Robert Paterson's List: Education Outcomes

Results from nationwide testing of 13-year-olds released Tuesday placed P.E.I. students at or near the bottom in every category.
Education Minister Gerard Greenan says he was not surprised by the results.Education Minister Gerard Greenan says he was not surprised by the results. (CBC)

Last spring, students were selected randomly from a variety of schools across the country to test their abilities in reading, math and science. The country's education ministers sponsored the tests to see how their education systems compared.

P.E.I.'s Grade 9 students ranked only above New Brunswick students for science literacy in recent international testing.

The tests, known as the PISA tests, are taken by students in 57 countries. The two-hour tests were written by more than 1,500 students in 26 P.E.I. schools. Students were asked to recognize certain scientific terms and outline scientific methods of investigation.

Sixteen per cent of P.E.I. students scored so low on the test that the report says it's likely they will have great difficulty if they want to continue their science studies.

Shay demonstrates that social cohesion is, in the language of military sociology, a strength multiplier: “the military strengthening and psychologically protective effect of stable, socially cohesive units is neither scientifically speculative, ambiguous, nor uncertain.” When we destroy social cohesion—in a university setting, by repeatedly moving students from one building to the next, by switching their advisers year after year or term after term, by depriving them of traditions and domestic stability, by preventing them from getting to know their neighbors well—we destroy the ability to face difficult challenges and to accomplish extraordinary things. The academic consequences are dropouts, poor performance, vandalism, and disaffection. (And the academic cure—the establishment of decentralized residential college systems with high levels of social cohesion—has as its military counterpart the creation of regimental systems within armies, an approach often recommended by experts on military organization.)

People in deeply stressful situations can often make it through successfully, Shay reports, as long as they belong to socially cohesive groups and as long as those with authority over them (who are supposed to be “on their side”) don’t betray themis—the ancient concept of justice that Shay translates as “what’s right.” The transformation wrought in the minds of veterans who have experienced a betrayal of “what’s right” by their superiors is identical to the sad transformation I have seen in students who have been victimized by broken university bureaucracies: “[their] worldview is based on an expectancy of exploitation for other people’s advancement.”