What is School For?

On Monday, I had the opportunity to once again be a panelist on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin. I love doing Steve's show because he is one of the best panel moderators in the business, and the long format of the show allows for a good exploration of the issues among the panelists. This show was the beginning of TVO's Growing Minds Week, an examination of issues surrounding public education, appropriate for the beginning of the new school year. It asked the question, "Getting along or getting the right job, creating critical thinkers or creating citizens ... what is the purpose of a K-12 education?," and had Ben Dachis (C.D. Howe Institute), Donna Dasko (Environics Research), Usha George (Dean of Ryerson's Faculty of Community Services), Veronica Lacey (President, The Learning Partnership), Joel Westheimer (Professor of Education at University of Ottawa), and moi. Steve said afterwards that he knows it's been a good show if he's not tired at the end, that the guests have taken the topic and run with it. Monday evening, he was full of energy after the show, and I agree, it was a lively, stimulating and thought-provoking conversation among all of us.



Here's a link to a downloadable video of the show (it's a 112MB .mp4).

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