Owen Sound Sun Times: 2007 November 8
Posted By Finlat-Stewart Anne
Sometimes I can't believe I get to do the things I do with real world-changers.
This past weekend I had the privilege of being involved in the annual conference of People for Education. I've been connected to this organization for about 10 years, ever since I looked up from what I thought were small local issues in my son's school to find the whole provincial education system was under serious threat. People for Education began with a group of parents at a public elementary school who were asked by their children's principal if they could raise some money for textbooks. Textbooks - they thought. Surely the government provides textbooks. From that moment they determined that they would divide their time equally between fundraising for things students needed and asking why the government wasn't providing these things.
This year John Ralston Saul gave the keynote address at the People for Education conference. He put Canadian public education in a broad historical framework. We here in the oldest continuous democratic federation in the world have long believed that the purpose of education is the creation of citizens. We have a strong tradition of public education, seeing it as the source of social equality and political liberty. Yet, said Saul, we have allowed ourselves to be sold a linear, utilitarian, "get-a-job" approach to education that threatens to institutionalize poor health, poor culture and poor citizenship.
For the past 11 years People for Education has been tracking resources that are and are no longer in our public schools. Although the most precipitous drops were between 1997 and 2003, the last four years haven't seen much reinvestment. Many discomforting trends have appeared in their annual reports, but the one that has always disturbed me and has captured the attention of John Ralston Saul on a national level is the effect of lack of policy on school libraries. How is it, Saul asked, that in one of the richest societies the world has ever known we have convinced ourselves that we are too poor to have libraries? Knowing as we do, without question, that the make or break point for real literacy comes when we are very young - how can we think that we are advancing civilization by reducing children's access to books?
According to People for Education's "Annual Report on Ontario Schools 2007", 20 per cent of elementary schools receive $500 or less per year from their school budget to purchase books and library resources, enough for no more than 20 or 30 books. This is the library's share of the provincial grant averaging $94 per student that also has to provide textbooks, workbooks, resource materials, instructional software, Internet and more. Boards and schools make different choices across the province - from $0 to $45,000 per school for library budgets - averaging 25 per cent of that from school fundraising.
Since the introduction of EQAO testing in grades 3 and 6, these students have been asked simply if they like to read. The question is the result of studies that have shown reading enjoyment is a prime indicator for student success. Other studies have shown that students in schools with teacher-librarians are more likely to report they enjoy reading, yet only 57 per cent of elementary schools now have a teacher-librarian either full or part-time, compared with 80 per cent a mere decade ago. Charts in the report showing the percentage of children reporting they like to read and elementary schools with teacher-librarians could be interchanged, the downward slope from 1997 to 2004 is so similar. A quote in the report from an elementary school in our own Bluewater board highlights the irony: "Despite the emphasis on literacy, the Ministry of Education neither recognizes nor provides adequate staffing levels for teacher-librarians."
Saul painted a vivid picture of the Canada he'd like to see. He described an existing Calgary complex that contains a high school, a Y with a day care and a youth centre, a rec centre with a pool and two ice rinks, a college with adult programs and at the heart - a public library. Saul believes schools should be community centres, open until 10 or 11 at night, full of services for adults and families including government services, wellness and recreation, and libraries should be the centre of schools.
The parents, educators, trustees, mayors, librarians, settlement workers and administrators who are part of People for Education gave Saul a standing ovation.
I always know I've been in the right place when I hear the phrase "we just want to change the world" at least once.
Anne Finlay-Stewart is a communications and marketing consultant who lives and works in Owen Sound.
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