08.31.2011 01:10 PM

Tim Hudak’s PCs: lying like a rug

10 Comments

  1. Wannabeapiper says:

    Changing the subject just for a moment-whoever is advising Dalton on policy like this should be fired:

    Rob Ferguson
    QUEEN’S PARK BUREAU

    Would-be teachers will have to spend two years in teachers college — not one as is the case now, if Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals win the Oct. 6 election.

    Other countries have multi-year training programs for teachers, the Training, Colleges and Universities Minister said Wednesday.

    Ontario’s bachelor of education program is one of the shortest in Canada, he said at Jarvis Collegiate.

    “We want to continually improve and strengthen our system,” he said.

    Student teachers will spend more time in classroom training.

    “It will improve their teaching, their confidence and their creativity,” Milloy added.

    The change, to begin as soon as the fall of 2012, will help ease the surplus of teachers seeking jobs, Milloy added.”

    What an idiot! The teaching field is over populated and Universities need to close off Teacher’s College for awhile. There are thousands of new teachers looking for jobs and the process so complicated it’s horrific. These kids go into massive debt to get their teaching degree and leave the Province or Country to get teaching contracts. I wrote the Minister of Education about this and got a shit-filled twinky reply.

    • Ted says:

      So, Wannabeapiper, will making it take longer to get a teachers degree and making it harder to get a teachers degree in increase or decrease the number of teachers?

      If your issue is that there are too many teachers, doesn’t this policy alleviate the problem a bit, rather than make it worse as you claim?

      Really really don’t understand the outrage here.

      • Wannabeapiper says:

        The point is the profession is over populated and needs time to balance itself. Students have a large debt load and upon graduation from Teachers College there is very little hope of establishing a carreer in Ontario. The Universities continue to offer Teacher’s College because of the money and without some kind of regulation will continue to collect tuition, students will continue to borrow and the propsect of teaching jobs is almost nil. I dont see how the policy does anything other than increase student debt and increase University revenue. Graduates are heading for unemployment and in fact I know of two Universities, to their credit, who are trying to steer students away from education because of the bloated market.
        Maybe it would make more sense to increase, dramatically, the requirements to get into Teachers College and that alone will make it better. In addition the Union makes it almost impossible for new hires, in Toronto elementary and secondary school registrations are on the decline and anyone knowing anything about the issue will tell you there are too many teachers and not enough students now. Moreover retired teachers tend to continue teaching supply-work, so that don’t leave the system and new teachers can’t even get on the supply list.
        The Liberal Policy just won’t work and I believe will make it worse. I am sure this policy is going to cost them a lot of votes.

        • Ted says:

          As a result of the policy, as well as direct action to reduce the number of teachers, the annual additional number of teachers is going to be cut in half.

          How that makes things worse is totally beyond me.

          You could argue it’s not enough, but make it worse?

          You can’t stop training new teachers. We tried that with doctors under the NDP and what you had is 5, 6, 7 years later, a very problematic gap in qualified doctors that we are only just recovering from today.

          I don’t see this being a vote loser to anyone except you and certainly not even close to the radar for most Ontarians. Doing the smart and right thing, usually (though not always) gets you more votes, not less.

  2. Michael Teper says:

    This is really bad news for people who want to become teachers as second careers. Far too many teachers are university eggheads with no understanding about the real world, who have never had a job other than teaching. You learn how to be a teacher by teaching, not by writing academic papers about teaching. Dalton just lost my vote on this one. I’m going to vote NDP.

    • Attack! says:

      and that’s pretty much all that’s done in education training, is it: write academic papers? (not role play, e.g.? and did you miss the part in the announcement about increasing the student teaching / classroom training)?

      and you’re okay with throwing them in the deep end and letting them experiment on someone’s kids, and work out the kinks by learning (what not to do) by doing …and maybe traumatize some impressionable youngsters in the process?

      say, why don’t we do that with surgeons, too… just give ’em some scalpels and let ’em loose…. they’ll learn what not to slice too deep or leave behind, soon enough.

      And: you really so sure the NDP won’t get behind this, too? Apart from enhancing the q. of education, it’s also a way of protecting existing teachers’ union members’ wages by making it harder for the young upstarts nipping at their heels to come flooding the market.

  3. Michael Teper says:

    Ever heard of apprenticeship, mentorship, and probation? Six months of teachers’ college to convey the basics of classroom management and the requirements of the Ontario curriculum, followed by apprenticeship and probation, where new teachers learn by doing. Training gets done on the job with supervision. No need for large student fees or student debt. I’ll leave role play to the drama majors. Love is better than anger, hope is better than fear, and doing is better than role-play. Writing academic papers is what students in education faculties do for the most part. It’s a big waste of time and does nothing to enhance quality of the graduates as teachers. There are plenty enough of education faculty graduates traumatizing impressionable youngsters already. It’s apparently a really big problem, so I suppose another year of racking up student debt will make everything go well.

    Guess what? Teaching school is not brain surgery. It doesn’t require much theoretical knowledge beyond the substantive knowledge of the subject matter. Teacher’s college doesn’t teach subject-matter knowledge. That’s why it’s largely a waste of time.

    What experience? You graduate from high school, volunteer at summer camp, take undergraduate arts and science courses for four years, and then slap another two years at teacher’s college.

    Why six years of university to teach middle school? It’s called academic inflation. It’s a great subsidy for education faculty professors and a nice make-work scheme. It’s also a great way to chop a year off a teacher’s working career and consequently reduce their pension entitlement. That will really sit well with the OSSTF.

    • Attack! says:

      but the program for a B.Ed. in some other provinces isn’t 6 years, total, but 5 (some w. a non-hon’s, 3-yr BA followed by 2 yrs Ed; some like the BC one linked below, transitioning already in year 3)

      and they don’t just role-play (I was just spit-ballin’ there), they teach them how to devise lesson plans to match the curricula of all the diff subjects; e.g., see:

      http://www.viu.ca/calendar/Education/BachelorEducation.asp

      You’re a tax lawyer, no? I don’t think either of us are qualified on the content or desiderata for ed. programs, esp. given how you’re dismissing what’s involved in teaching, esp. these days, when so many of those who used to be in their own ‘special ed.’ classes (w. ADD, FAS etc.) are integrated with the regular classrooms.

  4. Robin says:

    The comments I have read thus far demonstrate the problem with opinions that are based on ignorance. I agree with the position that the experience of student teachers at the faculties needs to be improved. It is the nature of these improvements that is the issue. Meaningful teaching that creates an environment in which students are challenged to think critically can only be created through practises that are based on an understaning of pedagogical theory. Those who say theory is a waste do not know what they are talking about. In fact I would assert that it is a teacher’s responsibility to continue to develop and improve his/her teaching practise through professional (theoretical) reading.

    Comments that denigrate teaching are counter productive. The prevelance of this attitude must come from the fact that everyone has gone to school and therefore must know something about how to teach. In all professions, practises change, develop and improve based on research. The experience of past generations is not that of today’s students. To teach effectively requires an expertise based on theory and experience.

    To improve education the public must recognize that rote learning delivered by the teacher is not a model that works for the twenty first century learner. Information is available with access to computers. Teachers need to develop learning experiences that require thinking, problem solving and group interaction. Teaching has changed and so too must teacher training. One or two years is not the issue. A paradigm shift is required to meet the needs of today’s students.

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