Ontario School Curriculum

So since I've started back into school, I am of course a broke ass student once again.  Let me rephrase that, I am even more broke now as a student than I was as an athlete.  Holy, pathetic.  Regardless, I have taken up tutoring high school kids on the side to supplement the sweet stipend I get as a grad student and have a few concerns to say the least.  Being that  I am not originally from Ontario I am a little less familiar with the curriculum here, however I am vaguely familiar with the old system of the victory lap OAC year (5th) year that most students took advantage of prior to heading off to university.  Ever since the revisions and the assimilation of the Ontario system with the rest of Canadian high school education system it seems as though they've simply tried to cram in everything that was once spread across 5 years into 4.  I get it, not everyone is destined to be an engineer, math or physics major but honestly, I would guesstimate the number of students who really understand math to be less than 30% given this revision.

 I'm not a high school teacher, but I'm pretty sure that handing a high school kid a text book, telling them to read it and do the practice problems doesn't constitute as "teaching".  Most of the kids I've been tutoring are not lazy, are not stupid, they simply have really crappy teachers!  Again, I apologize to my friends and family who are teachers and who do work diligently to help kids actually understand, but the point remains that there are far too many teachers out there who are not doing their job.  And let's not kid ourselves, for those who simply push the kids on through that really shouldn't have passed, you're not doing anyone but your lazy ass a favor.  Thanks to you, the teacher or professor for the following year now has to clean up your mess and explain to the student that he/she doesn't have a shot in hell of getting into university, college, trade school, let alone pass the class because they've failed to adequately LEARN and UNDERSTAND the material from the previous year.

Not sure where this rant is going, but something very obviously needs to be addressed.  With the over abundance of teachers looking for work, the competitive nature of actually getting a job should provide a field that in itself should be overrun with qualified, MOTIVATED, individuals looking to actually make a change.  So why not fire, or forcibly retire teachers who have long out lived their usefulness?  Why not demand the same from the educators as we do from any other business?  Darwinism at it's best - natural selection or better known as survival of the fittest.