Education

Who is Responsible for College Seniors?

John Seel

April 15, 2013

Parents and students everywhere wait with bated breath to find the results to the mysterious process of college acceptance. An entire industry has formed around supporting high school seniors in this life-defining rite of passage. One of the critical outcome assessments of private high schools is how successful they are in positioning their graduates in getting into the colleges and universities of their choice.

This is the season for thick and thin envelopes.

Parents and students everywhere wait with bated breath to find the results to the mysterious process of college acceptance. An entire industry has formed around supporting high school seniors in this l...

Read more...
A Quiet Battle in an Echo-ocracy

Peter Stockland

April 4, 2013

"Help is needed to support a young girl who was recently rescued from human traffickers. She was bought and sold into the sex trade for nine years. Now she is free. She needs food, clothing, shelter, medicine, counseling, and rehabilitation. We would also like to provide her, when she is ready, funds for education courses to help her restore her life.

As Ottawa's echo-ocracy worked itself into stage five incoherence over a backbench MP's motion on sex-selection abortion, the following words quietly appeared on another MP's website:
"Help is needed to support a young girl who was recently ...

Read more...
Less than Exemplary

Brian Dijkema

January 10, 2013

You'll be hearing a lot of this type of doublespeak in the next while, so I thought it would be helpful to clarify a few things.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) wants to strike this Friday. Wait, I'm sorry, they want to stage an "action" that "is a political protest unless the Ontario Labour Relations Board determines o...

Read more...
Families and their Worldviews

Ray Pennings

November 22, 2012

U.S. families can be divided into four approximately equal-sized groups. On one end of the spectrum are a group the UVA researchers labelled "the faithful" (20% of the sample); "engaged progressives" (21%) occupy the other extreme. The two groups in the middle of the spectrum were labelled as "the detached" (19%) and "American dreamers" (27%.) Huffington Post columnist Lisa Belkin provides a thorough summary of each of these groups and their particular characteristics.

Last week, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia released a report based on survey data showing the diversity of American familie...

Read more...
Battlefield: University

Brian Dijkema

November 15, 2012

This rankles the student government of Queen's, and is currently the subject of a student grievance. Argues a spokeswoman, "The inclusion of a civility clause, especially when it threatens a student's academic standing, would actively discourage the exchange of critical inquiry and free speech which are foundational to a quality undergraduate education."

There's a big fuss this week about a Queen's university professor inserting a "civility clause" into her course syllabus. The clau...

Read more...
Judging From a Distance

Peter Stockland

November 13, 2012

The newspaper's tall foreheads have taken a licking after their weekend editorial spanked the Supreme Court (calmly and just once on the tuckus, of course) for "overstepping its authority" in a recent decision. The Globe perspicaciously saw the danger of a distant court dictating to a very local level of government how it should spend scarce tax dollars.

I normally reserve frosty Fridays for rushing to support the Globe and Mail's editorial writers, but sometimes a chilly November Tuesday must do.

The newspaper's tall foreheads have taken a licking after ...

Read more...
Why Criticism of Religion is So Necessary

Richelle Wiseman

September 26, 2012

Should criticism of religion be allowed, particularly when it can lead to such violent reactions?

After two weeks of riots across the Muslim world, ostensibly due to an offensive amateur YouTube video which insults the Prophet Muhammad, many people across the non-Muslim world might agree that the reaction to the offense far exceeds the offense itself. T...

Read more...
Publisher's Letter: A Blooming Danger

Peter Stockland

September 1, 2012

Killing education with Ontario's Bill 13.

As the current school year began, words attributed to a 15-year-old student at a Windsor, Ont., high school exposed the destructive nature of the provincial government's Bill 13. The legislation, formally known as the Accepting Schools Act, was pas...

Read more...
When Teachers are Less than Exemplary

Jonathan Wellum

August 7, 2012

This lack of funding is clearly displayed within our public service sector. Over the past five decades the public service sector has, with the complicity of government and powerful unions, increased the value of their benefits (pensions and health care) to levels that are totally unsustainable. . .

The Baby Boomers are retiring. This aging tidal wave sweeping over Canada, along with the whole developed world, is placing massive stress on the financial solvency of governments. As Boomers retire they believe they are in line to receive an unprecedented ...

Read more...
The Leaning Tower of Ivory

Robert Joustra

July 20, 2012

What is to be done to resolve this stalemate between a marginalized academy and a disinterested, maybe hostile, political class? A few options have surfaced over the last decade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

...

Read more...
Wisdom Cries Out in the Streets

Brian Dijkema

July 4, 2012

But despite the cognitive and visual dissonance, the young lady above—whether consciously or not, and even fractionally—does exhibit wisdom on the streets. And, insofar as she is participating in that great mob of disaffected Quebec youth, there might be more wisdom in these street protests than one might imagine at first glance.

[caption id="attachment_1210" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Photo: Peter Stockland"] ...

Read more...
From Sea to Sea

Raymond J. de Souza

July 1, 2012

Father Raymond J. de Souza finds Quebec students going forward to the past.

Marching Backwards

Given sufficient patience, it would be possible to float down the St. Lawrence River from my home on Wolfe Island to the Island of Montreal. This spring, though, the short trip by train in early May seemed like a passage to ...

Read more...
Small Talk

Raymond J. de Souza

July 1, 2012

Our editor-in-chief looks at leisure, literature, and the PM's painted birthday suit.

Graduation season has just concluded and wisdom, conventional or otherwise, was dispensed by commencement speakers across the land and around the world. Tufts University made an excellent choice in Eric Greitens, a Rhodes Scholar, Navy SEAL and philanthropi...

Read more...
False Hopes and Dreams

Josh Reinders

June 25, 2012

While the majority of the 211 players drafted will not make the big stage, a few will make an impact and maybe a handful will play a game that will allow them to be a part of the NHL elite. Does this small probability of success mean that the players shouldn't even try or that they should give up because they are unlikely to be the best, to be special?

This past Friday night, hundreds of young men with natural talent and physical prowess descended upon the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, PA, hoping and praying they would hear their names announced by a National Hockey League team in the 2012 NHL draft...

Read more...
Graduation Wishes

Ray Pennings

June 22, 2012

Wellesley High School English teacher You've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. ... You've been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored....Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet....And now you've conquered high school....But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not.Talk show debate has reduced McCullough's antidote to an alternate reduction. "Make the most out of life by forgetting about yourself and serving others." With due respect, whatever merits McCullough's talk may have had, this alternative doesn't really cut it either. And neither does the religious version of graduation reductionism sometimes heard in Christian education settings. "Pray and trust God and He will make all things go well for you." Graduates deserve something more than unnuanced slogans.

This blog is the substance of the graduation address given at Oxford Reformed Christian School last evening.

Wellesley High School English teacher
...

Read more...
Tipped hands and missed opportunities

Dani Shaw

June 11, 2012

The recent debate between the Ontario government and concerned Catholic parents and educators (over the McGuinty government's anti-bullying bill, discussed in this space last week) highlights the need for a more robust understanding and public discourse about the interplay between freedom of conscience and religion, advancing public policy, and the role of government in a diverse society. Whatever the merits of Bill 13, it is lamentable that the reported public debate has been reduced to a putative clash between religion and "fundamental values" such as respect and tolerance, and to a dispute about the name of clubs designed to promote understanding between students of different sexual orientations. Freedom of conscience and religion is itself a fundamental value, one that legislators tend to ignore or curtail when there is an apparent clash with other fundamental values. A more robust understanding of the value of freedom of conscience and religion in a highly diverse society is long overdue.

...

Read more...
Religious rights are not human rights?

Peter Stockland

June 5, 2012

The key to the video is not the demonstrators protesting legislation that will use the State's monopoly on deadly force to tell Catholic schools how to name their anti-bullying clubs. It is not even just the presence of a lone counter-demonstrator who heckles the main group of protestors as she holds a juvenile sign announcing "Jesus had two dads and he turned out fine".

As Bill 13 was being passed in the Ontario legislature today, a parent's rights group was circulating the following video: "You Deserve to be Bullied".

The key to the video is not the demonstrators protesting legislation that will use ...

Read more...
Broken Union

Josh Reinders

May 18, 2012

On the surface, a student protest is impractical, by definition. How do students have leverage over a government, especially enough to paralyze that government into making concessions to them? They aren't employees bringing a valuable skill to an employer, so how do they effect change? And their form of protest is . . . skipping class? I do that too, but usually I do it with the knowledge that I'm losing valuable learning time and paying the university to not teach me. I'm not hurting the university by playing hooky, I'm hurting myself.

When the Quebec student protests started, my earliest feelings were of sympathy. These were fellow student, with whom I felt a kinship. Finally someone had taken up arms against ever-increasing tuition prices!

On the surface, a student protest is imp...

Read more...
The Tyranny of Extroverts

Robert Joustra

April 19, 2012

Put aside for the moment that the introvert/extrovert binary is a bit of pop psychology, fraught with reductionist silliness, leaning toward indulgent narcissism. Let's hat tip that awkward context and move straight past it: some folks just find it a lot easier to be out going and extroverted than others.

We now live under a kind of extrovert tyranny, says Susan Cain in her new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. It has led to a culture of "shallow thinking, compulsory optimism, and escalating risk-taking in pursui...

Read more...
Contesting the Defence of Liberal Hegemony

Brian Dijkema

March 1, 2012

Here's a snippet of the Supreme Court's ruling on parental requests to remove their children from state-mandated religious education, which prompted the discussion: Stackhouse criticizes the EFC and Cardus for "arguing quite wrongly" about the case. Putting aside the fact that Cardus has, to date, not published anything official on this case, I want to query John on two matters in his argument which I think will help the discussion along.

Dr. John Stackhouse thinks Catholics and Protestants are overreacting in their response to the Supreme Cou...

Read more...
Standing Up To Power

John Zucchi

March 1, 2012

When Quebec politicians are assaulting religious freedom in private schools, daycares and even private assemblies it's time to get off our knees.

One Saturday evening in March 1988, I was sitting at a table in the restaurant atop the World Trade Center with about 20 other people. The occasion was a dinner with Monsignor Luigi Giussani, the Italian theologian best known for the movement he founded, Co...

Read more...
Vocation Takes Patience

Alissa Wilkinson

January 16, 2012

Whether this is because Millennials insist on instant results, or because they have been proselytized to pursue their dreams, Segovia's point is a good one. He says in his final paragraph: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I read an interesting blog post by Oliver Segovia on the Harvard Business Review last week: "To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion." Segovia recounts the story of a p...

Read more...
The Disgrace of Grace

Kyle David Bennett

December 16, 2011

That has always struck a chord with me. I dropped out of symbolic logic after only the second class.

When asked what he thought about current philosophy curricula in higher education, the late Richard Rorty once said he would much rather have his students learn a new language than take symbolic logi...

Read more...
Educating Without Families

Ray Pennings

November 23, 2011

The Star report claims Ontario is embracing "the overwhelming social, economic, and scientific evidence favouring investments in early-childhood education." Says the report,

A report released yesterday celebrated the fact that more than half of Canadian preschoolers are in regulated child care centers or pre-school programs. Federal and prov...

Read more...