Editor:
Re: Educational oversight, Aug. 31 letters.
Is the education our children are receiving more superior in the regular classroom than in the portables?
I understand the challenges we have in our world today, but the school room shouldn’t be one.
Let me start with this: Our son went to White Rock Christian Academy from kindergarten to Grade 6. Yes, this is a private school. We felt it important to give him the best we could for his education and it was worth every thousands of dollars we had to pay out of pocket to have him there, unlike the public school system.
Five of our son’s six years in that school were spent in a portable. The reason we chose for him to be there was the school system shared the same values that we did in our home. We wanted him to be surrounded by like-minded families that shared those same values.
The education he received was on par to all the quality of education that the public schools offered, and we know he would have done well in both.
It is not the building that teaches our children, it is the values they learn at home. It is how you send them off to school that determines how they will learn and what they will receive, whether in a classroom or a portable.
The education system is not there to teach our children to respect each other, to have manners, to learn how to communicate or how to work hard for what they want. Those lessons are reserved for us, their parents, to teach, so that teachers can teach them the curriculum.
In 2008, we had the privilege to go to Guatemala and see the school that my mom and I helped to build for a village that had nothing. For years, their children had to be taught under a palapa hut with tree stumps as their desks. The one thing that brought tears to my eyes was the gratefulness. Although they had nothing – in our standards – they had each other and a strong sense of community. It takes a village to raise our children, so let’s live in gratefulness that we have an education system that takes care of our children in so many ways.
If we do our part in the home, the school system has a better chance to teach them their education – regardless if they are in a portable or a classroom.
Tracey Ellis, White Rock
• • •
We don’t send kids to school so they can take a class in a box on the side of the school out in the playground.
Some schools are old; they have asbestos; and they all stink like an institution. Even though they have janitors, the kids eat at their classroom desks. Some people eat at a kitchen table and wipe it down when they’re done; the desk might get wiped down once in a blue moon.
Things aren’t really clean at a school. A lot of people go through those doors every day. To send them out into a box in the backyard – with inadequate heat,ventilation and bathroom facilities – doesn’t make sense.
Sure, some Third World countries have school out on the forest floor, but this is Canada. We pay taxes so we can have hopefully have the best schools and the best education in the world, so everyone can prosper.
If you feel good about where you’re going and where you’re living, it helps in future life skills. Build the schools.
Stano Steer, Surrey
