News & Media

by David Colman, original article here

I am an American who has lived and worked in Montreal for the past 8 years. I am the Director of The Neuro, where about 1100 highly educated, professional ‘Quebecers’, native and new from 60 countries, work together every day in a technologically demanding, consummately skilled environment. In my own laboratory, scientists from Argentina, China, Morocco, Australia, India, Brasil and Tunisia have started new lives here. In my office, three out of five Americans have or are pursuing dual citizenship.

Many of my colleagues are here because Quebec has in the recent past made a substantial effort to attract highly skilled professionals from around the globe. Real leaders in Quebec understand that medicine, science and high technology are strong economic engines. Quebec must reaffirm and expand efforts to recruit internationally and to keep these valuable professionals, their families and children here.

We are the new Quebecers. If we are going to be competitive in the world of the future and thrive economically, skilled scientists, engineers, physicians, healthcare workers, and other professionals must be recruited and offered a real stake in Quebec’s future. This course will build in Quebec a strong, new, vibrant and creative young population, ready to shape her future as a world leader.

But where are the “new” young native Quebecers, who are now attending or are recent graduates of our public schools and colleges? Are they being educated to become the scientists, engineers, mathematicians and technologists of the future? I think we can do much better.

I return often to the States; my family has a farm on the coast of Maine where we spend part of the summer. It sits on the top of a hill on a spectacular island that has not changed very much since the 1950’s. In winter, the island population is under 2000; in the summer months, with the “summer people” settled in, the population doubles. The high school on the island has about 45 students per class, many of whom after graduation (but not all graduate) will follow the life path that their parents followed before them – the boys fish for lobsters, haddock and halibut in the warm months, and then do construction work in the winter, if work can be found. The girls marry young, have kids, tend to family, and work in small local businesses – as waitresses, clerks, receptionists.

Perhaps because the future plans of the high school seniors do not generally include a four-year college, and academic ambition levels are low, the school does not perform well in standardized tests administered by the Maine State Board of Education. In fact, this local high school is one of the worst performers in Maine on these tests.

Now, you may say that academic apathy in high school is an unusual situation in North America, but it is not so at all. The problem is not limited to Maine; it extends across the United States, and well into Canada. Quebec, too. We have the same problem.

I had a particularly enlightening conversation with a ninth-grade science teacher in Quebec recently. We were discussing the upcoming Science Fair, and I asked if any student was preparing a Wilson Cloud Chamber as an entry. The teacher looked puzzled and asked me what that was. I was truly surprised at his ignorance; the Chamber is a simple device for “seeing” radioactive particles as they speed through a cloud created inside a glass box. It was invented by Charles Wilson who, in 1927, won the Nobel Prize for it. His interest in understanding clouds stemmed from when, as a child, he would climb to the top of a hillside in his native Scotland and watch the clouds turn color at sunset. Any kid can now put a Cloud Chamber together, with a small glass aquarium, a block of dry ice, a flashlight and some drugstore alcohol. But they have to be made aware that such a thing exists, and that it allows you to “see” radioactive particles as they pass through the chamber. All science teachers should know about the Wilson Cloud Chamber.

This problem – the plummeting failure of standardized school curricula, especially for boys, and most especially in science and math, has several sources. It is a problem that is the subject of numerous commission reports, newspaper analyses, and broad policy statements. The recommended changes will take time and require new commitments, and extensive re-direction of resources. But there are as I see it some direct and obvious corrective measures, and we need no elaborate solutions to start correcting the problem.

First, science and math teachers should have a sophisticated level of education in those disciplines that they are teaching. They should be treated and educated as “specialists” in their fields, and not “generalists” who can teach music, art, math, science, or history depending on need. Teachers who need remedial education in math or science should be given free access to their local university courses. And teachers in our junior and high schools should be paid very well. Let’s attract the best and brightest into this profession.

Second, community experts – from business, universities, farming, industry, government - should be encouraged to volunteer as mentors in every school. This is key to sparking interest in unusual and rewarding careers in our young people. Let us help them stay curious!

A case in point – students from that little high school in Maine – because of extracurricular mentoring - became chess champions in US competitions, and received finalist awards for wind turbine design, both directly due to two experts who took the time to engage and stimulate the students.

For Quebec, there is the additional problem of the language issue. Unfortunately, the effective exclusion of English from the early public school curriculum has the unintended effect of limiting student acquisition of science and math. This is because the current global language for these disciplines is English (20th and 21st centuries), as in the past it has been Arabic (8th-15th centuries), French or German (17th, 18th and 19th centuries). Who knows? In some future, the language of math and science may be Hindi or Mandarin, but right now, it is English. To deny our Quebec youth the single most important tool to access the best science and math thinking in the world puts Quebec at a disadvantage in the extreme. We end up well behind the hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese students who in their public junior schools are required to achieve mastery of English. This is good economic policy?

These are not difficult changes to implement; we just need the will and commitment to do so.