Tory, Savoline and homework

John Tory is a glutton for punishment. Having been defeated personally in Don Valley West by Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, and having been raked over the coals by almost everybody during the election for his ill-conceived faith-based funding proposition, Tory nevertheless has waded into the education field again. He and his Burlington MPP Joyce Savoline have fired a broadside against homework and the result, alas for them, is that they have again shot themselves in the foot.

Tory should have learned - do your homework before opening your mouth. Savoline has no particular knowledge of education but Tory should know enough to vet press releases before they fly out to the world. Calling on the McGuinty government to stop encouraging school boards to ban penalties for late homework assignments or projects when they have done no such thing is another, deeply unsettling example of Tory's glaring weakness - he leaps to conclusions before he has the facts.

I think the Lib approach to homework is actually a fairly thoughtful one. They encourage teachers to be judicious in the amount of homework they assign and the severity of the penalties if a student is late or fails to hand in an assignment. There seems to be, across North America at least, a real debate about how much homework is enough or too much, and the value of homework at each grade level. Educators - as opposed to politicians - have reservations about both aspects of homework and are suggesting a lot more study needs to be made of the value of homework rather than a blind acceptance of the way it has always been.

Tory made the statement in the press release that "the McGuinty Liberals are giving our kids a one-way ticket to easy street. This policy does nothing to teach Ontario students about what it takes to succeed in the real world."

John, for heavens sake quit embarrassing yourself and all of us who like you - stop making statements that on their face are absurd.

Under the Liberals, the drop out rate is falling and more kids are going on to post secondary education and training. And Ontario students are doing exceptionally well. A 2007 study by the Organization for Economic Development placed Ontario students fourth in reading, math and science - behind only Finland, China and Alberta and way ahead of the UK who finished 15th and the US, who the Tories love to hold up as a model, who finished in 30th place. Not much of an easy street there.

Savoline also stretches credibility beyond even the norm for Opposition members when she said she believes the kid-glove approach by the Liberals on the issue is ultimately about graduating as many students as possible.

"There are certain exceptional situations where leniency should be available but it should be up to the discretion of our teachers to make that decision," said Savoline. "It shouldn't be exploited by the McGuinty Liberals as an attempt to prop up slipping student achievement."

She doesn't define "certain exceptional circumstances" but I certainly hope she's right that the Liberals are trying to graduate as many students as possible. The Harris Tories clearly didn't and it sounds as if Savoline belongs to that brain dead bunch.

Graduation rates in Ontario are up, kids are staying school longer and those are facts. As for who decides on homework, I called the Toronto Board and was told emphatically that each teacher determines how much homework is assigned and what penalties to impose for lateness, spelling and grammatical errors etc. From what I've read, it's the same in other Boards, so Savoline obviously hasn't done her homework. Applying her punitive approach, can we demand she resigns?

What Tory desperately needs, besides some intelligent MPPs to work with, is a top flight research and policy staff department in the Leader's office. But the problem with the Tories - not as bad as with the Alliance but still it's a major challenge - is that the party since Harris has always let ideology drive their policies rather than letting research and reliable data help form them.

This is one of the reasons McGuinty is doing as well as he is. The Liberals are just as susceptible to being a slave to ideology as anyone else but they seem to hold it at bay a lot more and to make decisions and design policies based on sound research rather than some old fart's nostalgic myopia. Tory is surrounded by old farts. Some, like Savoline, are young in years but with hardened arteries in the brain department. Others, like Randy Hillier didn't have a lot to start with and what was there has gone way way past its best before date. It makes the mountain Tory is having to climb that much steeper and more formidable but if he doesn't climb it successfully and start attracting some top notch candidates instead of the mediocrities he is surrounded with, my chances of being the next premier are better than his.