Twenty-Nine Steps to Better Education

Twenty-Nine Steps to Better Education

by Belle Watling

Everybody has an opinion on how to make education better in the Province but nobody asked me or my friends down at the "Beaubier" for our advice, so I'm taking it upon myself to pass on the results of our recent discussions. They became a bit prolix so I had to reduce the rather turgid prose to simple point form recommendations. Bear with me and enjoy a fine Kokonee while you're reading: it sure helped us.

1. Reform the school year for K to grade 8. Begin in September and end in August. Yeah, you got it. No summer break just like us parents.
2. No social passes. If we need 10 year olds in grade 1, then so be it.
3. Link funding of schools to performance of students.
4. No tenure for teachers between K to 12.
5. Decentralize. Go back to small schools. I went to school in a one-room school house (had to walk three miles up hill to get there too...;)
6. Reform curriculum and base it on multiple intelligences. No, I don't mean group intelligences.
7. Expand teachables to include Geology, Computer Science, Sociology, Economics, and Political Science. (Wouldn't hurt to have children know about who leads us)
8. Require 12 years of Math preparation before College or University.
9. Move the Department of Education to Thompson or The Pas. This will help the housing market up there.
10. Allow teachers to teach only those subjects they have expertise in.
11. Abolish the K-12 "broad" certification.
12. Tenure should be conferred only after certification at all three levels of teaching. Yup, all three so that everyone knows what the other teacher is faced with.
13. Abolish School team sports in K to 8.
14. Give textbooks to children to take home. One book = one child? Novel eh?
15. Ban fund raising by children.
16. Promote academic competition and reward the best.
17. Start schools for gifted children; and gifted doesn't just mean math and science.
18. Require more language proficiency by the end of Grade 12. English plus 2 of either French, Spanish, Chinese, German, or Hebrew. One must be ideographic.
19. Reintroduce Greek and Latin. Vertitas te faciet rubor!
20. Require school uniforms.
21. Return to 8-hour school days.
22. Allow professional development only during holiday time. (They have plenty of time in July and August).
23. Make parent-teacher interviews compulsory between K to 12.
24. Allow professional upgrading only for subject competency.
25. Install video cameras in Principals office, Classrooms and staff Rooms. Televise on the Internet to parents on a pay-for-view basis. (This will help cover field trip expenses).
26. Make supervision of extra curricular activities part of the teaching contract.
27. Require Provincial Certification exams for all teachers before hiring.
28. Require all principals to have an M.B.A. Yes, an M.B.A.
29. Abolish recess. School should not be fun.
30. Have a happy school year. O.K., so I can't add. I'm a victim too.