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The Elephant in the Classroom:  Is the New Brunswick Model of Inclusion Sustainable?

December 20, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Inclusive education, or inclusion, continues to be the ‘elephant in the classroom’ in New Brunswick schools. While the principle of inclusion has been around since 1986, the N.B. model of the ‘all-inclusive classroom’ is of more recent origin. Policy 322, reaffirmed in 2013, is unique to the province and requires that students with disabilities and complex needs are to be educated in local schools in regular classes with children of their own age.

Containing the Elephant

None of Canada’s other provinces have adopted that model and the reasons are becoming clearer, year after year.  Challenging or even questioning the ‘all-inclusive classroom’ model used to be taboo, but that’s slowly breaking down.  It erupted, in early November during the Public Consultations on “Improving Anglophone Education” in Moncton, Fredericton and online when parents and educators seized one of the rare opportunities to register their serious concerns.

Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock’s September 2025 report, Wake Up Call, may have helped by giving credence to claims that the inclusion system was failing not only disabled children but the vast majority of kids trying to learn beside them.

Over ten years, Lamrock pointed out that the proportion of children who can read has fallen from “the vast majority” to “barely half.” Inclusive classrooms are now so difficult to manage that the province routinely excludes record numbers of students to keep “all-inclusive” classrooms intact.

His figures show that one in every 200 students is now absent because “the school cannot or will not educate them.” New schools are even being built with “seclusion rooms in the design plan.” The number of students who fail to graduate, he added, “has increased tenfold.”

Unmanageable Kids and Unsafe Classrooms

Serious gaps in the inclusive net were revealed, most dramatically, in a recent 2024-25 labour arbitration case demonstrating a worst-case scenario. Some students, it is increasingly clear, cannot be properly and safely integrated into regular classrooms.

In the case of one middle school boy with multiple special needs enrolled in Anglophone South District, multiple numbers of teachers and support staff between 2019 and 2021 claimed to have incurred “repeated physical, mental and emotional injuries.” Some 100 violent incidents were reported on PowerSchool, including some 95 which were serious acts of misbehaviour.  The arbitrator’s ruling, which is being appealed by the province, found that “students are entitled to an education” in a school “without sacrificing the health and safety of staff.”

The Consultation Charade

The Anglophone sector consultation process itself, facilitated by consultants Maurice Robichaud and Natalie Dubois, steered participants away from these fundamental problems. Discussion was channeled into seven pre-set questions, only one of which even touched on “foundational skills” and how to prevent learning gaps from compounding over time.

No one was asked directly whether the “all-inclusive classroom model” is failing New Brunswick students by forcing teachers to cope with impossible ranges of student competencies. Yet parents and educators—frustrated, informed, and increasingly emboldened—spoke up anyway.

“Inclusion is the elephant in the room,” declared one Moncton parent and teacher, breaking the ice during the province-wide Zoom session. “Teacher retention is tied to the challenges in the classroom. There’s a lack of training for managing behaviours and disruptions. It’s systemic—and we aren’t equipped.”

Retired UNB education professor Ken Brien chimed in to support those comments: “Policy 322 on Inclusive Education needs reform, particularly its emphasis on the common learning environment. The real focus should be on learning effectiveness—teachers must be able to teach more homogeneous groups.”

“Classroom composition” has become the polite euphemism for “all-inclusive classrooms”—and the hottest issue of all. Simply mentioning it tapped into the undercurrent in Moncton. Calls to scrap the current inclusion model drew scattered applause; one comment— “Too many gaps exist in our regular classrooms”—won the loudest spontaneous applause of the night.

Excluding Kids to Preserve Inclusion

Hundreds of students are now on “partial-day plans,” effectively excluded from daily schooling because the system cannot meet their needs. One of the most outspoken parents, Chantelle Hyde, joined the final November 6 Zoom session. Her daughter Lily, an autistic 11-year-old in 2019, was locked in an isolation room at her Grand Falls elementary school—a story later featured on CTV W5’s exposé Restrained.

Six years later, and now living outside the province, Hyde still fights for those left behind. She told participants that provincial policy remains “arbitrary and inflexible,” with guidelines that “find fault” in children and families rather than in the system. “Everyone is wasting time putting out fires,” she wrote on the chat stream. Real progress, she argued, demands “a system-wide mindset shift.” Even teachers pushing for reform, she added, “face major resistance from co-workers and administrators.”

Is the Message Getting Through?

The rising chorus of concern over classroom composition—and, by extension, the inclusive classroom model—is starting to penetrate the protective armour surrounding the Minister and her department. Simply reaffirming Policy 322 with a “Moving Forward” tilt is no longer tenable. Properly integrating recent arrivals of diverse cultures and languages and trans-gender kids has only added to the complexities.

Lamrock, a staunch defender of the right of severely challenged children to attend school, now sees the province’s literacy collapse as a by-product and unintended consequence of inclusion. Declining literacy rates, he argues, are the bitter harvest of a system that fails everyone, especially children with complex needs and those deprived of intensive, properly resourced instruction.

The N.B. inclusion model is in shambles and, when combined with social promotion and eroded standards, its legacy is most visible in middle and high school classrooms that are unmanageable—and, too often, unteachable.

The system still has a way of silencing those speaking out-of-school. While educators and parents now feel emboldened to question the sacred tenets of N,B.-style inclusion, they still fear it will have repercussions. When the regime finally gives way, reform advocates who spoke out during the 2025 Anglophone Education consultations will be remembered for testing the waters, a shaky first step toward letting the elephant loose in the New Brunswick schoolhouse.

Why is Inclusion an ‘Elephant in the Classroom’ in New Brunswick? What’s so unique about New Brunswick’s model of inclusionism?   How is it sustained in the face of such challenges?  Why was Child Advocate Kelly Lamrock’s Wake-Up Call such an effective alarm bell?  Is the N.B. model of the “all-inclusive classroom” sustainable? 

Posted in Inclusion, Special Education/Inclusion | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Digital Danger from Predators: How Vulnerable Are Our Students?

December 11, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

The alarming case of a 14-year-old Nova Scotia girl contacted by online predators through her school-issued Chromebook has sent shockwaves through families, schools, and the wider public. What happened to this vulnerable student with severe ADHD is not necessarily an isolated incident.  It lifts the veil on the horrible reality of sexploitation and violent extremist networks preying on children under 16 years of age. The fact that predators hacked into school system laptops made it worse. All of this is certain to fuel the move to ban social media access during school hours, now (as of December 10, 2025) official state policy in Australia.

Digital Predators and Child Protection

Today’s hottest game for kids is Roblox, an alluring video game with a child-friendly appearance that is not only alluring and addictive but a gateway to inappropriate content and a world frequented by adults who arrive as strangers and can turn out to be predators.  It is part of an online ecosystem with dark corners such as the 764 Community—a shadowy subgroup of the larger Com Network promoting violence and threatening teen lives.

Unlike earlier digital threats, 764 operates on mainstream platforms including Discord, Minecraft, Telegram, Twitch, and Steam. These platforms are used daily by millions of young Canadians, often with parental permission. That accessibility, combined with online anonymity, makes this threat both pervasive and difficult to detect.

The threat is not hypothetical. In October 2025, a 16-year-old Halifax-area boy was charged with child pornography offences tied to 764. Police allege he coerced children into harming themselves or engaging in sexual activity on camera—mirroring the tactics used against the 14-year-old girl in the recent case.

Matt Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, describes groups like 764 as “very dangerous” and “persistent,” a judgment shaped by international work with police and counterterrorism agencies.

What sets 764 apart is its ideological core. It draws inspiration from satanic neo-Nazi extremism, particularly the Order of Nine Angles movement. This is a coordinated network that glorifies violence, self-harm, and degradation. Its members actively target vulnerable youth aged 8 to 18, coercing them into producing child sexual abuse material, engaging in self-harm, or participating in violent acts. The resulting recordings become tools of blackmail, trapping young victims in cycles of shame and dependency.

Schools – a New Frontier in Child Exploitation

The recent Nova Scotia Roblox incident reported by Blair Rhodes at CBC Nova Scotia demonstrates how predators have adapted to exploit educational technology. The girl’s mother discovered “very sexual” and self-harm-related material in her daughter’s school email. More disturbing still, timestamps showed that conversations with outside adults occurred both at home and during school hours, suggesting that school-based safeguards were not functioning as advertised.

School officials, described by the mother as “genuinely shocked,” sent an email to parents acknowledging that students had found a way to ‘hack into’ school Chromebooks allowing access to sites like Instagram and Roblox. That admission reveals a systemic gap: although school districts emphasize “robust safeguards,” technological protections have not kept pace with the rapid rollout of Chromebooks across the province.

The variability of Chromebook policies across Nova Scotia adds to the challenge. Some safeguards apply only while connected to the school network. Students taking Chromebooks home depend on parental oversight and whatever protections exist on home Wi-Fi. Yet the Nova Scotia case shows that even inside the school system, on school networks, students accessed platforms already flagged as high-risk spaces for predatory behaviour.

Public Warnings about Digital Dangers

Law enforcement has taken notice. Halifax Regional Police have issued public warnings about 764, and the RCMP’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit is investigating multiple cases. The Halifax-area arrest underscores a particularly unsettling truth: predators are not always anonymous figures in distant countries; sometimes they are local teens operating from nearby homes or even attending the same schools.

The Nova Scotia girl’s mother has opened up about the dire consequences for vulnerable kids. Despite close monitoring of her daughter’s personal devices, her daughter fell prey to digital harassment, required therapy is being homeschooled. Not knowing what images may have been shared is troubling, because extremist grooming networks tend to “brainwash and coerce” young people into actions that override their own instincts.

Robust Safeguards Full of Holes

Nova Scotia’s regional school districts have widely-varying, inconsistent policies regarding the provision, supervision and monitoring of their Chromebook fleets. Public claims of maintaining “robust” security do not hold water. While acknowledging the situation, the province and districts are playing catch-up, once again.

Offering links to general online safety resources is not enough. What happened in this case was not the result of ordinary online risk-taking by a curious teen. It was the product of “bad actors” finding holes to gain access to school-managed devices during the school day.

Digital dangers involving child exploitation warrant immediate attention. First, the Minister of Education needs to evaluate real-time monitoring systems for all districts. Chignecto Central’s use of Microsoft 365 Defender, which monitors devices on and off school networks, provides a promising example. Second, access to high-risk platforms like Roblox—identified explicitly as places where strangers can contact children—should be blocked on school devices. Third, existing digital citizenship instruction must be expanded to address extremist grooming tactics, not merely repeat standard cyber safety messages.

Step Up with Effective Child Protection

Parents and the wider public need a more candid assessment of where the current approach is falling short. If students can circumvent safeguards to access dangerous platforms, those protections are inadequate. Parents reasonably expect that a device issued by a school will not expose their child to violent extremists during downtime in class.

Educational technology is a vital component of everyday education, but accessing internet-enabled devices comes with responsibilities.  School system digital protections need to be constantly upgraded to match the sophistication of the threats they face. Only then can school-issued Chromebooks remain tools for learning rather than gateways for exploitation.

What digital dangers are posed by seemingly child-friendly online games and platforms?  How dangerous are Roblox and Minecraft now that predators have entered the children’s game world?  How susceptible are teens to being drawn into the dark web and the 764 community?  Should we be improving the safeguards and detection features associated with school-issued Chromebooks? What can be done to immunize kids against online child predators? 

 

Posted in Child Sexual Abuse, Social Media Addiction | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Restoring Local Voice in Education:   What’s Different about Ontario’s Plan to Phase-Out School Board Trustees?

November 23, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra has now proceeded with Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act, brushing aside fierce education interest group lobbying to stave-off school board governance reform. Lost in all the noise was the first step, announced on November 13, 2025, in a provincial plan to improve the public responsiveness of school boards while planning to phase-out elected school trustees.

Vocal critics and school board lobbyists claim that it’s a “provincial takeover of school boards” but it’s actually “taking back the schools” from the boards and their army of apologists.  Once the smoke clears and trustees are given their notice, it will likely die out as quickly as it did in Nova Scotia when English-language boards were eliminated by the Stephen McNeil Liberal Government eliminated on March 1, 2018.

What’s different this time around?  School boards will  be required to establish Student and Family Support Offices, so parents and guardians have a clear, effective way to get help regarding their child’s education instead of being left high and dry as happened in Nova Scotia

“We’re going to continue overhauling an outdated school board governance model,” Minister Calandra declared, “so that more resources go into classrooms, teachers have better support and students have the best chance to succeed.”

What’s abundantly clear is that Calandra and the Ontario government have no intention to duplicate what Nova Scotia did seven years ago when that province simply lopped-off elected English language boards and turned the entire system over to regional superintendents leaving local schools and parents without any real public voice.

Unintended Consequences – Bureaucracy Fills the Void

Today, seven years later, the Ontario government of Doug Ford appears to have learned some profound lessons. Eliminating elected boards, even when the bodies are ineffective and unresponsive, leaves a void and one that gets quickly filled by expanding school district bureaucracy. It’s far better to establish a public bureau in each district charged with responding to student, parent and family concerns in a timely fashion.

Eliminating school public school trustees in Ontario will come in two stages.  First came the provincial investigations and trusteeship, clearly designed to air our the largely hidden financial mismanagement, overspending, and dysfunctional governance practices harboured by such public bodies. The next step will likely be structural reforms aimed at strengthening parent voice and reviving public accountability for needed curriculum reform, responsible spending and improved student achievement standards.

Overhauling the Outdated Governance Model

“Better access for parents means better outcomes for students,” said Calandra in his official announcement. “Student and Family Support Offices will give families clear answers and timely solutions when it comes to their child’s education. We’re going to continue overhauling an outdated school board governance model so that more resources go into classrooms, teachers have better support and students have the best chance to succeed.”

Five school boards were initially placed under provincial supervision for financial mismanagement and related governance irregularities: Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Thames Valley District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board and Toronto District School Board.  More recently, the Near North District School Board, based in North Bay, was placed under supervision and found to be “dysfunctional” in its governance practices.

The proposed Student and Parent Support Offices will provide the missing link in the home-school dynamic.  If it works as intended, the offices will provide an additional access route to help families get answers on broader community concerns, as well as contentious or complex issues that need to be escalated after running into roadblocks at the local school level.  That is, in effect, what elected trustees used to do before they were co-opted into a corporate governance role and essentially abandoned their role as being parents’ representatives in the system.

Suffocation of Local Voice

Five years after Nova Scotia axed its elected boards, a provincial review conducted in 2022 by Thinkwell Research delivered its harsh assessment. Replacing school boards with “enhanced school advisory councils” was a total bust.  School-level councils were strictly advisory and invisible to most parents and community members. Few of the 3,349 online survey respondents believed they were effective in their supposed role to “give students, families, and community members local voice in their schools.”

While some school councils were “doing great work,” the consensus was that they were failing in their principal functions. Here’s how it was expressed:

  • School advisory councils feel they have no real influence or impact.
  • School advisory councils feel they lack resources and support.
  • Families are not aware of or well-connected to their school advisory councils but said they would use such a group if they knew it existed.
  • Recruitment of school advisory council members is challenging, particularly for diverse members.
  • Diverse groups and newcomers face language, cultural, and other barriers when they have questions or want to provide feedback.
  • Families are uncertain about where to go for information and want one clear point of contact.

The new system, put in place to replace elected board members, was failing to provide consistent, visible and effective local voice. Most damning of all – the public was essentially in the dark when it came to “understanding what is happening in the education system and the priorities of their school, region, and the province.”

The Ontario Reform – A Better Plan for Local and Community Voice

Unlike Nova Scotia, the Ontario initiative is conceived as “one more way the government is delivering on its broader plan to make school boards more accountable and focused on student success.” It’s also part of the policy commitment to “a back-to-basics approach that strengthens student achievement and prepares them for rewarding careers.”

Student and Family Support Offices are intended to “streamline the feedback process to acknowledge inquiries within two business days and aim to provide a response within five business days.”  That is inconceivable in Nova Scotia where it takes ages to get a concern acknowledged and you end up hitting brick walls with no recourse to any other channel.

Fierce and tireless Ontario education watchdog Debbie Kasman, a former teacher, principal and superintendent who also worked at the Ministry of Education, sees the move as a positive sign that Calandra is following through on his pledge to strengthen parental involvement in all school boards as part of his governance overhaul.

In the case of the troubled Thames Valley District School Board, Kasman sees its advantages. Instead of complaints being registered with many different senior administrators, she told the London Free Press, “all complaints might now flow through one dedicated superintendent” who will be required to acknowledge inquiries and to provide a response in a timely fashion.

That’s a big step forward, according to Kasman, who hopes the new offices will be required to keep data on the number of complaints received and identify the most common sources of complaints. She’s also hopeful it will open the door to channeling more resources into the classroom to better serve student needs.

Seven years after Nova Scotia axed elected boards and turned the system over to a faceless bureaucracy, it appears that Ontario’s Ford government is moving in a different direction.  Let’s hope it adds up to being more than paying lip-service to “strengthening local voices in education.”

What’s the Ontario’s Bill 33 generating such controversy?  How should it be framed – as a “provincial takeover of school boards” or “taking back the schools” from school board trustees? What’s different about the Ontario plan compared to what happened when English boards were eliminated in 2018 in Nova Scotia?  Will any of it make much of a difference for students, parents, teachers or families?

Posted in School Board Reform, School Trustees | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Being an Education Minister: Who Succeeds in Rising Above the ‘Talking Points’ Trap?*

November 8, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Former Nova Scotia cabinet minister Becky Druhan earned an unfortunate reputation for spouting “talking points” during her time as Minister of Education. That image was forged in the wake of the horrific March 2023 stabbing at Charles P. Allen High School. When Druhan appeared on CBC’s Information Morning after the attack, listeners expected an in-depth look at school violence and the teen mental health crisis. Instead, they were treated to a word salad delivered in a halting, garbled stream of scripted lines.

That ten-minute exchange with host Portia Clarke left an indelible impression. The South Shore lawyer-turned-politician, elevated to cabinet soon after the 2021 election, came off like an automated media release. Pressed for answers about the incident, the victims, or rising weapons reports in schools, Druhan deflected each question with therapeutic platitudes about “community healing” and “supporting recovery.” Veteran commentator Stephen Kimber aptly described her style as “obfuscation and deflection.”  It was a classic example of what happens when you resort to ‘talking points’ to talk your way through a bump in the road. 

A Tale of Many Education Ministers

Being a Provincial Education Minister in Canada is fraught with formidable challenges – confronting inflated expectations, maintaining ‘message discipline’ by toeing the party line, managing an enormous social spending budget, overseeing the bureaucracy with an invisible hand, staying on the ‘good side’ of the teacher’s union, and retaining the electoral support of your constituents. It’s like sailing a ship through a potentially hazardous harbour with rock shoals on all sides and the odd passing iceberg. 

Covering and analzing provincial education politics for over four decades, Education Ministers have come and gone, right before my eyes.  My commentaries have second-guessed their performance in a half-dozen different provinces, most often in the familiar confines of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. Few if any approach the status, influence and impact of Ontario’s William Grenville Davis, as Education Minister and Premier (1962-71 and 1971-85), making Ontario the “Education Province.”  Some were powerhouse ministers, such as Paul Gerin Lajoie (Quebec, 1960-66), George Dewar (PEI, 1959-66), Dr. Bette Stephenson (Ontario, 1978-87), and Karen Casey (Nova Scotia, 2006-08 and 2013-17). 

A few Education Ministers stood out for their ground-breaking policy initiatives, such as Bill Davis (Hall-Dennis reforms, credit system, funding Catholic schools, community college system, TVO); Dave Cooke (Ontario 1993-95) — for the Royal Commission on Learning and EQAO; Zach Churchill (Nova Scotia, 2016-21) for the abolition of school boards; and Adriana LaGrange (Alberta, 2019-23) for spearheading Alberta core knowledge curriculum reforms. Some were truly orginals who broke the mold, most notably John Snobelen (Ontario 1995-97) famous for quipping that “it was useful to invent a crisis” and Dominic Cardy (N.B., 2018-23), a free-wheeler known for his juicy quotes and stinging letter of resignation. 

The Risks of Playing It Safe

Most Education Ministers fall somewhere in the middle and most stay within conventional boundaries and rarely roam outside ther comfort zones.  In that sense, Nova Scotia’s Becky Druhan, recently dropped as Minister of Justice, is fairly typical. Her waffling on school violence was actually part of a recurrent pattern.  From 2021 to 2025, she proved to be notably cautious, performative, and visibly uneasy outside the protective confines of the government media studio.

As Minister, she was rolled out for choreographed media events — free school lunches, classroom cellphone restrictions, or brief press availabilities — but rarely faced unscripted questioning. Aversion to controversy came to define her mode of operations.

Five Illustrative Cases

Five instances during her time in cabinet in Education and Justice were identified in my recent Halifax Chronicle Herald commentary:  (1) Confronting violence in schools; (2) Cozying up to the teachers’ union; (3) Curbing Snow Day cancellations; (4) Tackling domestic/ intimate partner violence; and (5) Delaying action on environmental racism. 

Why the Fall from Grace?

Druhan’s abrupt cabinet removal attracted provincial headlines for all the wrong reasons. Much was made of Premier Houston’s notable silence and refusal to give a specific public explanation.  Her exit from cabinet, followed by her decision to sit as an independent, signaled deeper disillusionment. As a “Progressive Conservative” with green leanings, she may have found it increasingly difficult to defend a government wavering on environmental protection. Viewed from a wider lens, her discomfort with public accountability — and preference for scripted control — ultimately caught up with her.

Reading the Signs

Politics can be a cruel blood sport, especially for high profile women cabinet ministers.  Just ask former federal luminaries like Catherine McKenna whose tragic tale is detailed in her 2025 memoir Run Like a Girl.  Former minister Druhan will be remembered as a rather typical provincial minister, a mere footnote like PC minister Judy Streatch (2006-09) and NDP minister Marilyn More (2009-11),  Catapulted to the lofty heights of cabinet, you can find yourself on ‘the outs,’ dropped from cabinet or washed out at the polls. Minister Druhan played it safe and demonstrated message discipline, even when defending unpopular positions. Fuzzing things up, delaying action and risk aversion are survival strategies, but sometimes you pay a price in terms of public trust.

*A spin-off from my recent commentary in The Chronicle Herald, November 1, 2025. 

What does it take to be a consequential Minister of Education?  Why do some Education Ministers find their own voice and rise above the sea of ‘talking points’?  How do you explain the appeal of maintaining message discipline and toeing the government line? Will we eventually succeed in resurrecting authenticity in the Education minister’s office?   

Posted in Educational Leadership, Ministers of Education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Early Literacy and the Right to Read: Who is Lighting the Way in Canada?

October 29, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

One of the greatest joys of guiding researchED Canada has been the incredible opportunity to meet and work with outstanding educators and researchers committed to improving teaching practice.  Every so often, there’s a chance to acknowledge and recognize a true champion who cuts against the grain and achieves a breakthrough for today’s children that makes a big difference for teachers. 

Nearing the end of World Dyslexia Awareness Month in October of 2025, the researchED Atlantic Canada conference (Oct 24-25, 2025) provided one such opportunity to recognize someone who has done so much to raise the consciousness of fellow educators about best practice in literacy instruction and begun to make a meaningful difference in the lives of children with difficulties in reading.  What a pleasure it was to see the surprise and joy on Dr. Jamie Metsala’s face when we presented her with the first researchED Canada Award of Excellence.

Dr. Jamie Metsala, Jarislowsky Chair in Learning Disabilities at Mount Saint Vincent University, is now the undisputed champion of the ‘Right to Read’ movement here in Canada. She’s modest by nature, so it’s entirely likely that few realize how influential she is, across Canada, in advancing evidence-based research to improve reading instruction.  But then, sometimes we, Nova Scotians, are slow to recognize those making their mark elsewhere. 

The Big Breakthrough – Ontario’s Right to Read Inquiry Report

Literacy teachers trained by Dr Metsala at MSVU Faculty of Education were, over the past fifteen years, gradually beginning to bring the new ‘science of reading’ to a teacher force steeped in ‘balanced literacy’ practices and wedded to resources exemplifying that approach.

The landmark Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read Public Inquiry, started to turn the ride.  Initiated in October 2019 and reporting in early 2022, the OHRC is widely credited with dealing a damaging blow to conventional ‘balanced literacy’ programs and with moving the yardsticks in the direction of evidence-based structured literacy.

The Ontario inquiry, the first of its kind in Canada, declared that children had a right to read and that commitment was not being met in Ontario schools. It linked the reading failure with the rights of children and demonstrated how it was a form of systemic discrimination, hitting already disadvantaged kids the hardest.

It combined the OHRC’s expertise in human rights and systemic discrimination with the expertise of UBC professor Linda Siegel and Mount St. Vincent University’s Jamie Metsala, specialists in the research science in the field of reading development, reading disabilities/dyslexia, and interventions in decoding words to improve reading.

Until the report was released, few realized how much it drew upon the research and expertise of our own Jamie Metsala and her long-time research collaborator, Linda Seigel, professor emeritus at UBC Faculty of Education.  Reading the report, it was obvious when so much of the research cited bore their fingerprints in the research science of reading development, reading disabilities/dyslexia, and interventions in decoding words to improve reading.

The Metsala Effect – Follow the Research Lighting the Way

Since the 2022 release of the Right to Read report, Metsala has become a much-sought-after keynote speaker at conferences across Canada. As an influential literacy policy maker, Metsala was no longer speaking as a Learning Disabilities specialist to special interest audiences, consisting mostly of teachers and parents attempting to navigate their way through the labyrinth of ‘special education’ serving struggling kids in schools. 

With 2025 ahead, Metsala managed to breakthrough with a much-discussed feature in Maclean’s, Canada’s venerable national newsmagazine.  Her stirring January 2025 piece entitled “How Structured Literacy Will Upend Canadian Education” was rather uncharacteristically bold for the impeccably professional education scholar. “Canadian students have struggled to read and write” for years, she proclaimed. “That stops this year.”

Metsala was ‘stepping out’ and claiming her rightful place as the pied piper of child literacy reform.  Fifteen years after her first tentative foray into public advocacy at Halifax’s MSVU, the walls of passive resistance were coming down and the wheels of curriculum change were finally beginning to move.  The OHRC Right to Read Inquiry had broken the logjam.

Over the course of the 2025–26 academic year, Metsala reported that schools in provinces like Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta and New Brunswick were “on course” to implement structured literacy. For about 30 minutes a day, students in early grades, she reported, “will have direct instruction on letter-sound connections, reading words and spelling.” Students would also “learn new vocabulary and writing strategies.”  Rather than exclusively immersing students in fiction, structured literacy would “integrate different genres, like persuasive essays, novels and biographies, as well as texts from other subject areas, like science.” 

The Right to Read: What’s at Stake for Students

Professor Metsala’s finest hour came when she posed the fundamental question in her Keynote Address to at researchED Canada’s national conference on June 7, 2025.  Looking out at the packed house of 400 at Toronto’s impressive Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, she provided a complete tour-de-force addressing the early literacy crisis, explaining the origins of the Right to Read movement, and providing one of her patented detailed and precise analyses of how we can ensure the vast majority of children learn to read. 

First came the diagnosis: “Literacy is taught in classrooms, but its impact reaches far beyond — it is where pedagogy, policy, and human rights intersect. Despite decades of research, many students still do not receive the reading instruction needed for long-term success”

Then the advice and counsel: “Examine the structural challenges that perpetuate inequities in literacy instruction, labelling kids who cannot read with the stigma of disability.”  The time of reckoning was upon us, she said, and “the failure to act on the evidence” would have “devastating costs for our students.”

Her prescription was a familiar one. Honour the commitment to ensure all children have the right to read.  Addressing literacy acquisition and instruction, dyslexia, and teacher preparation were part of the equation. “Follow the best evidence and embrace an approach that works,” she said, and “one based upon the ‘science of learning’ applied to reading in the elementary grades.” 

 Taking Up the Challenge

Changing the trajectory in Nova Scotia is easier said than done because it involves moving beyond the approval of broad provincial literacy frameworks such as “Six Pillars of Effective Reading Instruction.”  Metsala’s spade work and consistent mentorship is beginning to bear fruit. Graduates of her MSVU programs are seeding the new research and beginning to have an effect on reading instruction in the elementary grades.

Hopes for the future rest with newer teachers, influenced by Metsala and the Nova Scotia “Science of Reading” movement, presently implementing a new literacy program known as UFLI, modelled after the University of Florida Literacy Institutes’ popular toolkit of structured literacy resource activities.  Two Nova Scotia elementary teachers, Erin Mosher and Christine Gillis, demonstrated how UFLI helps teachers to support student improvement in reading skills at the recent researchED Atlantic Canada conference on October 25 at Saint Mary’s University.

One of the big attractions at that conference was the chance to engage with Jamie Metsala and eight other recognized leaders in the science of reading field from across North America.  Our local Nova Scotia UFLI-based literacy initiative just got a lot better known outside the province. 

*Adapted from a guest column in The Chronicle Herald, October 18, 2025.

What does it take to affect change in Canadian K-12 education, particularly when it comes to improving literacy instruction?  Why did the Ontario Right to Read Inquiry (2019-2022) succeed in breaking the educational mold?  Now that the shift is underway, how can it be fully implemented in sustainable fashion in our elementary schools?

Posted in Early Reading Instruction, Literacy Education, Reading Wars | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Education Under Siege: Why is Liberal Education Disappearing in Canada’s Schools?*

October 24, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

The erosion of liberal education in Canada’s Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools is no longer a matter for speculation—it is now undeniable. Thirty years ago, Peter Emberley and Waller Newell’s Bankrupt Education (1994) offered a prophetic warning. They diagnosed a “crisis of public confidence” in our schools, highlighting the rise of a “vague and value-laden” curriculum in which “substance” was giving way to “social experimentation.” Students and teachers, they claimed, were reduced to guinea pigs in a system steadily abandoning knowledge, intellectual rigour, and preparation for higher education.

That diagnosis has aged remarkably well. Liberal education, once at the core of Canadian schooling, has been pushed to the margins. Today’s curriculum is dominated less by the pursuit of knowledge and more by the politics of identity, student self-esteem, and civic activism.

Historical amnesia, presentism, and the hollowing-out of subject disciplines have left our students less prepared to think deeply, argue persuasively, and participate meaningfully in democratic life. When Donald Trump threatened to make Canada the 51st state, far too may among the current generation were left not only completely mystified but unable to fathom its origins running deep, across time, on our shared continent.

The Empire Ontario Curriculum

Ontario has long set the tone for the rest of the country. Emberley and Newell’s critique based largely on Ontario’s ill-fated “Common Curriculum” of 1992—a cross-curricular, student-centred scheme steeped in constructivist thinking. Rooted in the belief that students “construct” knowledge on their own, it marginalized content mastery in favour of discovery learning. Across Canada, traditional subjects withered as progressive pedagogy triumphed.

The pendulum briefly swung back. Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution buried the Common Curriculum, restored standardized testing, and reintroduced a core curriculum. But it was a short-lived reprieve. By the mid-2000s, under Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, progressive reforms resurged under the banners of “equity,” “inclusive education,” and “student success.” Rigour once again gave way to therapeutic schooling and political activism.

Doug Ford’s 2018 victory promised a break from that progressive orthodoxy. Campaigning on “back to basics,” his Progressive Conservatives pledged to restore fundamentals in reading, writing, and math, while curbing experimental fads like Discovery Math. Yet Ford’s reforms have proven more about STEM and workforce preparation than about reviving the intellectual core of liberal education. In practice, many conservatives too have turned away from the humanities, prioritizing technology and skills over history, literature, and philosophy.

History Lost in Social Studies

No subject better illustrates this decline than history. Once the anchor of civic literacy, history has been steadily diluted into amorphous “social studies.” The shift began in the 1960s but accelerated over the last three decades. Renowned Simon Fraser education philosopher Kieran Egan warned as far back as 1983 that social studies had “grandiose and vague aims” impossible to achieve in classrooms. He accused the subject of socializing rather than educating children, starving them of substantive knowledge and historical understanding. His warning went unheeded after sparking a widespread backlash among elementary school educators.

By the 1990s, the “History Wars” erupted. J.L. Granatstein’ s bestselling Who Killed Canadian History? (1998) accused historians, bureaucrats, and faculties of education of dismantling our national narrative. Instead of studying Manifest Destiny, Confederation, Parliament, the CPR, the two wars and the post-war alliance, students were learning about “the history of housemaid’s knee in Belleville in the 1890s.” While provocative, Granatstein voiced a widespread anxiety: our youth were losing a sense of Canada’s past and, with it, their civic bearings.

Despite occasional revivals—fueled by the Dominion Institute, Historica Canada, or recent Alberta curriculum reforms—history continues to shrink within social studies. Curriculum battles today are less about what knowledge to teach than about whether knowledge matters at all.

The Hollowing-Out of Liberal Education

This hollowing-out is not confined to history. It extends across the curriculum. Schools now promise to address everything from poverty reduction to mental health, climate change to reconciliation. As education researcher Charles Ungerleider once noted, schools keep “adding without subtracting,” piling on mandates without lengthening the school day or year. Teachers are asked to be social workers, therapists, and activists as much as educators.

The result is predictable. Students graduate short on disciplinary knowledge and long on slogans or expressions of sentiment. They are quick to denounce settler colonialism but lack the historical literacy to understand the concept in all its complexity. They chant about climate change without much grounding in science. They demand “equity” but are often unable to engage with the philosophical and historical roots of liberal democracy itself.

Self-esteem education, once criticized by Kathleen Gow in Making a God of Self-Esteem (1996), has now metastasized. Victimhood and empowerment have displaced character formation and moral reasoning. Education has been transformed into a therapeutic enterprise, where affirmation too often substitutes for achievement.

Canada as a Post-National State

These curricular trends are deeply connected to broader cultural shifts. Canada’s embrace of multiculturalism and post-nationalism, famously articulated by Justin Trudeau in 2015 when he declared Canada “the first post-national state,” has had profound implications for education. If there is no “core identity” or “mainstream Canada,” then what knowledge is worth teaching?

For a generation, public intellectuals from George Grant and Michael Bliss to David Frum have warned that fragmenting our history into competing identities weakens our shared civic culture. Today, as Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt argues, we risk raising a generation untethered from any historical tradition. In place of a unifying national narrative, we are left with guilt-ridden identitarianism—an endless parsing of race, gender, and class, divorced from a sense of common belonging.

The result, as historian Patrice Dutil recently observed, is a younger generation “short on civic literacy” and unable to debate seriously the issues of our time. The flag-waving that greeted Donald Trump’s tariff threats or fears of American annexation revealed this hollowness. Much of it mimicked American patriotism rather than reflecting any deep knowledge of Canada’s democratic traditions.

Reclaiming Knowledge, Restoring Liberal Education

All is not lost. Around the world, there are examples of renewal. In Britain, the “Knowledge Turn” in education has restored rigorous history curricula, drawing inspiration from E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge movement. The United Kingdom now boasts “knowledge-rich” curricula that give students the cultural literacy needed for deeper learning.

Canada can learn from these efforts. We must resist the temptation to turn our schools into social laboratories. Schools should be places where students encounter enduring works of literature, grapple with historical turning points, and develop the analytical skills that only knowledge can provide.

As former high school teacher Trilby Kent argues in The Vanishing Past (2022), history must be elevated above the politicized “hodgepodge” of social studies. A coherent, intentional curriculum, beginning in the early grades and continuing through high school, is essential if we are to cultivate historically minded citizens.

The Stakes for Democracy

The erosion of liberal education is not just an academic matter. It is a civic emergency in-the-making. Without knowledge of our past, without grounding in literature, philosophy, and history, democratic citizenship withers. Our politics becomes shallow, polarized, and performative.

Thirty years ago, Emberley and Newell foresaw this danger. Today, we are living it. Unless we rediscover liberal education and rebuild a knowledge-rich curriculum, we risk raising a generation unmoored from history, bereft of civic literacy, and vulnerable to the slogans of the moment.

The choice before us is stark. We can continue down the path of fuzzy, self-absorbed, therapeutic, politicized schooling, where every fad finds its way into the curriculum, or we can restore liberal education as the foundation of our schools. The first leads to fragmentation and amnesia. The second, to renewal and the possibility of a shared civic culture.

The current President has spotted a weakness on the northern half of the continent. Knowing who we are and where we came from matters once again.  Canada’s future my depend on reviving our atrophied public memory and summoning up the political will to revive some sense of collective national consciousness.

*Adapted from the original in The National Post, October 16, 2025.  

What are the key factors in the steady decline of liberal education in Canada’s schools and particularly the high school curriculum?  What did Peter Emberley and Waller Newell get right in Bankrupt Education some three decades ago?  Is it a far bigger threat they forecast, reflecting broader social trends related to the slow death of book culture?  Where might we find cause for hope? 

 

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Re-Engineering School Boards: Flip the System and Build from the Schools Up

September 21, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Elected school trustees in Canada always seem to be in hot water and threatened with elimination. Right now Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra is focusing on the recurrent dysfunctional behaviour and confronting a critical decision on the future of that province’s elected boards. It’s time to survey the policy landscape and retire the existing model of centralized bureaucratic and unresponsive management.

Across Canada, the school system is groaning under the weight of its own bureaucracy. Centralized control, layered administration, and top-down governance have hollowed out the very institutions meant to serve students, families, and communities. For decades, provincial ministries and regional boards have been building an ever-expanding education “apparatus” that too often stifles innovation and isolates decision-makers from the classroom.

The wisest choice has never been clearer: If we want schools that truly serve communities, we must flip the system—replacing top-down governance with bottom-up accountability rooted in the schoolhouse.

The Promise of School-Based Management

The central flaw lies in governance. Provinces cling to structures that vest authority in ministries and school districts, creating distance between those who make decisions and those who live with their consequences. Instead of empowering principals, teachers, parents, and students, our system concentrates power in boardrooms, policy shops, and consulting circles.

Yet there is an alternative, one with deep Canadian roots. Edmonton was the pioneer. Under superintendents Rolland Jones and later Michael Strembitsky, the city dismantled centralized control and shifted responsibility directly to schools. Budgets were devolved, principals were empowered, and parents were offered choice. By the early 2000s, more than half of Edmonton’s students were opting for schools outside their attendance zones, revitalizing once-declining institutions and proving that site-based management could deliver results.

What Went Wrong

This approach—known as school-based management (SBM)—spread briefly to other provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia. But the reform momentum soon waned. Consolidation of boards, an explosion of administrative staff, and the rise of standardized testing all worked to recentralize power. By the late 1990s, only a minority of education employees were engaged in classroom teaching. The system, once again, was serving itself more than it served students.

The irony is that Edmonton’s model gained global attention, even as it was neglected at home. . New Zealand adopted “Self-Managed schools” in the late- 1980s The World Bank promoted SBM across Asia and Africa, pointing out that education is far too complex to be delivered effectively through rigid, centralized hierarchies. Results have been mixed overseas, often due to resistance from entrenched interests, but the lesson remains: when authority is vested in communities, schools become more responsive and more accountable.

A Made-in-Canada Model

Here in Canada, defenders of the status quo still claim that elected school boards are the bedrock of democracy. But as Ontario educator Peter Hennessy once observed, boards have become so out of touch that governments created parent councils to give families some voice. Clinging to boards that no longer function as true conduits of local democracy is missing the point.

A made-in-Canada model of community-school governance would start by replacing regional boards with autonomous school councils, made up of parents, educators, and community representatives. School budgets would be determined locally, with provincial funds following students to their chosen schools. Joint service consortia could handle transportation, purchasing, and other back-office functions, achieving efficiencies without stripping local schools of their authority. Regional development councils, involving trustees and municipal leaders, would provide oversight and ensure fair resource distribution.

Beyond Structures: Humanizing Education

But decentralization, on its own, is not a silver bullet. If flipping the system means only re-arranging budgets and administrative charts, then the exercise will disappoint. True reform must also humanize education, strengthen teaching, and deepen parental engagement.

First, schools must be scaled to human dimensions. Research from Britain and Canada shows that smaller schools foster stronger relationships, better engagement, and improved outcomes. The relentless consolidation of schools across rural and urban Canada has too often undermined these benefits, creating institutions too large to know students well.

Second, teaching must be restored to the centre of schooling. Teachers are not passive functionaries to be managed from above. They are the lifeblood of education. Movements such as Flip the System, led internationally by classroom educators, remind us that teachers need both professional autonomy and accountability rooted in evidence. Re-establishing teacher agency is vital if reforms are to reach beyond structures and into learning itself.

Third, parents must be embraced as true partners. Too often, “parent engagement” is little more than lip service, framed in ways that reinforce school-centric authority. A family-centred approach— “walking alongside” parents rather than “building their capacity”—would better reflect the diversity and realities of Canadian families.

Seizing the Moment

Taken together, these reforms would reverse the flow of decision-making in education. Instead of top-down mandates imposed by ministries and boards, we would have bottom-up accountability rooted in communities. Students, teachers, and parents would be at the centre, with administrators serving them—not the other way around.

The urgency is clear. Centralization has produced efficiency in name only, while draining vitality from our schools. Provincial governments from the Maritimes to the Prairies have eliminated local boards, but in doing so, they have often deepened the democratic deficit. Parents feel sidelined, teachers feel disempowered, and students remain caught in the machinery of a system designed to manage, not to educate.

Flipping the system is not about nostalgia for one-room schoolhouses. It is about building a modern, responsive, and democratic model of governance that puts learning first. It is about reclaiming schools from bureaucrats, consultants, and central planners who rarely set foot in classrooms. Most of all, it is about ensuring that Canadian education reflects the voices of those who know children best—their families, their teachers, and their communities. The time has come to re-engineer public education one school at a time.

Why are School Trustees always under fire and seemingly on life support?  What’s the source of the continuing problem in local education governance?  Why has abolishing elected school trustees and reverting to top-down management under the guise of ‘regional education centres’ made matters worse?  Is it time to implement school-level democratic governance to achieve self-governing and accountable schools?

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School Zones: Why Does Student Road Safety Top Back-to-School Concerns?

September 4, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Serious traffic congestion in school zones is, once again, sparking safety concerns among parents, as Canadian families settle into their back-to-school routines.  Yet year after year, the same warnings resurface: children are at risk, drivers are careless, and school zones are far from the safe havens they should be for children.

A flurry of news reports in August 2025 thrust the issue back into the public eye.  Eight in 10 Ontario parents surveyed by the South Central Ontario branch of the Canadian Automobile Association now report serious traffic buildup during both drop-off and pick-up times.

A majority of parents (83 per cent) reported seeing unsafe driving behaviours in their child’s school zone – up three per cent from 2024. Most parents (63 per cent) consider their child’s school zone very unsafe, a number that has climbed seven points since 2023.

The latest CAA Student Safety Surveys—conducted in 2017, 2023, and most recently in 2024-25 reveal a disturbing trend. Not only have family concerns over the dangers not diminished, they have actually worsened.

Rising Concerns over School Zone Dangers

In December 2017, CAA’s first survey raised red flags. More than 80 percent of Canadian parents reported witnessing dangerous driving in school zones. Then, in 2019, almost 30 per cent of Canadians reported witnessing a near-collision in a school zone.

Speeding, distracted driving, illegal parking, and ignoring crosswalks topped the list of hazards. Parents and teachers expressed growing concern about congestion at pick-up and drop-off times, which created unsafe conditions daily. At the time, the message seemed clear: ramp up awareness, step up enforcement, and the risks could be managed.

Today speeding remains the number one complaint, but a new threat has firmly taken root—distracted driving, especially the now-ubiquitous use of smartphones behind the wheel. Nearly half now report witnessing a near-collision in just the past year.

Even the presence of crossing guards, one of the oldest and most trusted safety measures, is being ignored by hurried drivers. Morning drop-off has become, in effect, a daily gauntlet. Calls are also growing louder for traffic calming measures—speed bumps, clearer signage, and redesigned crossings—but little is actually done beyond public reminders.

Faltering Public Awareness Campaigns

The most common dangers—speeding, distraction, and illegal stopping or parking that creates blind spots—are not new, but their persistence highlights a collective failure to address them. If anything, the problem is intensifying. Despite years of awareness campaigns, it’s made little difference.

Collisions and near misses in school zones are very common, but, judging from official statistics, many go unreported in Metropolitan Toronto and other major cities. One fatal school zone collision on March 26, 2025 had reverberations across Canada.  A 15-year-old Grade 9 girl attending Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute was struck and killed at a crosswalk in Scarborough by a woman making a left turn into an intersection. It happened in a school safety zone located near multiple schools where drivers were regularly spotted speeding, running stop signs, and taking their eyes off the road.

School zones should be much safer because traffic flows are relatively easy to predict during the school week.  We know precisely when and where these risks occur: during the morning rush and afternoon pick-up, on streets directly surrounding our schools. We also know what behaviours to expect: impatience, distraction, and disregard for rules designed to protect children. Yet every year, the same scenarios play out, as if we have collectively resigned ourselves to them.

The CAA’s surveys, spanning eight years, are not just snapshots of public opinion; they identify salient trends.  The escalation from 30 per cent reporting near-misses in 2017 to nearly 50 per cent in 2024 is not a statistical quirk. It is an indicator of misplaced priorities, complacency, and inertia.

A Call to Action on School Zones

What is to be done? Public awareness, clearly, is insufficient. Enforcement must be consistent and visible. Communities should not hesitate to demand stronger measures—whether it be automated speed cameras, stricter ticketing, or redesigned traffic flows around schools. Parents, too, need to recognize their own role in perpetuating unsafe conditions, particularly when it comes to double-parking, rushing, or using phones while behind the wheel.

Commissioning surveys does not save lives. Action does. Until the province, municipalities, and school districts take decisive steps to make school zones truly safe, we are putting kids at potential risk every school day.

Active transportation initiatives, however well-intended, are falling short.  Some 43 per cent of families, in a 2024 CAA Manitoba survey, now transport their children in personal vehicles, up from 35 per cent a year before. The most complete national survey of school-age children published in 2023 in grades 6 to 10 found that 74 per cent used motorized vehicles, 22 per cent walked, and only 4 per cent biked to school.

If we cannot guarantee the safety of children walking into their schools, then what does that say about our commitment to public safety as a whole? The risks have been identified and it’s time to move from public advisories to more pro-active policy responses. The real question is whether we have the will to act—before another ‘near miss’ results in serious injury or worse.

Why is traffic congestion and school zone safety such a big concern of parents?  How reliable are the CAA Student Travel Safety surveys?  Why are reported incidents and police reports so few and far between?  Why is “active transportation” not gaining much traction among families, particularly in urban and suburban school communities? Is it time to review our approach to curbing congestion and making school zones safer?

 

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Adolescent Boy Culture and Tate Speech: How Reliable is Social Media Trolling Research?  

August 11, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Online misogyny is “seeping into classrooms” in “frightening ways.”  So says Nova Scotia high school teacher Christine Emberley in a recent CBC News story giving big play to reports by women teachers of brazen sexism and barely disguised harassment exhibited by teen boys.  

Online misogyny is abhorrent and social media teen culture is now awash in horrific images, texts, and rants. Since the March 2025 airing of the blockbuster four-part Netflix series, Adolescence, teachers and parents are much more aware of the sinister influence of Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, two ‘maninfluencers’ radicalizing the current generation of boys and young men.

While sexism directed at women is hardly new, it has taken on a more overt and threatening tone since the pandemic. Much of it is “Tate Speech” – stoked by Andrew Tate and his followers attracted to his virulent “male superiority” posts, savage anti-#metoo rhetoric and luxurious lifestyle.

Emberley’s revelations about her classroom experiences and, in particular, the “grotesquely sexual” remarks directed at women teachers, add credence to the findings of a recent Dalhousie University study produced by the Luc Cousineau and his Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies, tracking teacher comments on Reddit, a gray zone social media discussion board featuring anonymous posters.

“Tate Speech” and its Ugly Underside

Andrew Tate, the 38-year-old Brit and former kickboxer idolized by millions of boys and men is a sinister and dangerous figure.  His message is one of venomous and unapologetic misogyny and he is currently  facing 10 charges in Britain related to three women that include rape, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain. 

The Tate brothers claim that men are superior to women but live under a form of oppression in contemporary western culture.  Since just over 75 per cent of teachers are female, according to Statistics Canada, women teachers are on the frontlines in the subterranean gender war in K-12 education. 

Examining the Research Claims  

Plenty of research has been conducted into the form and impact of sexism in schools, especially what is termed ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in school leadership, curriculum, and teaching methods. Yet research capturing teachers’ experiences and observations with sexism is relatively thin, particularly in Canada.     

The source of the latest Canadian research, the Dalhousie Institute for Far-Right Studies, approaches its work with a certain social justice slant, looking for examples of misogyny and linking it to so-called ‘far-right’ causes. The ‘digital traces’ data used is problematic because it’s limited to 2,364 self-reported content items from anonymous posters, making reference to Andrew Tate. The study’s title “Trying to talk white male teenagers off the alt-right ledge” is plucked from a Reddit post claiming that “masculinist influencers” have sparked boys to target women teachers. It all looks very much like an exercise in bias confirmation from an institute committed to exposing ‘far-right’ activity. 

The study is published in a reputable academic journal, Gender and Education, but it falls far short of the more comprehensive and sound research conducted by recognized leaders in the field.  A December 2023 Australian study, conducted by Stephanie Westcott and Steven Roberts with a research team at Monash University School of Education, takes a broader ‘hegemonic masculinity’ approach and is based upon in-depth interviews with 30 women teachers, looking at their documented experiences.

Instead of focusing narrowly on male proclivities for misogyny, the Australian researchers situate school-age boys and young men in the context of post-pandemic fallout and the emergence of the “manosphere” in a largely female-dominated profession. In their view, Tate’s “ominous presence… shaped – or perhaps calcified – some Australian boys’ ideas around masculinity, power dynamics, and boys’ relationships with women and girls.”  

Go Broader and Dig Deeper

The controversial Netflix series came closer to explaining this dark and frightening world than any academic study.  It was unsettling, gripping and disturbing because of its deep exploration of the torments of teen school culture and the crisis afflicting contemporary boyhood.  It focused on Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old English boy, on a typical dead end-street in a Yorkshire working-class town, who is apprehended hiding out in his room after stabbing a girl from his school to death. He looked normal but harboured deep resentments akin to captives of so-called ‘incel’ culture, short for ‘involuntary celibate’ boys who blame women for their troubles.

The narrowly-circumscribed Dalhousie research study captures only a slice of the problem. Contemporary teen life is awash with sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny, much of it hidden and concealed from both teachers and parents. It has infected a significant minority of boys, but girls swim in that same pond with their own ways of censuring and ostracizing ‘outliers.’ That’s the deeper and more profound lesson of the Netflix series Adolescence.   

North American adolescents live lives separate from most adults, and teachers, like us, are on the outside looking-in on teen culture. Twenty five years ago,  Patricia Hersch’s 1998 classic A Tribe Apart awakened us to the sub-culture in our midst.  Brazen comments, sexist innuendo, and comments laced with misogyny are merely the outward expressions of teens tormented by the inescapable and degraded online world of post-pandemic times.  

How widespread is the incidence of young boys tormenting women teachers with misogynistic harassment?  Is it being provoked by Andrew Tate and his posse of ‘manfluencers’?  Should we rely on research into ‘digital traces’ on Reddit unearthed by policy institutes committed to rooting-out ‘far-right’ ideas and movements?  Why is Netflix’s Adolescence far more reliable in its dissection of the dark side of teen culture affecting girls as well as boys?    

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The Memory Paradox: What Happens When Generative AI Does the Thinking for Us?  

August 3, 2025 by Paul W. Bennett

Consider these common everyday experiences in today’s digitally-dependent world.  A cashier in a convenience store struggles to make change in cash.  Your Uber driver gets lost on his way to your destination in a new subdivision or network of city streets.  A local contractor tries to calculate the load bearing capacity of your new floor.  An emergency room nursing assistant guesses at the correct dosage in administering a life-saving heart medication.  All of these are instances of an underlying problem that can be merely an irritant or a matter of life-and- death.

More and more we are relying upon technological tools to do our thinking for us.  Each of these situations are examples of the ‘memory paradox’ – technology enables us to do many things without relying upon human memory by what is known as ‘cognitive offloading’ to technological tools like calculators, GPS, and networked communications.

Instead of merely shrugging and carrying-on, leading cognitive science researchers have begun to connect the dots.  In a profoundly relevant June 2025 article, “The Memory Paradox,” Barbara Oakley and a team of American neuroscience researchers have cracked the code.  They exposed the critical but peculiar irony of the digital era: as AI-powered tools become more capable, our brains may be bowing out of the hard mental lift—eroding the very memory systems they should be exercising, leaving us less capable of using our heads.

Collective Loss of Memory and Cognitive Offloading

Decades of steadily rising IQ scores from the 1930s to the 1980s— the famed Flynn Effect—have leveled off and even began to reverse in several advanced countries. Recent declines in IQ scores among North American and Western European nations (the United States, Britain, France and Norway) cry out for explanation and Oakley and her research team apply neuroscience research in tackling that challenge. Although IQ is undoubtedly influenced by multiple factors, the researchers attribute the decline to two intertwined trends: educational shifts away from direct instruction/memorization, and the rise of cognitive offloading—where people habitually lean on calculators, smartphones, and AI to recall facts and solve problems

Surveying decades of cognitive psychology and neuroscience research, the authors show how memory works best when it involves more than storage—it’s about retrieval, integration, and pattern recognition. When we repeatedly practice retrieving information, our brains form durable memory “schemata” and neural manifolds. These internal structures are indispensable for intuitive reasoning, error checking, and smooth skill execution. In contrast, if we default to “just ChaptGPT it,” those internal processes—fundamental for innovation and critical thinking—may never fully develop, particularly in the smartphone generation.

A key insight from the paper is the connection made between deep learning behaviors in neural networks (like the phenomenon of “grokking,” where patterns suddenly crystallize after extensive training) and human learning. Just as machines benefit from structured, repeated exposure before grasping deep patterns, so do humans: practice, retrieval, and timed repetition develop intuition and mastery.

The Atrophy of Mental Exercise

The researchers also sound a cautionary note: purely constructivist or discovery‑based teaching—especially in an AI‑rich world—can short‑circuit this “mental muscle‑building.” They show that when students rely too early on AI or calculators, they skip key steps in the cognitive sequence: encoding, retrieval, consolidation, and mastery of procedures. Result: weaker mental models, superficial fluency, and less flexible thinking.

Even techno skeptics see a role for digital tools. Oakley and her research team argue for what they term cognitive complementarity: a marriage of strong internal knowledge and smart external tools. Tools like ChatGPT or calculators should amplify—not replace—the deep, internal mental architectures that let us evaluate, refine, and build upon AI output. That’s the real challenge that lies ahead.

The latest cognitive research also has profound policy and practice implications for educational leaders, consultants, and classroom teachers.  Popular progressive and constructionist approaches may have exacerbated the problem. It’s time to embrace the lessons of the new ‘science of learning’ to turn the situation around in today’s classrooms: re‑integrating retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and procedural frameworks into K-12 educational practice.

The New Imperatives – Using Your Head

What are the new and emerging imperatives in the AI-dominated world? Once again, Oakley and her team deliver with a sound set of recommendations: Teaching students to limit AI use and delay offloading; training teachers to design AI‑inclusive but memory‑supportive curricula; and guiding institutions to adopt AI in ways that build-upon, not supplant, mental work.

‘Using your head’ and tapping into those memory banks is not obsolete—it’s essential. Instant information access can and does foster lazy habits of mind.  British cognitive researcher Carl Hendrick put it this way: “The most advanced AI can simulate intelligence, but it cannot think for you. That task remains, stubbornly and magnificently, human.” The most important form of memory is still the one inside your head.

What is Generative AI doing to our thinking and writing capacities?  Is it eating away at our brain power?  What are the key lessons of the latest research in the science of learning?  Why is the most important form of memory still in your head? What can be done to get ahead of AI and turn it to better purposes in teaching and learning?

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