By Alison Larabie
Educators and parents in Centretown reject an American educator’s claim that high school is “boring” or a “complete waste of time” after Grade 10.
Leon Botstein, president of Bard College in New York state, made those and other comments about American high schools in recent interviews with the Ottawa Citizen.
Bernard Swords, principal of Immaculata High School, says he doesn’t give a lot of weight to Botstein’s theory that high school should end after Grade 10 and students should then move on to higher education, national service or vocational schools.
“I didn’t come away with any strong belief that we need to change the system, at least not the massive change that his ideas would bring about,” Swords says.
Swords points out that in the last five years the Ontario government has made significant reforms to the secondary school curriculum.
“Co-op programs have been extremely important and have been quite successful in helping some students to find a career that they might never have discovered otherwise,” he says.
“The new secondary school reforms are talking about more apprenticeships, which would alleviate some of the ‘waste of time’ he is talking about.”
Botstein also says upper-year students are not treated as adults, although they are physically and emotionally mature. Swords says it’s ridiculous to make blanket statements about how students are treated.
“I think (students) are treated as adults to the point at which they can handle it. Any good school treats their students individually because the level of maturity differs in 18 year olds,” says Swords.
Wendy Schieman, president of CUPE Local 2357, works in the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board and has seen her children go through the high school system. She says Grade 10 is too soon for children to be out of high school.
“My oldest daughter skipped a grade in school and went to university at 16, and I know she was totally unprepared,” Schieman says.
She says the last two years of school contain a lot of learning, but adds there are places where she’d like to see improvement.
“I’d like to see much more creative writing instead of what they are doing now, book reports and so on,” she says.
“I don’t think there’s enough room for creativity at all.”
As to whether high school students should be treated as adults, she says, “I think the more you expect from someone the more you will get from them.”
John Crump of the Coalition for Public Education says there is a need to make the last years of high school more stimulating and less frustrating for students.
“My concern with the recent changes (to the secondary school curriculum) is that critical thought is not being emphasized.”