Employment!

It looks like starting January 5th, I'll be employed again. I've signed on to be a temp administrative assistant for the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society. It'll be your typical 9-5 schedule, but the office is downtown on University, so at least I'm right where all the action is.

It's a temp job with no preset end date. It might be a month, it might take me all the way up to Pennsic, depending on how things go. I'm working through (and directly getting paid by) Quantum. The pay is roughly equivalent to what I was making at Softitler, so at least I know how to prepare my budget.

Yay employment!

Open letter to the Montreal Gazette

It's been a while since I did my "Response to Newspaper Stupidity" posts. But today I wrote a letter to the Gazette in response to this opinion piece in today's paper. Here it is:

I disagree with Harry Sterling's assessment of Canadian students. ("Educating our kids: We need to aim higher," Gazette, A27, December 29) Where Mr. Sterling decries our educational system, I'd like us to look a little deeper at the results.

First, Canada ranked in the top 10 in all three categories of the International Student Assessment. Fifth in the world for reading! I think this is cause for celebration, not hand-wringing!

Second, if the ISA test is anything like the SAT or other standardized tests, it assesses students' ability to take tests, and very little else. It doesn't measure their creativity, team-work, innovation, or real-world problem solving abilities. It may or may not have any correlation with how well these students will do in the workplace.

Third, what is the cost of the Asian nations' success? I've heard that students are forced to do schoolwork and homework to the exclusion of almost everything else. I'd rather my child have a chance to play and enjoy being young, even if that means that Canada is "only" seventh in the world.

Canada should, of course, continue to improve its school systems. It should expect the best from its students. But I would look deeper into the ISA's results before we start bemoaning the state of education in Canada.