Skip to content

FROM THE PUBLISHER: Education tragedy in the North

It's a regular scene; math class in any one of the dozens of schools in NWT communities, from the blue-green Arctic ocean shores of Paulatuk to the emerald forest of the Liard River country.

Bruce Valpy, Publisher, NNSL Media, Northern News Services Ltd.

How do we describe the jumbled emotions of young students confronted by confusing rows of figures ending in a blank space demanding a correct answer?

Heads down to fool the teacher, doodling in the margins, perhaps they steal curious glances at their equally befuddled classmates. Agonizing minutes pass until time is up, until failure comes to the rescue, relieving the stress of knowing how much they don't know.

Here are the numbers behind that picture, as reported in the latest 2016-17 Alberta Achievement Tests. The results in math showed only 20.7 per cent of Grade 6 students and eight per cent of Grade 9 students in the communities achieved acceptable marks. In English Language Arts, only 20.7 per cent of Grade 6 students and eight percent of Grade 9 students in the communities achieved acceptable results.

That means almost 80 per cent of these children are failing miserably in math and English. The wrong answers on those tests must cause ripples of despair beginning with the students closest to the pain, to the teachers witnessing the pain, to the parents not understanding the pain.

The culture of failure in our schools is nothing new. Our present schools are a humane improvement over the inhumane and damaging residential schools of our recent past. But year after year we as a people have accepted unacceptable results in our classrooms.

Where are the howls of outrage over how poorly our children are learning, the cries for change? Not a whisper. Instead we rely upon a plodding status quo periodically dressed up in thoughtful education theories which are rendered ineffective by a lack of funding to achieve the anticipated success.

Failure marches on, climbing from lower grades to higher grades, out into the streets of our communities, no end in sight.

Who do we blame? We can't blame the children, because they aren't in charge.

Teachers are an easy target. News/North criticized them when the government decided to shorten classroom time rather than give teachers a salary increase in contract negotiations. Teachers are so well paid, have so much time off, what will they want next, we asked? How does less facetime benefit students?

The Department of Education is an even bigger target, being responsible for academic standards, funding, staffing and everything else. What are they doing with the hundreds of millions of education dollars spent each year? Don't they care about what's going on in our classrooms? Don't they deserve a failing grade?

Politicians and deputy-ministers, those lords of education department policy, how can they escape blame, the most blame? Isn't it their job to lead us, grow our society into something we can be proud of?

Are we proud of our school results? Do not the wealthy among us send their privileged youth south for a better education? Is that not a true measure of their confidence in our Northern education system?

We could blame all of the above except for one fact – in a democracy politicians and the public servants in their employ, right down to the teachers, all work for the people. And of all the people, do not parents have the most at stake when it comes the education of their children?

Next week this column will discuss the how role of teachers in our schools has been overburdened by expectations, undermined by departmental policies and the inescapable conclusion that we parents are holding our children back.