F for Failure: A Critical Examination of the Ineradicable Defects of Canadian Education

Copyright © J.E.G. Dixon 2014

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The man who is in the minority of one is almost sure to be in the right.

Henry Whitehead

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Bertrand Russell

We know nothing, nothing at all, of the results of what we do to children.

C.L.R. James

This essay is dedicated to the proposition that the individual with his inherent abilities must be at the core of all educational policies and practices.

PART A

THE OLD ORDER

I.

It is right to begin our inquiry into the state of education in Canada by stating an obvious truth, the truth that, like many obvious truths, is often cast aside in favour of some new and trendy activity of the kind that attracts the attention of educational theorists. That truth is that the teacher and the curriculum are the heart and soul of education, but only when serving the needs of the individual pupils. This creed will strike most of our current educationists as a heresy, since their efforts are bent towards filling the heads of all our pupils with the same matters and on examining them to ensure that they, both pupils and matters, remain unchanged.

We will have much to say about teachers and teaching; but before tackling the issue of the curriculum we need to cast an eye on some of the current abuses taking place in our schools from a very early age.

I have studied the web sites of several provinces and cities and school boards which offer kindergarten programs, and in the following pages I offer a selection, together with comment where called for. It seems to me that all the programs are similar in both the activities carried on and the aims they boast of achieving.

The basic aim can be formulated in this statement: to pay attention is [to be] ready to be a good classroom citizen. A good classroom citizen—the very expression raises the hackles—suggests nothing other than to obey and conform, to do as others do, to follow the rules and never raise awkward questions. To pay attention, similarly, is to listen to the teacher and to take in whatever she says. This part of the program is intended to produce unquestioning conformists. Of that we shall have a great deal to say subsequently.

The kindergartens seem strong on having their pupils daub colours on sheets of paper. We feel justified in asking what skills they demonstrate in so doing or what skills they are meant to be developing? For the results of the ‘pictures’ show no instruction by the kindergarten teachers in the most basic ideas of colour or composition or perspective. Drawing and painting are arts which require many years of assiduous study and practice. It appears that all our pupils are subjected to this exercise, whether they show any talent for it or not; and indeed they are subjected to it without even being tested for talent.

The kindergarten teachers go further: they post the resulting pictures on the classroom walls—and award them all a prize. Well, perhaps at this stage they are all ‘equal’, and equally ‘good’. But they are not. And it is sure that the children see through the fraud. This practice is engaged in, apparently, in order not to harm the poor little kiddies’ delicate self-esteem. Such a notion strikes us as a serious psychological misdemeanour.

There is more; and it is equally bad. When the pictures are ‘judged’ and appraised as being of equal merit, the teachers are introducing the democratic principle of egalitarianism into the classroom. Democracy has absolutely no place in education. It is the ruin of educational standards. But I suspect that if you mention the term standards to almost any school or college teacher in North America today, they will have no idea what you are talking about.

I wrote to the Minister of Education of British Columbia to ask him what the purpose of this exercise was. I received a reply several months later from a nameless person in the Learning Division. It included this explanation:

Open-ended artistic activities, such as drawing or painting, support children’s physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and creative development. Making art is a sensory exploration activity that allows children to explore and build knowledge about the world around them. Drawing or painting are ways for children to symbolize what they know and how they feel. Artistic activities also help develop children’s motor skills (both small and large muscle groups), as well as hand-eye coordination. Creating art allows children to explore, express, create, think, plan and design using different materials and techniques; nurturing these capacities is vital for children’s success in learning and in life. Art is also fun and a natural way to learn through play.

In making art, the process or experience is more important than the end product, particularly in the early years. Children are encouraged to experiment and enjoy creating art without being concerned about the outcome or using a particular technique.

It is quite impossible to conjure up a more complete litany of excuses for inflicting on our children an activity, seemingly innocuous in itself, and for which the educational authorities claim such enormous benefits.

The same reply referred me to no fewer than thirteen online research papers which all made equally monstrous claims. Eleven of them were American, one was Australian—a survey of children in rural northern New South Wales at that—and one Ontarian.

The Australian paper reported that the creative arts are represented in a visual, kinaesthetic, aural or tactile form.

The Ontario paper claims that arts education helps children to develop and learn.

The American ‘research’ reports on the five major art form areas of dance, drama, visual arts, music and multi-arts, and concludes: The evidence is clear: study of the arts contributes to student achievement and success.

The claims made for these activities are not supported by any specific evidence. They do not go into questions of how arts education helps children to develop and learn, and what they develop and learn. And they have nothing to say about how study of the arts contributes to student achievement and success.

The reader will not have failed to notice the disclaimer added, perhaps almost as an afterthought, by my nameless correspondent of the British Columbia Ministry of Education: In making art, the process or experience is more important than the end product, particularly in the early years. Why particularly in the early years? It is not explained. Like everything else, nothing is explained. The whole exercise of spending hours doing something in school whilst the end product is held to be of no account is so inimical to all sound educational theory and practice that one cannot help but wonder in what strange and alien culture these educational bureaucrats were indoctrinated.

It is universally recognized that few people have the native talents required to draw or paint well, at any age. The children are required to ‘paint’, but they are not taught the basics of art—drawing, composition, perspective. Would a teacher give musical instruments to all their pupils and tell them to play them? Why not? What if teachers were to give their pupils an assortment of ingredients and told them to make a cake? Would they then ‘grade’ the results in the same way? Why not? It seems to me that such ‘teachers’ betray their very calling.

Whether this exercise constitutes attempts by pre-school teachers to ‘entertain’ their wards, or to fill in time, or to develop their ‘creative’ talents, who knows?. Daubing paper with bright colours and calling the products ‘art’ or ‘painting’ is an insult to children, and is, perhaps, the sort of thing justified only in care homes for giving elderly residents with various forms of dementia something to occupy the long daytime hours.

If you want to produce a crop you must prepare the ground lest you harvest a mass of thistles and weeds. Some kindergartens go so far as to segregate their charges into junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten. Is this distinction based on age or achievement? Obviously age, for all achieve the same.

Every kindergarten web site that I examined displayed reams of information about the indispensable advantages to its pupils to be gained, for example, from improved literacy and improved numeracy, but nary a word could I find about actually learning to read and write. We know that the literacy skills of our students, even at the university level, leave much to be desired. So it is clear that either the schools are not teaching reading, or the teaching of it is woefully defective. Yet there is no secret to the effective teaching of reading. Would you believe it has been going on for several thousands of years, and that even the old Greeks mastered the art early and young, and without even paper, let alone computers. (Mind you, teachers need to be cautious whether computers and other such devices are a help or an impediment to learning.).

Then there is the question of writing—I mean writing by hand. Our educational mandarins tell us that writing is necessary in the modern world, despite computers. Yet the kindergartens do not teach writing. Nor do the schools. I have seen occasional photographs in our newspapers showing a teacher bent over a pupil’s desk. The pupil is writing. She is not holding her pencil—she is clutching it in a closed fist in such a manner that makes it impossible to form letters well. The same month I came across a selection of children’s writings displayed in a local paper, displayed, I believe, with a sense of pride on their teacher’s part. They depict handwriting that reveals no teaching of how to write. At some stage in their schooling children are required to write compositions or even essays. A friend has complained that his neighbour has twin boys aged 14. He has shown me a sample of their writing. The letters are ill-formed, of varying sizes, and at uneven levels on the paper. And the letters are not joined up. The boys, like all pupils, are not taught how to write.

Another lady was visited by her granddaughter who brought a beautifully clear handwritten letter which she could not read. What is the explanation, or the excuse, for this neglect? Do teachers not write on the chalkboard any more? To be required to carry out a task in school which clearly calls for a scholastic skill, yet which they are not taught how to do, betrays not only a grave lapse of professional self-respect, but also an unconcern for educational standards.

The evidence of this professional mischief is visible in our offices and stores, where assistants and clerks in their twenties hold a pen as if it were a screwdriver.

The kindergartens lay great stress on the importance of games, presumably as a means of learning social skills. Children do not need to be taught social skills. They live them hourly and daily. The games they should be learning are mind-bending games like checkers and chess. Yes, even chess, at the age of four. But of course none of our teachers can play chess. Is it too intellectually demanding for them? It is not beyond our children.

It is significant, and revealing, that in every kindergarten program we looked at the dominant term used in reference to the contents of the program was ‘activities’. Now activities are simply doing things, or filling up time, or pondering what to do next. They have no defined aim. Typical of this kind of thing, of course, is precisely daubing paints on paper. Or asking questions such as What is the most likely place in the schoolyard to find worms? (I don’t know the answer expected. In the ground?) Apparently the question is devised in order to elicit inventiveness on the part of the pupil. Or knowledge. Of what value is such knowledge? But then, knowledge is supposed to be the be-all and the end-all of education. It is not. In all good time we will show that knowledge, as purveyed in academic courses, has nothing to do with education.

To conclude, we will quote the long list of Expectations that one school board has posted as representing the aims of one or two years of the kindergarten experience. It comes near the end of a 74-page statement entitled The Kindergarten Program published by the Ontario Ministry of Education; and is typical of the pedagogical and sociological claptrap disseminated by every department in the land:

A. demonstrate a sense of identity and a positive self-image;

B. demonstrate a beginning understanding of the diversity in individuals, families, schools, and the wider community;

C. demonstrate independence, self-regulation, and a willingness to take responsibility in learning and other activities;

D. demonstrate an ability to use problem-solving skills in a variety of social contexts;

E. identify and use social skills in play and other contexts;

F. demonstrate an awareness of their surroundings.

Splendid, absolutely splendid! These ‘expectations’ are to be fulfilled by finger-painting and the other ‘activities’ the kiddies are engaged in. Why, meseems that many university graduates would have difficulty in ‘demonstrating’ such a rich array of social and intellectual achievements. And all our kiddies get for it is a star for painting.

What else goes on, or doesn’t go on, in our kindergartens, which is nothing other than occupying the pupils’ time until their tenders —carers?— can pack up and go home at two-thirty in the afternoon, does not bear looking into. Above all, nothing they do lays the ground for what they will be called on to learn and to do the following year. But let us leave them to their activities and look at the curriculum of the years called Grades 1 - 12.

II

Like today’s pupils, I was required many decades ago to take courses in English, French, Latin, Geography, History, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. It was easy to see the utility of some of them, notably of