F for Failure - A Critical Examination of the Ineradicable Defects of Canadian Education by J.E.G. Dixon

The curriculum of different ‘subjects’ is useless, the subjects being unrelated to each other. The subjects imposed on our pupils do not impart a knowledge of the world we live in; to prepare them to make their way in the world; to manage money; to know the system of government we live under; or teach the most basic values of life. Post-secondary degree programs are a mere repetition of the high school experience. Universities perpetrate fraud against their students in five major ways: they have forfeited their duty to determine matriculation by conceding to the schools the qualifications of admission and thus raise false expectations; they recognize the importance of concentration of study too late; there is no final examination on the whole major discipline; all courses have equal value towards degree credits, whether in Greek Philosophy or Intro Sociology, and the teaching method is the lecture, which is not teaching. The origins of the malaise are twofold: the fundamental error of introducing democratic principles into policies and practices of education, of schooling, and of teaching; and the obsession with the social policy misnamed progressivism, as the propagandist of equality, champion of mediocrity, and enemy of standards. In my re-organized schools, the early years will be given to acquiring a mastery of one's language in its spoken and written forms, the foundation of all learning. At the age of 9 or 10—it might vary more widely— pupils will be required to choose a single field of learning or work which they will pursue to the exclusion of all else. In other words, I am turning on its head the current practice of learning piles of useless and unrelated 'subjects' , and have them discover an interest, a talent, a passion, a skill, and pursue it into all the various and numerous related fields it will inevitably lead to. Work of the mind and work of the hand are treated as being equally important. There will be no examinations.