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Toronto’s Dundas debacle proves education matters, even in a pandemic
Cancelling an abolitionist as an apology for slavery is moronic behaviour
Anyone who managed to escape the pandemic with some faith in humanity intact might have assumed that by the summer of 2024 we would be busy mitigating the damage done to Canadian children by keeping them out of school for so long — especially in Ontario and Quebec, where school closures were longest.
One might have hoped, as the Ontario Liberals proposed under otherwise-hapless leader Steven Del Duca, that kids would be offered an extra year of high school to make up the losses — not just academically but socially. Instead, in Ontario at least, we have essentially just waved the COVID cohort through to their next grades, to the trades, to university, to community college, to wherever they wind up, and hoped for the best.
One notable example: Most exams were cancelled during school closures, though not for any especially compelling reason. If kids are learning online, surely they can write tests online too. Competent teachers who have properly taught a well-designed curriculum should be able to set an exam in any subject that usefully tests skills in a time-limited environment, even if students have the whole internet at their fingertips.
Indeed, one could argue that’s precisely the sort of exam teachers should be using nowadays.
