Sink the Semester System

Did your mother not tell you “everything in moderation, nothing to extreme”?  That old adage derives from the ancient Greeks, among them Aristotle, who emphasized balance and a sense of proportion.  Today, with the semester system of high school education under the Coquitlam District School Board, that old adage is thrown out the window.  Ancient Greek wisdom has been replaced by North American “workaholic” types and Asian “obsessive” models, and we think that we are doing our kids a favour, by making them “tougher”.

Coquitlam high school classes resemble educational silos, where course curriculum is designed to over-the-top standards.  This can be especially daunting for kids who actually care about what they are being taught.  The guilty party is not any teacher, or school, but the School Board, which (following the industrial model) wants to “compress” time and learning – and presumably costs.

    

The never-ending “factory work” is not healthy.  We try to do the best for our kids yet there is no time to live. There has to be a period in a student’s day when homework is finished, and when free play begins. Students need to feel like they can successfully complete their assignments to achieve this sense of balance.  And the more we endure excess in our schools, the less critical might we be of extremes in our public politics, but that is another story.

Keep in mind, as well, that most Coquitlam District high schools are at best pretentious, because they do not offer year-round courses in mathematics, preventing students from building consistency in a vital foundational skill.  Looking closely, for example at after-school programmes, the overall net effect is that the offspring of immigrants are destined to become superior doctors, lawyers and engineers, because many immigrant parents – not the School Board - are the ones who recognize the problem-solving significance of mathematics in the first place.  Go figure.

And as for the over-programmed semesters (here I borrow from Karl Marx) - Parents in District 43: unite!