When I entered high school, just over 60 years ago, “bright” students were directed into the academic stream, with the others destined for technical training. Perhaps I was earmarked for the academic stream because I had skipped Grade Five, even though the result was that I have gone through life without an appreciation of the explorations of Juan Pizarro. [In today’s world of the perpetually aggrieved, this attempt at humour is likely to trigger accusations that I lack sufficient empathy for the Incas – but I digress.]
My High School Streaming Experience
As far as I can recall, the main effect of my streaming into the academic side was that I took Latin instead of typing. I would be hard-pressed to point to any particular benefits of my grounding in Latin. I seem to remember a discussion in class about the Latin basis of the word restaurant. We were told that it came from the Latin “restaurare” and, therefore, meant a place once goes to get restored (refreshed). We were also advised, I think facetiously by the teacher, that the word might also be derived from the terms res and taura, and therefore meant “a bully good thing.” Tremendously helpful in today’s world, I’m sure you would agree. Not long after finishing high school, I spent my spare time one summer armed with a book on typing and an old typewriter without any printing on the keys. Acquiring keyboarding skills turned out to be one of my most useful educational experiences.
Post-Secondary Streaming
I was involved in another form of streaming when I began teaching at St. Lawrence College in 1969. Community colleges were established in response to the perceived need for more technical training and the realization that those being streamed into non-academic four year high school programs needed some post-secondary alternative to university studies. As the years passed, however, a substantial portion of our students were university graduates, who decided to obtain a college diploma as well to round out their education and become more employable.
For a long time this reciprocal arrangement did not work in reverse, with universities being very reluctant to recognize educational achievements from the upstart community colleges. One of the worst was my old alma mater, Queen’s University, which was most unreceptive when St. Lawrence graduates sought some recognition for their college courses. It gave me particular satisfaction, therefore, when I contacted Queen’s about one of my top graduates in the college’s Public Administration Program. Queen’s had offered no credits at all to this person. I asked in my most innocent voice what text book Queen’s was using in the undergraduate course in local government – knowing full well that it was “Local Government in Canada.” I then pointed out that I had written that book (along with my wife Susan), and was teaching a similar course using that book at St. Lawrence – whereupon the university conceded that some recognition might, in fact, be in order.
Removing the Rigidity of Streaming Long Overdue
As the years passed, the two solitudes of post-secondary education have become increasingly intertwined. As I wrote in the spring of 2017, some 15% of students now come to St. Lawrence with a university degree. The number of colleges granting four year degree programs has grown 200% in the past decade. This more flexible and integrated postsecondary system was first recommended half a century ago by the Wright Commission on Post-Secondary Education in Ontario, which reported at the beginning of the 1970s. We were also long overdue to remove the streaming within the high school system in Ontario, even if making this change during the upheaval of the pandemic obviously imposes an additional burden on all concerned.