What concrete steps can we take to make sure that everyone has a decent education?
Since parents are a child’s first teacher and shaper of his/her attitudes towards learning and education , we need to ensure the parents can read and comprehend the things they’ve read, that they can do simple math to make change, calculate recipes, figure out temperatures. So the first step in educating children is to help their parents learn.
Unfortunately most neo con governments cut funding to programs that help this , I know the Harper government has in the last few days because their idea and their pacs of what constitutes an education vastly differs from most people. However that’s for another topic.
The second thing we need to do is train those who teach our children adequately and then pay them a decent wage so they will continue to teach. That includes the early education teachers, the daycare workers up through elementary school and high school and college and university.
Then get the department of educations in each country to not just focus on athletics in schools but include the arts, the humanities , emotional intelligences as well as high iqs. Give kids a well rounded education which includes music, gym, drama , the three rs, science, history , geography , languages. Lengthen the school day, in my day we went from
Make sure special education kids actually get the education they need as well and aren’t just shoved away in some corner, with the curriculum dummied down. Have realistic expectations for these kids and the equipmanet and or aides they need to succeed. Don’t segregate them into their own classes if they are mentally competent to compete in regular classes but also don’t have the aides doing the work for them and saying it’s them. And I’ve seen it happen in schools.
Support apprenticeships and co-op placements so that kids who aren’t going to college, have no interest in going are recognized and supported in their educational goals. Not everyone should go to college or wants to but make damn sure these kids have as much opportunity for scholarships etc as the college bound kids so there isn’t a separating of college vs trade school etc with the trades and apprenticeships being treated like they are lesser thans.
The world needs to look at education in a completely different way, not just job training but intelligence training so that everyone has the chance to compete on equal footing for jobs.