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  #21  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2012, 3:46 PM
beyeas beyeas is offline
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Originally Posted by Keith P. View Post
Actually the only $300 million I would spend on the education system is on costs associated with blowing it up and rebuilding it in a way so that it actually works. We do not need to throw more money at the existing dysfunctional system.
That is one thing that we are in complete agreement on.

It isn't even just the fundamental 3-Rs that kids aren't learning... although it is certainly true that there are way too many kids who are getting pushed through without getting the basics down.

For me it is a dysfunctional system that does nothing but produce robots that are unable to do anything but regurgitate "facts". It is a spectacular fundamental failure of the education system North America-wide that students are never taught to observe, question their observations, and draw their own conclusions. Instead students are taught to blindly accept what they are told, and regurgitate it back.

Doing so doesn't create "citizens", it creates lemmings who follow off the cliff whomever is yelling the loudest. There are times when I cannot understand why people have accepted a "fact" that is so clearly illogical and false, and then I think about our education system and realize why that is.
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  #22  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2012, 5:13 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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Originally Posted by beyeas View Post
For me it is a dysfunctional system that does nothing but produce robots that are unable to do anything but regurgitate "facts". It is a spectacular fundamental failure of the education system North America-wide that students are never taught to observe, question their observations, and draw their own conclusions. Instead students are taught to blindly accept what they are told, and regurgitate it back.

Doing so doesn't create "citizens", it creates lemmings who follow off the cliff whomever is yelling the loudest. There are times when I cannot understand why people have accepted a "fact" that is so clearly illogical and false, and then I think about our education system and realize why that is.
I believe this is a gross generalisation. I think even amoungst the most educated people, there is a strong tendency to 'pick a side' as though it were a sports context -- and argue that side to death until you have to change your position. I've seen people argue what they know is wrong simply because their ego prevents them from admitting what everyone should immediately admit: I may be wrong at anytime.

Though I can't accurately speak of our public education system now, having been out of it for so long, I am not that old, and clearly recall how rigorous my teachers were.

Granted, some of my teachers were absolutely horrible. And granted, I may...at times...have been a stubborn kid. I do need to acknowledge, though, how skilled most of my teachers were at aggressively and confidently presenting quantified 'facts' to the class, while being humble enough to encourage the class to question these conclusions.

And I remember being given ample choices. We could pick our science topics, within a given range of course. We could pick the English variant in which we submit our work (British, Canadian, American, etc.). We had sexual education beginning in grade 4.

Our public education system has obviously degraded since then. The government defunding is clearly a reason; too much union control in terms of protecting poor-quality teachers is another.

We need a modernised, reformed school system, which is more versatile considering the increasing number of middle-aged kids immigrating to our canuck schools lacking many language basics (but ironically kicking our kids' asses in math and science).

If I could make only five changes to the subjects to which our kids are exposed, I would mandate: (1) Political Science, to allow kids a duration of many years in which they may look forward to voting (and concurrently make better use of the CBC via lesson plans); (2) English AND French until graduation of high school; (3) Psychology, to allow kids a better understanding of what everyone must go through and to have more control over their own stress as they mature; (4) Religion, to allow kids to associate all the things religions share in common, as well as the broad evolution of religions which connects them all (i.e.: Christianity based on Judeo and Egyptian mythology, as well as other pagan beliefs); and (5) Food Health -- because the kids growing up now are so incredibly unhealthy compared to the last several generations.
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  #23  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2012, 5:29 PM
beyeas beyeas is offline
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Originally Posted by RyeJay View Post
I believe this is a gross generalisation.
It is indeed. And there are absolutely exceptions to that generalization in terms of students and in terms of teachers as well (because there are certainly teachers who in fact do an excellent job in inspiring students to think for themselves). I have no doubt that people on this forum fall into the minority that DO think and question, and likely had the benefit of being lucky enough to have teachers along the way who encouraged that. The mere fact that we are all on here debating and questioning speaks to that.

However, I see students coming through my university class all the time, and if you look at a freshman level I can tell you from 1st hand experience that the majority have absolutely no concept of how to think their way through problems and evaluate things on their own. They just want to be told what to do, memorize it, and do it. This is not "all" students, but many many many, and it is largely because this is what has been asked of them for the past 12 years. I can't tell you how many times I have been helping a student with a problem, trying to teach them how to look at it and figure it out on their own, and have them just say "No just tell me how to solve it and I will do it". The federal government spends a lot of time talking about the lack of innovation in the Canadian economy, but a part of that problem exists in a system that mostly teaches students to not question their observations.

This is an absolute failure of the system, because the current education system has the built in structural flaw that it is based on memorization, rather than one that actively tries to teach students to think for themselves.
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  #24  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 3:30 AM
fenwick16 fenwick16 is offline
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Maybe the NDP did the right thing to help get the shipbuilding contact. However, according to the allnovascotia.com, Dexter is now promising to roll back the HST if they get re-elected. The makes me feel sick to my stomach. It simply sounds like buying votes with the Nova Scotia taxpayers' own money.
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  #25  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 11:36 AM
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This is complete B.S. What the hell does he think we are, stupid?

2009 Dexter Election Promise: We won't raise taxes:

2010 Dexter's NDP raise the HST by 2%

2012 Dexter's Election Promise: We will lower taxes by 1% a year (for two years) after they get elected.

I don't care if your on the left, in the middle, or on the right. Do not re-elect these lying SOB's.

http://www.ndpripoff.ca/

Quote:
Nova Scotia to cut HST to 13 per cent by 2015
April 2, 2012 - 10:58pm BY DAVID JACKSON PROVINCIAL REPORTER

Nova Scotians can expect to see the harmonized sales tax start heading down in two years, Premier Darrell Dexter said Monday evening.

The NDP raised the tax by two percentage points to 15 per cent in 2010, breaking an election promise not to raise taxes.

Dexter said at the time it was necessary as part of the plan to get the province back on sound financial footing. He said Monday that plan is working and will lead to a one-point cut in 2014 and another one the next year that will get the tax back down to 13 per cent in 2015.
Read more here and vote NO to believing they will reduce the HST. http://thechronicleherald.ca/novasco...t-13-cent-2015

Last edited by q12; Apr 3, 2012 at 12:35 PM.
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  #26  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 4:51 PM
ScovaNotian ScovaNotian is offline
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I guess the official line goes: We needed the HST increase to buy us the time to cut spending. From what I gather the government has cut university funding by 10% over three years. Figuring in inflation brings this to something in the vicinity of 18%, and health and other education have seen cuts as well. What I would fault them for is using the opportunities that the cuts have generated for something as stupid as cutting the HST, rather than income taxes.
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  #27  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 5:10 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Not to jump into the education spending debate... but demographically speaking these kinds are growing up in newer schools with smaller class sizes, etc.

I'm from the middle of generation y and we were the most neglected... the buildings were falling apart, massive class sizes of 35+ students in some cases... behavior problems??? I saw people stabbed before. Now that they've given these issues scientific names, does that change that people have been crazy since the dawn of time?

I think kids are smarter and more educated than ever in history, but are more coddled than ever. The whole system of education is flawed because they pump all these teachers out now where there is no job growth. Futhermore, most of the teachers prior to these new generations were actually educated in some other field aside from just getting a B.Ed.

Why invest in schools when the age-sex pyramid won't swing outward again until my generation (born in the mid 80's) has children... years from now. Building them in far flung rural areas makes no sense either. Good on the province for building one in eastern shore, its actually growing there and has more younger families than most areas.

Most of the kids in school are the equivalent of gen-x to baby boomers.
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  #28  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 8:23 PM
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spaustin spaustin is offline
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Up to this point I was with them. Raise the HST and hold the line on spending to balance the budget. Our provincial finances are a real mess. Instead of just handing HST money back, I want to see an actual emphasis on debt reduction. We owe $13 billion. That's a lot for a province of less than a million people. Right now, even with rates sitting in the basement, interest eats up 10% of our revenue. $800-$900 a year. It's our largest expense behind health, education and community services (it's very close to being tied with community services). That's money that could go to other things, but it's tied up because of decades of mismanagement. Before tax reductions, we should have an aggressive strategy to reduce our debt, especially since it's not going to get easier as our population ages! To make it more palatable, maybe we could reduce income taxes by the equivalent that we save in interest each year by reducing the debt through HST revenue.
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  #29  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 9:26 PM
scooby074 scooby074 is online now
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Brilliant move Dexter.

What was the budget shortfall this budget? $211 million. Pocket change eh?

Compared to a projected surplus of $360 million in 2015 if the tax rate stays the same.

Talk about shafting the province to buy votes. Get these dummies out before they wreck our province like they done to others.

Last edited by scooby074; Apr 3, 2012 at 10:18 PM.
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  #30  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2012, 10:23 PM
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Originally Posted by spaustin View Post
That's money that could go to other things, but it's tied up because of decades of mismanagement.
Yeah, as you say, these problems go back decades. I don't necessarily think that NS has been much more reckless with spending than other provinces, but it has three big structural problems:

1) Large, not very productive rural population. This goes hand in hand with the horrible cycle of sinking money into rural areas to get rural votes.

2) Lack of population growth and immigration. Other provinces have lower debt-to-GDP ratios partly because they have "outgrown" their debt. The caveat here is that this growth isn't always sustainable.

3) Tiny scale of provincial government.

It's a bit of a pyramid scheme, but the easiest way to improve the province's bottom line would probably be to have more immigration/migration to Halifax. Unfortunately, NS has a very low immigration sponsorship quota and whenever immigration is brought up it gets derailed into a debate on how we can get people to move to Canso, which is very unlikely to happen.
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