Waddell: There are many reasons
- Details
- Published on Thursday, March 14, 2013
By: Ken Waddell
myWestman.ca
On Monday, CBC Radio had an on-air story and later posted the following on their web site, “The number of Manitoba children being taught at home has jumped by 32.1 per cent, according to a new provincial government report.
The Education Department’s latest enrolment report found that 2,400 children were being home-schooled in the province as of September 2012, an increase of 583 students from September 2011. Total enrolment in public and independent schools saw increases of 0.2 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively, during the same period”.
What the quote didn’t include is that there are many more students who, for various reasons, have opted out of the main stream public school system. This includes private schools, both large and small, and the dozens of Hutterite colony schools. The latter operate in a private school fashion but the teachers are hired by and paid by the local school divisions.
It would be interesting to add up all the students who don’t attend public schools.
There was a time when public schools were almost the only option. Certainly back in the dark ages of the 1960s, when I was in school, it seemed like everyone either went to a public school or wanted to go if they didn’t. There were some exceptions as many private schools have been around for a long time.
But times have indeed changed and our very excellent public schools don’t seem to be able to fit the needs of every family or every group. The CBC quote above is about home schools and those who are home schooled are generally convinced it’s a better way to go. Many families who have students in the public schools can’t understand why anyone would educate their kids at home.
There are many reasons that there is home schooling and that there are small private schools. For one thing, the public school system has pretty much legislated faith-based teaching out of the schools.
Reading from the Bible is rare when it used to be common. Praying at the start of a school day has been relegated to an awkward exercise. Even singing O’ Canada (and note I didn’t say listening to a recording) isn’t that common any more either. Those items are issues for some parents.
The curriculum is another issue for some parents. There are groups of people who wish to teach that “God created the world.” That’s not allowed in many classrooms -- in fact it’s ridiculed. Every other explanation of how our world began and how man came to be is encouraged, but the Judeo-Christian version has been set aside, or in some cases, it has been banned from the classroom.
Many parents have come to realize that, for whatever reason, their children have not learned enough in the public school. Many home schooling decisions have come about when parents realize that their child is “way behind” their age bracket and sometimes years of best intentions haven’t helped a particular child progress.
Lately, bullying has been in the news a lot. Though many would deny it, bullying is rampant in schools and parents find that out pretty fast. Home schooling and private schools may lessen the amount of bullying.
There are many reasons for parents to side step the public school system and it’s too bad because in rural Manitoba we generally don’t have enough students to keep our schools vibrant and alive. If we could have all our students in our public schools, our enrollment would be a lot higher. But it’s not going to happen any time soon.
The public school system has been asked to take on too wide a range of activities from day care to health care to sports to extra curricular to special Ed needs to, to, to...the list goes on and on. Given the legislative restraints, the stifling effects of political correctness and in some cases, just a wrong-headed approach to education, the public schools will continue to lose students.
Those reasons, combined with how much money has to be funneled to non-classroom activities and the ever present budget restraints, the public schools will do well to hold their own. It’s sad really, but it’s unlikely the provincial government and the Manitoba Teachers Society will ever let go their choke hold on local creativity that anything will change. Ironically, that lack of freedom will doom public schools to an ever-shrinking percentage of the student population.
Note: Correction request as sent from The Brandon Sun regarding Ken Waddell’s column last week:
“The Brandon Sun has never contracted out page layout. We have a full compliment of Copy Editors/Paginators doing that job right in our Brandon office.
As for staffing levels, we went through a period of slight cutbacks a couple of years ago, but we are fully staffed again, if not ahead of where we were at the start of 2000. We are now printed at the Winnipeg Free Press, our sister paper.
Amalgamation of printing presses in the same chain that are geographically nearby has become commonplace in the industry across the continent.”
