Education

  • Unlocking the Doors of Education

    Life’s circumstances have a way of reintroducing us to grace, writes Joseph McDaniel. His personal journey refreshed his perspective on his vocation and encourages us to be open to the expansion of our own horizons by the grace of God.

    I’ve always felt at home in libraries. From the cozy West Vancouver Memorial Library across the street from my family home, to the great coliseum-like Vancouver Public Library, and the many university libraries I’ve been privileged to visit over the years, ...

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  • Doctor's College Needs Political Attention

    Ottawa lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos says the regulatory body for Ontario physicians and surgeons has a serious Charter abuse habit and requires Premier Doug Ford’s immediate intervention.

    The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (“CPSO”) has spent hundreds of thousands in legal fees to limit Charter-protected rights of Ontario physicians and citizens. The Ontario government must act. It must stop the CPSO’s attack on Ch...

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  • Denying the Reality of Independent Schools

    Policy confusion inflicted on alternative schooling during COVID shows why Ontario needs urgent discussion of an education system that reflects the province’s diversity, Joanna DeJong VanHof argues.

    Recent controversy over the provincial government’s provision of rapid tests to independen...

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  • COVID Lessons for the Education System

    The flexibility and responsiveness of Ontario’s independent schools during the pandemic prove the advantage of humanized education in small, family-centric schools, David Hunt writes.

    As Ontario’s public schools struggle to accommodate students in a new school year amid what could be a fourth wave of COVID-19, what can the Ontario government learn from the last 17 months?

    For starters, the government needs to accept that huge, ind...

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  • Downing a Fighter for Indigenous Kids

    Alan Hustak reports on the removal of a statue honouring the 19th-century priest who suffered a nervous breakdown battling Ottawa over its abusive residential school system.

    The statue of a priest whose Indigenous students were originally taught in Cree, and who fought forced removal of Indigenous children from their parents, is slated for removal from a Saskatchewan cemetery.

    The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina has...

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  • Charting Educational Justice

    Brett Fawcett argues Alberta charter schools should be free to operate on religious grounds to meet the just vision of Canada’s founding constitutional vision.

    What does a just education look like?

    We talk a lot about what it means to provide a quality education to our children, but perhaps we’ve forgotten that you can’t have a good education without it also being a just education. In virt...

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  • Religious Freedom Equals Educational Freedom

    The latest call to defund Ontario’s Catholic schools both rewrites Canadian history and goes counter to international schooling norms, Cardus Education Program Director David Hunt argues.

    In terms of cultural insensitivity, the latest call for ending Ontario’s Catholic school funding wins the shamrock, coming...

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  • One Man’s Reading List

    Calum Anderson offers his “great” alternatives to what he considers the weak fare pushed by too many universities. Do Convivium readers agree? We’d love to see your alternative reading lists. Send them to convivium@cardus.ca.

    When I was in teacher’s college my first English Curriculum class was spent playing “four corners,” a children's game which is often played in elementary schools. (The fact it was played in a second-entry program at a major Canadian university is telling). ...

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  • 10 Highlights of the Year for Cardus

    Daniel Proussalidis and Monica Ratra write that while 2020 was a forgettable year for many reasons, Cardus initiatives throughout the year provided memorable highlights for the organization and our supporters.

    It’s cliché at this point, but 2020 is surely a year most of us would like to forget. And not just because of the pandemic or the brutally polarized political rhetoric of the past year. But, as we think back on the past year at Cardus, there’s actually a lo...

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  • Staying Home for School

    COVID-19 concerns could open parents’ eyes to the crucial benefits of kitchen-table learning, developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld tells Cardus’ Andrea Mrozek.

    David is the father of three children. While pushing his kids on the swings at his local park in Ottawa, he confesses to other parents at the playground that he is concerned about putting his kids back in school because of COVID. However, he is also worried...

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  • Regaining Lost Educational Ground

    In part two of his essay on the damage done by a century of “revolutionary” pedagogy, Joe Woodard foresees the power of independent schools and parental choice for returning education to its natural purpose.

    University arts students of the 1970s all saw Marxism dominating the world of academic respectability among ambitious young scholars – the Herd of Independent Thinkers – despite Communism’s repeated seven-and eight-figure slaughters (such as Stalin’s four t...

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  • The Lost Common Good of Education

    As parents send their kids back to school plagued by the new peril of COVID-19, Joe Woodard argues the real classroom risk remains an outmoded pedagogical revolution that turned education against its true nature.

    At the risk of sounding melodramatic: a revolutionary elite seized public education in the 1970s. I saw it during my time at the University of Alberta. It was not a “conspiracy.” It was an ideology – “politics masquerading as science” – the prosely...

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  • Bidding Loyola a Long Goodbye

    Paul Donovan’s retirement as president of Montreal’s Loyola High School ends his 39-year association with the historic Catholic institution, which included a major religious freedom victory in the Supreme Court. Peter Stockland reports.

    When young Kevin Donovan left Montreal’s Loyola High School 67 summers ago, he could hardly foresee having a son who would one day lead the school to a landmark legal victory for religious freedom.

    Yet his graduation picture in Loyola’s Class of 1953...

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  • Beyond Academics

    Through the strengthening of their school community as well as the surprising growth of an extended community, Community Christian School in Drayton, Ontario looks beyond just the academic in their transition to remote schooling.

    Raymond Verburg, principal of Community Christian School in Drayton Ontario, cites a Zoom meeting with a Grade Seven class in late April to illustrate how COVID-19 forced closures have affected students.

    “There were a number of students (online), and...

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  • Upholding Community

    Between hurdles such as rural Internet issues, emotional needs, and kids being kids, Northumberland Christian School has discovered that the path to teaching remotely relies heavily on the community they've always valued, reports Peter Stockland.

    It didn’t take long after the mad scramble caused by COVID-19’s forced closure of Ontario schools for Ginette Mack to realize some things never change.

    “Kids are kids,” Mack says looking back on the days after rural Northumberland Christian School re...

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  • Recalibrating Education

    When the Ontario government made the call to shut down school buildings, John Knox Christian School's leadership team jumped into action. In the second of a series on independent education, Peter Stockland reports on how the school got back on track so quickly.

    George Petrusma knows exactly where he was at 4:03 p.m. on Thursday March 12, and the decision facing him, staff and students at John Knox Christian School in Oakville, Ontario. 

    “I was having a conversation with all our staff who were in the buildin...

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  • A Saskatchewan Legacy

    This month marks the centennial of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. Alan Hustak reports on the school's legacy.

    Celebrations planned this month to mark the centennial of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame at Wilcox, Saskatchewan, had to be postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the campaign to raise $20 million Centre for Teaching and Learning on the prai...

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  • Independence and Inequality

    Ontario’s independent schools outperformed their government counterparts during COVID-19. Peter Stockland reports on policy recommendations from Cardus Education’s David Hunt to strengthen Ontario's education for all students.

    In a policy brief submitted to the Ontario government today, Cardus Director of Education David Hunt says the COVID-19 crisis has exposed “the cracks”...

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  • School Ruling Good for the Spirit

    A Saskatchewan Court decision upholding religious freedom and pluralism for parents and students shines a light in gloomy times, writes Cardus Education Director David Hunt.  

    It seems rare to find good news amidst the challenges of physical-distancing and self-quarantining, but a recent Saskatchewan Appeal Court ruling gives much to celebrate for educational pluralism and religious liberty.

    The unanimous decision in S...

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  • Speaking the Passion of Christian Schooling

    Adrienne Castellon talks to Cardus Director of Communications Daniel Proussalidis about a series of case studies she worked on mapping the stories of 11 Catholic and Protestant schools across Canada.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfd_m2lhBo0 

    Daniel Proussalidis: What motivated this particular research of 11 case studies, several provinces involved, several c...

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  • Are Even Secular Schools Sacred?

    Father Raymond de Souza wonders what spirit moves the public board of education in Brockville, Ontario to block an empty building’s sale to a private religious group.

    Who does the government compete with? Is a public school a sacred building? A recent surplus building sale raises those questions.

    In Brockville, the local public school board has a sold an elementary school in Wolford that it had closed in 2018. The...

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  • Minding the School-Home Gap

    Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent reports on a recent Cardus forum exploring the differing formative impacts of school and family on children.

    Photo by Peter Stockland

    One of the greatest challenges in determining the impact of a child’s school education is the simple fact that schooling is also connected to the impact of parents on their children and, in some cases, the chur...

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  • Educating Globally, Deciding Locally

    In late March, parallel to the annual Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Convivium's parent think tank Cardus hosted a panel discussion on educational innovation. Alberta journalist Danielle Smith spoke with Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus, and Deani Van Pelt, President of Edvance Christian Schools Association.

    This piece is the second of three parts. To read part one, click here. To read part three, click h...

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  • A Fresh Eye On Education

    In late March, parallel to the annual Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Convivium's parent think tank Cardus hosted a panel discussion on educational innovation. Alberta journalist Danielle Smith spoke with Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus, and Deani Van Pelt, President of Edvance Christian Schools Association.

    This piece is the first of three parts. To read part two, click here. To read part three, ...

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