Montreal City Weblog

Kate 21:13 on 2021-01-05 Permalink Reply  

• Ephraim 21:43 on 2021-01-05 Permalink

  The government needs to walk in and remove their authorization.

  Even if the kids don’t have computers at home, they have copy machines, paper and pencils.

• Kate 22:34 on 2021-01-05 Permalink

  Are those kids allowed any TV? I was reading just now that in the UK, the BBC will be putting out several hours of educational programming in the mornings while they’re locked down, so that kids without internet can still get some instruction. No idea whether that’s being contemplated here.

• Ephraim 10:12 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  Most of them don’t have TV. But that’s not really an excuse in those households. They have plenty of books, there are often multiple children. They can read, do exercises on paper. You don’t need to pass around COVID because you don’t want to listen to the central authority… and the central authority doesn’t have to pay for the teachers if you aren’t doing what they say. Quebec can withdraw funding.

• jeather 10:28 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  Are they actually funded by the government?

  But as Ephraim said, no, these kids generally don’t have tv or internet. I have no idea what the laws said about schooling for students who can’t learn online, and now we see the problem of basing your school closing laws around one religion, because the private (unsubsidised?) schools that run different calendars based on their religions are extra in trouble.

  This is not to say that I support these schools being open, because I don’t, but “actually these kids have no internet access and are losing more than 1 week of school because we choose to close on alternate days” is an actual problem that the government elected to ignore in favour of leaving all the retail stores open until Christmas.

• Ephraim 11:11 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  Jeather, I think every school, as long as authorized, receives money from the Ministry of Education. But then again, those of Tosh are embroiled in litigation with the government. And I would bet that Satmar is saying that the kids are being “home schooled” even though they are being indoctrinated.

  We need to set up a set of minimum requirements and testing for those who are home schooling, like matriculations and see that they are in fact able to follow the TAPS (or if you prefer to call it by the common name, the curriculum)

  We have an act respecting what private education does. http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/showDoc/cs/E-9.1 it may need to be tightened up. These kids need to know how to speak/write English and French, they need to know how to do math and arithmetic, at a minimum, enough to communicate with medical professionals, the state and how to function within society with money. They need a way out, in case they ever need or want to get out.

• jeather 11:21 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  They are, in theory, fairly strict re homeschooling. (As of this year, you can’t use an English school board as your related board services unless you have eligibility: this is a new rule.) I don’t know how closely they follow up, of course, but the rules are there. (I know one person who is homeschooling, though I don’t know her well, and one person who researched it just in case it might become necessary during this year.)

  https://www.aqed.qc.ca/en/homeschooling-quebec/legal-aspects-what-you-should-know

• Ephraim 11:27 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  There is a 5 person limit to home schooling, so many of the Tosh families wouldn’t be allowed, unless they stopped at 5 children…

• jeather 11:32 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  I didn’t know there was a limit! But the problem is really that there is insufficient followup for some students, not that the laws are too weak.

• Ephraim 15:21 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  Essentially, we need standardized matriculation for home-schooled students, that has to be administered elsewhere (like by the school board), so their parents don’t feed them the answers. And make the TAPS available online. We can even make the parents pay for that matriculation, as part of the costs of opting out of school. And it doesn’t have to be separate exams, it could be comprehensive. It wouldn’t be that hard to construct or to have available. A set of exam questions for each part of the exam loaded via GRICS that allows a schoolboard to push a button and output a randomized exam. You have several hundred questions that randomly come out. You put the answers, other than essay answers into a centralized computer and you have a baseline for everyone who’s finishing that grade and a way to send a list to the parents of deficiencies. At the next grade, you can push out an exam that tests the current grade plus the deficiencies from the last grade. If they are still below where they should be, it allows the system to intervene.

• Michael Black 15:54 on 2021-01-06 Permalink

  When John Holt started talking about home learning, it wasn’t putting school in homes, it was student based learning. It was a valid point, any gifted child knew they could learn by themselves, and schools used up a lot of time simply by being school.

  But somewhere that morphed into religious groups (not just Jewish) wanting control over carriculum.. That helped to legitimize home schooling, but resulted in school at home, with all the rules and structure.

  It kills the radical notion that kids can learn by themselves, and reinforces a dependency on schools. And homeschooling scares adults under a lockdown, “I don’t know how to teach”, even though they’d been doing it since their child was born.I

  I could question lots of things in school, but that can’t happen without knowing a broader world.

  Surely the five child limit that Ephraim mentions is so someone isn’t setting up a real school in their home. I can’t believe it’s about large families.