Canadian Schools

[Punks in Ontario]

Reading through the American school threads, I've been wondering what Canadian schools are like. For those who have/had children in a Canadian school, what has been your experience? If you homeschool now, what made you decide to do so?

 

I'm desperately hoping that some of the horrible stories from south of the border aren't happening here, but I'm suspicious it's not a lot different.

 

Only my daughter went to ps in French Immersion. Elementary wasn't too bad from an academic pov, but she went to a tough mixed school. High school was pretty mediocre. When she went to university, she was amazed at some of the resources the kids from TO had access to. Admittedly, some of them were private school kids, but we have nothing like that out in the country.

[stripe]

The Canadians I've met have seen remarkably well educated, but I could have a skewed sample size.

[SproutMamaK]

I went to public school. There were some morality issues with the teachers (known affairs, one teacher who was a little too friendly with the cute girls, etc), but I can honestly say that there were NO teachers that were horrible. The worst I can report was the history teacher (the one who was too friendly with the cute girls and liked to leave an extra shirt button undone) who basically only read the textbook and wasn't particularly insightful into the context of history outside of the time period he was paid to teach, etc. He just wasn't "into it". That's just my experience, though - I'm sure there are bad teachers out there. However, from the friends I know who have become teachers, getting into teacher's college isn't easy, and getting THROUGH it is even harder. It's not as simple as in the US.

 

Looking at what my American friends were learning in the same grades, especially in high school, I think we were definitely ahead. Everything I learned for the first year of post-secondary education was a repeat of my last year of high school. Unfortunately, that gave me a skewed idea of how easy it would be to finish my degree.