Hikado

Monday, December 18, 2006

by FRANK PEEBLES Citizen staff

High school dropouts in Ontario run the risk of losing their driver's licence, thanks to a new law there, but education authorities in B.C. say such a plan might actually hurt a student's future, rather than help it.

"I think it demonstrates how concerned people are about trying to improve graduation rates," said B.C. Minister of Education Shirley Bond. "This is a pretty interesting way to 'incentivize' kids to stay in school. Whether it will work or not, we will watch and see, but it demonstrates that passionate concern. It is not something we are contemplating here."

Bond said First Nations students are the most demonstrative group that does not see public school through to completion. Only 48 per cent of aboriginal British Columbians get their diploma in the customary time frame. She said this speaks not to a truancy problem but of a systemic problem that would only be exacerbated by punishments.

School District 57 has a 20 per cent aboriginal student population and is a leader in provincial efforts to improve scholastic results for First Nations children, with an aboriginal education specialist on district staff and an aboriginal education board working in tandem with the mainstream trustees.

SD57 school board chair Lyn Hall said the plan in Ontario was nothing short of punitive.

"It's not going to work here. We've never discussed any kind of plan like that and I can't see why we would," he said. "We use school-driven discipline here, we have no truancy court, and I think we do well within the system we have now. I'm not sure what they're trying to achieve. For me it doesn't send the right message."

Hall said such measures could heap government-sanctioned injury on students already struggling for connection to regular society.

Prince George District Teachers' Association president Karen MacKay agreed, from the classroom perspective.

"A child decides to drop out of high school for many reasons," MacKay said. "If someone drops out to get a job to support their family, is it going to help them if you also take their driver's licence away so they can't earn a living either? There are all kinds of reasons kids drop out. It has a lot to do with population, demographics, socioeconomic conditions, and nothing we really should be punishing them for."

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said, upon passing of the new law last week, "It is simply saying to our young people that it's no longer acceptable in a knowledge-based economy for you to drop out at the age of 16 and hang around the shopping mall."

Bond said that B.C. does have the luxury of having dropout rates better than the crisis they are in other North American jurisdictions, and she does not know the dynamics of the Ontario situation.

"Some of the students we are trying to reach have a number of issues and challenges and using driver's licences like this, I don't think is the answer for them," she said. "I think you have to look at the system, ask questions about the system, rather than imposing something on students. But...but...I am going to watch with interest."