Higher education goes Medieval

For generations, education has been a primary means to make countries like Canada and the United States stronger, more productive, and self-confident. Now the education system is not only failing to perform its primary mission for young people, but increasingly works to undermine and divide nations.

The decline of effective schooling, once identified with the U.S., has spread to other countries, including places like France and Germany. In Britain, reading and math scores continue to decline steadily while almost one-fifth of the population is “functionally illiterate” . Much the same is happening in Canada.

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Once Canada seemed distinct from the long flailing American system. When my wife moved from Montreal to Los Angeles in junior high, she felt about a year-and-a-half ahead. This might no longer be the case, as Canada’s primary school performance has declined markedly. Math, English and science scores plummeted during the pandemic, but were already falling before that; math scores have been decreasing for two decades for 15 year olds. Rising expenditures seem to have made little difference.

Equally disturbing may be the content being taught. In Canada, as in the U.S., primary school curricula are becoming increasingly politicized. There’s a sense, derived from the universities, that Canada’s past is essentially a record of evil and that the country is itself fundamentally illegitimate, the product of colonial political oppression rather than a flawed, but ultimately successful nation. Canadian children are in danger of losing their own heritage, of being deprived access to anything bright in their history. “We are in danger of ‘mass amnesia,’ being cut off from knowledge of our own cultural history,” noted the late long-time Torontonian Jane Jacobs 20 years ago.

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