No advantages accrue from consolidating schools
Published in LeaderPost: Thursday, December 06, 2007
I have read with interest how the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) is preparing us for another round of school closures.
The new minister of education indicates how closures are inevitable and that he will work to develop a new set of criteria.
The common denominator in all of this is the continued destruction of what was once a very good educational system.
The SSBA asks if it is better to keep a school with 20 kids -- or to combine our resources in order to provide supposedly a better education. It bases this assumption on some untested theory that resources provide education. Again, no information is forthcoming to show how that theory has any basis in fact.
I can only say that, after gathering what information I could relating to whether or not keeping that school of 20 students is better than combining resources, the information I've gleaned is a very definite "yes".
In our own case, which saw a school of 50 students closed in order to consolidate resources, we also experienced a substantial decline in educational quality.
Along with that decline, there was also a decline in quality of life, a decline in extracurricular opportunities, an increase in absenteeism, an increase in family problems and a threefold increase in costs. All of this after a guarantee in writing by the department that there would be no negatives. We have yet to find a single positive.
Given that information, the answer to the question about whether it would be better to keep the school of 20 students or to consolidate is self-evident. The fact that the department has refused to live up to its guarantee only confirms that the attitude of "don't confuse me with the facts" is leading our educational system into very poor future prospects.
The mindset demonstrated by the SSBA and the new minister of education indicates a very costly, yet ever-increasing decline in a system that clearly is in need of a major overhaul.
Michael Klein
(Klein is mayor of the Village of Wood Mountain.)
Wood Mountain
I have read with interest how the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) is preparing us for another round of school closures.
The new minister of education indicates how closures are inevitable and that he will work to develop a new set of criteria.
The common denominator in all of this is the continued destruction of what was once a very good educational system.
The SSBA asks if it is better to keep a school with 20 kids -- or to combine our resources in order to provide supposedly a better education. It bases this assumption on some untested theory that resources provide education. Again, no information is forthcoming to show how that theory has any basis in fact.
I can only say that, after gathering what information I could relating to whether or not keeping that school of 20 students is better than combining resources, the information I've gleaned is a very definite "yes".
In our own case, which saw a school of 50 students closed in order to consolidate resources, we also experienced a substantial decline in educational quality.
Along with that decline, there was also a decline in quality of life, a decline in extracurricular opportunities, an increase in absenteeism, an increase in family problems and a threefold increase in costs. All of this after a guarantee in writing by the department that there would be no negatives. We have yet to find a single positive.
Given that information, the answer to the question about whether it would be better to keep the school of 20 students or to consolidate is self-evident. The fact that the department has refused to live up to its guarantee only confirms that the attitude of "don't confuse me with the facts" is leading our educational system into very poor future prospects.
The mindset demonstrated by the SSBA and the new minister of education indicates a very costly, yet ever-increasing decline in a system that clearly is in need of a major overhaul.
Michael Klein
(Klein is mayor of the Village of Wood Mountain.)
Wood Mountain
posted by Saskboy at 12/06/2007 10:06:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home