Testing, testing
Re B.C., Not The Union, Should Run Education (Jan. 27):
We educate children for the future they will inherit. Standardized tests of language and literacy test the literacies of a half-century ago, when grammatical knowledge and mastery of spelling and punctuation marked the educated person.
Contemporary literacies profoundly invalidate such tests. Literacy now requires mastery over digital tools for collaborative, dynamic, multimodal communication. Continuing to test children’s formal spelling using handwriting is a speck on the team-oriented strategizing and programming abilities they will need to succeed.
Standardized tests assume that each student has learned exactly the same thing. When we can customize education to reach all students and maximize the potential of each, insisting that each student learn the same thing is wasteful of precious human resources.
Please suggest to the aging politicians who support standardized tests to collaborate electronically with the children of today, who might be able to give them a few pointers on how people communicate in this century. Mind you, they might not all pass.
Heather Lotherington, York University, Toronto
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A modest proposal
Re Kuwaiti Patients, Canadian Care (Jan. 26): Oh my God, treating a foreign national in a Canadian hospital might increase waiting lists! Rubbish.
We could do this today, not just for foreigners but also for Canadians of independent means or those supported by existing health insurance or disability plans (they already pay for our glasses and our physiotherapy, why not our hernias?) who might also benefit, with zero impact on current care access.
Here’s how: Just about every Canadian hospital has closed beds that our budgets won’t let us operate. Let’s open those beds and put the foreign nationals in them!
Operate them under a budgetary envelope distinct from the host hospital, either by leasing them out to an independent entity or through a new and independent corporation. Dollars for care/drugs/surgery/staffing would all be separate from the hospital budget. Profits would flow into the host hospital’s global budget, not to any targeted program. Limit the bed volume to those beds that are closed at startup of these programs.
Drew Bednar, MD, Hamilton
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Mental health
The rise in the female prisoner population and the severity of the mental health issues they are dealing with should not come as a surprise (Incarcerated, In Pain – Jan. 27). But this is only part of the story. For far too many years, we have turned our backs on our youth.
Without a significant investment in early intervention and prevention programs, they have made an alarming smooth transition from young offender to adult criminal without being offered resources and support to help them turn their lives around.
Peter Moore, executive director, Kinark Child and Family Services, Markham, Ont.
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The Globe’s articles and the letters on this subject correctly challenge the policy of building prisons and not focusing on treatment needs of people living with mental illness.
We also need to explode the myth that deinstitutionalization has created the problem. Dr. David Wright’s research shows that even in Victorian times, 40 to 60 per cent of asylum patients were admitted for six months or less.
Only three in 10 people living with mental illness receive any care at all, which suggests that universal health care is a myth for people with mental health and addiction problems.
Steve Lurie, executive director, Canadian Mental Health Association, Toronto branch
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Vulnerable seniors
The new Institute for Research on Public Policy study regarding the quality of residential seniors care in publicly funded private facilities is outdated and relies too much on research from the United States (For-Profit Facilities Leave Seniors Vulnerable – Jan. 24).
Most of the study is based on reports that are five to 10 years old. Seniors care has changed a lot since then.
