6. Canadian kids are not as academically competitive as an average international kid, that does not bode well for Canada’s future.

Gianni Versace said “It’s nice to have valid competition; it pushes you to do better.”

Canadian schooling standards are going down each year where academics are concerned like Science, Math, English etc. And I believe academics is the primary purpose for schooling. Other purposes are socializing, sports, dramatics etc. Some call our current schooling as watered down, some call it free daycare. I read this in user comments in several CBC posts on education on their website. Sounds right to me.

When an international student migrates to Canada and goes to K-12 schooling system, immediately s/he realizes the s/he already knows everything that is being taught in the current grade as well as the next years grade, and in some cases the grade two years down the road too. So they are one to two years ahead of us. Regardless, an international student finishing grade 12 in a country outside Canada knows a hell of a lot more about academics than an average grade 12 graduate in Canadian schooling system. As a result of lower educational standards, majority of Canadian kids are neither capable nor motivated to pursue post secondary education. And consequently, we need to bring a whole lot of professionals from outside.

The cause of poor schooling is that special interest groups and some times teacher’s union have taken over the education. The kids are the last priority. Lack of participation of kids’ parents is also another cause, which gives schools free reign to do anything. For example, special interest groups pushed for SOGI education in grade 11/12, then they moved to grade 6, and I think now they are pushing it to kindergarten level. Think about it, sexual identity education to kindergarten students! The point is we have forgotten the prime purpose of schooling i.e. academics. We are hollowing out the foundation of Canada as current kids will be in charge of Canada in future.

Another point to consider is that we have a lack of understanding that family has rights over kids not state. Family produces kids not state. Parents spend sleepless nights to cater for kids not state. Public schooling trains kids early on to rat on their parents if they get disciplined by parents. Result is parents feel helpless in instilling discipline in their kids to study and work hard if the child does not cooperate. Hence, children get free reign on spending their time in pleasure activities, which is natural tendency of all human beings, if no discipline is enforced. And this sets them up for failure early on. Kids are not pushed in the schools either to work hard as every student is guaranteed to advance to the next grade just based upon attendance. There are no semi-annual and annual exams to enforce learning. Ultimately only those kids succeed whose parents spend enough time to work with them or somehow some kid is self motivated. Or if the kid is in private school.

As Canadians, we need to remember that competitiveness is always gained by hard work. There is no short cut. And it needs to start for a kid from the day one.