Tue 25 Sep 2007
I won’t go too in depth into this topic as I had a much lengthier conversation on Kevin Redmond’s Facebook Note, where my thoughts on the issue are explained in detail. This seems to be the most talked about election issue (which shows how boring this election really is).
The proposal by the Conservatives is to publically fund faith-based schools in Ontario. Currently Catholic schools receive funding, which was guarenteed by the Britsh North America Act (originally just elementary schools) and extended by past Premier Bill Davis to include highschools. Polls are showing that a majority don’t support this, but it has made a target out of the exisiting funding for Catholic schools. A great deal of the public are either saying that it is unfair for Catholic schools to receive funding without giving funding to other faith-based schools or for them to even have funding at all.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has taken the latter stance and yesterday released a statement on the issue. There is quite a substantial debate on the announcement on the Globe website. I agree with this stance and I’m quite pleased that I recently became a member of the CCLA. I will note that the Green party is the only party to officially state in their platform that they wish to remove the Catholic School funding. I applaud them, but they also claim that they will add a mandatory world religions course. I have nothing against world religions courses, but I’d rather see a mandatory Grade 12 math course before I’d see a mandatory religion course. There is only so much space in the curriculum.
What do you think?
September 26th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I think that my experiences with going through the Catholic school system for elementary school has really turned me against the idea of faith-based schools. However, I have been exposed to reasons which I can agree with in favour of the funding.
I’m still against them, but I can see reasons that people who don’t feel very strongly about their religon or don’t have one would want funding for faith-based schools.
As for mandatory grade 12 math, there are courses (not necessarily world religions) I’d say should be added before that. Something that will make people more aware of the world they live in (media studies perhaps) would be a good idea before something that a significant portion of the population has a phobia against.
September 27th, 2007 at 7:28 am
I’m not sure what your English classes were like, but with 4 mandatory + 1 additional courses in English in which each one had a unit on Media, I felt I got enough of it. I do see many people come out of highschool struggling with basic math skills, including vital financial math, it makes me think that we need just as many math courses as english courses.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am
The English courses I took mostly focused on literature. The exceptions were when we did units on ethics and on how to argue, which both were in our enrichment.
I guess my question is what do you consider to be vital financial math? I know that what I’ve seen people strugging with in workplace (essential) stream math covers basic math skills, such as those needed for comparison shopping. The question would then be more one of how to make sure people are learning the content, rather than forcing more content on them.
If you’re talking about things like compound interest then “vital” math is beyond a majority of people, until someone develops a new way to teach it.