The falling PISA scores are likely caused by smart phones and social media, neither of which are really in the control of schools. The data and argument are laid out on The Anxious Generation by Haidt. It’s on my to-read list, but I’ve heard a summary of the main argument from a technology leader in education. The data is compelling.

The Fraser Institute, a conservative think tank, pushing for privatization in education through any means necessary isn’t newsworthy. Can we stop giving propagandists air time? “Choice in education” is code for charter schools, which are a failed US experiment.

The real story about equity in education comes from Finland. Decades back, they set an educational mandate to increase equity in their system. They were trying to help the most disadvantaged students in their system succeed academically. The result? Finland rocketed to the top of the PISA scoreboard. Everyone did better.

The bullshit they’re peddling about meritocracy in education is based on conservative ideology, specifically the capitalistic notion that there are winners and losers in the world, there always will be, and winners get there because they deserve it. The evidence says otherwise; rising tides lift all ships. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is better for all students.

I’m getting tired of conservatives trying to destroy our world-class education system. Yes, it has problems. Yes, it needs changes. But Canadian teachers are generally doing a very good job, and lots of places in Canada are on the cutting edge of implementing a variety of research-informed change that should make things even better.

If only we could only get conservative governments from cutting more and more funding from education…

So you just want to educate the rich kids and leave all the poor kids behind? That’s a great way to make us less competitive

Yes.

That is exactly what they want.

Because in their craven hearts they think we’re poor because we’re a worse class of people, and that if we were a better person it’d just shine through without any thought to the environment. After all, they’re doing well because they’re just superior, and not because they won the vagina lottery and were lucky enough to be born to rich parents in a time of opportunity. Nope, not that. It was all their own hard work. They built their business by combining the various component atoms of it, powering nuclear fusion by sheer willpower.

There’s a statistically significant number of these people who masturbate to copies of Atlas Shrugged.