I think history and civics are not very well taught in our schools and this has a huge impact on society and the future sustainability of our democracy.

If we can not have children that learn from our history, understand where we came from, and what our rights and responsibilities are as citizens then we will be nothing more then prisoners of our own ignorance.

Math, physics, grammar, biology, chemistry and the other memory based learning are the basics people often understand as important, because they are also politically correct. Where as civics and history can come from many competing perspectives, which in and of itself is important for young minds to learn to think for themselves as they make sense of the world around them.

To begin with set some standards of performance. Get rid of the “no child left behind”, no fail policy.

Simple : Kick out the kids who don’t want to be there, send all the disruptive idiots with them. Oh look, you just dropped your class size, improved your curriculum with one easy swoop.

Stop the summer “vacation” nonsense. 50 weeks a year schooling. The summer break was done in order to allow the children to be home on the farm during the planting and harvesting period to do work. Today, most children do not even do chores to get their allowance, so the summer break is no longer needed.

While we are at it, forget about the spring break as well.

Cut pro-d days to no more than once per semester and make sure there is a plan in place to promote professional development. No more excursions to nice vacation spots on school district dime. Assemble all the staff in the school district facilities locally.

Do you have first hand knowledge of pro-d days?

Nice try SD 57. Unfortunately any significant changes have to be made at the provincial level. Looking at successful education structures around the world show that after the 10th year of education, students need to be streamed into areas of interest to them, i.e. technical or academic.

To Loki and PG101: your simplistic solutions set the stage for more problems than they could ever possibly solve. What would you do with all those left behind? In the past, the males became cannon fodder for the next war and the females hoped like hell they could latch on to a decent man to support them, otherwise their futures were as bleak as the soldiers who returned from the war (if they were lucky). These days, such solutions are no longer the solution to anything at all, let alone resolving the problems in our education system.
I do however agree that getting away from the “everybody must have prizes” approach should be looked at. If working in the post-secondary system has taught me anything, it’s that the K12 system does not do an adequate job of preparing students for further education in many cases.

Excellent comment and observation Krusty. Reading comments from individuals who have a firm grasp, and understanding, of the subject matter being discussed is an occasional breath of fresh air on this discussion board.

Total BS Krusty, sorry but I don’t buy that for a dollar. Those who dropped out of school did not go to war, WW1 and WW2 some did drop out and lie about their age to go fight because they had something call patriotism at heart, not because their grades were bad or they were troublemakers. Those in the 60s and beyond who dropped out went to work (or woodstock), either at home or for others, they did not drop out to go become cannon fodder. Where do you get this stuff? Hasn’t been a war kids dropped out for, for 70 years, get with the program. “These days”… sheesh… at least Loki and PG101 know what year it is.

Welp, commentary on this discussion thread is free-falling down to some kind of lowest common denominator. Don’t think I will stick around to kind out where it ends up.

Sophic Sage. Seems you might have been on this site before under a different name.

You could stick around and try and make the commentary better, which would include spelling **find** correctly as opposed to spelling it **kind**.

Gee Slinky, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?
Now that you’re through attacking my opinion, why don’t you tell the rest of us what you would do with all the people who can’t cut it in a school system that lets the weaker students fall by the wayside? As a kid, I worked with lots of drop-outs, men who could set beads on a hillside but couldn’t write their own names; their wives had to sign for their paychecks. Those kinds of jobs are gone and folks who cannot achieve an education will be in real trouble. At some point, they will have nothing left to lose and at that moment, they become everyone’s problem. What’s your solution, Slinky?

We have set it so schools are now just a place to babysit our kids.

No failing? Keep them with their friends, write the words how they sound, not how they are spelt, evveryone gets a ribbon for participating .. Why strive to do better when you don’t have to?