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The statement that is the title is an opinion. To determine if a system is flawed, the purpose of the system must first be established. Once it's established, and only then, can the determination be made if it's functioning correctly or not. So, this prompts the question: What is the purpose of the education system? To educate, of course! But the deeper and real question is, to teach what? Currently, the education system roughly works like this: Elementary school teaches you basic English and math skills. There's also basic religion thrown in there, physical education and... nothing else comes to mind from what I can remember. Science, I guess, but even then, nothing ground breaking. Secondary (high) school teaches you the foundation for advanced math, science (atoms, weather, etc then specializes in chemistry, biology and physics), more religion and English. These four subjects are the major aspects of these four years. The anchor subjects, if you will. Post-secondary teaches you (more or less - more on this later) the tools you need to be qualified for your chosen career. Elementary school, fundamentally, from a curriculum perspective, is more or less acceptable. The basics are there: reading, writing, addition/subtraction/multiplication/division - basic things you need to know to function in society. However, the problem with elementary school is that they coddle their students. I'll take my brother, for example. Let's call him John (not his real name, taken after John Doe). John is lazy, and doesn't do homework. John is in absolutely zero danger of failing his grade. The policy is not to fail students, because it 'hurts their feelings' and affects their self-esteem. Intention is good, I don't dispute that, but it's unrealistic. As a result of this policy, My brother's grown up in a bubble; he has no sense of failure, it's not something he's experienced before. If he doesn't hand in an assignment, the teacher will say something like this: "It was due last week, John. You really need to hurry up and get this project in to me." "John, you're late with your assignment. Once you get to high school, this will be unacceptable." There's no real incentive to do anything and there's no real understanding of the consequences of inaction. The words of the teacher fall deaf onto John and his peers. They nod, say okay and they understand, and they think they do, but they don't. They've never fallen before. They've never been told that they've failed something and need to deal with the consequences. They've always been caught before they hit the ground, whether they realize it or not, and are living in a false sense of reality. As I'm sure the readers of this are aware, the world does not catch you. This is setting up young children to have unrealistic expectations of life and is setting them up for catastrophic failure. Secondary school is a disaster, almost a complete waste of time. For anyone over the age of twenty, someone that may rent, have a job, possibly owns a car or even have considering owning a house, I ask you this: What have you learned from high school that helped you with these things? Personally, my four years prepared me for nothing. There was a half-semester of Careers (which, really, was a joke) and a half-semester of Civics. Both, in theory, are life-essential courses, but the curriculum foundation makes them a joke. Half a semester is several weeks, that's not a lot of time. Besides Careers & Civics, what is taught that's essential? Geography is arguable, you have a general sense of the world's politics and a rough idea where all the countries are. Math sets you up for higher-level courses (more on that later). Science gives you a general idea of how atoms work and elements, which is nice, but not something you need to know on a daily basis. World Religion is arguably relevant, but even then, it's falls in the category of Geography, which is "nice to know, but not essential". What is essential in secondary school? I struggle to answer that question. Besides the aforementioned Careers & Civics, I can only think of the Automotive class, which at least teaches you basic vehicle maintenance. That's something that everyone should know. What about English? That course doesn't teach you anything, besides trying to get you to think a certain way. English teachers are notorious for their "my way or the highway" way of thinking in regards to symbolism. If you don't interpret the piece in the way that they feel is correct, then you're wrong. This is so counter productive, it boggles my mind. One of the goals of high school is supposed to be to teach you to think for yourself, but this is accomplishing the exact opposite. On top of that, it's with the topic of symbolism. Symbolism is one of the most opinionated and subjective topics in the entire English subject. Symbolism is open to interpretation, that's the whole point of it. Secondly, in regards to English, the courses fail in the very name. In my post secondary education, there was a mandatory (required) English remedial class. The professor explained that there was so many complaints by other professors as to the state of the assignments being submitted, that this course had to be created and made mandatory. The second half was productive - showing us how to write various types of reports (it was a technical campus, associated with a university), but the first half was basic grammar. Literally, basic grammar and usage. We'd have a week dedicated for each topic and a quiz at the end of the week, to determine if we were proficient enough with the topic to not be required to go to extra seminars. Such topics included: commas, semicolons and when to type out or spell numbers. These are all things that should be taught in secondary or even elementary school. I won't even get into the tuition cause and issues associated with this. Another course that stands out in my mind that I took in post secondary was pre-calculus. The second time I took the course (don't ask), it all became so clear. The random and dis-jointed Math courses in secondary school were all coming together as the foundation to calculus. That made the struggles through those four years seem justified, almost. But, really, how useful is pre-calculus? I can't say that I use it on a daily basis. It's not something that a normal person uses in their day to day lives, besides really cheesy pick-up lines. This, to me, is a sign that the post secondary system is failing at their job: to make us the best possible person we can be in our chosen field. However, it's not really their fault, as they're picking up the slack from secondary schools. Secondary school is where the blame lies, squarely. Not solely, but significantly. The system needs to change, or it will become like the financial system in recent years, it'll crash in on itself. Much like the financial system dramatically affected society, so will this. A generation of young people is being unleashed upon the world that has no idea how to do basic things: buy a car, rent a house, get a job, buy a house. I was planning on including an example of a ridiculous mortgage offer from a bank, to prove that I wouldn't know if it was a ridiculous offer or not, due to the failure of my education system. The sad thing, though, is that it occurred to me that I don't even know enough about how mortgages work (and how to get one) to be able to come up with an example. That's pretty sad, isn't it? Note: My experiences are based primarily on the Ontario provincial education system.

For those of you who read my #BCPoli election blog, thanks. It was fun, never doing it again. This is a postscript for those of you who read through everything. The BC Liberals nominally won the election with 43 of 87 seats. However, the NDP won 41 seats and the BC Green Party won 3 seats, and they have agreed to a written accord (not a coalition, which is a formal governance agreement in Canada) whereby the NDP will govern with the tacit and supporting votes from the BC Greens to achieve a majority. It is not a coalition, in that the Greens reserve the right to sit in Opposition to the NDP government they are propping up, and have agreed only to vote with the NDP on matters of budget or confidence in the government. Having said that, this government may die in a few weeks since there's an impasse on who will serve as the Speaker of the House. A liberal Speaker would preserve the Accord's majority, but an NDP or Green Speaker would lead to legislative deadlock. The Speaker, by unwritten convention going back 7 centuries, can only vote to continue debate or preserve the status quo. This means that legislation will die in Third Reading, including budgets, throne speeches and other matters of confidence in the government. Which means that as soon as the NDP attempts to table any such documents, it will die unless the Speaker is willing to repeatedly defy precedent for the next 4.5 years. Such a position would be absolutely unprecedented in Canadian electoral history. Liberals have unanimously declared that if elected, they will not serve as Speaker (something that they can apparently do in spite of the secret ballot used to elect the Speaker). So it's entirely likely that I'll spend my summer working a second election campaign, which would be an immense relief to me since I'm going insane from boredom. A summer election would end the boredom very quickly. But it's time to figure out what I want to do politically. Anyone who knows me knows that I harbour political ambitions, and I have the connections needed to make a good showing when I choose to make my run. Given the NDP sweep of my hometown and all of the surrounding districts, it's not advantageous for me to contest a provincial seat (which is what I would truly like), nor would I be well-situated to win given my lack of real-world experience at the moment. I'm also not likely to succeed at present in the federal seat I reside in. It has a history of electing NDP representatives, including very young gay New Democrats, but I think it unlikely that I would be their first choice, given the high profile of the seat and the fact that the party controls every other elected position in the city EXCEPT this one federal seat. That leaves city council or the school board. Both have vacancies due to the provincial election, which guarantees an opening for me to run in that doesn't explicitly mean that I have to face the city council directly in a nomination battle. Given the absolute virulence that some on Council have shown me (and I've shown them repeatedly in exchange), that's probably a good thing, since they would deal with me in short order in a head to head election, but may not play favourites for the open council seat. The alternative would be to contest the open school board seat, where I have broadly strong relations with all of the major players, and would be seen as less of a public frustration than the current school board trustee blabbing about internal discussions to the local paper. I have the benefit of having worked with the school board on policy in the past, having pushed them into creating and working through an explicit anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia policy that includes resources for including pro-LGBTQ material into the curriculum. So... they know me, and they like me enough to invite me to be a keynote speaker at a district event. Both options appeal to me. Council desperately needs my voice on housing issues, and even as the council reluctantly starts to take my activist viewpoint on expanding housing in the city, winning a council seat with that as my main platform issue would certainly boost the effectiveness of my critiques. In spite of their past anger towards me, they would be loyal and help elect me if I was part of the slate. I wouldn't be able to guarantee success on expanding housing options in the city, but those issues would have a voice and champion. It would also allow me to continue and expand my work on the city public safety committee where I've spent the last six years improving police awareness of youth crime issues and ensuring that stays on the radar. Councillors have seen me there, and they appreciate my work on those files, so they may also appreciate my diligence on other issues before council, should I get there. The school board interests me as well. Obviously as a teacher I couldn't teach in a district where I served as a trustee, but with my master's degree coming I may not be teaching anymore anyways, and may shift entirely into a research career, which would free me up to serve as a trustee at home. I already know that I can work well with the current trustees, and it's a lower profile position that would allow me to get used to actually governing before becoming a councillor or something with more clout and public profile. There are things that I would want to accomplish at the school board as well, including the expansion of additional Mandarin language classes, and expanding the Advance Placement capstone program to all eight high schools in the district. Increasing public knowledge about the ACE-IT program for early trades certification would also be a priority issue for me. So there are things that I can do, and I wouldn't be choosing school board because of its potential as a springboard to alternative elective offices. There's also the fact that the open Council seat is likely to be more interesting to potential candidates than a school board seat. Better perks and the like, and I'm not entirely in it for the perks. All of which is a long way for me to say that I don't know what I want for myself. I have a meeting with the local party's treasurer in the next few days, and I plan to sound him out a bit before I go too much further. I'm also considering talking to a current city councillor and a school board trustee that I have strong connections to, in order to better grasp what their views would be. I feel like they'll suggest I wait. It's what they Mayor said when I asked for his blessing to run federally in 2015, and I ignored his advice. The result was being squished like a bug by the powers that be. What a learning experience that was. Perhaps waiting another election cycle until I've more thoroughly rebuilt the bridges I've burned all to hell from my public comments. Perhaps hearing from my superiors will give me an idea of what my options are.

I'm going to go back and get my Master's degree. I already have Bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Education, and a diploma in Adult Education. The MA in Political Science is a bit of unfinished business, one that I swore I'd go and finish up. It's been years since I wrote an academic essay, but such skills don't usually atrophy over time. I... I want this. Not just for the sake of having an MA, but because politics is something I've grown to love from both the outsider's drama of it, as well as being deeply involved in my own personal battles with elected officials and political systems. I want to be teaching political science one day, and while teaching in high schools would be deeply satisfying, there's something about politics that keeps bringing me back. I can do it. I know I can. I also know that the last time I tried, I wasn't able to prove it. My marks have changed, but perhaps that won't matter. I like to think that it will, especially since my grades have gotten significantly better through my programs. I was always a good political science student as well, and my GPA only went down because of elective courses that were required for graduation. The only thing I don't have are recent letters of reference. I think it may be time to go and see if there's anyone at my old/current school who will write me a reference, and who feel doing so won't be a waste of time or insult to their time. There are plenty of people in the department that will still remember me, hopefully fondly. In the meantime, I'm going to be taking some time to write a couple of long-overdue papers to get myself back into the swing of things. I can do this. I need to do this. I know it's where I belong.