This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Peter MacKinnon, September 17, 2025
The Ontario College of Teachers should send all of us scurrying to find alternatives to this and other like-minded associations and school boards. It is bent on commitments that should bring parents and others to demand change.
To begin with, the college “acknowledges the role education has played in the genocide of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.” Further, teacher training must include “anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices” and must infuse “Indigenous knowledge systems, equity and inclusive education … and social-emotional learning.” The college mandates “an anti-oppressive foundation” in which teachers’ “ethical and professional responsibility” is to dismantle “manifestations of power and privilege.”
This rallying cry is an ideological mission. It is ahistorical and reminiscent of the Toronto School Board’s recommendation to purge the names of our first prime minister and other notable historical figures from schools because they were said to reinforce Canada’s “systems of oppression,” “legacy of colonialism,” and “histories of discrimination.” This relentlessly bleak (and distorted) picture of our history reminds us that current assessments of Macdonald and other historical figures “are driven not by academic historians but by politically motivated groups seeking to weaponize history for contemporary ideological battles.” Of all places history should not be weaponized in schools.
Meanwhile, we are told by Barbara Kay, the educational system is in free fall and while this across-the-board assessment may be exaggerated, we know the system, at least in Alberta, is uneven. The Fraser Institute’s latest report card on 290 of Alberta’s high schools rates them on a scale of 10, and while 31 of them are rated eight and above, the same number are rated below four. Six were graded below one.
It is not surprising that increasing numbers of parents are turning to charter schools. They want their children to be educated, not indoctrinated, and they expect reasonable parity among their public school options. Charter schools are found in most states south of the border, but in only one Canadian province: Alberta. These are autonomous public schools providing innovative or enhanced programs and governed by a charter that sets out their purpose and rules of operation. They are publicly funded, non-religious, cannot charge tuition, and are required to meet the standards of the provincial curriculum, though they can adopt their own pedagogies and educational philosophies. Their teachers must be certified but are not members of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. There are 38 charter schools in Alberta and their student numbers are growing.
At the end of August 2025, a Macdonald-Laurier Institute conference introduced the topic of charter schools through panelist Caylan Ford, and on Sept. 10 this writer visited the school she founded, the Classical Academy (1,000 students in Calgary, 500 in Edmonton). Ford is passionate about her school; its students are diverse, welcoming, energetic, well turned out and, in general, clearly engaged in their studies. Its faculty are highly educated and their commitment to the Charter model was clear. The school has made the most of its modest physical setting (access to capital is a problem), but it has visible assets that bespeak its classical model, and an impressive library provided mostly by donors.
How do charter schools compare with other public schools? Many parents of the young people I saw at the Classical Academy turned away from what they saw as dysfunctional public schools. They will be reassured to know that the outcomes of charters compare favourably to the publics. The model merits support in Alberta and across Canada.
Peter MacKinnon is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.
