Archive for the ‘Education Debates’ Category
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Identifying struggling students early essential, test results suggest
Monday, August 30th, 2010
Aug. 30, 2010
Students who fail to meet provincial math standards in early grades are likely to continue to struggle in high school… Of the 14,716 students enrolled in the Grade 9 applied mathematics course in 2010 who had failed to meet provincial standards when they were in Grade 3 and Grade 6, 71 per cent failed to meet standards again in high school. There were 5,603 students who had met standards in Grade 3 and Grade 6, and only 25 per cent of them failed to meet standards in high school.
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Teachers pledge fresh support for northern reading camps
Friday, August 20th, 2010
August 18, 2010
They are the most at-risk children in Canada, in more danger of dying young and living poor than any of their peers. Aboriginal children born into the 49 fly-in reserves that dot the vast woodlands of northern Ontario have long been more likely to drop out of school, remain illiterate and attempt suicide than young people anywhere else in the province. They are among the young Canadians with the least hope. Yet a five-year push on literacy in these remote reserves is starting to make a difference…
Tags: philanthropy, poverty, standard of living
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Atlas may shrug, but does he drop out? [tuition costs]
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
August 12, 2010
… kids from poorer families aren’t just disadvantaged in financial assets, they also have smaller pools of social and cultural capital on which to draw. This means they are less likely to be able to get the grades to go to university and they are less likely to want to go on to university in the first place. Finances are thus at best a third-order cause of inequality of access… finances do matter for some students, some of the time. But that suggests that the right policy response is a program of targeted grant assistance to low-income students. It does not imply that reduced tuition for all students makes any sense at all. Indeed, the evidence that such a policy would increase participation from low-income families is slim to nonexistent.
Tags: participation, poverty
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Teachers’ union calls for two-year testing freeze
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
August 16, 2010
The teachers’ union has long opposed province-wide testing, arguing it takes away precious teaching time, and has produced a 10-minute video of teachers criticizing the tests, which it hopes teachers will show at home and school meetings. Dombrowsky, who is slated to address the teachers Tuesday morning, noted Ontario already changed the test in 2005 to address teachers’ concerns, cutting the testing time in half and holding the test later in the school year.
Tags: budget
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Without access to education, wealth disappears
Monday, August 16th, 2010
August 16, 2010
One cannot enjoy wealth without strong civil society and vice versa. Voltaire pointed out that without food, shelter and clothing, people would not be in a position to contribute positively to the social fabric… Tolerance and respect are based on knowledge. Fear and distrust stem from ignorance. A world without access to education would be a hotbed of strife… The only way to maintain our competitive advantage is to provide access to excellent education, thereby providing innovation and economic development, as well as civic engagement.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living
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Internationalizing Canada’s student experience
Monday, August 9th, 2010
August 9, 2010
Canada welcomed more than 500,000 permanent and temporary residents in 2009, of which 77,000 were full-time university and college students who chose our country as the best place in the world to pursue their higher education. That’s the highest number of international students ever admitted to Canada and, according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, represents a 10-per-cent increase from 2008.
Tags: economy, globalization, immigration
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Premiers urged to get serious about aboriginal education
Friday, August 6th, 2010
Aug. 05, 2010
Assembly of First Nations national chief Shawn Atleo challenged provincial and territorial premiers to improve education, boost earning power, purge violence against women and enshrine human rights among Canada’s 1.3 million aboriginals during a meeting with the Council of the Federation… “We’ve talked about the economic benefits as well to this country. Our studies show that by 2020, if we close the education and employment gap, it would result in a $71-billion contribution to Canada’s GDP.”
Tags: Indigenous
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The Brain: Changing the adult mind through the power of plasticity
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
July 30, 2010
In recent years, experts have learned that the adult brain can actually rewire itself — changing its physical structure and function through experience, thought and behavior. It’s a property known as neuroplasticity… While we have always known the structure of our brain drives our behavior, plasticity shows the opposite is also true. The architecture of our brains is constantly changing in response to the lives we lead… New neural networks can be developed, regions of the brain can grow and change function, taking on the tasks of damaged areas.
Tags: Health
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Bad science: Global-warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
July 15, 2010
… too many of us treat science as subjective — something we customize to reduce cognitive dissonance between what we think and how we live. In the case of global warming, this dissonance is especially traumatic for many conservatives, because they have based their whole worldview on the idea that unfettered capitalism — and the asphalt-paved, gas-guzzling consumer culture it has spawned — is synonymous with both personal fulfillment and human advancement. The global-warming hypothesis challenges that fundamental dogma, perhaps fatally.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology
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Poverty should not stand in the way of education
Friday, July 9th, 2010
July 8, 2010
The problem is current education funding virtually ignores all factors except student population (there are some concessions made to smaller, rural areas). Thus any efforts to overcome socio-economic issues within school boards comes at the expense of other schools, assuming boards even have the ability to tackle anything related to socio-economic issues… If education is truly the key to helping people escape poverty, then we need to do everything possible to ensure poverty doesn’t then stand in the way to our children getting that education.
Tags: participation, poverty
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