Interesting Conclusions In School Safety Report

No extra cash for school safety

Province says earlier funds all it will give despite audit The province won't be stepping in to help implement any of the recommendations made by the School Community Safety Advisory Panel, the education minister says.

Students React To School Safety Report

First of all let's put things in perspective; the majority of the problems are being caused by a very small percentage of the students but valuable resources are directed at the problem basically robbing those students/parents/teachers who are doing their best to survive. Personally I think the minute we gave children "rights" the school system, and to some extent society in general, began deteriorating.

Human rights lawyer Julian Falconer was tapped to head up the safety panel and among the findings:

• Problems with teacher relationships
• A "gang mentality" that's present in the school
• Students being transferred from one school to another to break up gang affiliations. But the solution only spreads the problem elsewhere without solving it.
• Bullying
• A dysfunctional relationship between the trustee and the superintendent, who have agreed to mediation.
• New laws that force kids to stay in school until they're 18
• Changes to human rights legislation that have cut down on suspensions, letting kids get away with more disruptive behaviour.
• Board budget squeezes that may only allow the problems to escalate.

What I find interesting is that only one of the "problems" seems to be related to $$$ and most of the problems are related to parental control and character building. I feel it is worthwhile to again post some comments by a retired teacher......

When I began to teach in 1968, the standards expected of students were much more rigid and higher than when I retired in 1999. I had a real struggle in the 1980s and 1990s “watering down” my expectations to meet the pass/fail requirements of the time. The entire process was very disconcerting. Students were entering Grade 9 without ever having passed a test in the last years of elementary school. And research assignments turned out to be the typical cut-and-paste of Grade 5 or 6.
As this article points out, colleges, universities and businesses are facing the aftermath of this whirlwind of social passing. It has given children the mistaken impression that there are no consequences for their lack of effort. When they fail at university or are fired for lack of effort in a job, they blame society.
The attitude of no student left behind is still there and will take years, or decades, to eradicate. Unfortunately, the teachers in schools now are products of that education system, so the will to change does not seem to be there.
J. Beverly Ewen, Ajax, Ont.

School fix must come from the top

Social re-engineering screwed up the system......teachers became buddies, moving the kid through the system was more important than he/she becoming literate, injecting subjects into the curriculum that had nothing to do with the 3'Rs, schools becoming surrogate parents but without any controls, etc.