Cheapskate

If you really want to know who Doug Ford is, consider what Linda McQuaig has written:

There will be no cheapness on the part of the Ford government when it comes to providing for customers visiting the private spa to be built at Ontario Place.

On the other hand, the Ford government is exhibiting plenty of cheapness when it comes to providing for children getting an education in Ontario. (Those would be our children, by the way).

And so it is that our “populist” premier will spend $400 million building a parking garage for the convenience of well-to-do spa users, while scrimping on the most basic educational materials in Ontario’s schools.

That scrimping — education funding has dropped by $1,200 per student under Ford (in inflation-adjusted dollars) — explains why classroom shelves are empty after teachers remove the learning materials they have provided, and schools increasingly rely on fundraising drives to pay for technology, libraries and classroom supplies, leaving schools in lower-income areas at a disadvantage.

The government’s miserly approach to funding our children’s education seems curious in such a rich province.

It's not that Ontario doesn't have the money:

The government is actually swimming in money — even as it hollows out key public programs, underfunding schools, shutting down hospital emergency wards and doing nothing for the homeless beyond allowing developers to build ever more condos that are quickly sold to high-income buyers.

While underfunding our public programs didn’t start with Doug Ford, his government has raised this sorry practice to a guiding principle.

For years, we have been told by provincial business and political leaders that we must cut government spending to keep deficits under control — or international investors will cut us off.

That threat was always grossly exaggerated. Our deficits were always manageable; there was never the slightest risk international investors would cut us off.

The notion that we cannot afford a strong public sector has always been a scam.

But it’s particularly a scam these days. The Ford government’s own numbers show a sea of surpluses — not deficits — over the next four years.

And the government’s finances are even better than it likes to admit. The province’s Fiscal Accountability Office — an independent government agency — reported last month that Ontario is on track to collect $22 billion more than it plans to spend on its public programs.

That’s $22 billion that is not being used to adequately fund our education, health care and other vital public programs that determine the quality of life for millions of Ontarians.

If you're a rich land developer, Doug Ford's your man. If you're an ordinary citizen of Ontario -- or the child of one of those ordinary citizens -- he'll do nothing for you.

Image: rabble.ca

Ford's Continued War On Education

Doug Ford's image -- thanks to the pandemic -- has undergone a makeover. But, Linda McQuaig writes, when it comes to education, there's been no make over:

It may seem like a lifetime ago -- that carefree day in pre-pandemic times when two million Ontarians crowded into downtown Toronto to celebrate the victorious Raptors -- but Premier Ford is unlikely to ever forget the unmistakable jeering that followed his introduction.

One of the key things that had made him so wildly unpopular on that day back in June 2019 was his move toward defunding -- no, not police -- but something more precious to Ontarians: public education.

There had been widespread anger over the government's announcement a few months earlier that it planned to increase class sizes throughout the province (enlarging high school classes from 22 to 28 students and eliminating 3,500 teachers) and to force students to take online courses.

These moves, designed to cut $850 million out of provincial education spending, weren't mentioned during the election campaign and were clearly seen as putting the interests of students behind business demands for deficit-reduction.

A leaked internal document confirms that, on the education file, nothing for Ford has changed:

COVID aside, smaller classes, by allowing teachers to devote more individual attention to students, have long been seen as a bedrock principle of good education.

But the Ford government has never seemed particularly interested in such bedrock principles, according to a secret internal document obtained last January by Star reporters Rob Ferguson and Kristin Rushowy.

Rather than demonstrating a commitment to "do absolutely everything, everything" to support our public schools, the document reveals a profit-oriented approach to education that sounds straight out of a corporate boardroom.

Along with plans to cut funding to school boards, the document expressed dissatisfaction that "the [public school] system does not generate any revenue for the province."

The document suggests developing "a business model" for producing online courses that could be marketed to other jurisdictions so "maximum revenue generation may be realized."

Since when is public education about "maximum revenue generation" -- rather than about educating our children, instilling in them civic values and respect for others, and helping them develop into adults who can fully participate in our economy and our democracy? Why is this government so keen to turn the crucial institution of public education into a profit-making centre?

For modern conservatives, profit should be behind everything. If you can't make a profit, you're a parasite.

Image: strategiccfo.com

Back To Basics

Doug Ford  announced yesterday that education in Ontario is going back to the basics. Kristin Rushowy reports:

While he wouldn’t commit to keeping class sizes at their current levels, he said “I think the people of this province will be quite thrilled when they see” his government’s education reforms, which are expected to be unveiled Friday.

“I can tell you — we are going back to the basics. We’re going to make sure our students understand math, reading, arithmetic … We need to put more training with our teachers, and focus on our students.”

This from a man who knows nothing about education. It's true that math test scores have been going down over recent years. And the math curriculum needs overhauling. It has been trying to teach large concepts to kids before they can grasp large concepts. So a more student focused curriculum might help. But Ford thinks that the place to begin reforms is with the last generation:

Education Minister Lisa Thompson is set to announce changes to the math curriculum on Friday, which will fully come into effect in September 2021. Boards will hire a “math learning lead,” and the province will support 1,000 schools — roughly one quarter of all elementary and secondary schools — with extra numeracy help.

It will also require all new teachers to pass a math knowledge exam before they can be certified to work in public schools, and require the province’s 16,000 middle-school teachers to earn additional qualifications in math.

The government will also direct teachers to “focus on fundamental concepts and skills” and move away from “discovery math.” It will also boost online resources for students and parents.

Ontario's Conservatives are -- as usual -- looking through the wrong end of the telescope. They were born too late. And they're too stupid to figure that out.

Once again. life is not going to be easy for educators in Ontario.

Image: Trendsmap

We Don't Need No Education

Once again, under Ontario's Conservatives, education is under the gun. Heather Mallick writes:

In [their] first few months of government, [Doug Ford] and his cabinet have cancelled plans for Ontario’s first official French university and three new university campuses in Brampton, Markham and Milton, cut tuition fees thereby taking $440 million from university and college revenues, partially reverted to loans rather than grants for poorer students, forced universities to adopt a largely unnecessary free speech policy, considered cancelling sex education entirely, and are now preparing the ground for possibly ending full-day kindergarten in Ontario (at the moment he’s claiming to back only full-day “learning,” and that sounds unreliable.)

Ford also removed University of Toronto President Meric Gertler as a provincial appointee on the board of Waterfront Toronto, which might normally be listed in the I-hate-Toronto category of Ford spite firings but did I mention that Gertler is the president of the University of Toronto? Yes, twice, you say.

I can see no other reason except that Gertler is highly educated and internationally regarded, which snapped one of the tighter elastics in Ford’s mental assemblage. The elites!

Gertler isn’t elitist at all. You can’t be when part of your job is coping with as-yet untaught teenagers, and anyway a more courteous and patient person you couldn’t devise to link Toronto and one of its largest core institutions.

No, Ford does not like education or anyone involved in the process at any level. Ford went to high school and perhaps, like me, has bad memories of hours writing exams in the gym. But why would he take it out on full-day kindergarten, which is essentially education prep?

But whether Ford decides to cut education spending at the beginning or the end of youth, whether out of well-intentioned false economy or a genuine animus toward anyone better-educated than he, the result will be the same. Young people will be less equipped to face what may be the harshest century we have yet known.

They will be at the forefront of what the former journalist Alan Rusbridger calls “the flight from complexity.” What a demolishingly understated English way of saying that people are stupid, and worse, they enjoy being so. 

As I wrote the other day, we've been down this road before. It shouldn't be a surprise. When you put an ignorant man in office, education becomes Public Enemy No.1

Image: Tad Too New

Ignorance Is On The March

If you're looking for a clue to what life will be like in the Era of Doug Ford, Rick Salutin writes that you should keep your eye on education. That's because modern conservatives don't favour education. That was certainly true of Ford's conservative predecessor, Mike Harris:

Harris’s own public career began on school boards and he’d been a teacher himself. This disposed him negatively, not positively. For minister, he pointedly named a Grade 11 dropout, John Snobelen, who immediately told his staff to fabricate a “useful crisis” in public education to justify drastic attacks on it.

That included grabbing control of funding from local boards, undermining the public system with tax breaks for parents who put their kids in private schools, and bringing in standardized tests, which threatened to crowd out everything else done in classrooms. Teachers and their unions became Harris’s main opposition and everyone got used to frequent, sometimes illegal strikes.

I lived through two strikes in the Harris years. Mr. Snoblen did, indeed, create a crisis -- the effects of which have been long lasting.

South of the border, Donald Trump has also targeted education:

Trump placed his own ignoramus, Betsy de Vos, in charge there. Her life’s mission has been dumping public schools for private, so-called charter schools. Trump himself said, “I love the poorly educated.” That’s not the same as the uneducated, which could result from neglect. “Poorly” implies deliberate bad teaching. Keep them stupid.

The main pushback has come from U.S. teachers and their unions, often in “red,” Trump-voting states. It’s been breathtaking. Teachers have fought not just for wages, which are often far below average. They’ve demanded that the funding come from taxes on the rich or energy corporations, whose taxes had been reduced. They’ve allied with parents, who generally seem to get it since the aim is to bolster not just schools, but overall social well-being.

And, let's face it, Doug is not known for his stellar education. If it wasn't a priority for him, it should not be surprising if he chooses not to make it a priority for Ontario.

We live in a time where Ignorance is on the march.

Image: Toronto Star