January 23, 2020
Educate Me, Please
The educational system in Ontario (and elsewhere) is a mess.
I’ll start with the classic statement that ends with a but: “I’m not an expert …”
BUT …
We have rolling strikes that have been going for the last several months. There is no sign of them ending.
We have a government that is hell bent on NOT negotatiating.
There is a complete failure to bring a mediator to the table (something that should be legislated to force both parties to actually work on finding a solution).
What’s the future of education when all we’re really doing is pushing the whole system to the bottom?
Will the Ford government introduce broader private education, further separating the classes of people that can afford school (and therefore university) and those that can’t?
They’ll be saying in their private board rooms: “Let’s make sure they can count our change and clean our toilets. That’s about as smart as we want the population to be.”
Why We ALL Need Better Education
The last 200 years has seen a radical shift in the educational system compared to all of humanity before that.
Roughly 200 ago (give or take a few decades), we as a society demanded universal, free public education.
Once we organized universal public education, the increase in ALL measures of quality of life, especially economic growth, has been exponential. Information, knowledge, incomes, health and more have all grown to new and unique ranges that we could NOT have imagined 200 years ago.
Even organized religion and other cults have taken a hit as we learn to be skeptical about what’s on offer.
Universal education has given us ALL a future.
Conservative governments want to take this away.
Yes, this massive explosion in wealth comes with a downside. We are most likely going to burn out this planet within another generation (if that) and yes, there are still massive disparities between the ultra-rich and the destitute poor.
But … not until recently have we all had ways to grow on these massive tsunami waves of wealth that haven’t been available before.
Maybe I’m just having this revelation now because I’m a father of a young man that I want nothing but the best for, but maybe it’s also because we’re about to throw away all of the good that we’ve been able to bring to the world. All of the promise, the love and the peace that comes with a better connected globe and deep new communities of people that are committed to real change.
Conservatives just want a bigger pile of coin to sit on for themselves. Unions just want to control the thousands of teachers and manipulate them into believing that they are being robbed by the public.
We need to find a better way to do things or our entire system will get an F.