(Time for Brigitte to put her crusty old goat hat on again.)
I’m not even that old yet (really, I’m not), and I remember when people thought school should teach kids things like reading, writing, geography, math, history, physics, that sort of thing. Well, pfft. That’s too dull. Now they want to teach the kids how to change the world.
Toronto District School Board students will be expected to contribute more to their communities under a new ”social justice action plan” unveiled yesterday by education director Chris Spence.
The initiative will see every school in the board take on one local and one global social justice issue — such as poverty, equity and environmentalism — in order to “create awareness of how students can be empowered through their leadership to make a difference in their world,” according to Mr. Spence.
“When I visit schools and talk to kids and staff, they’re all engaged in this kind of work. Now we’re raising the bar in terms of expectation and saying this is part of what we want to stand for as an organization,” he said in an interview with the National Post. “When you put these kinds of issues in front of kids, they will run with it and go places.”
That will make for fun dinner conversations, no?
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Schools don’t like to get tied up in controversy too much. I expect this to involve only position that just about everyone can agree on (Trees are good!), and to stay *well* away from politics by never uttering the name of a specific piece of legislation, candidate or company.
Ignore it. It’s a gimick, that’s all. The students will get to design a few posters, but probably not much more than that. There’s little of real impact they can do.
I used “social awareness” a lot when I was trying to get my Grade 4’s involved in persuasive writing, and even more with my Grade 7 debaters…. It wasn’t so much teaching them to save the world as trying to find something not entirely boring for them to do to practice their writing skills…
And no, I was NOT allowed to have prolife/prochoice as one of my topics… boo.
I forsee *some* crunchy fellow teachers taking this as yet another reason to cut math class even shorter and focus more on “Real Issues”… since we all know that kids need to focus on global issues before they tackle “incidentals” like 3x-4=28.
As a teacher, I have to say that these new initiatives put do little but put stress on hardworking, dedicated teachers – especially since most of them are flash-in-the-pan anyway… the initiatives, not the teachers.
This reminds me of the Phd dissertation tacked to the bulletin board at the univ. when my husband was working on his MEd. It proposed that the real job of the teacher was to effect social change through the children- educating them about the ‘right way’ so they could go home and educate their parents…
When I read the ‘mandates’ of many of the Dept of Education across Canada, I wonder where that Phd candidate ended up.
Recently, I’ve been pondering just how the vast majority of people think “community” works. Two weeks ago, I attended a general membership meeting for a political party (not organization) and we could not even muster quorum. Last evening, I attended a parish meeting on an important new (and expensive) project, and only 9 (out of a couple of thousand) people could be bothered to show up. I’d rather our schools taught and modeled community behaviour: responsibility, duty, loyalty and trustworthiness. Get them involved in community, not causes.
In order to “create awareness of how students can be empowered through their leadership to make a difference in their world.”
Why not just ‘make a difference’? Instead of awareness … to be empowered … to make…?
It’s odd how ‘caring’ and ‘real change’ wind up at such a far remove from anything really changing, anyone actually cared for. And “global issues” – like, really far-away issues – perfect!
As if what the world really wants out of me is brainwaves (‘believing in change’).
Lauri Friesen is entirely right: you want to “make a difference”? Teach people how to live (serve) in a community. Which is just step 1 in being human, isn’t it?
Or is it step 1 through 100?