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The Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education provides non-partisan education research and information to policy-makers, education partners and the public. Our purpose is to encourage higher performance throughout Canada's public education system.
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Preparing for the New Millennium
FROM THE BOARD: Neil Godin, Neil Godin International Inc., Summer 1998
In a neat trick of fate, our passage out of the industrial age in Canada coincides almost perfectly with our exit from both the twentieth century and the second millennium. The Year 2000 is a legitimate milestone in our history.
As a business and organizational development trainer, I am deeply immersed in helping companies and other organizations meet the 'deadline' of the Year 2000 - an appropriate date for achieving their passage into the post-industrial age.
In many organizations the language of change is heard, but substantial change does not occur. In others, the terms 'empowerment,' 'self-management,' 'customer focus,' 'collaboration,' 'shared decision making,' 'change management,' 'feedback and learning systems' and 'learning organization' have real meaning and application. Canada's public school systems are not found in this latter group.
In the closed systems of our schools the language of change is heard, but professionals and administrators still manage unilaterally. Parents and students - the clients and logical partners in the planning, delivery and evaluation of education - are on the periphery still.
At our recent conference, Shared School Decision-Making, the universal lament was that in Canada, parents are still token partners. While every province and territory, except Saskatchewan and British Columbia, has now enacted legislation requiring the formation of all-partner school councils, councils have little authority to actually set policy, spend money, or hire and fire. So we have the appearance of empowerment and collaboration without the substance.
There is a price to be paid for our schools' resistance to real change. That price is performance. And it is being paid daily by students who exit our industrial-age school system to enter the post-industrial world.
When I speak to students, teachers and parents about the changing world of work, I urge them to prepare for a life of independence and interdependence - of self-management, collaboration with others, entrepreneurship, continuous change, and life-long learning. But very little in the school experience prepares students for these new realities and demands.
As a result, youth unemployment and underemployment, and youth violence, crime and street life is growing to crisis proportions. As most of the population basks in the warmth of a strong economy, StatsCan reports that the cold, hard numbers of unemployed youth have risen to unprecedented levels, and the upward trend shows no sign of flattening out or turning down.
Would shared decision-making at the level of our schools help? Yes, in my opinion. Effective site-based management and shared decision-making would provide students with living examples of local autonomous and collaborative governance. And genuine collaboration would at least have the potential to drive real change in the design, delivery, measurement, and continuous improvement of public education „ to ensure that it nurtures a love of learning in all students, and provides them with the insight, knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the post-industrial economy.
Public education - of the kind and quality demanded by a new age in human development - is the last hope for social equity in Canada. And, driven ultimately by the law of supply and demand, the system will change. The question is "when?'' Will it happen by the milestone year 2000? Or some time later?
For many students who will leave our schools this year, time has run out.
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 Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education
225 - 1889 Springfield Road, Kelowna British Columbia V1Y 5V5 Canada
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