Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Primary and secondary education 143
Low skill levels
One of the strongest criticisms leveled against government schools is the low level of
basic skill-acquisition by many students. Major international surveys, for instance, have
shown that Canadian and American children enrolled in public schools consistently
under-perform students in many other developed countries in core subjects such as
mathematics, science and geography. 21 In particular, although Canadian students
performed at or above the median of surveyed countries in mathematics at the grade 8
level, they fell well below the median by the time they reached the end of secondary
school. American children fared even worse. In science, 10-year-old students from
Canada performed above the international median, and American students were at the
international median. By the age of 14, however, American students fell well below the
median; Canadian results also fell. When students were at the point of completing
secondary school, Canada fell below the international median in science and the United
States performed extremely poorly. 22 In geography, Canadian students fared poorly
against their counterparts in other industrialized countries, and American students were
second to last in the industrialized world. These results indicate that the longer children
are in the public education system in North America, the farther they fall behind
international standards.
Mark Holmes has argued in response to these results that the deterioration in
performance at the secondary school level in North America has been exaggerated and
that the results do not drop off as precipitously as has been suggested elsewhere. Rather,
Holmes argues that the North American educational experience is probably deficient
from the earliest grades. “The data in fact suggest that our position is mediocre by age
nine, remains so at age fourteen, and is impossible to assess in any legitimate, overall
way at the end of secondary school.” 23 Thus, there may in fact be no difference in the
quality of the education provided to students as they move from primary to secondary
schools. An explanation of the drop in performance from primary to secondary school
may be that North American children are encouraged not to “drop-out” by an educational
establishment that labours under societal pressure to maintain a high graduation rate. In
many European countries students are encouraged to follow vocational and
apprenticeship paths much earlier than they are in North America. 24 It is thus arguable
that in the absence of deliberate sorting activity, poor North American test results can be
traced to the disaffection and disinterest of students who would benefit from alternative
training and education programming that is less academic in nature. 25
Insufficient “values” education
Whether it is advocates on the right demanding a return to sectarian education, strict
discipline and “family values,” or on the left urging a strengthening of the values of
cultural diversity, community and tolerance, there are many critics who fault the
government-supplied educational system with providing too little in the way of values
training. The demands made on the educational system in this regard are deeply
problematic. Many parents have less and less time to spend educating their children in
their values. 26 This is the result of a long-term trend toward the participation of all adult