True Patriot Love - THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN CANADA

00:00:00.000 Everyone keeps saying Canada has one of the best education systems in the world.

00:00:04.220 And on paper, that's true.

00:00:06.060 We're the most educated country on earth.

00:00:08.340 More than half of our adults have post-secondary degrees.

00:00:11.420 Our students still rank in the global top tier.

00:00:14.500 So what's the problem?

00:00:16.040 The problem is what's happening underneath.

00:00:18.000 Test scores are slipping, math is declining,

00:00:20.740 and nearly half of Canadian adults struggle with basic literacy.

00:00:24.360 So how can we be the most educated country in the world and still be falling behind?

00:00:28.940 That's the question nobody wants to ask,

00:00:30.660 because if we're spending more, getting worse results,

00:00:33.440 and lowering standards along the way,

00:00:35.420 then maybe the system isn't as strong as we think,

00:00:37.860 and maybe we're confusing credentials with actual education.

00:00:46.880 All right, and to have this conversation,

00:00:49.840 our very own Roger Tumanyuri,

00:00:52.420 I guess substitute teacher is the look,

00:00:55.320 And Brady Wedham, grade 11 class photo, I guess, is the look.

00:01:00.300 Very suitable.

00:01:01.200 I dress for the occasion.

00:01:02.440 Who am I to talk?

00:01:03.360 I'm wearing a sweatshirt.

00:01:04.280 Guys, thanks.

00:01:04.880 I really appreciate you doing this.

00:01:06.220 Welcome to the jungle.

00:01:08.000 And the conversation runs deep on education right now around this place.

00:01:13.500 We've done several episodes over the last three or four weeks

00:01:16.980 that kind of focused on where education is at.

00:01:20.220 I had the opportunity to speak with Nick Dolinsky,

00:01:23.340 And I'll recommend you go back and watch that episode as we talked about the decline of literacy in Canada.

00:01:29.120 Today, we're going to focus on education on the whole and where we sit on the global level.

00:01:35.720 Roger, what immediately were some of your preconceived notions about what was going on with education in Canada?

00:01:43.280 Before looking at any data, I thought our education system in terms of reading and writing, understanding of grammar, was on the decline from when I was in high school.

00:01:56.520 Yeah.

00:01:56.760 I do believe that's still the case.

00:01:58.440 I think we were taught differently than kids today.

00:02:02.700 But the data that I have now read would argue otherwise.

00:02:06.800 Well, actually, it's so funny because the data that you get, depending on where you get it from, and don't forget, we have an education system that runs region to region, province to province, and on a federal level, the funding comes in to some degree.

00:02:21.480 But when you look at the big picture across Canada, in some cases, it's comparing apples to oranges.

00:02:28.280 You know what I mean?

00:02:28.940 How it's taught, how students are doing.

00:02:31.100 And we're given two different types of stats too, right?

00:02:33.100 So we're given the overall stats, which is the entire education system, which includes the Catholic school system, private educations, things like that, which can be a whole bunch of different types of teaching, and then the public school system, right?

00:02:45.800 So overall, those look like they're doing very well.

00:02:49.200 But what we specifically broke down is the public education system and how we, how do we stand on the global scale?

00:02:56.460 like well it's interesting yes we are number 10 globally in student performance and we are

00:03:02.100 the number one most educated population number one in the world number one now once you once again

00:03:10.420 30,000 feet right yeah some of the stats that you found i think support this yes um well we are

00:03:17.580 globally uh number one in um adult education attainment uh we have what do you think that is

00:03:25.660 Yeah, I education is free.

00:03:28.960 Yeah, I mean.

00:03:30.960 But why so many people?

00:03:32.260 My initial reaction to that is, yeah, right now we're number one at adult education,

00:03:37.760 probably because we have so much immigration coming in and so much retraining.

00:03:42.560 Right.

00:03:42.960 And at that level, before you get to post-secondary education, it is it is free.

00:03:46.360 So people are coming to this country and they're upgrading their skills

00:03:49.960 and getting educated, arguably, for the first time.

00:03:51.960 So a lot of adults are entering that education system and they're getting captured in this stat.

00:03:58.920 It's much higher than the U.S. or the U.K. and most of Europe, actually, for that matter.

00:04:03.720 Not all of Europe, but most according to the stats that we have here.

00:04:08.660 And, yeah, according to the PISA 2022, so PISA actually stands for Program for International Student Assessment.

00:04:17.840 Which is OECD, I think, right?

00:04:20.060 Well, OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

00:04:25.760 So within that group, you have the PISA scores.

00:04:27.940 So we're measuring or standardized testing students within the OECD countries.

00:04:34.880 Gotcha.

00:04:35.420 Okay.

00:04:36.340 Now, remember 25 years ago when they, so they, in high school specifically, they used to have OEC.

00:04:41.860 So anybody previously that was born after like 1985, 1986 has no idea what I'm talking about.

00:04:48.360 But if you were born in that era or before, we had OAC, which was basically like your 13th grade, I guess, right?

00:04:55.000 They ended up getting rid of that about 25 years ago, maybe a little bit over that now, but I think it was about 2000, 2001.

00:05:01.040 And now they had the equivalency test, right?

00:05:03.460 So they would make anybody from grade 9, grade 10, grade 11, grade 12, write this equivalency test.

00:05:08.280 They threw out OAC.

00:05:09.360 They figured it was a better way to track.

00:05:11.260 So our tracking of our education got better over the years.

00:05:14.340 And I'm wondering if this has finally caught up now.

00:05:16.780 if we're if this is why we're seeing that well i think it's interesting because 78 of students

00:05:21.660 meet baseline math proficiency which is something we've always maintained pretty consistently uh

00:05:28.380 82 percent meet reading proficiency uh however uh and by the way that puts us still in the top

00:05:34.940 10 education system globally uh you know outperforming countries like singapore japan

00:05:40.620 South Korea and Estonia but having said that stats are also showing and and Nick if I get off

00:05:48.700 Nick is here we just did an episode about this if I get off the rails on this please stop me

00:05:53.020 but how we've educated for literacy in Canada is also catching up with us where we're finding out

00:06:00.400 that a huge percentage of students arriving even to English programs at university have never read

00:06:05.380 a book where understanding information through reading is not really working for a large

00:06:14.320 percentage of Canadian kids. They can't read well enough to follow instructions. So it's a reading 0.97

00:06:20.240 comprehension thing. It's not so much that they're dyslexic or there's an illiteracy. They're just

00:06:24.280 not comprehending what they're reading, it sounds like. And it also sounds like we've left some of

00:06:28.400 the students that struggle in the dust in the process. Yeah, well, that's always been a thing,

00:06:31.740 right? Like we, I know that in Canada, we specifically have a really good program when

00:06:36.480 it comes to dealing with kids with mental health, right? Autism. We have workers that are there

00:06:43.440 specifically inside of these school systems for them, but you're right. If you don't fall into

00:06:47.320 that category, you might kind of just fall into a category that gets left in the dust where it's

00:06:51.300 like, you're not in that situation, so you don't need the extra attention, but maybe you do need

00:06:54.760 a little bit more one-on-one work, but you're stuck in a group setting, right? Yeah. How do we,

00:07:00.140 how do we actually how do we maintain that do we just hire more government jobs and have well i

00:07:05.560 think that how we educated for a little while uh made a difference when it came to literacy

00:07:09.720 um the the method by which we started teaching was not that that we learned which was

00:07:16.000 phonetically phonetics yeah we learned phonics remember those books yeah well phonics was a big

00:07:22.000 thing in the 90s too right you couldn't turn on the tv without seeing a commercial to order the

00:07:25.480 Hooked on Phonics, which was getting adults into that system, right?

00:07:29.260 Adults that never had the phonetic teaching.

00:07:31.840 I think we should look into that.

00:07:33.760 How long did that phonetics, when did that roll up,

00:07:37.260 and when did that kind of disappear?

00:07:39.220 I could say something about this.

00:07:41.200 Yeah.

00:07:42.340 So Hooked on Phonics still exists.

00:07:43.900 Producer Nick, by the way.

00:07:44.760 Sorry, Nick.

00:07:45.280 Yes, Producer Nick.

00:07:46.440 Yeah, so Hooked on Phonics still exists,

00:07:47.760 and it became popular in the 90s.

00:07:50.580 It wasn't started because of this, but in the 90s it became popular,

00:07:54.340 largely because phonics was not being taught in schools.

00:07:57.700 They'd moved away from phonics for literacy,

00:08:01.700 and it sort of filled the gap in a private way, so to speak.

00:08:07.160 So now we moved away from that.

00:08:09.660 Literacy became an issue pretty quickly.

00:08:12.960 And so that is the one area that we're starting to see now.

00:08:16.520 Here's what I took away from this,

00:08:18.100 and maybe you guys have a different perspective on it.

00:08:22.320 By the way, we're not doing as well as the only North American country consistently in the global top 10 is only, sorry, outperformed.

00:08:32.140 I want to correct myself by Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Estonia.

00:08:35.840 We are outperforming U.S. and U.K., so I just wanted to correct myself on that.

00:08:41.760 But if Canada is failing, most of the Western world is failing worse is the kind of the message in that.

00:08:47.200 Right.

00:08:47.480 you know like england and and uh the u.s comparable but still doing i think they're

00:08:54.640 they're trying to increase their they're trying to work on that right now right and like so in

00:08:59.500 2018 it's been reported now that canada is slowly on a decline so yes we may be listed in the top

00:09:05.500 10 and yes we may be the number one for population but there is a steady decline that's happening

00:09:10.840 here now is that city decline happening because these other countries are starting to amp their

00:09:15.680 game up and these numbers are balancing or is this something else that's going on well when 48

00:09:21.380 percent of canadian adults have low literacy rates we've had this problem for a long time this has

00:09:27.060 been it's been around for a minute yeah but from what i've read that decline is across the board

00:09:31.640 like across the world from the 2018 testing to the 2022 testing and why do you think that it's

00:09:38.700 contributed to covid covid okay how do we i mean are we underspending on education it just seems to

00:09:46.300 me we overspend on everything but you know what what is it costing us to educate out there right

00:09:51.420 now so that's a really good question so the research that i gathered says we spend 5.5

00:09:58.060 percent of gdp on education okay okay so to put that in context um we spend like 11 to 12 percent

00:10:06.460 on healthcare um wow so this is a still a very significant number yeah 16 to 18 percent on

00:10:15.420 we'll call it a social safety net things like uh employment insurance and pensions but get this

00:10:22.140 we only spend 1.2 to 1.4 and we're trying to increase that uh on defense

00:10:30.300 so we spend more than double the amount on education than we do on national defense

00:10:37.240 Well, that makes sense to me.

00:10:39.780 Yeah, because we don't, up until this year,

00:10:41.820 we really haven't spent much on defense in a very long time.

00:10:44.160 Yeah, I was going to say, I think our last purchase was

00:10:46.120 some guns that don't work and a bunch of canoes.

00:10:48.160 And blanks, blanks for guns.

00:10:49.520 We have blanks.

00:10:50.320 Yeah, by mistake.

00:10:51.320 So having said that, no, I think now, like you say,

00:10:54.200 we're trying to make a change on that.

00:10:57.760 However, what this does to education when you spend 5% of,

00:11:02.300 that works out to about $15,000 per student.

00:11:05.380 to get them through school.

00:11:08.460 That's a pretty significant amount.

00:11:10.540 Singapore is the only other one that I saw that was much higher

00:11:13.020 or South Korea, between 18,000 and 25,000 per student.

00:11:18.540 But the dedication in those countries to that education

00:11:21.720 is a full 10-hour day.

00:11:24.740 There's school during the day.

00:11:26.220 There's courses afterward, weekend school.

00:11:28.900 The education system there is fortified by a real strict

00:11:33.600 regiment of hard work and discipline we were talking about this before the show i was just

00:11:39.540 about to say you know maybe this is a take that and i'm going to cut you off but maybe this is a

00:11:43.220 take that i just come up with on my own i don't even need stats but i know firsthand from having

00:11:48.720 an ex with a kid that i was around every day while he was in school through covid and then

00:11:53.160 after covid that discipline is not a thing anymore in public school i went to school i was

00:11:59.160 under the becca book system i was lucky enough to go to a private school as a young kid but i got

00:12:02.800 strapped i got in trouble i was one of the last kids that came from that era right there was

00:12:07.200 discipline you did something wrong you you paid a punishment for it and it kept you in line well

00:12:13.080 there's that type of discipline but what type of discipline are you talking about i was talking

00:12:16.940 about whipping kids no i'm not doing that nobody's doing that when you whip a child you end up with

00:12:24.640 a brady and that's our motto for the day we're talking a bit more about physical and mental

00:12:29.420 discipline like the kids in japan yeah um they actually have to clean the classroom and i don't

00:12:34.500 mean tidying things up and making sure you know books are at a right angle with respect to the

00:12:38.520 tabletops they're actually mopping the floors every day before class discipline is a big thing

00:12:43.620 there yeah and have you ever seen the lunch rooms in a in a school in japan go look at the automated

00:12:48.380 lunch rooms they're not automated machines they're automated people the the the class and the

00:12:54.620 elegance that they have just putting lunches together for these kids and they look like

00:12:58.260 five-star lunches so you're getting it yeah there's a discipline thing there and there's

00:13:03.520 like done well in japan because i only showed up for lunch a lot of times in high school and if it

00:13:07.820 was good lunch i stayed the rest of the day and here's the thing too about japan they even had

00:13:12.080 discipline going all the way up once you leave school you know you have to keep a waistline a

00:13:15.300 certain like if you're if you're if your waist is too big for how big your body is and your

00:13:20.140 employer finds out they're actually penalized by the government what the government's penalized

00:13:24.640 yeah there's a discipline thing that goes starts from school and goes all the way up through the

00:13:28.000 workforce so well i think a lot of cultures actually represent that that do well on the

00:13:32.040 list i mean if you take a look japan singapore south korea all of these asian countries have

00:13:38.340 a discipline right and we can break down what they're not good at and we can do that all day

00:13:45.440 long but in terms of what they're doing very well disciplining the system you know what we're really

00:13:51.880 good at canada teaching equity okay of all things well explain equity explain fairness happens to be

00:13:59.600 a big deal yes or so we believe in the education system uh yeah that i think that extends into

00:14:07.080 participation trophy kind of thing bled into that certainly i mean when i was a kid growing up

00:14:12.760 playing soccer and rugby and football you know there was a first place trophy and a second place

00:14:18.720 trophy and that was it now everybody gets a participation award no no bronze didn't exist

00:14:24.160 back all right okay right you either won or you were the the first loser second place yeah it was

00:14:31.060 that now our kids are playing hockey and they don't keep score they just well i mean the time

00:14:36.400 on the scoreboard i heard a story recently of uh it came from mexico my wife was explaining to me

00:14:43.180 that when she was a teacher the students they would line them up every day uh at the schools 0.80

00:14:48.020 and it was lowest marks to highest marks in the line and they they took that away and because it

00:14:56.600 was you know parents actually became the problem why isn't my kid at this point in the line and

00:15:03.060 stuff like that but it also became a moment where the kids were like whoa i'm not doing as good as

00:15:08.260 you wow you get different treatment when you do well you get to be noted for doing well

00:15:13.700 makes you want to work harder it kind of when they eliminated it i would imagine that a little

00:15:20.780 bit of that incentive went away yes incentive can be difficult wanting what somebody else has

00:15:27.900 often makes you work harder to get it and i think that we've eliminated that in canada

00:15:33.420 equity replacing it no roger you're you yeah you don't have the same hairline uh maybe as brady

00:15:41.600 does but we're going to put you in with the guys who have hair yeah and is that fair what that is

00:15:47.720 that ultimately fair to guys like me with no hair or the guys like brady with beautiful hair no hair

00:15:53.620 he's covering it up with that cap yeah isn't that frustrating huh so having said that brady

00:15:59.680 leaves combs at my desk just to poke fun at that is not nice yeah it's not nice but you can take

00:16:05.140 care of your beard with it please stop oh that's true i could i think that it makes a difference

00:16:09.360 that students have the ability to perform achieve and be noted for it and yes if somebody's really

00:16:17.920 struggling in a classroom that's the moment you're going to find out that's the moment you're going

00:16:22.240 to see okay they need to be part of a different part of our education system they need special

00:16:26.720 attention or they need to be motivated in the classroom in some way but i think keeping

00:16:32.080 everything equal in the classroom demotivates so many people you know if you were a great student

00:16:39.040 what do you care suddenly that's right i we're gonna skate i would argue that that's unfair to

00:16:43.040 the high achievers yeah it demotivates them 100 do they still have an honor roll i believe that

00:16:49.840 they still do i don't think that it operates the same way and maybe you're not even allowed to

00:16:55.440 announce it anymore i don't know i do remember when i graduated everybody's scholarship was

00:17:00.160 announced you knew that you know you were going here you were going there you still have a

00:17:03.920 a Victorian do you even allow that there's a valedictorian do we have this anymore when my

00:17:08.800 kids graduated yes I'm not sure at this point but this is a you know a few years now I would imagine

00:17:14.120 that we're getting back to it because one thing that I think is going to become very important

00:17:17.860 to Canadians is seeing that we are educated properly we've all once it starts to become

00:17:22.660 part of the regular vernacular that we are stagnating with our education I think that

00:17:28.740 we're going to snap back into place with it and something's going to change equity is going to be

00:17:33.240 part of the equation, but not as important. So let's say we're going to, we're going to stick

00:17:42.000 with the statistic now. We've done our own research. We've all come up with our different

00:17:45.080 opinions on this. And let's say we are number one in terms of population from what our statistics

00:17:49.520 are all saying. How do we keep that? Well, I think that we're number one based on a long glide

00:17:57.080 after a huge amount of hard work to create an amazing education system. It's now starting to

00:18:03.160 fail um but it's left us in the top 10 for the moment i don't think that we're going to be there

00:18:09.420 much longer if we don't change something quickly roger what do you think you make a really good

00:18:16.460 point i think we've done quite well and kudos to all the teachers out there listening oh yeah

00:18:20.500 any teacher educators watching if ever there's a noble profession uh teaching is certainly one of

00:18:25.660 them um and we've got oh my god you'll do anything to get a b plus won't you

00:18:30.900 sorry i was always the guy leaving apples for the teachers right um but i think with anything um

00:18:40.480 there are extreme pressures internationally uh from other countries that are competing for this

00:18:47.360 top spot like singapore like finland um i'm sure the u.s is chomping at the bit to work its way

00:18:55.040 back up that ladder but a lot of changes in our society um i think trickle down into how whom we

00:19:06.080 educate and how we educate those people yeah and um i think funding is a big thing um trickles down

00:19:13.600 from the federal level to the provincial level so i think as long as we keep our focus on education

00:19:19.360 and we fund it appropriately,

00:19:22.120 I think we have a chance of staying in that top 10.

00:19:24.360 But we seem to be sliding out of these top 10 scales,

00:19:28.360 like happiness or other measures

00:19:32.960 of what it is to live in a quote-unquote good country.

00:19:37.140 That's a good point.

00:19:38.340 This is not the only scale that we're sliding down at the moment.

00:19:42.260 Economically, we're having that issue.

00:19:45.340 What we produce, we're having that issue.

00:19:47.420 where we stand it with our education globally now we're starting to see cracks in the armor there

00:19:53.960 our health care uh dropping off of the top 10 well the block of ice that is canada is melting

00:20:00.720 and we're watching it well okay so now here's the other thing this leads to another problem

00:20:06.080 in the future that we're not discussing yet but we will and that is brain drain if we don't have

00:20:11.640 the right kind of educated people here in this country we're going to keep bringing people in

00:20:16.460 that are not homegrown. That means we've not created a fertile environment for them to grow 0.96

00:20:23.060 with an education that leads the best to stay here in Canada. You know, we can have great jobs

00:20:29.280 for them, but we need the people to fill those jobs. And if we want to expand into other markets,

00:20:34.240 into other industries, we need a wide breadth of really well-educated people to do it.

00:20:39.040 that maybe will rattle us back into shape but here's the thing we're now noticing a decline

00:20:48.020 in our education as we sit here we say yes we're in the top 10 but none of us are excited we're

00:20:52.800 proud we're proud that we built that system but i'm happy that we've held it yeah we're all wide

00:20:57.400 awake to the idea that it's in decline at the moment alongside many things we've let things go

00:21:04.580 in this country for a long time on decline until it became an emergency scenario i think the time

00:21:11.760 to deal with this is almost past the time we should have been dealing with it and we really

00:21:16.760 do need to put a focus on it now well i i have a biased opinion on this and i i can't not be just

00:21:23.520 because i you know we have a phd and so of course i think we need to implement the christian becca

00:21:28.960 book system into the public school system um take out the science section because the science

00:21:33.420 section isn't really great obviously it's based in christianity um put that public the public

00:21:38.720 school science back into it and i think we just fixed everything really why is that take anybody

00:21:44.320 watching take a look at the becca book system it is it's original times tables it is things like

00:21:50.280 you'll remember every word in the webster's dictionary that isn't a noun every adverb every

00:21:54.540 verb you'll go through tables like this it sticks in your head you i'll do the shortest one i

00:21:58.920 possibly can and as our was we're being being been have has had who does did shall would should

00:22:03.480 would make my must can't could these things are stuck in my head from a little kid i never at a

00:22:08.660 loss for words so interesting me just previous and my sister my brother uh people that i know

00:22:15.760 that i grew up with that were all under this becca book system all seem to be stable in terms of

00:22:22.240 education they can pick up a book they can read it have no problems they can retain that information

00:22:28.620 They can do basic math in their head.

00:22:31.360 Like these little teeny tiny things that are good, you know,

00:22:33.900 foundations for your everyday life are built really well

00:22:37.660 from something like the Becca book system.

00:22:39.760 It's not the only one out there, but I'm biased towards it because I was raised.

00:22:42.260 I think that's a tendency for people who have finished being educated

00:22:45.680 or are not educators to do.

00:22:47.580 Go back to what we learned.

00:22:48.860 I did it before.

00:22:49.520 I said we need to get back to phonics.

00:22:51.280 You know, we need to do it.

00:22:53.400 Maybe the old way is the best way, 0.94

00:22:55.420 But I also think it's time for us to look at what countries like Singapore, Korea, South Korea, and all of these various countries are doing that make a difference to education.

00:23:07.200 And then maybe start to replicate that or apply that here.

00:23:10.660 Or just start whipping the kids again, like I said earlier on the episode. 0.97

00:23:13.340 No, we're not whipping any kids.

00:23:14.680 Forget it.

00:23:15.700 It's not going to happen.

00:23:16.860 You know, even just the appreciation of the written word through spelling and proper grammar.

00:23:22.900 I think that's kind of gone by the wayside, and there are probably some reasons why it has, like spellcheck and AI, I'm sure.

00:23:31.640 Spellcheck doesn't work for Canadians, though.

00:23:33.520 We spell words differently.

00:23:34.680 We do, but.

00:23:36.160 My AI knows where I live.

00:23:40.840 But you can get information now so much easier than you could before.

00:23:44.740 Growing up, we had, you know, a collection of encyclopedias.

00:23:49.420 That's a good point.

00:23:49.960 Which ones did you have?

00:23:51.540 A to E.

00:23:52.280 No, no, no.

00:23:52.700 Which brand?

00:23:53.440 I had Funkin' Wagonel.

00:23:54.740 B was my favorite.

00:23:56.260 I think we only went up to E, so.

00:23:58.040 Yeah, but you know what?

00:23:59.000 You knew the rich kids in your neighborhood.

00:24:00.680 You know how?

00:24:01.700 I had Funkin' Wagonel, Dominion.

00:24:03.920 You could buy them at Dominion stores.

00:24:05.600 You could, like, save up.

00:24:06.600 That's right, we bought them at the grocery stores.

00:24:08.100 Right.

00:24:08.700 Before it was Metro, it was Dominion.

00:24:10.820 Dominion, right.

00:24:12.120 Loblaws are Dominion. 1.00

00:24:13.140 It was Dominion. 0.63

00:24:13.780 It was Dominion. 0.63

00:24:14.160 So that's where I got educated by a grocery store.

00:24:17.660 the rich kids in my neighborhood ordered them online and got uh britannica encyclopedia

00:24:24.160 britannica yes i kind of came from a caveman we had them show up at our house already paid for

00:24:29.700 by my mom my dad's like oh nice this would be good kindling you know what i'm going to show

00:24:33.700 you guys something we have all the technology in the world here to take a look at the globe

00:24:37.380 at any time when we're following the news i'm going to show you the computer we're using talk

00:24:40.800 amongst yourselves anyway speaking of educating yourself um one of the things that i tell people

00:24:46.700 all the time is that we're so blessed to be in the world right now currently because it doesn't

00:24:50.900 matter what you want to be you'll never get a real degree that you can print off but you can

00:24:55.000 become anything if you have the patience and the actual understanding i could i could give you

00:25:00.540 surgery right now if it was my passion i might not survive i'm not going to have any degrees i'm not

00:25:05.640 going to make any money but i could do it if i wanted to what did you bring us here this is our

00:25:11.260 fancy computer for looking up stuff around the globe it's a book look at that that's an actual

00:25:17.580 atlas and this this one uh this is a student atlas our partner paul stole it from school when he was

00:25:24.600 a little boy i think and hung on to it yeah we use this a lot because we're in the habit of

00:25:31.520 understanding how to look through an atlas and find a place if i handed this to uh let's say

00:25:37.240 grade six and said okay find me africa and uh and and then drill down from there to south africa

00:25:44.880 20 minutes later they still be flipping through the book i think is that africa nope that's canada

00:25:50.320 bud yeah nice try though it's a pretty close pretty big place uh so you know nothing that's

00:25:57.180 still part of our life here i think that our generation tends to grab for a book because

00:26:02.460 that was part of our

00:26:03.920 now

00:26:05.120 no it's like right here in front of them

00:26:08.620 on a tablet you don't even need

00:26:10.640 to know how to type anymore

00:26:11.900 you just push a button and say what you want

00:26:14.120 the kids all have tablets too which is

00:26:15.900 to me blows my mind I remember the very first

00:26:18.480 day I walked in with my IBM ThinkPad

00:26:20.440 little actor boy and everybody looked at

00:26:22.560 me and the teacher looked at me and they're like

00:26:23.880 get it out of the classroom

00:26:26.840 like it was a video game

00:26:28.260 you're not allowed to

00:26:29.860 there was an era we're having a phone

00:26:33.000 Well, for us, we'd have to have a really long extension cord.

00:26:36.320 But having a phone in the school was like, no, no, you can't.

00:26:39.940 You can't be communicating while you're in class.

00:26:41.920 Now there's rules that say the kids have to be able to have their phones,

00:26:45.320 which is, I don't know, there's got to be logic behind that.

00:26:48.340 I don't understand.

00:26:49.000 This gets back to the blue ribbon participation.

00:26:50.660 And you're right.

00:26:51.220 If your parents are trying to get a hold of you, the PA system will tell you.

00:26:54.540 Right.

00:26:55.260 And how about this?

00:26:56.200 You can still write a note.

00:26:57.700 You don't.

00:26:58.180 Not everybody has a challenge that makes it impossible for them to take a note.

00:27:02.420 and they have to use a tablet in class,

00:27:04.360 which I think is part of the ruling on that.

00:27:06.480 A lot of kids are in the classroom.

00:27:09.300 There's not enough desks for the kids,

00:27:11.400 but they, by and large, all have tablets.

00:27:15.380 Well, Roger, would you want to leave us with the last thought

00:27:18.920 on what you think about the state of public education inside of Canada?

00:27:22.020 Yeah, Roger, where are we going from here?

00:27:24.280 I'll be the positive guy.

00:27:25.760 Okay.

00:27:26.140 This is why I knew he had something positive.

00:27:27.460 You can be the negative guy.

00:27:28.560 You can moderate, Mike, if that's okay.

00:27:29.780 Okay, if you guys need to fight, I'll be here.

00:27:31.440 No, just taking this from a pro-Canada perspective,

00:27:35.640 we talked about being the number one

00:27:37.380 most educated population in the world.

00:27:40.080 That's a very broad statement.

00:27:42.600 I'm sure we have to drill down into that.

00:27:44.800 I'm sure that accounts for children and adults.

00:27:47.820 We're top 10 globally in student performance.

00:27:50.480 We have a strong equity system like we talked about before.

00:27:54.360 Brady labeled it as such, the blue ribbon.

00:27:57.120 and um yeah we're actually beating most western nations like the u.s and the uk so i think that

00:28:04.820 bodes very well for canada something uh for which we should be very proud and uh i'm actually proud

00:28:11.880 after reading these stats i thought would be much worse because like we were talking earlier a lot

00:28:16.360 of things in in canada are on a massive decline but to see that we're still in the top 10 makes

00:28:21.780 me feel a little good a little bit better all right roger your turn brady oh i just think we

00:28:28.680 should whip the kids no okay i'll tell you what roger i'll take the i'll take thank you i'll take 0.99

00:28:33.880 what you said yes and i absorb it and i will tell you what i think of it are you crazy scores in

00:28:42.260 math reading and science have dropped since 2018 an increase in low performing students across all

00:28:47.820 subjects math is in decline especially flagged as a concern and canada uh overall has i might

00:28:55.000 repeat 48 of canadian adults have low literacy skills and as i read this i notice i might be

00:29:01.200 one of them having said that yeah it's good that we can be proud but we got to stop being proud

00:29:07.440 and get back to work and become number one again or among the educated in this world that are going

00:29:13.880 make a difference to this world at this moment this makes us all qualified to go to university

00:29:20.200 and then come out and struggle looking for a job just like anybody else but it doesn't take us

00:29:26.600 around the world as leaders uh we are not a force in education anymore we did a good job when we

00:29:32.680 were small we're getting bigger we need to look at the future in education and yes i'm proud to

00:29:37.640 be canadian am i proud of our education system and our educators absolutely are they in trouble

00:29:43.080 are we in trouble absolutely looks like it looks like you might be right yeah so let's put a cap

00:29:48.460 on this right now sorry roger got really upset there don't worry i'll get a detention but having

00:29:53.940 said that i'll see it's important that we are proud but we need to keep an eye on this thing

00:29:59.320 yeah all right that's just my uneducated opinion and anybody who's watched knows that that's true

00:30:04.700 uh roger tumenieri brady wetham i'm mike wickson uh thanks for joining us tplmedia.ca this was a

00:30:11.560 lighter conversation on a heavier topic. But we go deep on many, many topics down the rabbit hole

00:30:17.940 in some cases. And we hope that you'll join us for that. You can also download the app

00:30:21.740 for Android or the Apple phone. Thanks. See you next time.

00:30:32.240 Patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together. True patriotism is being

00:30:39.040 in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being

00:30:43.760 a part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from

00:30:48.160 patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government and still be a

00:30:54.400 patriot it's gratitude to your country of course i'm a patriot i'm canadian it's my home well

00:31:00.320 Actually, true patriot love is the mission.

True Patriot Love - March 31, 2026

THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN CANADA

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