The Must Read on BC Schools You Won't Like

In January The Tyee published my review The Must Read on BC Schools You Won't Like. Excerpt:

Worlds Apart: British Columbia Schools, Politics, and Labour Relations Before and After 1972 Thomas Fleming. Bendall Books (2011) 

Just about everyone with an interest in B.C. schools will have to read this book -- parents, teachers, trustees, administrators, politicians, the media. None of them are going to like it. 

That's because Thomas Fleming, a professor emeritus at UVic, has studied our schools for many years; he knows the system we set up back in 1849. He knows how it's changed, not always for the better. With energetic impartiality, he finds fault with teachers, trustees, civil servants, and politicians, especially since the first NDP government took power 40 years ago.

Comments

[Camilla]

As an assistent prof at a Dutch unvisreity I'm constantly looking for ways to make my courses interesting and relevant for students and for myself. I find the Tegenlicht episode on Education 3.0 very inspiring.I share the idea that students need to have an inventory of knowledge from which they can explore, experiment and explain. Indeed, the So What?' question regarding knowledge acquisition is the litmus test here.One of my main challenges is to convince students that education is about knowledge *sharing* (teacher student; student student) not about knowledge *transfer* (teacher -> student). My freshman students expect the teacher/professor to be all knowing' and the text book to contain absolute information. Together with a reluctance of self-expression in class (due to fear to fail in front of peers), this translates in a passive audience. I'm trying to find ways to deal with this; the Tegenlicht episode definitely has given me inspiration to continue this quest.