LET'S FACE IT -- OUR SCHOOLS AREN'T WORKING 

If we can't recognize a crisis, it will be confirmed by a disaster. But a disaster has already occured and we still have not recognized it: Our schools just aren't working.

Our school drop-out rate is fatal for a country entering the communications age. Of every 500 children who make it to fifth grade, only one gets a full education. That means to you personally -- and financially -- that although 2.5 million people ( BC population, less school-children) pay (directly through property taxes or indirectly through rent) for our educational system, only 500 parents -- in the entire province -- get their money's worth! Does any other institution receive so much and return so little?

An unbelieveable 38 percent of Grade V students drop out before finishing high school. Seventy-eight percent of those who make it to high school drop out before university. Seventy-five percent of those who enter university drop out before they graduate. It gets worse. Ninety-five percent of university graduates who reach the Bachelor degree level leave before they receive a Ph.D. Of the 500,000 Grade V students who start to receive an education, only 1,000 go all the way. One in 500. That's not enough.

Is our competition doing any better? Many believe that the Japanese are producing twice the educational product at HALF THE COST PER CAPITA compared to Canada. There they go to school 5.5 days a week, an hour longer each day and attend 240 days a year compared to our 180 days. High school students receive three hours homework -real homework -- every day!

The Japanese are not satisfied with the result. Some districts are sending teachers to summer school. But the most dramatic step has been the recognition that even there the old way isn't good enough in a competitive globalized world. They have reduced student intake at teacher training insitutions by 40 percent!

The Japanese usually phase out before they reach a peak. They know we are moving from an era of a teaching environment to a learning environment. When that occurs teachers are not necessary. "Knowledge Navigators" are.

As a Niagara of information develops around the globe, new knowledge creates new "islands of information". Like early Portugese navigators who daringly adventured forth on unexplored oceans to discover new lands, our Knowledge Navigators will have to explore, locate, define and map the knowledge of tomorrow. Then they can steer students to the new sources of data. All old knowledge is already instantly available on more than four thousand data bases, in North America alone. The Knowledge Navigators will be constantly aware that now, far more frequently than in the days of the Navigator King, shoals are constantly changing as knowledge accelerates at about 100 percent every 18 months.

A critical factor, that will be tomorrow's necessity, is immediate transmission of information from the cutting edge to students. In a rapidly-changing world those at the front, who have already entered the "Land of the Time Famine", know they haven't time to drop out and become "teachers" or to train teachers. New knowledge must flow from the source to the "learners" at once. That can only happen electronically. No longer do we have the luxury of waiting for books that take eight years to get into the public education system. We have been providing books, obsolete the day they are written, to our kids to train for their future. Even the few students who receive a full education are not trained for the future. We are not even training them for the present. We are training them for the past. Our students go into "battle" carrying bows and arrows. The competition is using laser beams.

The mortality rate will be horrendous.

Unless you want kids at home until they're 30, YOU had better take more interest in your offspring. Your school tax dollar should provide more than a baby-sitting service.

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