Election and Other News

The polls have finally begun to move. It looks as though this time, the debates were important. Votes seem to be shifting from the Liberals to the BQ in Quebec, and from the Liberals to the NDP in English Canada. This reflects the consensus among commentators on who did best in the debates.

The principal beneficiary is going to be the Conservatives, as the vote on the left splits more evenly.

In other news, Bernier’s PPC is taking heat because one of their NS candidates tweeted in 2017 that “Islam is pure evil.” Storm in a shotglass, it would appear. Candidate explains she failed to make the distinction between Islam and Islamism.

It would be fair comment if someone did consider Islam purely evil, mind. Islam is a set of opinions or beliefs. Just as we could honourably say “Nazism is pure evil,” or “Satanism is pure evil,” logically, we might believe this of Islam. But it would be political suicide. And of course, for the record, I would consider this wildly wrong. Islam is wrong on some things, but a force for good.

Islamism, on the other hand, is pure evil.

It would be tough for Bernier to dump her, in any case. This late in the campaign, it is not legally possible to replace a candidate.

In other other news, Star Metro reports Ontario students and parents protesting Doug Ford’s cuts to education. They are upset at a new requirement that four high school courses be taken online, and a rise in the number of pupils per class from 22 to 28.

As someone more or less in the education field, I feel this opposition is misguided. Although all educational studies are necessarily dubious, there is no good evidence that the number of students in a class affects student achievement. It affects the teacher’s ability to break classes into small groups instead of lecturing. But some of the most popular courses at university level fill huge lecture halls.

There is no evidence either that breaking students into small discussion groups leads to better learning than a lecture. There are theories to support this claim, but no actual empirical evidence.

Perhaps it is more significant that lecturing requires more work by the teacher than having students break into small groups and discuss. As a teacher, I love such group discussions.

As a student, I always felt I learned more in a lecture.

Such studies as have been done also suggest that online courses teach more efficiently than conventional classrooms. And there are reasons to expect this to be so: online a student is able to work at their own pace, potentially has access to a variety of different forms of presentation, text, audio, images, video, interactive, animated visuals, and instant search, and can back up and try again if they miss something.

This is not to say that there is no value in the physical presence of a teacher, or of other classmates. Best results are obtained by “blended learning,” combining online with classroom. But students are gaining, not losing, on balance, if the choice is online versus conventional class.

The problem with online learning is that it automates so much of the process; over time, fewer teachers are needed. This is of course not good for teachers. Moreover, in my experience, most teachers are confirmed Luddites. They are afraid of the new technology, and will not use it if not forced. With some reason: inevitably, the students are better at it than they are.

So why are students and parents protesting?

Perhaps because they are too inclined to accept the authority of teachers as the “experts.”

But for students, it may also be a matter of not daring to alienate your own teacher. That could be risky.