Lost amid all blame-gaming and buck-stops-here talk this week by U.S. President Barack Obama concerning the would-be Christmas Day bomber was an important announcement by the White House on education.
The President outlined plans for a $250-million (U.S.) program to train tens of thousands of science and math teachers. He said: "Our future is on the line. The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow." Meantime, a number of U.S. states began rolling out initiatives that are part of Mr. Obama's education reform agenda that some are calling groundbreaking.
In a globalized world that puts an emphasis on creativity and innovation, education is the key to America's future prosperity, the President has said. Education is a subject that works its way into most of the speeches he makes.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It's a subject he rarely talks about. In fact, yesterday it was announced that the federal government was ceasing funding of the Canadian Council on Learning - the acclaimed independent think tank that has for the past few years been leading the call for education reform in this country.
This decision was purely political. Despite what you may hear from Ottawa, it has nothing to do with the federal government having a desire to "provide a comprehensive learning information system" it says the CCL can't provide. Whatever that's supposed to mean.
Here's the truth: Ottawa didn't like the CCL leading the call for national standards for our postsecondary system. Didn't appreciate, either, hearing the council plead for more accountability around how billions of dollars being poured into our universities are being spent. For more information about our universities in general.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had noted in various reports on postsecondary education that when it came to Canada it was unable to report figures for two-thirds of the information gathered by the other 39 countries covered in the survey. That would include basic information such as participation, enrolment and graduation numbers in our colleges. We don't even have complete information on dropout rates. "We are the laughingstock of the OECD," Paul Cappon, president of the CCL, said a year ago.
A quote that no doubt delighted the Conservatives.
But mostly, Dr. Cappon and the CCL burrowed their way under the skin of the Tories by suggesting the country was in jeopardy of falling behind our global competitors unless we developed a pan-national strategy on postsecondary education. One that included a set of standards, goals and objectives that was defined and measurable.
Like a growing number of other countries are doing.
But doing this would mean the Conservatives would have to take charge and lead the initiative. It wanted no part of it. Nor were some of the provinces thrilled with the idea either - namely Quebec and Alberta, which never had any time for the CCL. So the Tories decided to kill the council by saying to the provinces: We'll continue funding the organization if there is unanimous support to do so.
Of course, the Tories knew that would not happen, even though most of the provinces believed in the good work the CCL was doing. So that was that.
In the end, the Conservatives didn't much like the independent nature of the CCL, either. Didn't like that it couldn't control the messages the CCL was sending out that often didn't reflect well on the government. But its independence was not something the CCL was ever prepared to sell. And good for them for not putting a price on their principles.
Last May, Mr. Harper received a letter from Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD. It congratulated the government for its commitment to education through its funding of the CCL, which he went on to praise at length.
Mr. Gurria singled out the CCL's invention of the Composite Learning Index. The first of its kind, the index measures learning conditions in countries as a whole but also in individual communities. It has shown that when you make learning conditions better, you make economic and social standards better. It is now being adopted by several countries in the European Union.
"It is a pleasure to pledge my personal support to CCL in its ongoing work," Mr. Gurria wrote.
What the secretary-general must be thinking now.
The CCL has vowed to soldier on the best it can. While 95 per cent of its funding came from Ottawa, it has received some money from foundations that will allow it to pay the heating bills for a few more months. Ironically, its two biggest donors are from Germany.
What an embarrassment.