ONTARIO'S MATH CURRICULUM AGAIN UNDER FIRE

This time it's from the editor of the Woolwich Observer in the Saturday February 22/14 edition. Steve Kannon's editorial is titled "Defense of math curriculum doesn't add up". Apparently the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) released another report this week which continues to show that Ontario students are having math problems. Reading and writing apparently are on track whereas in math, the numbers just don't add up.

Steve debunks the latest edubabble which uses terms such as "self-actualized", "inquiry based" and "self discovery". It seems to me that our big shots at many local school boards are nothing but frauds. According to Steve "Because math is a cumulative skill, with concepts building on each other, a poor foundation means trouble as a child is moved along through the system without understanding of the basics, which happens far too often.". Steve adds "The Ontario government has finally acknowledged there are problems, including with the fact that many teachers have little if any grounding in mathematics, even those who teach the subject."

To those of us who have observed our own local education shortcomings for many years none of this is any surprise. School Boards and the teachers' unions have long ago abandoned any pretense of being powerful lobbies for the chidrens' benefit. They are in it for themselves and the self serving results are plain to see. Our childrens' education has been shortchanged while these hypocrites have helped themselves to bigger and bigger pieces of the financial pie. Parents and taxpayers have subsidized this decline in quality while naively believing that our provincial government was steering the boat. All they have done is enabled this disgusting antisocial behaviour while belatedly raising the quality alarm.