their area of specialization. It's all very well to reduce wait-times, to have doctors who truly listen to what their patients have to say, to make the patient's experience in the doctor's office a little more pleasant. But at the end of the day, if that wonderfully personable, service-oriented doctor lacks the expertise and professional judgement to make a reliable diagnosis and prescribe an appropriate course of treatment, the lives and health of the patients will be needlessly placed in jeopardy.

There is a similar problem with this emphasis on "front-line" services at the expense of "back-room" services. Fact is, front-line service is often merely the tip of the iceberg. The back-room services are the rest of it - or perhaps more accurately, the foundation that keeps the building standing and working the way it should. We've seen a few scandals over mismanagement of medical records and to my mind that can only get worse if we continue to focus only on those activities that are conducted in public areas.

A degree or diploma or certificate is, or ought to be, a shorthand guarantee that a prospective employee has at least a certain minimal set of skills and attributes - a necessary and often sufficient condition for at least an entry-level job in that person's field of expertise. And if you had to make the choice, wouldn't you rather hire people based on what they've demonstrated over a period of years that they are capable of, rather than on their bubbly personality that won you over during an hour-long interview?
Is Wi-Fi in the classroom harmful to the students' health?

If by "harmful" we mean that it poses a direct, scientifically verifiable and quantifiable health hazard, then I suspect the answer is no. Even if there WERE some risk, it would be pretty hard to protect your children from it altogether, as there are hotspots in most public libraries, coffee shops and other well-frequented public spaces. Still, a small but vocal lobby group of parents and teachers clearly believes that WI-FI is dangerous and should be banned from the classroom.

It's a nonstarter just to tell these concerned adults that they are complete and utter fools who ought to know better than to react so irrationally and subscribe to all this voodoo-magic-nonsense. Instead, we should say to them, "Tell me about these children's symptoms so we can get to the bottom of this problem." Because the symptoms, whatever their root cause, are real. If it's something ELSE (or more likely, a number of other things) that's putting our kids at risk, I sure as hell want to know about it so we can eliminate or at least mitigate that risk.

I'm reminded of the scare surrounding video display terminals (VDTs) that occurred in the 1970s and 80s when libraries were ditching the card catalogue and moving to an online environment. A majority of cataloguers were young women in their childbearing years. Rumour had it that the VDTs were giving off dangerously high levels of radiation that would harm a developing foetus and infiltrate a mother's milk supply. The doctors, particularly if they worked in the field of occupational health, were quick to dismiss these fears. Nonetheless, a certain number of young women who worked at VDTs - maybe a statistically significant number or maybe not - went on to have pregnancies or postpartum experiences which were in some way problematic.

Chances are, these experiences were nothing to do with radiation. Maybe it was the air quality in those ultra-energy-efficient office buildings of the era, where you couldn't even open a window to get fresh air. Maybe it was the insulation in the buildings that was the problem - many buildings contained asbestos or UFFI, for example. Maybe the women were simply exhausted from working full days almost up to their due dates and then returning to work as soon as their 15-week "unemployment" insurance benefits ran out, so their resistance was down and their health suffered.
Who knows?

So to go back to the WI-FI scare, we need to really LISTEN to and THINK about these parents' and teachers' concerns if we are to have any hope of properly diagnosing the problem.

There's something else too. Maybe schoolchildren really DO spend too much time these days doing things on the computer - at the expense of, say, physical activity, or reading real books made of real paper or talking to real-live people in real time about real-life issues. Maybe they should even be doing more of the things that people of my generation scorned as being too mechanical or robotic, like memorizing poetry and doing mental arithmetic.

If we could arrive at a compromise solution and balance the risks so that kids simply spent LESS time exposed to WI-FI, less time peering at a computer screen, less time being subjected to endless computer-generated worksheets, busywork, and standardized IQ and aptitude tests, would that be such a bad thing?
On the Faith and Ethics page in yesterday's Citizen, the question asked of the experts is "Should children be left to make up their own minds about religion?" The Roman Catholic priest and the pastor from the Metropolitan Bible Church came down on the "No" side while the other experts, to my pleasant surprise, seemed to lean towards a qualified "Yes".

By the time I came along, the youngest of four children, my family was not affiliated with any particular church. So until I started school, I had no exposure to religion. But in the 1960s, even in the public school system, there was no escaping it! School officials didn't believe you if you said you had no religion, so my parents taught me to say I was Anglican or, more generically, Protestant. They had come over not that long ago from England where, even if you were not devout, you could sort of say you were Church of England, and Anglicanism was and is the closest Canadian equivalent.

At school, we started each day with the Lord's Prayer and some sort of a Bible reading. We also sang hymns and had "religious education" once or twice a week. Up to about grade 5, I'm sure I won no friends in telling my peers that I didn't believe in God. Fortunately I was not one to speak up much in class, so I never got into trouble that way with my teachers nor did I have the Christian Aid Society sicced on me! Yet just as I entered the intermediate grades and was starting to explore new ideas and wonder if perhaps I DID believe in something, suddenly my fellow students were tripping over themselves to proclaim their non-belief, with Christianity (and probably just about any other religion unless it involved the Maharishi) being mocked as being as naive as believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy!

When I went to Arch Street School, I remember the principal telling us all during an assembly that if we didn't already go to church or Sunday school, we should go home and tell our parents that we wanted to start going. Nowadays, of course, he would be severely reprimanded for doing something like that but I'm sure he meant well and believed he would be saving our souls. Anyway, that was one instruction that I didn't follow because my contemporaries, even if they were believers, assured me that church and Sunday school were boring. Still, I think I did fleetingly wonder if I was destined for eternal damnation!

When I moved back to Vincent Massey for grades seven and eight, the grade seven teacher suggested that we have regular classes in comparative religion. He wasn't the most popular teacher around but in that particular respect, I think he was extremely progressive and well ahead of his time. But by this stage of our development, a majority of the students were at the all-out religious rejection stage and for lack of popular support, nothing ever came of the idea. In grade eight, our home-room teacher was atheist or agnostic and refused to teach religion in any form. But I guess maybe it was still a curricular requirement, so he went and taught a math class to some grade sevens, while the grade seven teacher (not the progressive one who had wanted to teach comparative religion) came and tried to impart his religious faith to a typical classful of smart-alec grade eights (us). I don't know what particular denomination this grade seven teacher belonged to but he WAS rather odd! I later heard he had been fired for refusing to shave off his beard but that might have been an urban legend.

But back to my religion or lack thereof. I certainly don't fault my parents for not giving me religion. In fact, I think it would have been decidedly hypocritical of them to insist I attend church or Sunday school when they themselves were non-believers. And in many ways, it was the best situation I could have been in - they raised no objections, for example, when I attended Day School Gospel League after school, or the local United Church for services or CGIT. They simply asserted their belief in freedom of religion.

Still, I AM glad that I went to school when religion was still taught. After all, religion is about much more than just saving souls! It serves a social and community function and is a crucial piece of our culture and heritage. Think of all the allusions in literature, art, music, theatre and so forth that we could not appreciate if we did not have at least a passing acquaintance with the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Or mythology, which was also people's religion in earlier times. Yes, I think a comparative religion approach would have been more appropriate, at least from about grade five or six onwards. And there's no reason why we have to stick to learning about Judaeo-Christian religions either - that's all the more true as we become a more cosmopolitan and multicultural society. But I do sometimes wonder if kids at school these days may be missing out on crucial elements of their cultural heritage as we rush towards political correctness and the reluctance to offend anyone in our diverse society.

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