National Post

Ontario schoolgirl uses secret code word to outwit potential abductor in ‘textbook example’ of street proofing
A 10-year-old girl who outwitted two potential abductors by asking them for a secret code word has been praised by police for her quick thinking.

The girl was approached on Monday outside Applecroft Public School in Ajax, Ont., by a strange man trying to lure her into his car. The man, who was accompanied by a woman sitting in the passenger seat, claimed the girl’s mother had sent him to pick her up.

The girl and her family had established a secret password to be used as proof a person was really sent by her parents.

“She asked this person what the code word was and obviously they got it wrong,” Dave Mason of Durham Regional Police told CTV. “She told them ‘You got the code word wrong’ and that person left.”

Sex-selective programs and the belief that ‘boys will be boys’ stigmatize students: study
The belief that “boys will be boys” could hurt their chances for academic success, new research says.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Child Development, says experiments with predominantly white British schoolchildren revealed even young boys and girls believe girls are better students. When children were told this, boys’ academic performance dropped compared with those in a control group. Boys did better in a subsequent experiment when children were told both sexes were expected to perform equally well.

“Our findings emphasize the real importance of promoting positive gender expectations,” said Bonny Hartley, a PhD student at Britain’s University of Kent, who co-wrote the study with associate professor Robbie Sutton. (Fotolia)

Ontario imposing new contracts on tens of thousands of teachers and education workers in public schools across the province
Ontario’s governing Liberals are imposing new contracts on tens of thousands of teachers and education workers in public schools across the province.

Education Minister Laurel Broten says she’s using Bill 115 to impose the new collective agreements on elementary and high school teachers, to freeze wages and stop strikes as the government battles a $14.4-billion deficit.

However, Broten says once the contracts are imposed, the government will move to repeal the controversial law. (Dave Chidley/CP)

Edmonton teacher ‘Captain Zero’ faces termination hearing for ‘obvious neglect of duty’ after giving zeros to students
Three months ago, high school teacher Lynden Dorval went public with his struggle against Ross Sheppard High School’s no-zero policy, making him a lightning rod for a debate on how to teach a generation often billed as having a sense of entitlement.

But on Tuesday, the letter from the superintendent of Edmonton Public Schools informed him his principal, Ron Bradley, requested his termination for “his obvious neglect of duty as a professional teacher, his repeated insubordination and his continued refusal to obey lawful orders.”

The physics teacher, who colleagues called Captain Zero, spent 18 months disobeying the school’s rule against doling out zeros to students who didn’t complete assignments or tests, which school management sees as a discipline issue, not an academic one. (Rick MacWilliam/Postmedia News)

Is the PD day broken? Professional development days may do little to improve teaching
Since at least the 1970s, school calendars across Canada have contained four to eight “professional development days,” a mysterious day where school buses are parked, students stay home and teachers gather in empty classrooms to figure out the latest ways to get kids to absorb lessons on math and science. Nevertheless, after 40 years, exasperated principals and bored teachers are starting to say what students have suspected for decades; the Canadian PD day is broken.

School board makes singing O Canada mandatory
Students at Toronto Catholic schools will now have to deliver an a cappella rendition of the national anthem every morning, according to a 7-3 Thursday night vote by the Toronto District Catholic School Board.

The new requirement is intended to “encourage authentic patriotism” and satisfy “veterans who have fought for our freedom [and] would appreciate that students sing from their heart,” according to the motion put forward by trustee Angela Kennedy. (Andy Clark/Reuters)

Is a new-found focus on the bullying ‘epidemic’ misidentifying the problem?
In less than two years, bullying and all of its tragic consequences have made a massive shift in public consciousness from a kids-will-be-kids fact of life to one of the most serious social issues of our time. The Day of Pink, marked this coming Wednesday, has become a international symbol of awareness, and proposed legislation to stamp out the bully problem in Ontario and Quebec has brought a new urgency to the issue. Other provinces are poised to follow suit.

While researchers and observers are glad to see administrators take some much-needed action on bullying — the seriousness of the problem is not in dispute — some worry that labelling it an “epidemic” or “crisis” makes it sound like the problem’s getting worse. They’re also concerned the spotlight on the issue has stirred a panic amongst parents, educators and politicians whose well-meaning efforts are, in some cases, backfiring or proving ineffective. (Illustration by Mike Faille)

U.S. boy, 4, pulls out multiple bags of marijuana at school, tells teacher he wants to share
A four-year-old U.S. boy who announced to his teacher at school snack time that he wanted to share pulled nine bags of marijuana out of his jacket pocket, police said on Wednesday.

Police in Meriden, Connecticut were called to Hanover Elementary School Tuesday afternoon after the young special needs student displayed the drugs, authorities said.

Meriden police said the nine individually wrapped bags of marijuana appeared prepared for sale. (Photo: Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Dancing with the crossing guards
Kathleen Byers started working as a school crossing guard eight years ago. She brought a chair with her to her post on Dufferin Street, just south of Dundas, in the beginning, but she found that sitting and standing — and sitting and standing all over again— was hard on the knees.

So she ditched the chair and things got better. Though they weren’t perfect. Prolonged standing induced an intense drowsiness and, for a crossing guard, falling asleep on the job is a firing offence.

“Have you ever stood in line before?” Ms. Byers asks. “Standing is so boring.”

And dancing is not. (Photo: Tyler Anderson/National Post)

No recess from French as Montreal schools to scan playground chatter
The playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias of Quebec’s largest school board will soon be French-only zones as authorities move to silence other languages, even during recess.

In a bid to ensure its 110,000 students master French, the Commission scolaire de Montréal has announced a new code of conduct declaring French de rigueur at all times during the school day.

Diane De Courcy, the board’s chairwoman, said the approach will be persuasive not punitive.

“There will be no language police,” she said. Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules.

“If they are automatically switching to another language, [the monitor] will gently tap them on the shoulder — not on the head — to tell them, ‘Remember, we speak French. It’s good for you.’

Photos of the day
Students from St Andrews University participate in the traditional Raisin Monday celebrations in St Andrews, Scotland November 21, 2011. The tradition dates back to the early days of the university when new students would give senior students a pound (0.45kg) of raisins in gratitude for their help in adapting to university life, in exchange for a receipt written in Latin. Failure to produce such a receipt could result in a dousing in the local fountain. Nowadays the raisins have been replaced with a bottle of wine and the dousing with foam. (Photo: David Moir/Reuters)

Young girls make vicious bullies
I don’t remember being bullied by other girls when I was young. But I do remember with shame having failed to do the right thing as a teenager at summer camp, when a cabinmate — we weren’t close, and she wasn’t socially attractive, but still — was cruelly humiliated.

“Shira” kept a diary, as many of us did at the time. A mischief-maker found it, and some intimate details of Shira’s sexual fantasies about a male counsellor were read aloud to shrieks of pitiless laughter. To this day I can vividly recall the moment’s exact setting, and Shira’s horrified face. I also recall my own visceral empathy with her pain, in spite of which I didn’t step up to the plate and denounce my cabinmates’ barbarism.

The rumours spread around the camp, and Shira’s summer was ruined. Looking back, I have to wonder how that vignette affected her life and her relationships with women as an adult. Such a betrayal isn’t something any girl would forget.

The good retrospective news for Shira is that she grew up before the era of social media; her mortification was socially contained and unarchived. Shira’s fate today might have been that of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Mass., an Irish newcomer who, relentlessly hounded on Facebook and in text messages by girl peers (“slut” was the leitmotif), hanged herself in her closet in 2010. In the aftermath, the question remains: “Are girls really meaner?” (Illustration: Kelsey Heinrichs/National Post)

Parents cry foul after elementary school bans balls
A Toronto elementary school has banned most balls from its playground, citing the need to protect staff and students after a parent got hit in the head with a soccer ball.

The new policy has infuriated parents and students, and exposes what child-health researchers say is a growing focus on child safety that is keeping kids from being physically active.

On Monday, Earl Beatty Junior and Senior Public School principal Alicia Fernandez sent home a note warning parents their students are no longer allowed to bring soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, footballs and volleyballs to school. All balls that weren’t made of sponge, or nerf, material would be confiscated.