EDITOR:
John Terry, founding director of the Eastern Nova Scotia Institute of Technology, had a saying that “nothing is so unequal as the equal treatment of un-equals.” That statement aptly describes one of the underlying issues of public education today.
Individuals are born with different capacities, learn at different rates, have widely differing life experiences and increasingly different interests and expectations. Yet we enroll them in age-based classes, present them with single or common learning opportunities and expect all of them to reach the same degree or level of growth in the same period of time. Why the education system does this in 2020 is hard to comprehend. I was interested, therefore, to learn during a recent visit to New Brunswick of plans in that province to dispense with grade levels and restructure learning resources in support of student learning. I commend them on this initiative and will follow the transition with interest.
Don Glendenning (a long-time student of education),
Charlottetown
