The Risks Facing Education in Canada

Commentary

The continuity of civilization and national prosperity depends on the education of next generations and their preparation as a capable and willing labour force. But many employers find Canadian-born youth lacking the required education, skills, and work ethic. That’s one reason for lagging business investment and corresponding productivity.

Only limited prowess exists beyond STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). In universities it survives mostly among immigrants and their children, and foreign students. A Canadian-born friend doing a degree in engineering at McGill told me she did the writing for group projects “because engineers can’t write.”

Current orthodoxy includes the falsehood that ethnic differences determine outcomes. But it’s bigotry—often racist bigotry—to lower expectations for perceived minorities. Many factors explain why youth of any background may need supplementary help.

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An important benefit of increased intensiveness and high expectations is its impact on teenage depression. Students immersed in their studies aren’t hooked on social media—in effect, a narcotic like crack cocaine that impairs the brain. With good reason, high-tech titans curtail their own children’s use of computer technology.

And one way to promote a healthy mind in a healthy body—seldom implemented outside independent schools—is to start the school day with an exercise class requiring universal attendance. In addition to releasing energy that otherwise might make trouble, it also lessens the challenge of obesity carried forward into adulthood.

Independent schools hire those who know and love their subject, and pass on their enthusiasm. So why do public schools require the make-work of a teaching degree? The BEd at McGill even has a full course devoted to teaching math in primary school!

As demonstrated in the book “The Education of Eva Moskowitz,” education thrives—especially for those in most need—in charter schools. By extension, whether run by the state, charter or otherwise independent, schools should get their money from vouchers allocated to students for the schools they want to attend. As Milton Friedman said in a 1995 essay in the Washington Post, competition for customers is as necessary in education as in any other field.

It should be obvious that an effective and prospering democracy requires an education system that delivers to next generations the capacity for evaluating choices. Today, however, social-justice indoctrination dominates education, leaving far too many students deprived of basic knowledge, skills, and work ethic.

Educational bureaucracies, school boards and teachers’ unions uncompromisingly embrace wokeism, victimology, and anti-capitalism. Their ideology connotes repudiation of the values of the Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian ethics that made of Canada a great country—personal responsibility and self-reliance, initiative, and open inquiry.

A grassroots movement can and must demand change from politicians. I envision it comprising business managers and supervisors, shareholders, investors and pension fund managers, and, especially, the parents and youth who the current system short-changes.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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