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Public Schooling in Ontario in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
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13605 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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4 / 1988 |
5,044 Words |
| Author
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Ian Dowbiggin
Ian Dowbiggin is professor of the faculty of education at the
University of Western Ontario. |
In years to come we shall probably look back at the 1980s as one of the most important and controversial decades in the history of public education in North America. With the publication in April 1983 of the National Commission on Excellence in Education's (NCEE) report titled A Nation at Risk, there began in the United States what some observers have dubbed the "Great School Debate." The NCEE report, commissioned by T.H. Bell, then secretary of education, warned Americans that their schools were threatened by "a rising tide of mediocrity." A Nation at Risk claimed that this situation would prove calamitous for America if the country did not reassert its commitment to learning. The stakes were high, according to the report: America stood to lose its "slim competitive edge... in world markets" if it did not train its citizens in the literacy and occupational skills necessary for survival in the anticipated "information age."
A Nation at Risk quickly generated additional reports and studies in the 1980s which sought to evaluate the NCEE's allegations and recommendations. Many Americans agreed with the report that public schools were not effective as learning institutions. Neoconservative journalists, disillusioned liberals, and spokesmen for conservative groups and fundamentalist churches concurred that the present state of public education was a result of the radical politics of the 1960s and 1970s. For them political irresponsibility had been matched by educational irresponsibility: Curricular expansion had produced a "smorgasbord" of course options for students. Schools had been turned into "cafeteria-style" institutions for learning. This greater program flexibility and wider freedom of choice for students, the thinking went, had led to a fall in pedagogical standards. It was charged that pupils increasingly avoided those
... (1998 of 32431 Characters)
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