In June, an Edmonton teacher (Lynden Dorval) wa suspended from his job because he refused to stop giving zeroes to students who didn’t hand in work. I posted a reaction to that here.
His hearing is coming up in a little over a week, and he may get fired. The Edmonton School Board is going to review their policy although I suspect they will do almost anything to avoid admitting they were wrong about something and will decide that the status quo is just fine. Of course, the official institutions like the U of Calgary are quick to support the status quo. Dr. Friesen sounds like she’s trying to run for public office. Lots of words; very little real information.
There’s a FaceBook support group for Mr. Dorval
Here are a few comments that really resonated with me:
I don’t have a scholarly education, I’m an electrician. I’ve worked in construction, in industry & in service. I’m appalled even with those who go into the trades who can’t read and write yet have a high school diploma, not a GED but an actual diploma. I’ve had teacher friends who I’ve told (when i operated my own business) to tell their classes that I won’t hire a person who can’t tead or write and who can’t do simple math in their head. Like the times table, like measuring a room length and dividing it in 2 or 3 to space out lights. I also wouldn’t hire somebody who couldn’t write properly because they couldn’t fill out service reports that were a) legible and b) I couldn’t make sense of in order to send an invoice. Even if the people who’ve worked with me could read, write properly and do simple math in their head; if they consistently didn’t finish projects on time or at all guess what, I would fire their a*s because they cost me money. No sense of entitlement working in the real world, it’s time these coddled kids grew up and these intellectuals who run our education system got fired and got a real world education themselves.……(Those) who are vocationally minded (…) often feel it doesn’t matter if they know how to write properly etc. It does matter and now I sit back and observe (I’m a people watcher and currently work in an ice cream factory) and see people in factory environments who struggle with basic communication skills, like all their writing and notations are a text message on their cell phone. Nothing to me is more irritating than someone who can’t be bothered to write proper words in a report. Short forms and abbreviations are of course acceptable but stuff like ” ur” isn’t.
Communication skills are key – no matter what you end up doing in your life.
Self-esteem is built by real achievement – NOT by patting kids on the head and saying “It’s OK, we’ll let you continue because we know you could have done it if you’d only… well… you know…. ACTUALLY DONE THE WORK.”
