I know a lot of teachers. I hear stories from them that make me understand why children today seem to be dumber than my generation.
Don’t get me wrong, my generation had its share of idiots and I believe that generations older than mine thought ours was stupid as well.
So when in August the Ontario government announced that schools were going to start giving out “zeros” on unfinished assignments, it was quite interesting to see the public’s reaction to the news.
Most parents were unaware that such a policy actually existed, that if a student failed to hand in an assignment, they would be given every opportunity to hand in the assignment.
This led me to compile a list of little known facts about what goes on in schools with both students and teachers.
- Did you know that kids can’t be held back a grade anymore (failed) – it socially scars them too much. No matter how dumb the child is, they will graduate to the next grade.
- For all the public complaints of high salaried teachers, the starting salary for a teacher is $40,257 and they may not start that salary for 3-5 years waiting for a contract position to open up. In the mean time, they work supply positions and maternity leaves (LTO’s) at a rate of $20.55/hour. The starting salary for a garbage man in Toronto is $25.80/hr or $53,664 a year. In other words, the guy who picks up your crap off your front lawn earns more than the teacher educating your child.
- There are kids that are so bad in class that they will have their parents called to take them home after being suspended and parents will refuse believing they are the schools problem between the hours of 9am and 3pm
- Although Daddy Dalton McGuinty campaigned and promised classrooms of only 20 children, with the implementation of all day daycare (kindergarten), the average class in Toronto for kindergarten stands at 26 kids each with 30 kids in a classroom being fairly normal.
- To further that point, the Ontario Day Nurseries act which regulates private daycare and nurseries has limits of 1 Early Childhood Educator (ECE) per 8 -10 children under the age of 5 which is all of junior kindergarten. The number increases to 1 ECE for every 12 children for senior kindergarten. In other words, Private institutions provide more adult supervision than your taxpayer funded Ontario school.
- Just like every profession, there are bad teachers out there; unfortunately most became bad because over time horrible kids, unsupportive principals and poor community support made their job beyond manageable. There is an actually average ‘burn out ‘ rate of 5 years for newly employed teachers.
- Your child is not gifted…just because at the age of seven he seems smarter than some of the others doesn’t make them gifted.
- For all the complaints of how much a teacher’s pension is, just remember this; the average teacher pays $565 per month into that pension. If you cut $565 a month out of your earnings and stashed it away in a bank account, you could retire pretty well also, the difference is most people can’t afford to give up that much per month.
- Although teachers get 3 months total time off from work, most work evenings and weekends with prep time and marking making the average time worked comparable to a 9-5 employee with 4 week’s vacation.
- Many teachers pay out of pocket for supplies for children because parents are too poor, ignorant or cheap to provide for their kids. The average teacher pays out of their own pocket $450 per school year because little Susie got a new iPad for school but no pencils.
- Crap rolls downhill – superintendants come down on principals, who in turn come down on teachers. If you believe that your teacher or principal can make substantial changes, start moving up the hill, they are often powerless to help (hence how a good teacher can become a bad one)
- The empty can rattles the most – if you nag and annoy your kids teacher long enough, they will do what you say just to shut you up, but your child will ultimately suffer since you will have “blacklisted “ them by being a pain in the ass parent. Keep an interest in your kid’s education but let your teacher do their job.
- Your child may be the trouble maker in the class – before you accuse the teacher of not running a good classroom, make sure your child isn’t the reason for the classroom dysfunction. Most parents are oblivious to the fact that their child causes problems.
- A student can anonymously accuse a teacher of abuse, the teacher will be suspended pending an investigation and if the student lied about it, everything goes back to normal with the child being unpunished and the teacher left “hung out to dry”.
- Most of today’s school policies were instituted by Mike Harris but in almost 10 years Daddy Dalton has yet to repeal them. The reason is that they all work and Mcguinty takes credit for them, he just tells the teachers to blame Mike Harris for anything they don’t like
- There are less field trips today in less affluent neighbourhoods because parents have less money and they don’t have/don’t care enough to make the time to volunteer for field trips. If you think your teacher will risk their career by being the only supervisor of 25 children out in public, think again. In fact, a teacher is legally responsible for up to 10 years after a field trip if something was to happen but was unreported right away.
- When school boards announce that test scores are up, take the information with a grain of salt…most teachers teach in grades 3, 6 and 9 towards the test knowing that higher test scores improve school funding. Ironically the dumber your school is, the less money you get.
These are just some issues; I’m sure teachers reading this all have their own stories which are always welcome in out comments section.
The bottom line is that the educational system is on a downward spiral for a variety of reasons. A new movie is coming out that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival called Waiting for Superman detailing the decline of the American school system. The producers of the film had a warning for Canada that we are headed in the same direction.
I can’t speak about the content of the film but I will see it when given the opportunity. After listening to various stories from teachers and thinking back to my days in school, I am worried about my child not receiving the education that we pay into the system for.
Interesting reading material.
I came across your article as I was researching Ontario education system and trying to find out what really goes on in the classroom and what’s the required teaching practices of teachers.
Spurred by a parent/teacher interviewed which was quite disturbing to me when the teacher (nearing her 50′s, so I assume not new in her career)said my 7yr old grade two son was not up to standard in his reading and writing. The apparent suggested solution was that we the parents bring him up to standard at home.
I being an underwriter by profession, investigated the accusation in detail. On speaking with my son, it became apparent that the school’s method is more of a role of assessing rather than teaching. My son’s grade teacher has never once heard him read or any of her students for that matter. The assessment was done by the librarian, who since the semester started has only heard students read no more than once. General practice seems to be that the kids pick books of interest from there grade section and read in their minds – this to me is not teaching!
In regards to the writing, my son (I have to use him as the example, but not want to seem bias in anyway)entered grade two with great assessment for his writing skills, three months into the semester, it has fallen behind. Does it not make sense that during the six hours spent per day in the classroom this would have been noticed and coached sooner rather than later. There is no formal Penmanship class also, so again the assessment is being based on what you can show but not being taught how to.
I myself has not gone through the entire schooling system in Canada, my wife generally sits with my son 1 to 1.5 hour every evening doing school work. Most of his learning is being done here to be assessed at school. I strongly do not feel the methods are right, don’t get me wrong the parents involvement is a big asset and should serve to make better the teaching they are getting from school.
Now I am at a dilemma of moving my family to an area where the school would have better teaching methods/true assessment or risk having my son being brought up with the feeling of being substandard or even asked to repeat a grade.