LETTER

School board reorganization? 

I want to wish everyone at the Bulletin a good New Year – and a good news year! A good year to the Bulletin’s readers, also,  especially those who write in and keep our community humming. The “letters” are my favourite!

I want to ask for even more coverage of Quebec’s new law to revise the school board system. I understand that the English system has constitutional guarantees, and that they must be respected. But I also ask those who are attacking the province’s plan to answer one question: if the present system needs no improvement, why are its results so disappointing?  

Look at all the stats about life-style choices – smoking, over-eating, TV-watching, reading levels, etc. – and we find that West Quebec has some of the country’s worst results. These are choices made by each person’s intelligence and facts at hand – so we have to conclude that the present education system is not equipping our population to face modern challenges. 

Those attacking this re-vamp seem to me more interested in preserving their own domains, with well-paid positions often, or just offering these men (any women?) community soapboxes for their egos.  

Talk to graduates of our high schools and not just those going on to Cegep – their grasp of the world and their tools for thinking clearly and methodically are pretty primitive. I have met graduates who could not do simple calculations in their heads but relied on their cell phones for the simplest calculations.  That’s a small thing, but it is symptomatic. And don’t mention the nonexistent “bilingualism” of too many graduates.  These kids are not being well-prepared.

I ask the “protectors of English education” to sit down again and this time assume the education system should be changed – and figure out where and why. The government wants to modernize school administration – that is big news and we should not let it go by or refuse to cooperate and participate. But that’s only my view, and I was educated elsewhere!

Byrn Somers, 

Aylmer