canada has school choice?

[ElFenix]

learned today via a column that canada has school choice via funding by the state of private schools, both secular and religious. the columnist is one of bush's advisors, marvin olasky, prof of journalism at UT here. he said that its worked well in the 30+ years its been around.

my question: has it? we always hear that canadian schools are wonderful, etc, so could we model state-wide school choice/vouchers/whatnot here in the states on the systems in canada? would it work here?

 

[TNTrulez]

who knows

 

[N8Magic]

I can't see why not...

I went to a Catholic elementary and high school and it wasn't all that different than the public schools. The only differences were that I had to wear a uniform in high school, and we had to take a full credit religion course once per year.

Keep in mind that this religion course was not a catholic bible-thumping type course, but usually about different world religions and whatnot.

 

[ElFenix]

but it works, and it works on a large scale, right?

 

[charrison]

Voucher programs here work.

 

[Colt45]

I hated catholic school. public was much better IMO.

(no people bitchin' at you, telling you to take your hat off, having to stop during prayer BS, etc, etc ,etc. hehe )

oh, the differences are ( that i know of )

cathloic HS, you need to take christian ethics, and all the teachers are supposed to be catholic. When people like counsellors talk to you, they can legally ask "do you believe, etc".

What I want to know is why we don't have subsidised protestant schools? It's no different right?

(note: I'm not a member of either religion. Just doesnt seem right to me..)

 

[SSP]

I say it works. I went to a Catholic school too, and it a hell of a lot better then the public school system. They don?t cram Jesus down our throat. All they ask is that you get up and respect the morning prayers and show up for any mass planned for the students. Even thought some public school have more freedom clothing wise, and A/C, the staff is a lot better at Catholic school then Public school, that?s just IMO.

The only thing is that in Ontario, there was a grade 13 (called OAC) which have courses for students who want to go to University (or college) and is designed to get them ready for University or College. They are removing that after next year, so the new kids have less time to get ready for College or University. This system worked well for pretty much everyone, and it?s too bad they are removing it. Oh well...

 

[Cyberian]

Originally posted by: Colt45
I hated catholic school. public was much better IMO.

(no people bitchin' at you, telling you to take your hat off, having to stop during prayer BS, etc, etc ,etc. hehe )

oh, the differences are ( that i know of )

cathloic HS, you need to take christian ethics, and all the teachers are supposed to be catholic. When people like counsellors talk to you, they can legally ask "do you believe, etc".

What I want to know is why we don't have subsidised protestant schools? It's no different right?

(note: I'm not a member of either religion. Just doesnt seem right to me..)

Which Catholic schools are subsidised?
I don't think the ones around here are.

 

[Z24]

In the province of Ontario (in Canada) you have two "public school" choices. Standard public school, or Catholic school. They are both publicly funded and have no tuition costs.

I wouldn't say that one is better than the other -- I know people who went to Catholic school because it was the closest high-school, or it was better than the closest regular school. But I also know Catholics that went to regular highschool for the same reasons.

Now, if you want to attend a private school, that is also an option. You have to pay tuition and you get no subsidy from the government for doing this.

There is new legislation introduced to give tax credits to those who attend private school (the thinking being that why are you paying taxes to support the public school when you do not use it). As far as I know, this hasn't gone into effect yet.

 

[Scouzer]

I agree with Z24. Many people just attend the school closest to them. Both systems are fairly similar AFAIK.

I attend public school, and its so underfunded its gross. We studied Communist Russia in Social 9 (2001-2002 schoolyear). Thats because they want us to study Capitalism vs. Mixed vs. Communism. But Russia isn't Commy anymore. The vast majority of our textbooks in ANY subject are at least 15 years old. One of our main textbooks for Communist Russia was copyright 1979!

They are planning to make future Grade 9's study China, but the only reason they haven't is lack of funds to buy the new textbooks. The school has a strong compliment of lovely Imacs, and in a school of 800 where we have 2 computer labs and most classrooms have a computer (albeit most are not Imacs outside of the lab), the only connection to the net is a single 128kbps ISDN line. If your whole class is using the one lab, the net is unbearably slow. It defeats the whole point of using computers for studying/research.

Our school also had a lot of handicap students as it is the only school in the county that has about half the school specialized for handicap students. This means our school actually has more money overall than most schools. I don't even want to think how bad it is in some of the other schools.

They used to buff the gym floor once a year. Now this isn't important, but they don't anymore. They have to cut corners everywhere...

Oh, and this in Alberta. The richest province per capita in Canada, thanks to Oil.

 

[Scouzer]

Damn it, EVERY SINGLE TIME I make a long reply to a thread it dies... reply damn you people! Look at the truth!

 

[Handle]

Heh, Scouzer, don't worry, it happens to me all the time.

I actually think that the public (meaning both public and Catholic) systems in Alberta are very good. I can only speak from my own experience (which is K-12 in a Catholic school), but, as people have mentioned, the Catholic schools here don't shove religion down your throat. There were plenty of people in my classes who weren't Catholic, or Christian, or even religious at all. And of the ones who were Catholic, plenty did not go to church on a regular basis. And it didn't seem like many people were bothered, and if they were, they were an unvocal minority. In high school, religion comprised 1/16 of a normal course load if I remember correctly, and religion was taught from quite an academic perspective (some religion classes seemed like philosophy classes). And the exams were heavily reliant on common-sense -- you didn't have to memorize the Bible or anything.

As for funding and how well the curriculum is taught -- I never had any major problems. The schools I went to were clean and were "upgraded" regularly (heh, "upgraded", I guess I can get away with terminology like that on a computer messageboard). My only complaints (in elementary/junior high) would be that we had to eat lunch sitting in the hallways (no cafeteria, and we weren't allowed to eat in the classrooms) and that over 50% of the classrooms in my school were portables (but they were attached and seemed just like normal classrooms).

The curriculum I thought was taught very well. I went to a high school with the IB program, and we were thoroughly prepared for all the material on both the IB exams and the provincial diploma exams.

As for teaching about the communist USSR... I don't see anything wrong with that, although a 1979 textbook is pretty old (are you sure that the 1979 isn't the first edition publication date? I imagine that a 20+ year old book wouldn't survive being used every year in a school). There really isn't a good example left in the world of communism in practice on a large scale (China is communist only in name--I mean, they even have a stock exchange, which goes very much against the idea of communism. They are, however, authoritarian). Given that communism vs. capitalism was a very important issue from around 1945-1995 I imagine they would still want to teach about it, even if there are no present-day examples. Case-studies and textbooks don't always have to be modern, and most books you would read on the Cold War or capitalism vs. communism will tend to be quite old anyway.

 

[Handle]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
learned today via a column that canada has school choice via funding by the state of private schools, both secular and religious. the columnist is one of bush's advisors, marvin olasky, prof of journalism at UT here. he said that its worked well in the 30+ years its been around.

my question: has it? we always hear that canadian schools are wonderful, etc, so could we model state-wide school choice/vouchers/whatnot here in the states on the systems in canada? would it work here?

My understanding of our school system, (for Alberta, I don't know how much provincial variation there is), which may very well be flawed, is that all schools (public, private, and charter-public) are funded by the government, specifically the provincial government. Public schools include both Catholic and "public" schools. Private schools are just that, private. Charter-public are schools that are run on a specific charter (essentially its specialty, such as catering to "bright" students, or a school that emphasizes science, or fine arts).

Public schools are the most common schools and most students go to them. Charter-public schools are probably slightly more common than private schools. These schools are not allowed to charge a "tuition" fee, although they often charge school fees that amount to one or two hundred dollars per year. Public schools receive the most funding per student, and charter-public schools receive less than public but more than private.

Private schools receive the least government funding, but can charge a tuition fee.

I vaguely remember the ratio of funding was approximately 5 (public) : 3 (charter-public) : 1 (private) when I looked it up a while ago. Which would mean that if a public school student yielded $5000 of funding, a charter-public student yielded $3000 of funding and a private school student yielded $1000 of funding (but they can charge tuition fees). So yes, charter-public schools do quite a bit of fundraising.


I find it interesting you say that "we always hear that Canadian schools are wonderful". Who is saying that? I never knew that anyone respected our school system. If you listen to opposition politicians and teachers' unions, you'd think that our education system was horrible!

 

[Scouzer]

I've never even heard of charter-public schools. Thats dumb though, less funding for the more smart or specialized.

Yes my textbook was indeed 1979. They are in EXTREMELY rough shape...

My social teacher was also going insane. We'd repeat every lesson 3-4 times. God knows how many times he repeated things. He didn't know how to teach properly, and he'd contradict himself through mumbling so you wouldn't know what the hell he was trying to say. I think over 1/2 of Grade 9's failed.

My math teacher didn't know what the hell he was doing. Over half of the Grade 9's failed in math also. In comparison, the year before over 3/4 passed.

My LA teacher had some pretty whack ideas about life and liked to go off topic and give false information, but he teached LA very well. Vast majority of people passed.

My Science teacher was just old and grumpy, he was ok. Most boring classes I've ever taken though. But, most people really struggled anyway. My peer group has always been terrible with Science.

I think this might be more because I have a stupid and lazy peer group more than the teachers fault though. But my Math teacher was terrible for sure.

 

[ElFenix]

scouzer - your textbooks last 15 years? the publishers must be putting more money into making them... ours lasted about 3...

handle - thats just sort of the general impression i've gotten from the media and elsewhere. maybe someone around here has one of those rankings of 15 industrial countries' schools to compare against.

 

[kami]

I went to a catholic high school here in ontario simply cause it was closest to me and that's where all my friends were going. Yes you have 1 religion class per year but I can't recall ever touching the bible...it was more of a moral and spirituality class, and I even remember my grade 10 religion teacher doing a bit of sex ed :Q Then grade 11 religion was world religions...learned about christianity, hinduism, judaism, etc. etc....after that it was a sociology class i think. There was also the masses that everyone was supposed to go to but me and my friends always skipped those and went to the arcade.