Here’s why Western education is doomed

The meteoric rise of feelings-first schooling has ended academic excellence

As someone who hadn’t set foot inside a grade school for decades, I knew something was amiss when I visited my former Canadian high school for a craft fair.

“Where did all the photos on the walls of the atrium go of all the top achievers from academics and sports throughout the years?” I wondered, wanting to laugh at my early ’90s-style hairdo. Turns out they were taken down, perhaps around the same time that rainbow and native tribal flags went up beside Canada’s national one.

The high achievers that previously adorned the walls were replaced with evidence of successful collectivist cooperation. Teams seemed to matter, while individual success was boxed up and hauled away from public view. Heaven forbid their mere existence make anyone feel bad about themselves. Personally, I used to love seeing those faces. They were inspirational for someone growing up in a small town and aspiring to do great things outside of it. “We Pursue Excellence” was the school’s longtime motto. But now, on the wall, was the result of a student survey showing that 75% of students felt “uncomfortable” to even use the washroom. One might think that the first step in the pursuit of excellence would involve mastering whatever went down in the toilet stalls.

The participation trophy generation now has to have a portable safe space in the form of a bubble around them at all times. Everything is seen as a potential threat – especially standards of excellence. Which would explain why the entire province of British Columbia, on Canada’s Left Coast, ditched standardized tests in subjects such as math, physics, chemistry, and languages – which allowed for a form of ranking and comparison among all students in the entire province — in favor of just two types of tests: general literacy and numeracy.

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A sample final high school year literacy test, for example, features an excerpt from ‘The Inconvenient Indian’, suggesting that explorer Christopher Columbus’ contributions are overrated, and asks, “Which type of magazine would most likely feature this description of Columbus’s landing in the Caribbean?” The description: “And let’s not forget all the sunny weather, the sandy beaches, the azure lagoons…” The potential multiple-choice responses? “Chronicles of History,” “Business Ventures,” “Travel World,” or “Living Well.” So are they going to be interpreting Shakespeare’s classics in essays next, or not?

Another question: “Which invention would most likely have caused concern for factory workers?” Choices: the Unimate industrial robot that went to “work at General Motors replacing humans,” MIT’s Kismet emotionally intelligent robot, the Roomba that cleans your floors at home, or Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa. Oh gee, that’s a tough one! For a seven-year-old, maybe. But surely not for someone heading to university next year, one would hope.

A sample test from two years earlier in the curriculum, the numeracy assessment asks questions like, “The size of this [fish] trap would depend on the size and species of fish that people were trying to catch… Which of the following factors would be most important in designing a cone-shaped fish trap?” One of the answer choices: “the size of fish in the river.” We’re certainly a long way from the mathematical proofs that we were doing 35 years ago at around the same age. The standard seems to be more along the lines of, “Can this kid fill out one line on a tax form for their influencer gig without having a meltdown?” (Likely answer: Probably not. Because government forms are a form of colonialism, you bigot.)

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Two years ago, the same province moved away from any and all letter grades for students, up to and including about age 14. Instead of As and Ds, teachers could only assess whether the kid was ‘emerging’, ‘developing’, ‘proficient’ or ‘extending’. The rationale? Apparently they didn’t want to highlight any deficits. Guess that comes later in the real world when he or she gets trolled mercilessly for being a moron at a time when there’s a much larger price to be paid for not having learned earlier to avoid being one.

In France, the attempt to institute a similar post-knowledge educational system has seen middling results. High school math classes were ditched entirely in 2019 under President Emmanuel Macron. But the outcome was such a disaster that it was reversed for the 2023/24 school year.

This year’s French final standardized exams for high schoolers and middle schoolers, which have just taken place, saw the French media publish a bunch of instructions that were given to the test graders to dummy things down for France’s future Nobel Prize hopefuls. “The first is to not deduct points for spelling or grammar mistakes. What matters is not compliance with the spelling code, but intelligibility,” said France’s RTL.

Oh, so something like this, you mean? “Shur, whi not rite a sentins like this won, wear awl the wurdz sound rite but luk lyke they flunked owtta speling skool?” Because that fits the stated criteria. Imagine an email from that colleague when he or she gets into your workplace.

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Apparently, graders were also told not to remove all points when a student is asked to conjugate a verb – and then gets the root of the same verb that was just listed wrong. Maybe the verb they replaced whatever was right in front of their eyes with doesn’t even exist, but the ending is right. Only half the points are taken away for that.

The final philosophy exam had to explain the meaning of the word “preponderant,” because it was apparently considered too hard for kids about to head off to university, RTL reports. The media outlet also pointed out that graders of the oral exam, read from a text that the student has 20 minutes to prepare, were only to focus on the student’s performance at the end of the session, to account for nerves.

This may or may not have been read off a student’s page:

“Hai, my naym is Sam. I hav two bruthurs and wun sistur. We lyk to play soker togethur. My mum cuks gud fud and my dad lukes to wach mooviz wif us. I lyk drawin and playin vidyo gayms. Thansk for lisnin! Do I pas high skool now?”

Oui, oui! A+.

Every day seems to bring a new revelation about how the West’s Wokémon Academy is doing. In a world where feelings outrank facts and spelling is optional, it’s anyone’s guess what our ‘graduates’ will actually know and be equipped with for real life. But hey, at least their safe spaces are well-furnished.