When my daughter begins school this September she will be the third generation in my family to attend a public school in Canada.
Sasha's Oma arrived in PEI as a toddler in the mid-50's as part of a wave of immigrants who came to this country looking for a new beginning after WWII left much of Europe in a state of despair.
Her school age years in Montreal was when my mom learned to become ambidextrous because left-handed writing was deemed worthy of the strap.
I was born in a decade of community spending by all levels of government that provided me with a truly liberal learning experience. The only beatings I took were of the emotional kind from peers who liked to taunt me because I had a prominent birthmark on my face.
Sasha, born early into a new millenium, is part of a generation that will experience "21st Century Learning". And what is that you ask?
Well, that is still up for debate all over the developed world and two movements are now vying for control over the future of what education will look like for us.
One wants to build on the successes of the public system we currently have and is primarily made of people who are stakeholders within the system. The other wants to open the system up to a free market consumer model and is primarily made up of celebrities, economists and think tanks.
Both have different ideas about what public schools are good for.
Chronic underfunding for decades has turned parents, teachers, trustees and students into entrepeneurs helping to raise funds for things that were part of the status quo when I was in school.
Things got better between my moms generation and mine, so why is my daughters generation getting shafted?
Rather than letting our public education system get nickle and dimed to death I feel its time for Canadians to decide what kind of system we really want to invest in.
I want to make the case that a holistic public education system is far more beneficial to Sasha's generation than a competition based model, and then encourage Canadians to be part of the debate in their own communities to help shape the sustainable "21st Century Learning" that every child in our nation deserves.
Sasha's Oma arrived in PEI as a toddler in the mid-50's as part of a wave of immigrants who came to this country looking for a new beginning after WWII left much of Europe in a state of despair.
Her school age years in Montreal was when my mom learned to become ambidextrous because left-handed writing was deemed worthy of the strap.
I was born in a decade of community spending by all levels of government that provided me with a truly liberal learning experience. The only beatings I took were of the emotional kind from peers who liked to taunt me because I had a prominent birthmark on my face.
Sasha, born early into a new millenium, is part of a generation that will experience "21st Century Learning". And what is that you ask?
Well, that is still up for debate all over the developed world and two movements are now vying for control over the future of what education will look like for us.
One wants to build on the successes of the public system we currently have and is primarily made of people who are stakeholders within the system. The other wants to open the system up to a free market consumer model and is primarily made up of celebrities, economists and think tanks.
Both have different ideas about what public schools are good for.
Chronic underfunding for decades has turned parents, teachers, trustees and students into entrepeneurs helping to raise funds for things that were part of the status quo when I was in school.
Things got better between my moms generation and mine, so why is my daughters generation getting shafted?
Rather than letting our public education system get nickle and dimed to death I feel its time for Canadians to decide what kind of system we really want to invest in.
I want to make the case that a holistic public education system is far more beneficial to Sasha's generation than a competition based model, and then encourage Canadians to be part of the debate in their own communities to help shape the sustainable "21st Century Learning" that every child in our nation deserves.
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