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Saskatchewan Hansard

But again thank you to you, to legislative staff, to staff that
enable us to have this opportunity to put democracy in action
and really, opportunity to put this speech forward. So thank you
very much, Mr. Speaker.
The Speaker: — I recognize the Minister of Education.
Hon. Ms. Eyre: — Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Throne
Speech sets out an ambitious vision for the upcoming session.
Its theme, thank goodness where I am is Saskatchewan,
resonates with us all. Its broad, deep content is driven and
inspired by our Premier, whose last session this sadly is.
I thought I would go into some of the content and context of the
Throne Speech as it relates to education, being a bit biased that
way. For one, invoking the notwithstanding clause, the status
quo will be protected to ensure that non-Catholic students can
continue to access Catholic schools and that our funding model
takes into account the number of students in a division, not their
religious affiliation, which surely makes sense in 2017.
One can imagine the upheaval if as of June 30 next year,
students and teachers were forced to upheave their lives by the
fall. Friends separated, staff reallocated, parents completely
unsure of their children’s short-term future.
The interim Leader of the Opposition seems perfectly okay with
that, despite the former interim leader’s gracious support of the
notwithstanding clause in this case. Last week she said, we need
to let the appeal happen first, before falling back on that old
metaphor about using all the tools in the tool box. Why? Why
court such uncertainty? The problem is that the appeal, which is
also ongoing, will take 6 to 18 months. So there’s a very good
chance that any decision delivered beyond June 30 next year,
when the original decision was set to come into force, would
result in non-Catholic students being forced out of the Catholic
system. Full stop.
I suppose we can surmise where the interim leader’s loyalties
lie.
Meanwhile in the areas of curriculum development, Mr.
Speaker, in math we know that at least one-quarter of Canadian
children, which of course includes Saskatchewan children, are
now relying on private tutors or learning centres outside school
to get the basics. So parents who can afford it are looking
outside the system because students aren’t getting the support
they need in school, and that’s largely of course for math
reinforcement.
We don’t have cross-provincial numeracy assessment here as
other provinces do such as Ontario. And it was through such
assessments that Ontario recently came to terms with the fact
that only half of its grade 6 students met the provincial standard
for math, whereupon Premier Wynne quickly announced some
changes. We, on the other hand, have to rely on national and
international testing to see where we’re at and our scores in
recent PISA [programme for international student assessment]
tests, as we all know, were disappointingly low.
We will begin to set things right. Math reinforcement and
supports in school will be expanded and we will look first, of
course, at what is working right here. There are teachers already

November 1, 2017

accomplishing very good things, and we can’t wait to talk to
them.
We also believe that every student having access to a textbook,
which believe it or not currently varies widely across divisions,
would be a good practical step. Students could take it home if
they wanted to study, which would help them and their parents,
in some cases, get a sense of the overall context of the
curriculum. Call it an additional resource.
We will also look at what other jurisdictions are doing, best
practices in other provinces of course, but international models
as well. The French, for example, are top leaders in math partly
because elementary and high school students are exposed to
continual reinforcement and review. The Mastering Maths
model, which the UK [United Kingdom] has recently adopted,
is also reinforcement- and workbook-based.
I was interested to read the comments by the president of the
Mathematics Teachers’ Society last week responding to the
Throne Speech. She said she rejected common sense models,
saying the traditional way of teaching is successful for only a
certain portion of the population, although she failed to
elaborate on what works for everyone else or even whether the
current way and for whom . . . [inaudible] . . . the current
system is really working.
It was interesting too that she admonished parents not to use
flash cards to drill equations with their kids but instead to treat
math as a conversation about numbers, values, and counting,
which is one thing at pre-levels, Mr. Speaker, quite another
when you get into the vagaries of geo-trig or algebra or, as my
son is doing right now, long, long lists of dividing fractions
which the teacher assigns. That’s where the so-called
conversation gets trickier. And if we’re going to encourage our
children to go into STEM [science, technology, engineering,
and math] subjects, which we want to instil in them, we want to
instil that math of course can be fun but it also requires a lot of
long lists and a lot of reinforcement.
As a U of S [University of Saskatchewan] physics prof once
said to me, there has to be some rote in math so you can call up
numbers and patterns instantly in your head. That’s how it
works. He also said, you can dream about being, let’s say, an
astronaut as long as you realize you’ll have to master physics,
and physics isn’t very abstract or quantum physics — a little
less conversation, more concrete.
On computer coding, Mr. Speaker, BC [British Columbia],
Ireland, the UK, Finland are doing it. We too must take our
place and prepare students for the new tech economy. There
will be challenges particularly because, as things stand, there
are only 70 teachers across the province qualified to teach
computer science 20 and 30. This is partly down to the fact that
the colleges of education, which haven’t made specialized
computational methods part of their teacher curriculum until
now . . . Still, the will and the engagement are there, as it is out
in the tech field. I understand there’s a committed group of
teachers and experts who are passionate about this and raring to
go. So we will get there.
On French, Mr. Speaker, back in the summer I met with
Quebec’s minister for intergovernmental affairs and la

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Francophonie, Jean-Marc Fournier. We discussed the challenge
that school divisions face in non-francophone provinces
attracting and retaining French teachers from francophone
provinces. There are no two ways about it; we face a shortage.
A shortage of high-quality French teachers who know the
difference from between “tu as simplifié” with an e accent and
“il faut simplifier” with an -er. Teachers who teach students
articles because French doesn’t have a “the.” It’s “le” or “la.”
And grammar, fundamentally communicating in French,
depends on knowing that.

years ago French revolutionaries called their movement
Citizenship, or that later Maoists were very partial to school
children singing indoctrination songs, or that a key tenet of
cultural bolshevism was prominently displaying ideological
slogans in schools, how do you know what rights,
responsibility, and respect are, which are currently being called
the new three Rs by the way, especially when they’re
demanded, being demanded, right here, right now as
“intentional, explicit mandating.” How can you analyze them in
their fullest, most critical context?

This year is Canada 150, a great symbol, finally, of bilingualism
in this country because French has become cool. And across the
country and here in Saskatchewan, parents are enrolling their
children in French immersion programs in growing numbers.
And we think there is more we could do as a province to reduce
the hoops that new teachers who come here have to go through
to get right into the classroom to teach our students, and more
provinces could do to break down administrative barriers,
whether for young entrepreneurs or teachers, to come closer
together. Because we, for one, would love it if young Quebecers
could come here and teach here and fall in love and start a
family and teach our children, strengthening the francophone
community right here in Saskatchewan.

My grade 8 son brought a homework sheet home the other day
— they’re always sheets — in which he was asked to outline
nothing less than his vision of his collective past, his country,
and his world. As background, however, he’d copied from the
board the following facts which were presented as fact: that
European and European settlers were colonialists, pillagers of
the land who knew only buying and selling and didn’t respect
mother earth. He asked me if it was okay if he could write that
he
associated
with
his
pioneer
greatand
great-great-grandparents because no one was writing down their
vision of the world. And I said yes, of course, and that after all,
they had known poverty in Norway or Ukraine, or war in
Germany, that they had come here and tilled the land that
produced food for everybody and loved their families and tried
to create whole, stable communities in this province, and had
loved it here.

We have arrived at an important crossroads in education. And
when it comes to a broader discussion about curriculum, and
that is our intention in the coming months, I would submit that
there has come to be at once too much wholesale infusion into
the curriculum, and at the same time, too many attempts to
mandate material into it both from the inside and by outside
groups.
The intention is always good to provide resources to teachers,
websites, professional development, access to material on this
issue or that issue. But what has ended up happening, to my
mind, is that the broader curriculum has become watered down.
Teachers, it seems, are being put upon to infuse certain material
into every subject area, and students are becoming guinea pigs
in some cases for whatever is being tried out by the system.
In an October 30 column in The Globe and Mail, Debra Soh,
who holds a Ph.D. [Doctor of Philosophy] in neuroscience at
York University, said:

My two grandmothers went off to school speaking only
Norwegian and Ukrainian respectively, to one-room
schoolhouses. The amazing patchwork of supports we know
today would have been completely unknown to them. And yet
one of my grannies became a business owner, what’s known
today as a female entrepreneur. The other was brilliant in math.
And we all know the studies. In many, seniors perform better in
math than our young people do.
So where do we go from here, Mr. Speaker? I know what they
would say about this Throne Speech, its vision, and the vision
of our Premier. They would say thank goodness where I am is
Saskatchewan. What our families came for and came here for
led to a vision like this, which is why I will not be supporting
the amendment, Mr. Speaker, and will be supporting the
motion. Thank you.

Most of us would agree that it’s inappropriate to use
children as pawns in order to fulfill . . . ideas [by adults] of
what the world should look like, both in the
implementation of policy and criticism of it.

The Speaker: — I recognize the member from Regina
Rosemont.

It might be preferable to go the other way around, to start from
broad bases of classical education — history, geography, basic
grammar and writing skills — and then cautiously perhaps
infuse from there. Because bottom line, you’re not going to be
able to change the world on any social issue if you can’t write
properly. If you don’t know how to use a possessive, or can’t
identify a preposition, or the famous ones — mix up who and
whom; two, too, and to; effect and affect — someone is going
to call your bluff.

Mr. Wotherspoon: — Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my honour
to enter into the Throne Speech again here this year. And I do
so through the lens of the people I serve, the good people of
Regina Rosemont, as I look to this Throne Speech that’s put
before us, and I thank them for the privilege of serving them
and being their voice in this Assembly.

Or for that matter, Mr. Speaker, if you don’t know what
happened in 1789 or 1066 or 1917 . . . Because history shows
us patterns. It shows us context. And if you don’t know that 230

[15:15]

I also want to recognize, just as many members have, family
and the role of family in our role and in serving. And in my
case, I want to say hello and thanks and I love you to Stephanie,
a grade 6 school teacher here in Regina, who I think might have
something to say about the speech she just heard from the
Education minister. I think some of her colleagues might have a