Trudeau Popularity - or not (various polling, etc.)

[suffolkowner]

I think the problem is that basically we see education as a requirement to be successful (which I strongly agree with). The issue is it is only a requirement to being successful if we are actually teaching them what they need to know. Since we correlate success with education the result must be everyone passing said education. The problem being if we pass everyone without making sure they know what they are supposed to, you haven't actually educated anyone only provided a check in the box.

That check in the box is meaningless if it doesn't have the knowledge behind it. That 'education' is meaningless if they never learned anything from it. But people are so fixated on having the check in the box they forget what that check is supposed to represent.


It does matter, it degrades the quality of education for everyone else. It matters because if they haven't actually learned what that says they are supposed to have learned, why give them a pass? We are too tolerant of incompetence as a society. We are seeing the effects in all trades, jobs and even the CAF now. We keep dropping the standards in everything when people aren't making them. This is leading to a race to the bottom which instead of correcting the issues that exist only compound them long term.

I think the idea was that it would lead to better social outcomes as the barrier of the lack of diploma has been removed. Has that happened?
I dont know when this magical period of education existed. My first wife came up in a one room school house whoose teacher was half the time some girl that decided to teach for a year until she got married and we were the first generation to have access to greater education

 

[Brad Sallows]

Being held back imposes a stigma.

A student falls increasingly behind if material in later years depends on grasping material from earlier years, and his life (time) is effectively wasted.

There's no solution to fix both problems. I observe that people I knew who were held back are at worse average and in some cases doing very well as adults; people without basic education do poorly. There's an obvious choice to favour.

 

[YZT580]

Being held back imposes a stigma.

A student falls increasingly behind if material in later years depends on grasping material from earlier years, and his life (time) is effectively wasted.

There's no solution to fix both problems. I observe that people I knew who were held back are at worse average and in some cases doing very well as adults; people without basic education do poorly. There's an obvious choice to favour.

pardon my french, but if you are incapable of achieving at a grade 9 level why move you to grade 10? All that does is waste the teacher's time, your time, and take time away from those who will achieve. Instead, find another way to stream them. Perhaps a proper trade school, apprenticeship or another form of ojt should be created for those who cannot achieve academically. a H.S. diploma should actually be representative of a certain level of knowledge that an employer or an advanced school can count on and not a reward for attendance. On the other hand those same underachievers are wasting time when they could be learning valuable skills: welding, cabinet-making, plumbing, farming. We have stigmatized manual workers when in fact we should be holding them up as alternative career choices.

 

[Furniture]

pardon my french, but if you are incapable of achieving at a grade 9 level why move you to grade 10? All that does is waste the teacher's time, your time, and take time away from those who will achieve. Instead, find another way to stream them. Perhaps a proper trade school, apprenticeship or another form of ojt should be created for those who cannot achieve academically. a H.S. diploma should actually be representative of a certain level of knowledge that an employer or an advanced school can count on and not a reward for attendance. On the other hand those same underachievers are wasting time when they could be learning valuable skills: welding, cabinet-making, plumbing, farming. We have stigmatized manual workers when in fact we should be holding them up as alternative career choices.

He wasn't arguing for that, he was pointing out that in trying to prevent the social stigma of being held back, we have created a system that can cause children to become hopelessly behind and miss out on the value of an education.

i.e. If you can't do grade 5 math, you're unlikely to succeed at grade 6 math, which means you are unlikely to do well in math for the next six grades as well. Meaning that at the end of 12 grades worth of schooling, you've missed half of the math, but have just been pushed through so you don't get stigmatized... Except now you're poorly educated/uneducated, and have the stigma of being dumb for the rest of your life.

Being held back isn't a lifelong stigma, and it might be the lesson in personal responsibility a few kids need to learn. The fear of not graduating with my classmates inspired me to buckle down and get through the BS of writing, so I could pass English and graduate on schedule.

 

[Eaglelord17]

I think the idea was that it would lead to better social outcomes as the barrier of the lack of diploma has been removed. Has that happened?
I dont know when this magical period of education existed. My first wife came up in a one room school house whoose teacher was half the time some girl that decided to teach for a year until she got married and we were the first generation to have access to greater education

To answer your first question not really as all that has happened is us inflating the level of education required for jobs due to the lack of standards coming out of our lower levels of schooling. I would put money on a 1950s high school school graduate being better educated than a 2023 high school graduate as sad as that is.

Depends on where you are for the level of education. Education doesn’t always mean elementary school, high school but I consider learning skills education as well. The Scots were really the first people to teach everyone to read and write because they wanted the population to be able to read the bible. The result being for the next 80 years (1800s) a substantial proportion of the engineers of the world were Scottish.

Your first wife is a exemption rather than the rule for education, but even then those single room school houses aren't necessarily a bad thing. Students can get a lot more personalized education due to the smaller amount of students and the fact the parents can be a lot more involved due to everyone knowing everyone in a small area. My grandfather was the last in my family to receive that type of education, he had to leave home at 13 to pursue a higher education. Ultimately he ended up finishing his career as head of maintenance in a pulp and paper mill so he wasn't hard done by it. Everyone else in my family including my grandparents on the opposite side had the more common elementary school, high school, post secondary (either trades training or schooling) arrangement.

 

[Brad Sallows]

It's not that hard to provide literacy and numeracy sufficient for post-secondary education. Home schoolers aiming to meet university entrance requirements don't have to put in the same amount of "classroom hours" as a public school. A university degree isn't needed to deliver that kind of education.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I did poorly in high school as they were not well set up for someone like me. Based on my marks I went into technical school and not academic. At that time we had fully outfitted shops for automotive, welding and wood work. With instructors from the industry. I learned a lot in those classes and I ended up catching up to my peers outside of school. At that time education other than grade 12 was not required for most jobs.

Nowadays, schools are way better at dealing with kids that have special needs than before, That's the good news. the technical side of high school has been mostly razed and what's left is taught by "Professional teachers" who have never worked in industry. My daughter wants to be a elementary teacher and looked at Early Childhood Education for daycare. They want her to take a 4 year program and get a degree, the job pays on average $22-5 an hour. She dropped that and is doing a major in communications. I push my daughters to get a degree, not because I think it will make them a better person, but because otherwise, most of the doors will be closed to them otherwise. Sadly most of the job descriptions are written by people who went to university and who can't imagine someone with no degree having any skills.

 

[Brad Sallows]

With respect to post-secondary academic subjects, it's never been easier to self-educate and will most likely continue to become easier. A cunning student would seek difficult courses in difficult programs taught by masterful instructors, and do the easy subjects and easy programs on-line.

 

[rmc_wannabe]

Education, credentials, knowledge, and experience are not arrows in the same quiver.

You can have a Master's and still lack the knowledge and experience to perform a skilled trade. Some of the most insightful and wise conversations I have had are with people who dropped out of high-school to pursue a skilled trade. I would trust the welds of a journeyman with 25 years of experience before I would that of a young kid coming out of a 3 year college diploma program.

Where we get lost in this is that the world is run by gatekeepers. We do it within recruiting all the time. We spend so much time finding the ideal candidate when in reality, we need a GE recruit; "Good Enough."

My wife recently applied for a job with the PS and was worried about the education requirements, as she went into the workforce after high-school and then became our Domestic SM. The interviewer said the education piece is easy enough to wave because she had experience and that it was a job she would learn as she went. My wife retorted, "then why is a 4 year degree a job requirement?"

Policy. Written by someone who probably doesn't know ow the ins and outs of the day to day enough to assess the actual education needs of an applicant. Instead, flatten the Grid Square and make it a Bachelor's degree and you'll get far better applicants right?

Much like you @Colin Parkinson I know I am pushing my kids to higher learning, not because I believe they need it for what they want to do; but solely because it's the price of admission.

Then again, I barely passed HS, didn't get a degree, worked hard, learned the business from Pte to Sgt and was handed the King's Commission, based on merit and performance. Am I less of an officer for lacking a degree? According to the SCRIT, yes. In practice.... well let's just say I had to correct the spelling mistakes on my CFR paperwork coming down from my Adjt.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

That was me, I got my job in the CCG by volunteering to run an old crashboat for the museum, as the local CCG base used to run them, I took it down there several times to get their advice. The OIC came out and said "You like doing this, want a job?" That was my interview. Even my office job tests were around problem solving and basic navigation. When I retired, it was a 6 month ordeal to get a candidate. Surprising how many university types failed the basic navigation part of the exams, even though it was clearly listed as a requirement.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Reliance on credentials simplifies screening and the attendant burden of dealing with legal challenges.

 

[mariomike]

Where we get lost in this is that the world is run by gatekeepers.

50 years ago, the "gatekeepers" at my full-time employment required a high school diploma to apply.

In 1975, they mandated a one-year community college certificate to apply. Those of us without the certificate were "grand-fathered", and later sent to community college to catch up.

Then a two-year diploma.

Mandated just to apply.

If you have a degree, that's nice. But, not mandatory. Yet.

For better or worse, what you say is true, in my opinion. "The world is run by gatekeepers".

 

[IKnowNothing]

They want her to take a 4 year program and get a degree, the job pays on average $22-5 an hour. She dropped that and is doing a major in communications. I push my daughters to get a degree, not because I think it will make them a better person, but because otherwise, most of the doors will be closed to them otherwise. Sadly most of the job descriptions are written by people who went to university and who can't imagine someone with no degree having any skills.

Where is that? In Ontario we're screaming for more ECE's, to get registered it's a two year diploma or an apprenticeship plus 4 credit bridge in.
Edit- and you can continue to work with the apprenticeship certificate without the bridge in

 

[suffolkowner]

Personally where I think things have gone awry in education is in the movement away from compulsory courses to electives in high schools and the proliferation of degrees being offered at the university level as each discipline continues to get subdivided over and over again. There used to be 5 yrs of HS as well and then OACs now there is 4. The electives allow people to graduate without a solid core of knowledge and contribute to the inflation of the budget.

Every generation in my family has been better educated, smarter and more intelligent than the one before it. And while I cant give 100% credit to the public education system I also cant give it any blame either

 

[Remius]

My wife recently applied for a job with the PS and was worried about the education requirements, as she went into the workforce after high-school and then became our Domestic SM. The interviewer said the education piece is easy enough to wave because she had experience and that it was a job she would learn as she went. My wife retorted, "then why is a 4 year degree a job requirement?"

Curious about what job that would be. If a degree was an essential qualification (many positions do have that as a requirement) then that can’t really be waved unless it stated that a suitable combination of experience, training and education would be considered. If it’s an asset then no it isn’t required and neither is any sort of waiver. I’m surprised she would have even made it to the interview as she would have been screened out before even getting there.

Policy. Written by someone who probably doesn't know ow the ins and outs of the day to day enough to assess the actual education needs of an applicant. Instead, flatten the Grid Square and make it a Bachelor's degree and you'll get far better applicants right?

What department was this at? Was it core PS?

 

[rmc_wannabe]

Curious about what job that would be. If a degree was an essential qualification (many positions do have that as a requirement) then that can’t really be waved unless it stated that a suitable combination of experience, training and education would be considered. If it’s an asset then no it isn’t required and neither is any sort of waiver. I’m surprised she would have even made it to the interview as she would have been screened out before even getting there.

What department was this at? Was it core PS?

PM inbound

 

[mariomike]

Still some decent paying jobs that don't require higher education.

eg:

VIA Rail Locomotive Engineer: $66.77 per hour.

 

[Quirky]

Still some decent paying jobs that don't require higher education.

eg:

VIA Rail Locomotive Engineer: $66.77 per hour.

But that job is noisy, dirty and you can’t WFH on snow days.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Where is that? In Ontario we're screaming for more ECE's, to get registered it's a two year diploma or an apprenticeship plus 4 credit bridge in.
Edit- and you can continue to work with the apprenticeship certificate without the bridge in

BC, yes you can get a diploma, but your still pulling a $22hr wage with the 4 year program it's a dizzying 25, maybe 27 if your lucky.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

We pulled my oldest out of highschool and homeschooled her. We enrolled here in online TRU courses and now she is finishing up at Capilano U, at 18 she already has 30+ credits to her university. As an adult, she only needs 20 credits to get her high school diploma, as a student she needs 80. If your kid is smart and self motivated, there are other options than completing the traditional high school route. My youngest is doing high school in person and online, her plan is do some fluff and social courses at high school while completing the academics online and starting TRU as well. She wants to get a degree early as well.