Rubble from the collapsed Morandi motorway bridge is strewn along the railway line in the northern port city of Genoa in 2018.VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images
Seeing green
Re “Why we forget lessons learned from collapsed bridges, burned towns and financial crises” (Opinion, Jan. 3): This beautifully crafted opinion blames our failure to recognize and address risk to three systems: fragmentation of knowledge, absence of fully informed accountability and economic incentives that discourage corrective action.
I maintain that the last item is the main driver of the catastrophes we now face, including environmental degradation, authoritarianism and armed conflict, to name but a few.
Many of us see the dangers of continuing on our present course, but those who seek to benefit from the status quo seem set on misinforming and deluding the rest of the population, so that they enthusiastically elect or support those who have “prioritized profit over life.”
Liz Addison Toronto
Help wanted
Re “Why does Canada have such high rates of forced psychiatric hospitalizations?” (Opinion, Jan. 3): As a mother with 27 years of experience with my son who has paranoid schizophrenia, I’m glad you are highlighting psychiatry.
There are delays for assessment, diagnosis and determination. The threshold of dangerousness sadly requires demonstrating frank violence to others (not property damage alone) in order to get treatment.
After domestic violence, personal injuries and criminal charges: That’s when patients most often qualify for treatment of severe mental disorders. Paranoid people do not request treatment.
Let’s focus our statistics on the outcomes of health. Neglecting our most ill people until the very last straw means we wait until the last legal resort must be used.
Community treatment can save unnecessary public expenses with fewer 911 calls, apprehensions, hospital stays and injuries to nurses, as well as less court and jail time. But the threshold to qualify for community treatment is far too steep.
My prescription is an ounce of prevention.
Iris Murray Toronto
Crack the formula
Re “Ontario has a math emergency” (Opinion, Jan. 3): Parents would be justified in asking whether the people setting math standards are not largely to blame. Most parents understandably have no idea what criteria are in the first place.
Singapore perennially has the best mathematical outcomes for elementary students. As a former principal, I was fortunately in a position to teach and test students while drawing on this curriculum. The result: Students grasped the material and enjoyed their math lessons. The subject went from spawning anxiety for students and teachers (and parents) to becoming one of their favourites.
“Ontario has the research, the expertise and the educators to lead. What remains is the will to act.” Call me skeptical: My biggest challenge in implementing my program was identifying and training teachers who were competent to teach the Singaporean way.
I found that few elementary teachers have a solid grasp of much more than the fundamentals they try to teach.
Adam de Pencier Toronto
My colleague is justified in arguing for the importance of clear, structured teaching in the acquisition of mathematical knowledge, and perhaps right in suggesting that educators overestimate children’s ability to discover principles on their own. But I find she is wrong in attributing the importance of systematic instruction to advances in cognitive science.
The principles emphasized are commonly attributed to John Locke in the 18th century and 1950s learning theory. Cognitive science, beginning with Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner along with a generation of researchers, offered a corrective by demonstrating that learning depends critically on what the learner already knows, believes, expects or wrongly assumes.
Finding and forging a link between a learner’s prior beliefs and a school lesson is the central task of a teacher. If successful, the result is the “uptake” of new information into an already established knowledge system; the learner will understand and not only learn.
David Olson Professor emeritus, applied psychology and human development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
I strongly agree that the problem with poor math achievement is not a reflection of student potential, but a result of misdirected “discovery-based” math instruction.
It should be clear that when only half of students are meeting provincial standards, with the remainder being unsure and disengaged, something needs to change. We shouldn’t be relying on the support of parents and private tutors to teach math skills. This widens the inequity for families unable to provide remediation.
We should change the basic way math is taught: away from failing “discovery math” to the more proven, evidence-based, step-by-step direct instruction used in other countries. We should bring back the love, excitement and success of math achievement, crucial in this high-tech age.
Rose Robertson Special education consultant, Toronto District School Board (retired)
Read all about it
Re “The enduring power of a good book” (Editorial, Jan. 3): I am reminded of an old saying: “Those who don’t read have no advantage over those who can’t.”
Serving as perhaps one of history’s most powerful and infamous non-readers: Donald Trump. Then there was another president, John F. Kennedy, who was widely known to be as voracious of books as Mr. Trump is of fast food.
Sometimes, being stridently incurious and historically ignorant because of it can cost the entire world. While the more common consequences of ignorance are much smaller, books and actually reading them serve to effectively immunize people against the worst of them.
Charlie Sager Ottawa
Book reading is a mode of reasoning that society should promote above many other skills. It is not a pastime, it is a training ground.
According to Marshall McLuhan, “Print is the technology of individualism.” So a book is not just a container of ideas: Reading is a technology that shapes the mind. When things fall apart, reading teaches us how to put them back together – inside ourselves first.
A book asks for sequence, patience and silence. In return, it builds linear thought, private judgment and independence. Other media surround us, but a book addresses us one by one. The medium itself disciplines perception and conception.
To give someone a book is to give them a tool for self-identifying education, a portable world, a rehearsal space for reality. In an age of constant signals, reading remains an act of freedom.
Keep on reading in the free world.
Tony D’Andrea Toronto
I’ve never been any good at buying presents, but this year I chose to give books that were among my favourite recent reads to my adult daughters and their partners.
My choices included a novel, short story collection, non-fiction history and memoir. I wrote a short message in each book explaining why I enjoyed it, and why I thought the recipient would as well.
I hoped each choice would tell each person why I loved them. So begins the first chapter in my new Christmas tradition.
Glen Schaefer North Vancouver
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com