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Editorial: Welcome to Our Forum |
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BY DARRELL HOKEEY
High schools should teach the Three Rs and allow colleges and universities to teach trades and professions.
(Yet, how would the students know what career they want if they aren't exposed to what is available to them?)
High schools should not be in the business of teaching things like citizenship skills and sexual health. That is the job of their families.
(Yet many families do not teach these things.)
High schools need to find a way to encourage First Nation students to learn from the way they teach.
(Yet the First Nations already have a way of teaching that the high schools could very well learn from.)
Hmm, a lot of good and contradictory ideas floating around out there. No wonder that I was told by a few Department of Education staff that they don't normally tell people where they work. They say it seems everybody has an opinion on how students should be taught and, invariably, schools in their neighbourhood are getting it wrong.
This issue of How's Business Yukon explores the question: Are high schools preparing students for the business world? And should they?
We gave voice to the teachers, students, the Department of Education, each of the political parties in the Yukon, the business community, agriculture, the arts and Skills Canada Yukon.
In all but one story, we simply allowed the ideas to flow freely, unfettered by the journalistic imperative to cover the pro and the con. Instead, we looked for all the sides of the issue ... whether they be pro or con.
The end result, I hope, is we have ourselves a “forum” in these pages of intelligent and valid discourse.
Alas, there is one story that I selfishly included that advances my pet theory on how to fix education. It is on Page 2.
After reading the Yukon Education Act, I came to the conclusion that the secret to giving students the education that they should, the education that our society needs them to receive, is through (drum roll, please) ... school councils.
Yeah, I know, they've been with us forever. But school councils are the place that we, in the neighbourhood, can bring our ideas to be considered. If we see a segment on the television news that shows math scores increasing because a teacher brought in treadmills, then we can get that idea considered at school council.
If we think a principal or teacher is not doing the job properly, we can bring our concerns to school council.
I, too, have been approached by many people when they learned of our theme for this issue. To each person who brought a complaint or suggestion my way, I said to them, “You should discuss this with your school council.”
For the story I wrote, I interviewed Christie Whitley, the assistant deputy minister with the public schools branch. If you pay taxes in this territory, you will feel much better about it after meeting Ms. Whitley. She is enthusiastic with what is happening in schools today and, more so, the amazing potential if more and more community members got involved.
Even better, she says, there are now School Growth Planning Process teams for each school that are streamlined and more responsive to the wishes of the community.
It is made possible by an education act that is uncommonly flexible and encouraging. Indeed, it allows for 20 per cent of the school semester be used for locally developed courses of study.
Do you want even more good news about the state of education in the Yukon? If you read every story in this paper, you will see a common thread emerge: more hands-on training for students.
This is good news because there is one such organization that is already doing this ... and doing it very well. It is Skills Canada Yukon, an organization that exists only because it has 300 volunteers who believe that “doing”, is “learning”; and “learning”, is “exciting”.
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EDITORIAL