I thought I lived in Canada until encountering my son’s
grade 12 “Grad Transitions” requirements.
Not only is he supposed to learn good money management but he is
required to submit a breakdown of his budget to the school. Note: a personal budget becomes more of a
family budget when someone does not move out of the house to go to college or
university. Also required is a written
explanation as to how my son’s post-secondary education is being funded. This kind of financial plan is no one’s
business but our own.
What’s worse is that failure to complete the Grad
Transitions requirements means that your son or daughter will not graduate from
High School.
This is a B.C. wide provincial policy, and it amounts to
nothing less than an invasion of family privacy followed by plain and simple extortion. I thought we were supposed to raise our kids
so they can look out for themselves (and avoid these sorts of unfortunate situations)
but it is the school system (or, actually the state) that is sticking it to
busy kids and treating their parents like herd animals.
Where does the B.C. government get the idea to treat people
this way? The Liberal government’s
obsession with econometrics makes us perilously much like China, and we need
look no further than School District 43’s symbiotic relationship with the Confucius
Institute, which is intended to attract more students (read: money). By reducing everything in education to a
matter of costs, you risk throwing out the values that a good education is
supposed to instill, and that is what has happened with the financial planning
requirements for Grad Transitions.
But the students’ instincts are good. They don’t all want to obey blindly – or even
tell the truth (for if they did it would be a family intrusion). And for the
most part they leave completion to the last minute, giving a similar degree of
pushback (and a lot of work) to their very own Transitions teachers.
Congratulations students: in so doing, you’ve just graduated!
