Do we really want them to be even dumber?

I just read that a school district to the south of us is going to be shortening their school year by a week by tacking on a further week to Easter Vacation. Huh? Shouldn’t that have read ‘adding’ a further week to the school year? You know, looking at the quality of literacy that abounds in the young, wouldn’t that make more sense. Just sayin’ …

I gather that the noble body of school trustees in the Victoria district felt that lots and lots of  parents wanted that extra break so that they could take wonderful mid-term vacations in the South of France, Hawaii or Belize. I noticed that the demand by po’ folk for extra vacation time — you know, the working stiffs who will have to fork out for an extra five days of daycare — didn’t seem to factor in. In fact, the feelings of parents did not factor in, period, in the arbitrary decision.

The school board made the statement that money wasn’t a factor, but that students and teachers needed an extra week of R&R to gear up for the final onslaught of the school year. As if that onslaught was something actually demanding. When I read that I think I threw up just a little bit.

Oh, and they also justified their boneheadedness and irresponsibility by saying that all sorts of other school districts are grabbing an extra week of slackass time, so who are they to buck the trend. Who are they indeed? Certainly not a group of people who put education first-and-foremost in their instincts.

Maybe I’m just ranting, but I don’t think so. Are modern kids (with school years appreciably shorter than ours were) stupider than we were? I mean, we were pretty damn stupid; I’ll concede that point. But, looking at the general level of literacy out there (or lack thereof), I would say we were virtual Rhodes Scholars in comparison. In other fields, there is a bit of a crisis in Canada and the US because none of our graduates want to go into the sciences. “It’s like way too hard, dude.” So,what happens to technology and medicine? Thank God for India.

The point is, Canadian and American school years are already the shortest in the world (American are actually shorter than ours, but we’re catching up.)

When I was teaching senior history centuries ago it was a struggle to get all the course material in during the time alloted in the semester. If more time was to be taken away we wouldn’t have been able to finish. Or, at least the course would have need to be watered down to a superficial level. And, judging by our knowledge deficits, I expect such is actually the case these days.

Education is, to me, old-fashioned bastard that I am, not a business that must especially cater to the comfort zone of students and teachers, but a vital component of any future that we might be able to latch onto.

God knows contemporary society needs more bright people so, dear school trustees, whatever your remarkably ill-advised motivations might be, stop pissing around with our future. That is not what you have been entrusted to do.