Guest Blogger - James CoulterOn Tuesday, the Windsor Star proclaimed “Windsor Rated 7th in Innovation”. The Dave Hall story calls Windsor “one of the country’s leading cities for innovation”.
The ranking came from a report published by the Conference Board of Canada titled City Magnets – Benchmarking the Attractiveness of Canada’s Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA’s). I went to the CBofC’s website looking for the report. It’s behind a paywall, if you want to read the full report it’ll cost you $2400. However, there is a ten page summary that is free and I read it over. The report ranks 27 CMA’s according to several categories including; economics, housing, education and innovation. CMA’s were given a letter grade A, B, C, D, depending on how each fared against whatever criteria they used. The report sheds some light on economic and social trends in Canada and who the best, biggest and brightest star cities are. The overall top three were Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, while the report had Saguenay, St. John, and Thunder Bay at the bottom. Remember my last post, big cities getting bigger, smaller cities getting left behind.
I found what the report had to say about cities and innovation. The top CMA was Ottawa/Gatineau. Make’s sense, lots of government research facilities, software companies a good university. In fact there is so much research and ‘innovation” going on in Ottawa/Gatineau that they scored AAA. No other category had any CMA scoring more than an A. Calgary and Toronto were distant B grades. According to the summary more than half the CMA’s scored no better than a D. At best Windsor’s 7th place is a C. It seems a little misleading to describe Windsor as “one of the country’s leading cities for innovation” when our C is so far behind the AAA of first place Ottawa/Gatineau.
For me, the big news was in the Star story. Dave Hall revealed a dirty secret about our city. According to the Star Windsor’s “educational rank is dragged down by the worst adult literacy rate among the cities surveyed”. For a city that wants to reinvent itself as a knowledge economy centre this is a huge problem.
The last paragraph of the summary says, “Although some indicators, like climate, are beyond the control of policy-makers, we believe that all levels of government should look at the results of this benchmarking study to help determine priorities. Canada’s future depends on it.” In Windsor, our priorities need to change to include literacy. In light of this report’s findings it is outrageous for the Mayor and Council to impose budget cuts on the city’s libraries. Save the $900,000 branding monies and use them for literacy campaigns and reading programs. Education and knowledge are priorities and we should demand that our city give us every opportunity to learn and better ourselves.
James Coulter is an Engineering Technologist with the School of Building, Design and Construction Technology at St. Clair College. His opinions are plentiful and may not reflect those of his employer or the teaching faculty at the college.
10 comments:
this is sorta off topic, but i am 12 and i believe that windsor should invest more in education and the reading capability of future important windsor citizens.
I thimk librarys should be givin more thought and children should be incouraged to read.
(p.s. Great blog!)
It's nice to see a young man such as yourself participating in worthwhile debates. As you get older, you'll learn more and more about the politics of educational funding.
The provincial and federal government determine how much money educational institutions receive. Secondary schools (high schools) are always under pressure to operate with balanced budgets, while post-secondary institutions are not. However, educational institutions do try to solicit funding from private parties and corporations. The University of Windsor's new centre for engineering is going to require private/corporate funding in order to be really successful. Despite what you may hear or see or what you've been told, some corporations aren't "bad".
I am forever grateful to my parents for passing on a love of reading to all of their children. My dad only went to school until Grade 6, my Mom Grade 10. That never stopped either of them from reading or passing on their passion for reading to each and every one of us. To this day you could keep me waiting for 2 hours and I really wouldn't care much, as I almost always have a book nearby to occupy myself. Even more satisfying is watching another generation take up the same passion in spite of all the electronic distractions available. I don't have any kids of my own, but given the opportunity I would read to or with a child every day of the week. It's an investment in time that pays off for years to come.
Some parents beam with pride when their kids get A's in school. I'm most proud when I see my kids names on the list of kids who met their reading target for school that month.
The sad irony of this report is that libraries are the easy target for municipal penny-pinchers. We wonder why we have pathetic literacy scores and then turn around and slash library budgets.
To ollieloho -- thanks for the kudos. Continue to make a difference in the world. Turn off the tv, iPod and video games and pick up a book. Continue to read and you will be one of those "future important Windsor citizens".
I can't afford to pay $2400 for the full Conference Board study. Without seeing the details of said report, one would think that Windsor's large immigrant population factors into Windsor's poor literacy figures. Many immigrants know enough about the English language to participate in basic conversations. However, when tested, many immigrants/students can't differentiate conversational contexts from technical contexts.
my thoughts exactly, robert. while the numbers are stunning, you have to factor in the very large immigrant population into the mix.
The Conference Board report is really no surprise and confirmed what the last census of Canada found, Windsor had the largest population of any city in Canada of people with NO post secondary education!
For almost a hundred years, you didn't need an education to get the most valuable job in Windsor, working on the line for one of the big three, as long as you could stand on the line and assemble simple part you got paid...a wage that didn't reflex your education. The low literacy rate is in part do this lack or need for an education to get an over paid job and a false middle class perception of being equal to someone who worked hard for their education. And it ain't coming back..so get over it! Get an education or move!
Don't blame our immigrants on Windsor's poor showing, in most cases they have more education than the norm in Windsor..they just don't necessarily have the language skills in some cases to express what they really know but they are literate.
About our library system...it isn't about the money or staffing it is about control of the budget and spending..Mayor Francis is a control freak and a micromanager extraordinaire..some blogs have called him a bully...a fair perception of the man from what I have seen on cable TV of city council meetings.
One city blog reported via charts that the Windsor Public Library was under utilized..ya figure! Knowing what I said in the previous paragraph!
This past summer, the forensic audit of the Windsor Public Library (forced upon them by the mare) was given to the mayor and city council..KPMG noted that the WPL was the most cost efficient department in the city and that the city could learn from the library about managing money. Also they stated that if the library followed the cities staffing module, it would take 270 people to do the work of the ninety full time employees that work for the library.
So cut 20% percent of the library staff and just try to keep all the libraries open! When the new Fontainebleau library was built, the city agreed to pay for the staffing of that library as part of the agreement with the Friends of Fontainebleau library and Windsor Public Library...Just before it was to open the city withdrew it's funding, leaving the library to scramble to find staff to staff it. It ment reducing staff at other libraries.
The city isn't telling the people of Windsor the truth about it's attack on the library system. Fast "The Buzz word" Eddie is the real reason, he just hates not having the control of everything and the majority of spinless city councillors rely on him to tell them how to run the city.
The majority of city councillors want the appearance of a library system and if Brister had his way..with no books etc. in them..then they don't have to face the public when a library has to be closed in their ward..basically they are cowards when it comes to facing the public.
In the last two years quite a few of the states in the United States have done indepth studies of their public library systems and their return on investment..they were quite surprised to find on average that for every dollar invested in public libraries, that the public libraries returned on average seven dollars on direct economic investment in the communites and the state. Windsor Public library is the lowest funded library system in Canada..yet it has free Wifi, free internet and opened 72 hours a week during the winter.
May I suggest that we just shut down the library system all together and then we can become number one in Canada...as Canada's Dumbest City!
Thanks for the insights, UrbanRat. I would like nothing more than to see you team up with olliloho and raise Windsor out of the sewer that is our literacy situation.
And thank you, ollieloho, for giving me some hope for this city.
And thank you for verbalizing what I have always felt about 6 figure big three jobs and their attitude towards higher education. The sense of entitlement that some of them possess is beyond me - they have obviously never set foot out of their little dreamland which is Windsor.
Autoworkers fall into two categories, under or over-educated. I know many autoworkers with multiple degrees, and many with less than highschool. Remember that the CAW has a very generous education allowance for its' members.
As for libraries, I used to work at the library in Kingsville when I was a teenager. Ever since I was a wee tyke I went to the library as often as I could.
Out of curiosity, I would like to see how often our councilors, the Mayor included, actually use the library. I am sure there are some privacy laws, etc. that would have to be "overcome", but that would be very interesting information.
I bet we would not be surprised when many of them don't even have active library cards!
"Remember that the CAW has a very generous education allowance for its' members." I, like many readers of this blog, know many people who are employed by Chrysler, Ford or GM; of those people, I know of only one person (a 24-year-old) who has made use of the aforementioned funds. I can't help but think that Basil and friends have conditioned most of their "members" to embrace mediocrity.
urbanrat: Your comments left me thinking that your post is permeated with a sense of elitism. I'm fairly certain that whoever reads your post will know that you're educated. Congratulations! You obviously neglected to be mindful of the fact that this blog is now read by at least one young person. "...a false middle class perception of being equal to someone who worked hard for their education." How telling. You know who invented Microsoft OS, right? A Harvard drop-out. You know who won the last Nobel "Peace" prize, right? A journalism school drop-out. You know who became one of the most credible, Canadian-born journalists in history, right? A high-school drop-out. The true value of an education is always debatable.
In Windsor, people with a post-secondary education don't have an abundance of employment opportunities, especially FULL-TIME positions of employment (namely nurses). As a number, the national rate of unemployment is great. However, 6.3 percent of 30-32 million isn't great at all.
Are you not subsidizing programs designed to help educated immigrants get their foreign credentials recognized? Are you not subsidizing programs designed to help immigrants develop a better understanding of the English language? I think you have to answer the question: WHY do such programs exist?
Planet Earth is inhabited by roughly six billion people. Regardless of how educated Earth's population is, there will never be six billion jobs for six billion people.
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