CHILDREN LEARN WHAT THEY ARE TAUGHT

The British Columbia Teacher's Federation wants the government to abandon the Foundation Skills Assessment tests for students in fourth, seventh, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. The tests measure basic skills like maths and reading. The teachers' union is afraid that the tests are harming education by allowing parents to know which schools fare poorly.

I think the term necessary at this point is truth in advertising. I am a parent and, naturally, I wish to know the status of my child's education. The BCTF's reluctance to have accountability is devious and self-serving to the union. Put up or shut up comes to mind. Either teachers will perform well in the classroom or they will fail. The FSA is a measure that they need to consider while they teach.

There should be higher standards for education but I am dubious about BC school workers' ability to deliver excellence. The public school education that I have seen in the province is crap. Teachers with mental and competency issues are styled into "education experts". Curriculum is either dumb downed to the level of a nematode or is esoterically academic. It is a blessing that the only correct thing that BCTF has promulgated is the call for less homework for younger children. The reading material provided in most classrooms is idiot makelit and the maths are pigeon droppings from an ivory tower.

Education south of the border, in America, is as clueless. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wishes to have classes meet seven days a week, eleven months out of the year. What fyking planet is he on? When will children be able to learn on their own when the school system has them captive for an entire week? There will be no time to read literature but only the unimaginative and sanitized pap spewed from the textbook companies. Literature is a bold, messy, rude middle finger to the corporate niceness of most school test-based dribblings that masquerade as genuine books in the typical classroom. Less schools and more libraries would be the best remedy for education. Children, the plastic deities of academics forbid, might learn to think... and to think for themselves.

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