Category: Education

Gordon Porter, this country’s guru of inclusive education, is fond of saying that it’s a simple idea. “It means kids go to their neighbourhood schools with kids their own age in regular classes.” But for such a simple concept, inclusive education – I’ll call it fuller[1] inclusion – has had a very complicated history in this province. And its future could become even more difficult. I first became actively engaged with the issue in 1991 when our son started school but became aware of the movement before that. We had been living in New Brunswick in 1986 when the...

I was not planning to write about the seemingly endless dispute between the NSTU and the Liberals. For one thing, when it comes to education it can be a polarizing topic and I have too many personal and family entanglements with “the system” to stake out a passionate position on one side or the other. Furthermore, although it is a big political issue, I have no brilliant insights to offer beyond those that have already been advanced and chewed over by others. The best I can come up with on the larger political story is to say we’ll just...