Case Studies


Case Study: Education

Case Study: Education

"Everyone who has attended a school thinks they are an expert on the education system as they've all experienced it first hand." This was a comment made to me by a very good friend many moons ago when we were discussing education system problems then. The obvious problem here is our experience is simply a snapshot in time. We can even see how things change during our time in the system making it fallacious to think it's more or less the same today.

From family and friend involvement, I know first hand how things sit in the elementary sphere and can categorically state that classrooms and learning are definitely not same, particularly in the make-up of the students. Classrooms today have a much higher proportion of students who have learning difficulties, autism, allergies, etc. Further, there is a much higher proportion of what I'm just going to call 'bad attitudes', both from an interaction perspective as well as physical assault. Lastly, this is not a new thing and has been growing steadily over the past decade or two. Anecdotally from friend involvement and logical determination, the same issues extend through high school and are even exacerbated further due to the fact that the students are now teenagers. All of this combined puts a much greater load on teachers.

In speaking with a relative, a retired high school teacher, he often had classes higher than 25, with 30 being the overall average for many years, however, he also noted the student makeup was very different with students behaving in a much more respectful manner as well as a higher majority who were very proficient at taking a topic and running with it thereby allowing him to focus on those who needed additional guidance despite a high class size.

How does this connect to PC gov actions:
  • this action is estimated to result in the loss of ~18K teaching positions but will no doubt result in a $0 reduction in tax rate
  • the teaching loss will be done via seniority thereby leaving many of the jaded & poor teachers in place while ejecting the younger enthusiastic (and demographically connected: unless they have kids of their own at the same age, hard for the older teachers to connect with the kids unlike younger teachers) from the profession
  • based on my paragraphs above, the education experience of the student will very likely not be improved and in fact will very likely get worse