The modern education state has a fundamental problem, and its roots run deep

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

I am going to put out a question to the community, one that must be taken seriously, and really considered. What is the purpose of education? Is it to make students independent, competent thinkers, people who in turn can make a difference in the world for the better? Is the purpose of education to give our young people the best chance for survival and success in the world? School is supposed to be an incubator of young humans being prepared to change our troubled world.

Unfortunately, as a community worker, I am witness to the fact that education in Canada has lost touch with parents, teachers and communities, in favour of a centralized bureaucracy. Canada’s school system was flipped on its head during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the early part of the pandemic, the system-wide shutdown was much like a power outage that left students and parents in the dark and educators scrambling to master unfamiliar forms of education technology. There were radical readjustments that were conducted in lockstep with public health directives, upsetting the normal order in Canadian K-12 education.

Let’s face it; our school system is messed up. I grew up in the Canadian public school system, and on a weekly basis I work with families and their children, which is why I am making this claim.

I have students who tell me that in class, too much time is wasted on useless topics. The quality of education has been sacrificed for quantity, and as a result, academic inflation and the devaluation of information has turned intellectual ambition into apathy and bright minds into cesspools of nothingness.

Topics are taught gradually, and teachers do not spend time to help students integrate what they have learned into a coherent picture that can be utilized or built upon. A synthesis between topics is neglected in the current school curriculum, and consequently our students’ experience in the public education system has become a vague memory of random, meaningless, and useless facts.

Most school subjects themselves aren’t even accurately taught. History books are full of purposely engineered inaccuracies and distortions for the sake of corporate gain and hidden agendas.

So, how do we change this? Building back the disrupted and damaged school system will involve confronting squarely the fragility and limitations of the current structure. This step cannot be ignored. If not, the effect will be an amassing of students dependent upon the system and isolated from the real world. With that: social, financial, and academic dysfunction will result.

The modern education state has a fundamental problem, and its roots run deep.  Since the rise and expansion of this system over the past hundred years, public education in Canada has become much less connected with: students, families, teachers and communities. Our public schools, initially established as the vanguard of universal, accessible, free education, have lost their way and become largely unresponsive to the community they claim to serve.

Rebuilding public education needs to begin from the community up. Putting students first has to become more than a hollow promise. It will require structural reforms, including community-school-based governance and management.

It is time that we put students first, democratize school governance, deprogram education ministries and school districts, and listen more to parents and teachers in the schools. It means designing and building smaller schools at the centre of urban neighbourhoods and rural communities. It’s not a matter of turning back the clock, but rather one of regaining control over our schools, rebuilding social capital and revitalizing our communities.