April 4th - What Was It All About?

Brandishing signs and equipped with a megaphone and the power of collective student voices, numerous Bethune students walked out of school on Thursday, April 4th to protest the government’s recent changes to education policy.

Revealed in mid-March by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, the drastic changes have been met with distaste by students and teachers alike. Changes involving high school class sizes, math curriculum across grades and even the implementation of an education system reliant on emerging technology have caused many to question the implication of these sudden changes.

CLASS SIZES

In an attempt to reduce the amount spent on the province’s education system, the biggest change is not to the curriculum itself, but to the environment in which the learning is done, with an increase in class sizes. In Ontario, the average class sizes in secondary schools are reported to be at 22 students, while elementary schools contain about 23 per class, putting Ontario at the top, boasting Canada’s lowest student-to-teacher ratio. With Ford’s changes, the average secondary school class size will increase to 28, while class in Grades 4-8 will rise to 24. With this new minimum number of students per class, many high school courses in the arts and humanities may not be run, due to a lack of general interest and an inability by local schools to run smaller classes.

The motive for these changes, however, is a bit muddled, as when this change was officially announced, Education Minister Lisa Thompson stated that no teacher would lose their job as a result of the increased class size, thus dismissing the government’s perceived motive: to cut costs by laying off teachers. Since then, it has been reported that from Peel region alone, nearly 193 secondary school teachers and 176 elementary school teachers have received layoff notices. The TDSB is expected to face similar changes proportional to the district’s size, with 800 secondary school and 216 elementary school teachers facing layoffs. Ford states that the changes in class size will result in a reduction of 3,475 teaching positions, a statement contradictory to the original announcement, though this change is projected to save $851 million over four years.

MATH CURRICULUM

Prior to his election as Ontario’s premier, Ford’s campaign attracted a lot of attention with his views on the previous Liberal government’s math curriculum. Discovery Math, a method currently employed, is based on inquiry, allowing students to reach their own conclusions. Mary Reid, assistant professor of math education at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, explains that it’s “about having students engage in problem-solving, open-ended, authentic, rich problems”. While this unconventional method of teaching may appear innovative and beneficial, math scores on standardized tests across the province have been dismal for several years. Examining the results of the EQAO tests since Discovery Math was employed in the classroom found that in the 2017 results of the test, only 62% of Grade 3 students and a disappointing half of the Grade 6 population met the provincial standard. In Grade 9, 83% of Academic kids and a mere 44% of Applied students meet the standard. While these statistics are disappointing on their own, a six-year study conducted between 2010 and 2016 found that with 27 000 students between students in Ontario and. Quebec, Ontario students’ Math marks remained relatively stagnant while Quebec’s saw a significant climb.While Ford’s changes to our math curriculum are in light of these statistics, not much information has been given as to how exactly these changes will be implemented , besides a promise to revert to the fundamentals of math.

Despite Ford’s prime goal of “going back to basics”, he also cites elementary school teachers as a contributing factor to Ontario’s underwhelming Math performance. Without the credentials necessary to teach math at the elementary school level, the report stating that “one-third of new teachers instructing students in preparation for the Grade 6 math test today are failing it, as well” (Lilley, 2019) isn’t shocking. In light of these reports, 2020 will mark the start of mandatory math proficiency testing for new teachers.

CELLPHONE BAN

Ford doesn’t stop with changes to classroom size and curriculum. Starting in the upcoming 2019 year, the government plans to implement a province-wide cellphone ban in classrooms. Thompson states,“By banning cellphone use that distracts from learning, we are helping students to focus on acquiring the foundational skills they need like reading, writing and math." While the government may hope that this ban will decrease how distracted students are in the classroom, education experts warn against the changes, stating that they will be ineffective in contributing to the changes they desire, and may instead yield contradictory results . Parent Association President of Lawrence Park C.I Unah Grieve speculates that the difficulties in implementing said rule, which may sound beneficial in theory, will create an unnecessary power struggle between teachers and students . This preoccupation will be a distraction from actual learning. Grieve also states that this change is being implemented too quickly, and she isn’t alone in raising this concern, with many insistent on the belief that more studies on the effects of cellphone use by students in the classroom should be conducted before the ban occurs.

Unfortunately, the teenage stereotype of cellphone addiction will ring uncomfortably true for many. Charles Pascal, Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, states that the addiction of high schoolers to their phones has reached such a point that "telling post-millennials to get rid of their cellphones is almost like telling them not to breathe". The ability of schools to enforce these changes is questionable, and not much information has been given as to how this change will be enforced effectively -- students have been known to find their way around various cell phone rules at school.

At face value, several of the changes expected to be made within the upcoming years may appear to be beneficial -- so why is there such a commotion?

These changes primarily target students and teachers, and both parties have chosen to make their voices heard. The walkout, first organized by Natalie Moore, a student in her senior year at Listowel District Secondary School, raised the point that students, as with most changes made by the government, had no say in a change that would be affecting them. Despite Ford’s claims that the walkout was influenced by the teachers, whom he dubbed “union thugs”, the generally outraged student population cites the decrease in classroom size causing a lack of funding for arts and humanities programs and the cellphone ban to be behind their motivation to walk out. Amongst these worries are others, such as the mandatory e-learning to be enforced in the 2020-21 school year, about which Beyhan Farhadi, a University of Toronto PhD candidate, states,“It’s a terrible idea [...] The ministry hasn't paid much attention to e-learning aside from having licensed the platform. In the research I've done, only a minority of students succeed and those students are concentrated in really high achieving schools".📷

The degree to which this protest has affected Ford’s decisions is unclear at the moment, though with his belief that teachers were behind the walkouts gives us some insight as to where education in Ontario is headed.

Information on Bethune’s very own walkout was given through the Instagram page, @bci_saysno.

Sara Saad

2019 Spring Issue