Out Of School Youth In Ontario

“I am going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry.” — Edward B., a student at Onion Lake School (1923) "[I]f I were appointed by the Dominion Government for the express purpose of spreading tuberculosis, there is nothing finer in existance that the average Indian residential school.” — N. Walker, Indian Affairs Superintendent (1948) For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse. Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system. He begins by tracing the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trail of internal memoranda, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.

"What year are you preparing your students for? 1973? 1995? Can you honestly say that your school's curriculum and the program you use are preparing your students for 2015 or 2020? Are you even preparing them for today?" With those provocative questions, author and educator Heidi Hayes Jacobs launches a powerful case for overhauling, updating, and injecting life into the K-12 curriculum. Sharing her expertise as a world-renowned curriculum designer and calling upon the collective wisdom of 10 education thought leaders, Jacobs provides insight and inspiration in the following key areas: * Content and assessment: How to identify what to keep, what to cut, and what to create, and where portfolios and other new kinds of assessment fit into the picture. * Program structures: How to improve our use of time and space and groupings of students and staff. * Technology: How it's transforming teaching, and how to take advantage of students' natural facility with technology. * Media literacy: The essential issues to address, and the best resources for helping students become informed users of multiple forms of media. * Globalization: What steps to take to help students gain a global perspective. * Sustainability: How to instill enduring values and beliefs that will lead to healthier local, national, and global communities. * Habits of mind: The thinking habits that students, teachers, and administrators need to develop and practice to succeed in school, work, and life. The answers to these questions and many more make Curriculum 21 the ideal guide for transforming our schools into what they must become: learning organizations that match the times in which we live.

Based on an extensive and collaborative research effort, this book features findings from particular ethno-racial groups in Ontario, highlighting family life, social relations, citizenship, education, and employment. It also includes comparisons of immigrant and refugee youth from different countries of origin and includes an overview of current research on immigrant youth settlement, as well as an integrated summary of the research findings and perspectives for future investigation.

Using a sample of 324 young adults in four urban centres who left high school in the mid-1980s as well as interviews with representative parents, former teachers, and employers, the authors identify factors that ease transition from school to. These include level of education, social class, gender, ethnicity, aspirations of parents, help from role models, participation in co-op education, and most important of all, self-motivation. The authors describe a range of youth profiles -- uncommitted, non-careerists, conservatives, and innovators -- that will help youth, parents, and educators identify present development and how to improve performance. Emphasizing the importance of co-operative education, the authors suggest that closer relations between school and work, such as exist in the United Kingdom and Sweden, facilitate transition into the labour market. On Their Own will guide parents, youth, educators, trustees, employers, and ministries of education and training to prepare a new generation of productive, resilient workers and managers for success in the information age.