Licensed under CC by kelp1966

A lot of ink has been spilled this year about the cancellation, diminution, or otherwise politically correct modifications of Christmas celebrations at Canadian schools.

Reactions among students have been mixed, and some particularly outrageous comments have been making their rounds through the social networks, some leading to (probably well deserved) suspensions.

What seems lost in all the talk among parents, teachers, principals, and school board directors is what the kids really want.

I don't know how much things have changed, but when I was growing up attending Canadian elementary schools, I always looked forward to Christmas celebrations, with the trees and lights, the gift exchanges and the santa hats, and especially the Christmas carols.

Being a twelve-year-old, singing "O Christmas Tree" in front of a crowd of overanxious parents might have been temporarily embarrassing, but it was certainly fun - and a useful distraction from the usual boring stuff that happens in class.

I am not a Christian, and I don't "celebrate" Christmas in the sense that I do not go to church and I do not believe in the miracle of the birth of Jesus (that's what Christmas is supposed to be celebrating, right?). I have never been a Christian - I was born and raised an atheist (at best areligious) - and yet, I celebrate Christmas as a holiday and it bothers me not one bit.

All the talk about religious inclusion and diversity has obscured the fact that Christmas, for most people (especially kids), has never been about religion. Sure, the name might evoke religious metaphors, but Christmas itself is only about as religious as Santa Claus, reindeer, and Christmas trees. Christmas is as commercial and secular a holiday as any other - when is the last time you saw Christmas decorations in public actually celebrating the birth of Christ?

I celebrate Christmas as a joyful time of stress-free relaxation in the dead of winter; I celebrate it as a time to gather with friends and family, and to catch up with old acquaintances; I celebrate it as the end of exams (hurray!); and I celebrate it because it is a holiday for everyone in Canada. Everyone gets time off, no matter your religion (or lack thereof) - so why by picky about the details?

So let the kids be kids, and celebrate all the holidays they want - but don't take away Christmas from the kids just because the adults are wrestling among themselves.

I, for one, welcome our Christmas-y overlords - Santa Claus with his elves and reindeer, giant Christmas trees on streets and shopping centres,  candy canes, and bright lights - so Merry Christmas (in the secular sense) and a Happy New Year (now, is that also a secular holiday?)!

What follows is a story I have told only to a few of my closest friends (and probably not in its entirety), because of its complexity, personal nature, and my own confusion. It’s taken me a long time to formulate this into a coherent message to share. I think it is worth reading for anyone who is considering a career in (or at least an academic foray into) the field of Engineering.  I apologize in advance for the length, as this may read more like a journal than an essay. I hope, though, that you will appreciate the sentiment behind the words.

—–

High School Blues

It was the final year of high school. Some say it’s the best year of their life – not yet an adult, but old enough to do all the cool things you never could when you were ‘just a kid’.  I, however, spent most of this year in confusion and stress. Up to this point, I had been fairly academically accomplished. I’d been regularly getting those revered 90’s in all of my classes. I’d written all the toughest math contests and placed well. I’d just placed in the top 60 in the Canadian Computing Competition. Actually, I was really bored by school. It provided no challenge, and it gave me no direction.

I was stressed because I needed to make a choice that I had been avoiding for years. What is it that I want to do? I sought advice from friends, teachers, family, and anyone else who would listen. None of it helped, and all of it was contradictory. My mom wanted me to do Biology; my dad was indifferent; my friends thought I made a great programmer; other friends thought I should take a stab at business; my teachers suggested Engineering.

The last of those seemed intriguing. Engineering? What on Earth was Engineering? It intrigued me because it seemed so foreign. What do Engineers do? Why should I have anything to do with them?

Engineering, according to my high school teachers, was the place where the smartest people gathered. All the students who had the best math grades and the best science grades and some desire to get a real job went into Engineering. This is, of course, a terribly short-sighted view of the diverse profession.

I had no particular desire to save the world, or to invent the wheel. I just took the suggestion because it seemed like a good fit. Math grades? Check. Science grades? Check. And then I was off. But like all things I do, I didn’t start with the easiest of paths. I chose the most difficult. I entered the vaunted Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto, upon the suggestion of my Calculus teacher.

Engineering Science – A Proving Ground

The Engineering Science program is no cakewalk. When you hear the oft-repeated ‘horror’ story of a professor telling you to look to your classmates to your left and right, and saying that only one of you will make it through four years in the program, there is no doubt in my mind that such a story could only be true here. It is an unadvertised fact that first year Engineering (and especially Engineering Science) at the University of Toronto is tougher than all other Canadian undergraduate programs, bar none. There is nowhere else where the material will be as challenging, the courses more packed, and the workload more demanding, than here. It’s even been said that first year of EngSci, as it is known here, is more challenging than its counterpart at the more famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I took on this challenge with glee. I had never failed to meet a challenge.

So it was with this intention of ‘proving myself’ that I entered into the toughest period of my academic career. My previous math and science training had paid off. I had no problems transitioning into university-level courses, and met the challenge with gusto. I was able to do most of this without much thought, without much hard work. I wasn’t used to doing hard work. I had gone through all of primary, middle, and secondary school without doing any hard work. At the end of the first term, I was ranked 18th in a class of over 300. In a class that started with 334 students and would eventually dwindle to just over 170, I considered that one of the greatest accomplishments of my academic life.

A Slippery Slope

It all went downhill from there. It turned out I was just ahead of my time, and it would all catch up to me.

You see, I had always been told that at some point in my life, I would actually have to work hard for results. I’d been told that natural intelligence would only get me so far. Being the arrogant kid that I was when I first heard this in elementary school, I ignored the advice. After all, it had gotten me results in the past, and it had worked until even the first year of university. I never believed otherwise.

Then second year came, and where everyone else had by now fully adjusted to the work, I had just begun to reach the limits of what my so-called intelligence could handle. I could no longer spend just an hour or two reviewing for an exam the night before and expect to get my 90’s. Nor could I afford to skip doing homework and expect to remember anything of value.

It was during this turbulent second year that I encountered numerous personal troubles as well, further eating into my academic life. I entered a funk, and into a greatly reflective mood.

I decided that I hated math and everything associated with it. It was so dry, and tedious, and mechanical, that I could find no joy in doing this for a living. I was greatly depressed by this because the one thing that everyone had told me I was really good at – math – turned out to be something that I hated. I never realized this before, because I never really had to work at it. This is incredibly selfish, I realize too, but alas, I cannot be everything to everyone.

Second, I was not enjoying my time at school by focusing only on academics. In my entire first year, I lived inside this protective shell, meeting only a few new people whom I kept touch with regularly. I had joined little to no extracurriculars, despite my extensive involvement in various activities throughout high school, and most of all, I felt I was wasting my time with university. I asked myself, what does going to university contribute to my life? Why go through all this trouble?

A Search for Passion

It was at this point that I reached out to some friends in various places, began talking to lots of upper years, and some grizzly old professors. What was generally acknowledged was that school is sometimes a necessary evil on the way to a career – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evil. Having never thought of school as much of a chore, I had never really thought much about this problem.

I began to get out of the academic shell, and look for other things to do. This, in itself, was not a solution to the academic problem I was having, of course – you may even think it would exacerbate the problem. However, my goal at this stage was not to be ‘the #1 student’ – marks were now a secondary concern, and my main purpose was to meet as many people as I could.

The result was a newfound perspective of my situation. While I had always lived in the upper echelons of academia, I had been completely ignorant of, well, everyone else. I had set such high standards for myself that I had been unable to see where I really was.

At some point, everyone gets lost. We get lost in the midst of our midterms, or in times of personal crises. What sets you apart from everyone else is how you choose to play the cards in your hand. Sure, I could complain about life, or get all depressed about everything – but these choices are mine to make, and I could now see how I could turn things around.

Having met so many people, I found that I was not unique. Engineering is tough. But everyone here has a reason to go through the trouble.  What sets Engineering apart from almost any other profession, is that while most people claim to be doing the world a service, only Engineers can really say this with any conviction. If Engineers don’t go through the trouble, who will?

Engineers are immensely practical – we can see through lies, and we know what we want. Underlying the philosophy of Engineering is that we can not only learn about nature’s forces, but also that we can use it to our advantage to improve humanity. Thus, engineers can invent awesome machines, design more efficient systems, and construct civilizations. I had come one step closer to figuring out why I was in engineering.

A Choice and a Path

One more decision had to be made. After 2 years of Engineering Science, we were expected to choose an Option (or a Major, so to speak). Of these, I had identified Computer Engineering and Infrastructure Engineering as my frontrunners, but for extremely contrasting reasons.

I was interested in Computer Engineering because my entire life, I had been fascinated with computers. They are so essential to our daily lives now I can hardly imagine anything without them. I had learned most of my knowledge through computers, and spent a great deal of time with them. I was good at all things computing, and this should have been an easy choice. I could probably excel in Computer Engineering without much trouble – it would probably even solve my academic issues.

But then there was Infrastructure Engineering. Nothing in my first two years of university had stoked my passion as much as this field of Civil Engineering – of bridges and buildings. In my reflection, I had found that I had the most fun in my Civil Engineering design projects – those involving bridge designs and such. I had spent countless hours with these projects, and it felt like no time at all. It was one of the few things I enjoyed in my coursework.

So here we were, at another crossroads. Should I choose what I was ‘good at’, or should I choose what I can be passionate about?

There were many factors to consider, of course, like coursework, class sizes, difficulty, career prospects, and such – but for me, there was one last motivating factor. What impact do I want to have with my education?

This made my solution clear. I could learn computer engineering anywhere. In fact, I was well on my way through my adolescence in learning all this, without the help of school anyway. But if I really wanted to do something useful with university, and to not make the same mistake I had made two years earlier in high school, this was it. This is how I decided to be an Infrastructure Engineer.

In retrospect, I probably should have chosen the more direct path through Civil Engineering to begin with, rather than go through the charade of Engineering Science – but naturally, I hadn’t gone through this whole thought process in high school. I had no such guidance, and no such experience. Part of the reason I was so enthused by Alex’s idea of the RHHSAA was that I probably could have benefited from something like this in my own days as a student. Alas, we had to start somewhere, and now was as good as any.

Having said that, it’s not as if my studies are going perfectly as planned. There are still courses I don’t enjoy, and subjects I cannot comprehend, but at least I know why I want to do it. And that is the biggest lesson of all – I found a good reason for making a choice, and having such a reason, I can deal with the hardships that might come of it. Motivation is thus created by the mind.

All of these changes were designed to simplify the curriculum, or perhaps, in their mind, to make the curriculum more 'relevant' to students. The ministry cited increasing failure rates in mathematics, and the low enrollment numbers into the Calculus and Geometry courses. There was some noise made by students and parents, as well as the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. To this end, I wrote the ministry a letter, which I subsequently posted on my blog (click to read). [For the record, after they replied with their initial acknowledgment of my letter, I never heard back from them.] After hearing the complaints, the ministry decided to postpone the proposed changes for a year, while creating a special task force to investigate the changes to the curriculum.

I, for one, was hoping the ministry would scrap the changes completely, and realize the mistake they had made. Unfortunately for me, that didn't happen. While I occupied myself with the various activities at university, I forgot about this issue during the past school year. So when I visited my high school again, I was shocked to hear that new changes were to be implemented next year which would have a dramatic effect on current secondary school math students.

The changes made were:

• Grade 11 Functions and Relations became Grade 11 Functions
• Grade 12 Advanced Functions and Introductory Calculus became Grade 12 Advanced Functions
• Grade 12 Geometry and Discrete Math was basically removed, making room for a new course, called Grade 12 Calculus and Vectors
• The third senior math course (and generally recognized as the easiest), Grade 12 Data Management, was essentially untouched

Now, it would appear that Calculus remained in the curriculum, and that the only real casualty was the Geometry and Discrete portion of mathematics. Upon closer inspection, in fact, both calculus and geometry+discrete were dumbed down and/or removed. Vectors, which made up about one-third of the old (and difficult) Geometry course, was added onto the already packed Calculus course, while some of the Grade 11 Functions and Relations content was moved to the new Grade 12 Advanced Functions course.

What did all this accomplish?

• Grade 11 students who don't intend to take calculus now have a much easier course;
• Grade 12 students who wished to take calculus, but not the more difficult geometry course must now take an extra course to get their credit;
• Stronger grade 12 math students who wished for a challenging course to stimulate them are now simply out of luck.

Not to mention, of course, the problems that they caused for all the students going into this 'transition' year. (Namely, all the students who took Grade 11 Functions and Relations last year will have to take Grade 12 Advanced Functions, which repeats some amount of material, before they can take Calculus)

Now, I am sure the Ontario Ministry of Education had the students' best interest at heart when they implemented these changes, but they have gone about it in a completely backwards way. To put it bluntly, in order to curb failure rates of senior mathematics students, the ministry has decided to dumb down the curriculum. Simple, right?

Well, as I wrote previously in my letter to the ministry, the failure rates, in fact, are representative of a larger problem, and that is the growing incompetence of our educators and the use of particularly bad learning material (anyone who remembers the Quest 2000 series of textbooks introduced by Harris will understand what I mean). Kids are no longer learning the fundamentals properly - of course they're having trouble in upper years.

I'd love to get into how the education system is flawed, but that's a topic for another day. Most of it, of course, has to do with most educators teaching all the wrong things, and the mostly forceful rote memorization and inherent boring-ness of the assigned work. If we start teaching people to ask why and motivate instead of lecture, we might actually see some positive results.

In any case, the fundamental flaw behind this new series of courses is that instead of fixing the fundamentals from the ground up, they have decided to build another obstacle and hoping for the best. Seriously, will requiring an extra math course before calculus really improve students' understanding of the concepts? Surely, those who were having trouble with calculus aren't going to suddenly get better at it just because they've been given more math.

A second fatal flaw in the new courses lies in the lack of a true mathematics course. Anyone who has taken high school calculus knows that for the most part, this is a course about memorizing techniques and, well, methods of differentiation. For the most part, students taking calculus don't realize its significance, nor do they expect to use it in any facet of their life after the course. Most merely enroll in the course to get the prerequisite for their university program. The only real mathematics course for senior students, Geometry and Discrete Mathematics, has been all but destroyed.

Sure, the ministry did note that the "Discrete" course was getting low enrollment numbers - but for good reason. It was a course designed, and in that respect, designed very well, for students who were genuinely interested in mathematics or were at least skilled in the subject. I say without hesitation that content-wise, it was definitely the most challenging course I took in high school, but it was also very enlightening, from a mathematics standpoint.

Geometry and Discrete brought everything we learned in mathematics together, from basic number theory to algebra to geometry. It required connection between concepts, and a deep level of understanding of what mathematics is. If nothing else, it was an unbelievable learning experience. The sheer elegance of mathematics was brought out in the course, and for those so inclined, it was even enjoyable.

Beyond just the learning experience, Discrete provided a solid basis upon which science, math, and engineering students could build during their postsecondary education. Without taking the Discrete course (which was not a requirement for my engineering program), I would surely have done far worse in both my Vector Algebra and Linear Algebra courses. Ironically, the only reason I had a vector algebra course at all in my first year was because it was removed as a prerequisite for entry into the program last year. The class average in that course was very high this year - and not because the material is easy, but because most of the students there had already learned the material.

Now, engineering at the University of Toronto is a rather diverse group. I would venture to say (although I do not have solid statistics here at the moment) that somewhere between a third and a half of the students in my program was from out-of-province, and yet, most still had the background knowledge for that course. This proves only one thing - the rest of the world is at least on par with the Ontario education system. Now, with the removal of the more challenging course, Ontario has surely fallen behind.

As an aside, but perhaps not so off-topic, AP Calculus in Ontario has all but hit an end. The flagship course of the American Advanced Placement program is a course which teaches university-level calculus to high school students who wish to get a head start, or wish for a truly challenging learning environment. With the addition of a second prerequisite to calculus, it essentially forces all secondary schools to semester their grade 12 math programs, and run calculus in the second semester. Thus, if AP Calculus classes were to be run, it would have to be in the second semester as well. Typically, schools in Ontario have their second semester from February to June. Unfortunately, the Advanced Placement exams run by the college board in the States is held in early May. That leaves only three months for AP Calculus to teach students all they need to know for the AP Exams in May, on top of all the other curriculum-required material. This little logistical problem has rendered AP Calculus virtually useless in Ontario. Now, it will only be a matter of time before that is ultimately canceled, leaving Ontario students further behind their counterparts from the rest of Canada as well as the United States. Oh, and not to mention the more impressive European education systems, and the ever-competitive Chinese students. So much for having a good and competitive education system.

Canada was recently ranked one of the worst in terms of innovation among modern industrialized countries around the world. Now, with Canada's largest province deciding to dumb down the education system, Canada will fall even further behind in innovation. Without solid mathematical foundations in secondary school, the postsecondary institutions will now have to shoulder the burden of teaching students these subjects, in an environment that is generally harsh for learning (for one, if you fail in university, you'll now have to pay for it - is that any incentive to take a challenging course?). With our mathematics lagging behind, it is no wonder that we're not innovating - how long will it be until our economy begins to suffer because our students have been denied the opportunity to excel in a global context?

Yesterday, amidst a rather empty convocation hall, I attended the Engineering Science overture lecture for the 2007 Winter Term, themed "Systems and States". Giving the lecture was one Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. The director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and an MIT graduate, Mr. Homer-Dixon's lecture for the day had a sobering message. By all scientific accounts, modern human civilization is heading towards collapse in many different directions. The time to act against it is now. Yes, climate change is occurring. Yes, population growth is at an unprecedented high. Yes, energy production is slowing down. There are numerous factual evidences that support these phenomena. It's happening. Now.

---

Not too long ago, I was contemplating what I would do after high school. For me, there was almost no doubt I was going to be doing something science-related. Being practical, I chose to study engineering rather than purely theoretical science. I wanted to do something with knowledge. Learning is exhilerating, but alone, it serves no greater purpose.

Something else had always been troubling me for a while. Why aren't the smartest people in the world making the decisions about the world?

Our world, for the large part, is run by the great democratic political machines of industrialized western nations. Yet this same political machine regularly fails at recognizing what I feel are the most important issues of today - the human impact to environment.

Now, I've never called myself a tree-hugger, or anything of the sort. I don't have that sense of activism. But, I do maintain that many governments of today seem only to be concerned, with great hubris, about their own infinite 'economic' growth.

I am fascinated by politics. I read the newspaper regularly, just to catch up on the latest political scoop. I am fascinated, by the way politicians continue to sidestep real and important issues, with great deftness of words. Politics, to me, is nothing more than a play on words with some basic economic management.

So I figured long ago, that democracy is broken. Sure, if you ask me now, I'll tell you that I'll go out to vote, but for me, the impact of government is too slow, and too little. There are things going wrong with the world today, and political manuevering is not the way to solve it.

I was shocked, one day, about a year ago, to learn that there were still a great many important international figures who contest the notion of global warming, or even climate change. (Here's a list of some: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_sceptics) It shouldn't take so much work to convince the public. And it sure as hell shouldn't be so hard to realize how it's bad for the Earth.

With my faith in politics and the media shaken, I resorted to the conclusion that the only way to get things done is to do things yourself. Of course, it's a long road, and it's hard to see where to begin on something so monumental.

---

Professor Homer-Dixon listed the problems, and offered a great many solutions. He articulated what I had been thinking, unconsciously and in abstract. But now I see it more clearly.

As an engineer, in the 21st century, these problems will be up to us to solve. So we can avoid a catastrophe in the future (near or far). Will we be able to engineer ourselves out of this problem? Well, we can only try and see now.