What’s in a school’s name?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

As every parent knows, names are important. It is also true when applied to schools.

Some school boards are renaming schools that were named after people who, by today’s moral standards, did things society no longer finds acceptable (slave owning, support for residential schooling, for example). The attention this has received recently prompts several questions for me.

Is renaming a school consistent with the educational mission of public schooling?

The sensitivities and considerations that apply today may not have been considered at the time that a school was named. However, because schooling is dedicated to the education of the next generation of citizens, schools and the boards that govern them have an obligation to model careful and deliberate thought about the names given to its schools. This includes the names applied in the past that may not conform to the sensitivities and moral considerations that apply today.

Consider a school named after a politician who was instrumental in defending the rights of French-speakers at the time of Confederation but was also an architect of the residential school system. Residential schools were government and church run schools established to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual development of Indigenous children - a value that is in direct opposition to the values which we hold today.

I do not think renaming the school alone would meaningfully address the harms caused by residential schooling and would not fulfill a school board’s broader educational responsibility. In the spirit of reconciliation as expressed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), we might use the renaming process to raise awareness of residential schooling and its long-standing effects on Indigenous people.

I think that, for instance, a school board should engage and consult with leadership of the First Nation(s) on whose territory the school board is situated. The purpose of the consultation would be to seek the advice of the First Nation(s) about whether the name of the school in question should remain or be removed from the school. In either instance a plaque explaining the politician’s role as an architect of the residential school system in Canada should be placed prominently on the school and a companion lesson or lessons about the politician’s role developed for use in that school as a way of educating students about residential schooling and its impact. 

What behaviour merits reconsideration?

Determining what behaviour merits consideration for school renaming is challenging because good people can do bad things and vice versa. Perhaps the politician who was the architect of the residential school system was also a defender of the rights of French-speakers at the time of confederation. His behaviour should be used to educate students and the public about residential schooling because the horrors and impact of residential schooling were so abhorrent.

Consider a school named for a politician considered a hero for preventing his country's invasion by another country intent on exterminating Jews. He was also a winner of the Noble Prize for literature.  And he was a racist and eugenicist as well.  Should his name be removed from the school? Who should make such a decision? Does his objectionable behaviour over-ride his positive behaviour? What standard should apply in making the decision? Do we not make such judgments every day?

Expunging names from school buildings is fleeting. It does not absolve the education system of its enduring responsibility to educate about, and carefully consider, the complexities of making historical and moral judgments.  

Right to Read

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) recently released the results of its inquiry into human rights issues affecting students with disabilities titled Right to Read. The report begins with a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Moore v. British Columbia, in which the Court held that Jeffrey Moore, a student with dyslexia, was entitled to supports that he required to learn to read.  

The Court’s decision in Moore held that the Province of British Columbia, in asserting that the purpose of education is to ensure that “all learners . . . develop their individual potential and . . . acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy,” acknowledged that children are entitled to an education necessary to make such a contribution, including the right to read.  

The focus of the OHRC report is upon the lack of attention to “word-level reading and the associated early reading skills that are a foundation for good reading comprehension.” It asserts that, in failing to heed the accumulated, multi-disciplinary evidence about effective reading instruction, Ontario is systematically failing the students for whom it is responsible. The failure has an especially profound impact on children from marginalized or human rights code protected groups.  

The OHRC report takes a comprehensive view of language arts instruction. It argues in favour of robust, evidence-based phonics programs but only as one essential part of a broader language arts program that includes “story telling, book reading, drama, and text analysis” as well as “evidence-based direct, explicit instruction for spelling and writing.”  

Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s Minister of Education said the province will change its curriculum to align with “scientific, evidence-based approaches that emphasize direct, explicit and systematic instruction.” It is encouraging to see education policy and practice reflect the accumulated evidence. But I worry that, in the highly politicized environment in which we all seem to live, that there will be reflexive opposition to Lecce’s statement and resistance to the changes that will be introduced. I hope my worries are unfounded. It would be refreshing to find that, having considered the OHRC’s report and the underlying evidence, educators would see the merit in what is being recommended.  

I am hopeful that change comes without further resort to human rights inquiries, cases, and the litigation that often ensues. I am optimistic that people can place evidence above ideology.  

The report brings much needed attention to students affected by dyslexia. The kind of professional support teachers will need to help learn how to best assist these students' learning is not going to be a casual, one-day training session.  It's going to take a lot of on-going practice and constructive feedback from skilled teachers.  

I also hope that Minister Lecce realizes that significant resources will be required to support teachers who need assistance in making the changes necessary to bring their practice in line with the evidence. One of the resources at the Minister’s disposal are the many teachers who have used evidence-based phonics programs and direct, explicit instruction as part of their language arts programs.

Indigenously focused course requirement long overdue

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Among the stated purposes of public (state supported) school systems is the development of educated citizens who possess the disposition to active citizenship. It is worth contemplating what it means to be an educated citizen or to be disposed to active citizenship.  

You cannot exercise your obligations and rights as citizens if you do not know what those rights and obligations are. The behaviour and claims of members of the trucker convey clearly demonstrated that they failed to grasp both. The rights and responsibilities citizens enjoy are part of the social contract between citizens and their nation. However, knowing rights and responsibilities is not sufficient to being considered an educated citizen. It is important to know how the Canadian social contract came to be and how it has evolved.  

Educated citizens understand how and why the rights and responsibilities of their citizenship developed and evolved. I have lamented in several blogs the absence of the subject of Citizenship from British Columbia’s curriculum and the neglect of that subject generally.  

The Government of British Columbia announced that, beginning in 2023-2024, the education program of students in British Columbia must include coursework with an Indigenous focus. I hope that I am not being overly optimistic that this requirement is recognition that educated citizens cannot be ignorant of the factors that have shaped the development of one’s nation.   

Canadians who are ignorant of those factors would not know or understand why they enjoy language or mobility rights or the right to equality before the law and the equal protection and benefit of the law. They would not know that the rights and freedoms granted to Aboriginal people of Canada by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 cannot be revoked or diminished by the Charter of Rights. Nor would they know that the Charter requires that it be interpreted in a manner consistent with “the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”   

The Honourable Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Education, acknowledged that the requirement that students’ education programs must include an Indigenously focused course beginning in 2023-2024 addressed one of the knowledge gaps in the British Columbia curriculum. In essence, the Minister understands that citizens who do not understand the experiences, cultures, histories, and knowledges of Indigenous people are less well educated than those who do because those experiences, cultures, histories, and knowledges are part of the history of all Canadians.  

I will be disappointed if the requirement for the inclusion of an Indigenously focused course is challenged in the way that efforts to give an honest account of the part that slavery played, and racism continues to play, in the United States is being challenged. That challenge will eventually fail because students in the United States seek the truth about their history.  

Canadian students also seek the truth about the history and development of Canada.  

I am optimistic that the BC requirement will be embraced as a first step in a much-needed social studies curriculum revision because citizens who are knowledgeable in values, histories, cultures, rights, and responsibilities that distinguish Canadians from the citizens of other countries are better equipped to participate in effective, active citizenship.

I hope your Spring break provides the rest and relaxation you deserve. This blog will resume on March 30th. 

Who needs school?

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce is granted if authorship is acknowledged]

I’ve thought about this question often. A new year’s resolution prompted me to ask the question again. I had resolved to organize the zillions of photographs I’ve taken since I first acquired a digital camera. I needed a free, desk-top program with artificial intelligence capability. I did not want to use a cloud-based system where commercial providers use my photographs to train their algorithms and add to their repository of my personal information. I found what I was looking for. I found written and video material to learn how the software worked. There was a user group (they are called communities these days) where I could post questions and receive help in the form of crowd-sourced replies.

The experience reminded me of the many times I use the internet to access information and develop skills. I’ve had many successes and one monumental failure. My culinary abilities, such as they are, were honed with recipes from the internet. A couple of weeks ago, I learned how to replace a water filter. I cannot recall the last time I was unable to find something I wanted to know or be able to do. If information is freely available online, who needs school anyway?” 

There are some parents who are determined to eviscerate or at least control the substance of schooling and its important contribution to critical thought. In the US they are pursuing legislation to ban materials and teaching of topics that might cause psychological discomfort to students. The term “psychological discomfort” is code for anything with which the parents disagree.  

If passed, legislation such as the bill to which I referred above would make teaching about sexual orientation / gender-identity, racism, or any other contested topic perilous for teachers, schools, and school systems. If such legislation were to pass in British Columbia, the curriculum would require revisions to remove such competencies as “make reasoned ethical judgments about actions in the past and present, and assess appropriate ways to remember and respond.”  

Students cannot learn to make reasoned ethical judgments from the internet. It is too easy to find dogma and ideology -- the enemies of reasoned judgment – on the internet. If dogma and ideology replace reasoned judgment, school becomes unnecessary because one of the purposes of schooling is to acquire the values that make us human (empathy, compassion, etc.) and enable us to distinguish right from wrong.  

Schooling tries to cultivate the ideas that other people are no more or less important than we are and that our claims will be considered impartially along with the claims of others. This process often causes disequilibrium and discomfort when applied to non-trivial issues. For example:  

·        How could pious people who advocate for the rights of people enslave other human beings?

·        Are there justifiable reasons for permitting children to be taken from the parents and denied the opportunity to speak their own language?

·        Does my freedom allow me to behave in ways that cause harm to others?

·        Are there circumstances that justify taking the lives of others?

·        Was the trucker blockade in Ottawa an urgent, temporary, and critical situation that seriously endangered the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatened the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada?

·        How should a society balance the rights of individuals with the needs of the collective?

These are the kind of questions likely to cause discomfort. Ensuing discussion might include: “Would you change places with: the person who was enslaved? the child removed from her family? the person who was harmed? the person whose life was taken?” Other discomforting questions include: “How are you defining [freedom or some other key term]?”  “What is your evidence for that claim?” “Is what you just said consistent with what you said earlier?”  

If we do not want our children and grandchildren to learn what is required to make ethical judgments, we can leave their education to the internet. To put it another way, if we are content to live in a world governed by dogma and ideology, schooling as we know it is unnecessary. Discomfort is an inevitable by-product of the school’s effort to expose children and youth to an environment that is larger, more complex, less cohesive, and more diverse than their families.  

Trucker convoy reveals ignorance of government

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

In his comments about the Ottawa trucker convoy, Kurt Phillips of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network described some of the protesters as “. . . people who really don’t understand how government works.” There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence in support of Phillips’ claim. 

One of the first examples was the purpose of the convoy. Many in the convoy said they were going to Ottawa to protest COVID mandates, most of which were set by provincial health authorities. Fair enough, there is a vaccine mandate imposed upon commercial truckers entering the US (imposed by the US) and returning to Canada (imposed by Canadian authorities). But most COVID health restrictions are provincial restrictions according to the (Canadian) Constitution Act.

Another example in support of Phillips’ assertion were the numerous references to the US Bill of Rights and the right of free speech it confers. Although it is difficult to imagine that commercial truckers are geographically challenged, Ottawa is in Canada.

Canadians have fundamental freedoms under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – conscience and religion, peaceful assembly, association – and “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” But many of the protestors appeared unaware that Section 1 of the Charter limits those freedoms: 

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Phillips’ assertion about the protesters as “. . . people who really don’t understand how government works” might be true of Canadians more generally. In an earlier blog I lamented the conspicuous absence of the concept democracy in BC’s provincial curriculum. The Phillips’ comment prompted me to examine the three BC documents - “Big Ideas,” “Curricular Competencies,” and “Content” - that guide teachers responsible for social studies from grades Kindergarten to Grade 10.

Grade 2 Big Ideas reveals a fundamental flaw in the thinking of those who created them. One of the Grade Two Big Ideas is that “individuals have rights and responsibilities as global citizens” (Grade 2). Citizenship describes a relationship between an individual and the state. It is in that social contract that rights and responsibilities are defined.

“Global citizenship” may be an aspiration among those writing the curriculum. But until there is world citizenship and the existing nation states cede their jurisdiction to some yet to be defined global body, I am grateful for citizenship in Canada and the rights and obligations that I have.

The authors of the provincial curriculum should have noticed their global citizenship mistake when they crafted one of the Big Ideas for grade six. The tip off is their statement that “systems of government vary in their respect for human rights and freedoms.” The inconsistency between the grade two and grade six big ideas should have caused them to reflect.

A closer look at the curricular competencies and the content suggestions – yes, suggestions – does not inspire confidence that Canadian students living in British Columbia will understand how their government works.

I do not want to blame the education system for protesters’ ignorance of government. Most do not live in British Columbia and only a few who do were young enough to have gone to school in BC since the curriculum change. But the ignorance of the truckers and their fellow travelers signals that this significant knowledge gap has been with us for some time and is likely not confined to British Columbia.

Anti-racism training works, but is no panacea

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

An increasing number of school boards are incorporating diversity training as part of their professional development programs for teaching, administrative and support staff. While motivations differ among boards, the general hope is that diversity training will have a positive impact. I share that hope.

Knowing something of the literature and practice in the field, I suggest that boards have realistic expectations about what diversity training (also called race-relations training, anti-racism training, etc.) can accomplish.

In the early 1990s, a colleague and I undertook a meta-analysis[1] of what we described at the time as “attempts to prepare teachers for managing inter-cultural and inter-racial contact in their classrooms and for creating the conditions under which students can learn to work and live together harmoniously and productively.”[2]

We were able to locate and systematically review 19 studies that contained 43 effect sizes.[3] The average effect was a +.20 standard deviation improvement of among those who had diversity training versus those who did not. To put that small effect into perspective, about 57% of the teachers receiving training exhibited less measurable prejudice than the teachers in the control groups who did not have diversity training. The chance that a teacher picked at random from the training group would exhibit less prejudice than one in the control groups who did not have diversity training was about 55% - just a bit better than 50/50.

We compared studies that used an anti-racism approach with those that used a social-psychological or cultural information approach. Training that focused on anti-racism produced superior outcomes. There was a 57.6% chance that a person picked at random from the anti-racism treatment group would exhibit less prejudice than a teacher picked at random from the group that had no anti-racism training. In contrast, the chance was only 52.5% that a teacher picked at random from the training using a cultural information approach exhibited less prejudice in comparison to a person picked at random from the group having no training.

My colleague, Josette McGregor, conducted a study of the impact of anti-racist teaching and role-playing approaches to reduce prejudice in students. She found that both approaches were about equally effective, each producing an effect size of approximately +.45 standard deviation. In other words, there was a 62.5% chance that a student picked at random from training that used either a role-playing or and anti-racist teaching approach would exhibit less prejudice than a student picked at random from a control group that did not have either kind training.[4]

A 2016 meta-analysis of 40 years of diversity training research produced similar findings. The overall effect size was +.38 of a standard deviation, meaning that about 65% of those diversity trained exhibited better outcomes than those who are in the control group without such training. Or, to put it another way, there was a 60% chance that a randomly chosen person from the diversity training group exhibited more positive outcomes than someone picked at random from the control group without diversity training. The best outcomes achieved for cognitive learning were maintained over time. Attitudinal learning effects attenuated over time.[5]

Diversity training produces small effects. The literature devoted to the topic provides information about practices that are effective and ones that are not.[6] Such training has a greater positive impact: on younger rather than older people; in situations where women predominate among those trained; and where training occurs over a longer period (but not too long); etc.

Diversity training is not a panacea. The impact of diversity training will be modest. This suggests that such training must be part of a larger effort that includes policies and practices aimed at eliminating systemic racism.

This summary is no substitute for a careful review of the literature, especially the meta-analytic literature that looks across studies for effective and ineffective practices and conditions. School boards undertaking diversity training for staff or students should ensure that the training is evaluated closely so that adjustments can be made that will produce maximum positive outcomes.

---

[1] Meta analysis involves looking across studies that address the same question to determine what the overall pattern of data looks like.

[2] J. McGregor & C. Ungerleider (1993) Multicultural and racism awareness programs for teachers:  A meta-analysis of the research. In K. McLeod (Ed) Multicultural education:  The state of the art - report 1. pp. 59-63

[3] An effect size is a statistic that compares the difference in mean outcomes (effects) between two conditions, programs, or approaches.

[4] McGregor, J. (1993) Effectiveness of Role Playing and Antiracist Teaching in Reducing Student Prejudice, Journal of Educational Research, 86(4), 215-226.

[5] Bezrukova, K., Spell, C.S., Perry, J.L., and K.A. Jehn, (2016) A Meta-Analytical Integration of Over 40 Years of Research on Diversity Training Evaluation, Psychological Bulletin, 142(11) 1227-1274.

[6] See, for example: FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D. et al. (2019) Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review. BMC Psychol 7(29). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7

Will litigation change social media?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

It has been more than a year since the seditious incursion into the American Congress. In the intervening period Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook (now Meta), and YouTube. Banning Trump was tacit acknowledgment by the three media giants that it was providing license to name calling, demeaning characterizations, misogynistic rants, taunts, incitement of violence, and lies.  

In July, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang published An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. I read the book prior to the Christmas holiday; it certainly did not put me in a festive mood. The book is based on thousands of hours of interviews with 400 informants. In it, the authors argue that the company knowingly spread lies about the US election, promoted hate speech that led to violence, used algorithms to provoke emotional reactions, and prompted negative social comparisons among school-age boys and girls -especially girls. Although aware of what it was doing, Facebook, the corporate entity, did little or nothing to change for fear of diminishing its profits.  

Frenkel and Kang’s claims were reinforced by evidence of Facebook’s agency from documents provided to the Wall Street Journal and the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Frances Haugen. Initially an anonymous employee at Facebook, Haugen became a whistleblower. She is quoted  by CBSNews as saying: “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.” When she appeared before the US Senate, Haugen said she was appearing because she believed “Facebook’s products harm children.”

 

Facebook’s (now Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, have walked a snakelike path to obfuscate the company’s agency and have done relatively little to put the public good before private profit. They’ve paid fines for breaching privacy protections and other transgressions, but one gets the sense that the fines are simply the cost of doing business. In response to public outrage, they delayed the development of Instagram Kids, a service that would have groomed children under 13 for adult social media. The company’s rebranding from Facebook to Meta appears a shallow attempt to further deflect responsibility for its egregious disregard for people.  

In mid November, a law firm in Washington State, formed the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC). SMVLC’s website says that it was established “to hold social media companies legally accountable for the harm they inflict on vulnerable users” by using the principles of product liability. The founder of SMVLC, Matthew Bergman, is quoted as saying, “We believe jury verdicts on behalf of victims of social media cyberbullying will not only furnish the compensation they need and deserve but also incentivize social media companies to design safer products to avoid having to pay court awards in the future.”  

It is clear that there is a relationship between internet access and online aggression and that children and youth are harmed as a result, in part, of using Instagram. Facebook says it is looking for ways to “nudge” users to better content and to be more transparent. It is hard to see how Facebook will do that because it refuses to share internal research and has denied external researchers access to its data.  

It is doubtful that a technological solution to the negative impact of social media will improve the situation. Education is a more promising but limited approach. Perhaps litigation and financial penalties for successful litigants will have some impact. But, given its track record – amply documented in An Ugly Truth and in its own leaked documents – it is doubtful that real change will occur without formal regulation.

What education are students entitled to receive?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Statute, international covenant, and court decisions make it clear that all eligible children are entitled to an education. But what is the nature of that entitlement? In British Columbia, under section 2 of the School Act eligible persons are “entitled to enrol in an educational program provided by the board of a school district” if they are resident in the school district and of school age. The School Act defines an educational program as “an organized set of learning activities that . . . is designed to enable learners to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.” The definition accords the agency responsible for the provision of an educational program some latitude as to what constitutes learning activities.

Although granted some latitude as to what an educational program entails, it must meet specific conditions. The definition refers to an educational program, meaning it must be a plan of action to accomplish specific objectives. The objectives of such a plan are to equip the learner with “knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy,” specifically calling attention to literacy. Again, there is obviously some leeway about what knowledge, skills, and attitudes learners might need to make such a contribution. Leeway is not carte blanche.

To my mind, the determination of the learning activities must meet the Professional Standards for BC Educators. Chief among those standards is: “Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.”

The educational program provided would not impede a student’s normal progress to graduation. Or, to put it another way, the educational program should not discriminate among students without adequate reason. Thus, it might be reasonable to provide an educational program that would take a given student longer to complete than her peers because of the circumstances affecting her situation. This, for example, is a consideration in adjusting the educational program provided to a student with special needs.

Provincial ministries and departments of education acknowledge that adjustments to a student’s educational program may require the student to spend more time in achieving its intended purposes. Secondary schools in British Columbia, for example, incorporate five years (from grade 8 to 12). The BC Ministry of Education reports the number of grade 8 students that earned graduation in five years as well as the number that completed in six.

An educational program that prevents a student from acquiring the knowledge and skills s/he needs after she completes school does not meet the spirit or the intent of the School Act. The concept of program requires both deliberation about the characteristics of the learner and the circumstances affecting her and consideration of the knowledge and skills that she needs to maintain normal progress toward successful school completion and the eventual assumption of adult responsibilities in “a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.” 

School board determination of what constitutes an educational program is an essential task that must be performed for all learners and, especially, for learners who face challenges that, if not considered, would impede their successful attainment of the intended outcomes of schooling. These include students with special needs, students who are not proficient in the language of instruction, and students who, because of circumstances beyond their control, find schooling more challenging. 

School boards, to which the responsibility for ensuring that students are provided and educational program, are not without guidance. There is a provincial curriculum. There may be, as there is in British Columbia, a ministerial order that spells out the required areas of study. That order specifies that a school board must offer students in kindergarten to grade 9 an educational program that meets the learning outcomes in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and other subjects. There is a complementary order that specifies the requirements a student must meet to achieve graduation, including the number of credits a student must accumulate, the courses for which credit must be earned, and the literacy and numeracy assessments that a student must complete.  

There are students for whom the determination of an educational program is too often overlooked or is treated perfunctorily: students subject to out-of-school suspension. Students suspended from school are among the most challenged and challenging students. For some, one of the factors prompting the behaviour that gave rise to suspension is lack of school success. Their reintegration to schooling should not be further impeded by failure to provide them with an educational program while suspended, one that, given the circumstances, a reasonable person will regard as appropriate.

The Right to an Education

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 Schooling in Canada is so ubiquitous that we take for granted the right to an education. But a friend and colleague inclined to skepticism, asked whether a provincial premier might simply declare that the province would no longer provide an education to those whom we typically regard as having a right to education. I replied that such a declaration would be unlikely since the right to an education is firmly established in law and custom. He asked for proof for my assertion.

My immediate response was to refer him to section 93 of the Constitution Act which confers on provincial legislatures law-making power in relation to education subject to specific conditions. I also referred to section 23 of the Charter which confers on English-speaking and French-speaking citizens the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in their first language, subject to specific conditions.

He conceded that a premier could not unilaterally deny education to children and youth of school age, but a provincial legislature could. “Not easily,” I replied, since most acts governing education in the provinces and territories contain provisions entitling children and youth to an education. I used, as an example, section 2 of the School Act in British Columbia. It reads in part that, subject to specific conditions, “a person is entitled to enrol in an education program provided by the board of a school district . . ..” (emphasis supplied).

Further evidence that provinces and territories have a duty to fulfill the entitlement to an educational program is found in the definition of “school age.” In British Columbia, for example, that entitlement extends to the end of the school year in which the individual turns16 years of age.

While it might be feasible for a provincial legislature to rescind the legislation establishing an entitlement to an education, such an action would engender widespread outrage because the provision of education is customary. I pointed to article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It declares that “everyone has the right to education.” The UDHR speaks about the provision of free elementary level. Canada is a signatory to the UDHR.

Canada is also a signatory to or has submitted to other international covenants and treaties obligating states to provide education. Making primary education compulsory and free is seen as a means of ensuring the rights of the child to education in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC specifies the purposes to which an education shall be directed. Among them is “the preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin.”

The notion that preparation for “responsible life in a free society” is a central purpose of education in Canada is codified in provincial legislation and regulation. As I have argued elsewhere, school or education acts and related policies make clear that education is instrumental in developing the knowledge, values, and behaviours that citizens need to maintain a socially cohesive and productive society.

My friend was not completely convinced. “Rights and international agreements are contested all the time,” he asserted. I did not disagree. I pointed out, however, that in Moore v. British Columbia, the Supreme Court of Canada reasoned that, in asserting that the purpose of education is to ensure that “all learners . . . develop their individual potential and . . . acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy,” the Province of British Columbia had acknowledged that children are entitled to an education necessary to make such a contribution. Access to special education, the court reasoned, “. . . is the ramp that provides access to the statutory commitment to education made to all children in British Columbia” and “not a disposable luxury.”

The duty of a province to provide education under the terms of its school act was also  upheld in McLeod v. Salmon Arm Bd. of Sch. Trustees, making “the interest of the children . . . the paramount consideration in the Public Schools Act.”  In Bales v. Board of School Trustees, School District 23 (Central Okanagan) the Court reasoned that “eligible children have a legal right to an education” and an entitlement to an education that “meets some basic educational standard.”

It is understandable that we would take for granted the universality of elementary and secondary education in Canada. However, we can take comfort in knowing that statutes, international conventions, and court judgments make it difficult, if not impossible, for a provincial premier, provincial legislature, or a school board to deny children their legal right to an education.  

Demographics foreshadow significant educational changes

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

According to a Statistics Canada year-end report demographic changes will have an impact on Canada’s economy and society, including its education systems. And the impact will not be trivial. COVID-19 has produced fewer births, lower numbers of immigrants, fewer inter-provincial migrants, and fewer fee-paying international students.

 

As the graph above from Statistics Canada illustrates, population growth, natural increase (births minus deaths), and migratory increase are declining precipitously. To put the decline in perspective, the annual growth in population in 2020 (149,461) was the lowest in number since 1945 and the lowest in percent since 1916. International migration, which accounted for three-quarters of population growth since 2016, declined by more than 50% in 2020.

Some changes such as the decline in the birth rate are part of a longer trend. The chart below indicates, over the past 70 years there has been a dramatic decline in the number of births per 1,000 people. In 1950, there were over 25 births per 1000 Canadians. Today, the number is closer to 10.

 

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/birth-rate Canada Birth Rate 1950-2021. www.macrotrends.net. Retrieved 2021-08-28.

COVID will exacerbate the downward trend in the number of children born through its impact on fertility. Twenty percent of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44 said they want to delay having children and 14% want fewer children than they had anticipated having. There are some Canadians in that age group who want to have children sooner (7%) and want more children that they did prior to the pandemic (4%).

Even if these reductions are only temporary, together they will have a dramatic impact on education in the years to come. Decline in student numbers is consequential, affecting many, if not all, facets of the school district, including facilities usage, employment of district staff, and the nature and types of services the district provides.

If the Government of Canada increases the number of immigrants to offset the decline in natural increase (which is much below the replacement level), there will be increased need for settlement and language services for newcomers for whom English or French is an additional language. Part of the settlement process will need to give attention to the social integration of newcomers and the maintenance of social cohesion. Engagement of parental support--so crucial for successful schooling--will need to figure even more prominently in school districts' community outreach. Increased immigration will also put pressure on schools to ensure the successful educational and social integration of students who are only just learning the language of instruction.  

A drop in the school age population is not uniform across all regions of the country. School boards will be under significant economic pressure to close small, rural schools. School consolidation may produce some economies of scale, but these may be offset by increased transportation costs, environmental impact, and diminished small ‘p’ political support for schools.    

Forecasting and planning capacity differ among school districts. Large districts sometimes have dedicated specialists who can estimate changes in the population at the district level and help policy makers and educators plan for those changes. Smaller districts often lack such capacity because there are fewer, if any, in-house specialists. Differences in capacity would be alleviated if ministries and departments of education assumed responsibility for student population forecasting.

School boards would likely resist such a move, arguing that they know their local conditions better than the ministries or departments. They would also recognize that ministries in possession of such detailed information would likely point out schools that might be candidates for closure to save scarce resources. On the one hand, boards wouldn’t like that. On the other, boards might welcome being able to blame ministries for forcing boards to close small, less efficient schools.

Boards might decide to work together on developing population estimates. They might do this through the provincial associations to which boards belong or they might wish to establish a shared service.

The continuation of COVID makes it unclear whether the declines that have been observed will continue, what the magnitude of those declines might eventually be, and what impact governmental policies such as admitting a greater number of immigrants will have on school age populations.  Regardless of the impact of government policy, demography plays an important part in educational policy, planning, and resourcing. Boards that fail to plan for demographic changes put themselves on a precarious economic and educational footing.

Simple solutions are often not as simple as they seem

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

My experience as a Deputy Minister of Education taught me that seemingly simple solutions to complex problems are not as simple as they first appear. The January 4^th Globe and Mail opinion article (“Canada needs to invest in tutoring for students falling behind”) proposes that the Government of Canada fund tutoring in K-12 schools to address learning losses caused by COVID-19. It is an intriguing proposal, but before adopting it there are several issues that the authors do not address that may subvert the intended outcome they seek.

Long before COVID, small, rural, and remote regions of Canada have found it challenging to recruit and retain qualified teachers. Even in urban areas recruitment can be problematic, especially recruiting and retaining qualified French-language teachers. COVID-19 has prompted many experienced teachers to resign, making staffing even more difficult and exhausting the supply of teachers who fill in for teachers who are ill. These conditions make access to education an equity issue that has implications for tutoring.

Unless they are experienced teachers, tutors will need to rely upon the diagnoses and prescriptions of experienced teachers for their tutoring efforts to succeed. Teacher shortages and teachers overburdened with the demands on schooling imposed by the pandemic are not trivial matters that will, in turn, affect the deployment and supervision of tutors. How will regions and school districts facing recruitment, retention, and daily teacher absences provide the support that tutors will need to be effective?

Inequities in access to the internet, equipment, and bandwidth during COVID have not been remedied. The failed natural experiment in online education during COVID suggests that tutoring via the internet is likely to be even less successful.

The brief opinion article does not indicate what mechanisms will be established to ensure the quality of the tutoring experience for vulnerable students. Teacher certification is a mechanism that provides some assurance that even the least qualified teachers are unlikely to do harm to the students for whom they are responsible. Certificated teachers must undergo background record checks and meet minimum standards. What standards should tutors meet to undertake responsibility for working with students? 

The opinion piece argues that the Government of Canada should provide resources that will be spent in the education sector. As most people are aware, education is a provincial jurisdiction. Will the provinces accept money from the government of Canada for education? Will all provinces accept the resources?  Quebec often insists that it receive resources without restrictions about how the resources are spent. What conditions will the provinces place on the receipt of those funds?

If provinces accept resources from the Government of Canada, how will they distribute the resources? Will resources be distributed through school boards? Do school districts have the capacity to use the resources to hire and supervise tutors?

When will the tutoring be provided? If during the school day, will teachers’ unions and support-staff unions say that the tutors, whether face-to-face, or remote are “doing bargaining unit work” prohibited by the contracts they have with their employers?

Parents will want assurance that the provision of tutoring does not absolve school systems from the obligation they have to address the negative impact of COVID-19. Many will be concerned that tutoring simply relieves school systems of the pressure for addressing the educational needs of students. “Yes, she’s behind, but the tutor is handling that!”

My intent is not to impede consideration of this proposal. The concerns and question I raise are ones that must be addressed to ensure that a well-intentioned proposal does not compound the challenge that the proposal is designed to address and exacerbate the problem.