Re: Dunster announcement at School Board meeting.
The announcement at the school board meeting Tuesday night that the board had sold the closed Dunster school to a parent-led education society created a unique situation in recent B.C. history.
For the first time a public school board now holds the mortgage on a private school property. For both parties involved it was the culmination of some hard work and good faith negotiations to find a solution that worked for the parents and children in the Dunster area.
The achievement was in spite of the government and its funding policies that are increasingly denying meaningful access to public education in rural areas and it is only a sign of things to come.
Sometime this fall the education minister, who will be in town today, will reveal a fait du complis vision of public education disarmingly named "Education for the 21st Century." Much like the HST fiasco this major shift in public policy has been developed without consultation with parents, students and educators and is rumoured to shift the focus of high school education from in class broad based learning to narrow out of school training opportunities.
The current model anticipates that we are educating our kids for professions and challenges that don't yet exist and the thinking is to give them the basic skills so they may adapt and become critically thinking problem solvers.
However, the corporate world, who have presumably been consulted on the new path, would rather have our children trained early for the jobs and industries currently becoming yesterdays news. To quote Albert Einstein "Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything one learned in school."
If all our children learn is a narrow skill set instead of an education they will most certainly not be 21st Century learners.
Matt Pearce
First vice-president PGDTA
Prince George
