Bennett, P. W. (2020). The State of the System: A Reality Check on Canadian Schools. McGill-Queens University Press

Abstract

A provocative "tract for our times," Paul W. Bennett's latest offering, The State of the System: A Reality Check on Canada's Schools (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020), is a broad yet simplistic overview of the Canadian education system. Dr. Bennett's book is written with verve and is an acidic commentary on a broad range of issues confronting public education. He traces a history from the 1920s, examining the shaping of a modern bureaucratic education system, through to a system focused on accountability and testing, and finally into contemporary times of school management and consolidation. Peppered throughout are Bennett's seemingly fond recollections of days past with the one-room schoolhouse where students walked to their local school. It is through this romanticized lens that Bennett attempts to create a sweeping description of a singular Canadian education system. According to Bennett, "Reforming the System is essentially about parents reclaiming schools. Top-down decision-making, educational managerialism, and rule by the technocrats has run its course" (p. 237). So, how does Bennett's call to action stand within the context of contemporary education, with all of its nuances and complexities?Dr. Bennett has considerable first-hand experience as a long-time commentator on Canadian schools. He has a refined historical appreciation for the grey advocacy literature and commission nostrums, personalities, and panaceas purporting to bring our schools into the 21 st century. In fact, Bennett's book is one among many such jeremiads over Canada's 150-year history that propose "solutions" for purported problems: to make education more humane, less bureaucratic, and as idyllic as possible, thereby restoring the relationships once found in a fictitious Arcadian past. If we are to situate Bennett's tract within any particular tradition of educational reform in North American education, it would be Tyack's and Cuban's (1995) Tinkering toward utopia in the United States, to Lawton et al. (1995) Busting bureaucracy to reclaim our schools, and Michael Katz's (1971) Class, bureaucracy and schools-the illusion of educational change in America, perhaps even as a riposte to J.E. Hodgins' effusive Memorial upon Ryerson's death in 1889 in Canada.Since Bennet touts his book as a reality check, three central "facts" about Canadian education must be kept to the fore when reading such a prospectus, rather than retreating into the saccharine image of a Robert Harris painting of a school trustee meeting.First, Canadian education is a behemoth when considered as a sector and not as a collection of isolated school buildings. That explains many of the difficulties in reforming "the system"-insofar as anyone can discern a single system. Approximately seven million students, or one-sixth of Canada's 37 million citizens under the age of 18 enter a school and are "institutionalized" within it for about 180 to 190 days per year for 12 or 13 years in a series. If we add half a million teachers, school bus drivers, educational assistants...