News Release: Why an Educated America is Crucial in our World Today.
FROM: THE GILES SCHOOL
80 Scarsdale Rd.
Toronto, Ontario M3B2R7 Canada
For further information, please contact:
Mr. Harry Giles, Director of Education, at 416-446-0825 or 416-285-5891 or mrharrygiles@yahoo.ca
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 21, 2008 (follow up to April 2, 2008 news release; article additions)
WHY AN EDUCATED AMERICA IS CRUCIAL IN OUR WORLD TODAY: AN OUTSIDER LOOKS IN
Falling U.S. Dollar Hurts America's Education System, The Economy and World Peace: A Comprehensive Program for Fixing America's Dysfunctional Education System
TORONTO, ONTARIO – A falling U.S. dollar may have more profound implications than a drop in foreign investment, educator Harry Giles claims, because it will likely worsen an already failing American education system. The result? A further decline in American innovation and the Economy.
Now, for the first time, an independent study available on The Giles School website—from an accomplished international educator and based upon proven, global methods—offers practical recommendations for creating a better American education system for the 21st century. “This effort is not just important,” Giles contends; “it is essential in a world which, from humankind’s earliest beginnings, has been characterized, University of Chicago Professor Herman Finer says, by ‘extended periods of war punctuated by rare moments of peace.’ Hence, the article’s title: “Why an Educated America is Crucial in Our World Today: an Outsider Looks in (II).”
“Today, however,” Giles says, “there is one huge difference—our world faces weapons of mass destruction—including not only nuclear, dirty and bio-chemical armaments but also new esoteric ones such as nano-technological agents now in development. A handful of disgruntled or disaffected individuals can murder not only thousands—as on 9/11—but now even millions. “These wars must stop. Insisting on or pleading for a ‘stoppage’ to war is not enough. It never has been,” Giles argues. An educated U.S., not more or bigger weapons, is the key. As with children, we must now teach the world’s adults how to resolve their disagreements with words, not fists.”
Among the 35 wide-ranging recommendations advanced—from architecture to xenophobia—are provocative arguments offering alternatives to high-priced, bureaucracy-based school boards, reintroducing the one- and two-room schoolhouse model, and creating new “salaam” (peace) schools to compete with Jihadist Madrassas in Arab countries.
The “Peace Schools” would teach modern, core subjects in the physical and biological sciences, mathematics, and humanities to Moslem students. As such, they might be viewed as an extension of Turkey’s moderate Moslem Sufi schools and an attempt to recreate the enlightened schools of the Islamic Golden Age from the middle of the 8th century to the middle of the 13th century when the Arab World led in philosophy, the sciences and, especially, medicine. “Perhaps, Harry Giles says, “in much the same way Islam saved Christianity from itself by restoring the Greek Classics and other works that Christianity itself destroyed during its religious wars, so too can Christianity now help Islam restore its former greatness.”
Finding new ways to help the bullies or those bullied, ignored or overlooked to become gentle, caring, and compassionate students and, later, intellectual leaders, is what is needed. What Giles is recommending is no less than a revolution–-not evolution. He has proven that his methods work through the results his own independent schools have produced. He is now offering his discoveries and the fruits of his work to revive American education. Education is key to developing the type of true leadership that can deliver all of us from ignorance, hatred, greed, and intolerance now posing a real global threat to the existence of all democracies within and without America’s borders. “Implementing these recommendations, of course, will not be easy,” educator Harry Giles says. “Success requires leadership, intelligence, and courage—things that have been sorely lacking in America’s public school system to date. If implemented, these recommendations will provide Americans with an education that can compete effectively with the best in the world.
Throwing more money at or making politically correct, ‘flavor of the week’ program changes to the problems rife in the American education system,” Giles cautions, “will not make them go away." The recommendations and their implementation will cost money but they may ultimately save America and make America's vision as a leading democracy and world leader once again a reality—returning the U.S. to its historical position of international respect, affection, and honor.
Giles School families and staff represent over 25 cultures and nationalities. They speak over 40 unique languages, a half dozen of which are taught at The Giles School in a bilingual, English-French, multicultural Canada. With its emphasis on the emotional and intellectual development of individual students, TGS is a rare example of “extended ‘home schooling.’” For more information, contact The Giles School at harry_giles@gilesschool.ca or mrharrygiles@yahoo.ca, 416-443-9499, 416-285-5891, or visit the School’s web site at www.gilesschool.ca.
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NOTE: Interviews and photo opportunities at The Giles School can be arranged upon request.
ABOUT THE GILES SCHOOL: The Giles School is an independent school serving the Greater Toronto Area’s primary and secondary students. Since 1989, it has provided international learning methods in several major languages. The School has an “open door” accessibility policy that strives to provide nursery to grade 12 students of all abilities with an advanced university preparatory education in mathematics, the sciences, modern languages, and the humanities. Students are prepared for the major university entrance examinations including the British A & O Levels, the French Baccalaureate, and the American SATs and AP.
Children begin French immersion courses in pre-Kindergarten (age 3). Second and third core languages are added to the regular curriculum in Grade 1: English and either Mandarin or Japanese. A fourth, optional language is offered in Grade 8. Students graduate two or more grades ahead of their peers.
Student learning not only reflects the highest standards in international academic excellence but does so in small-sized, multilingual classes, which—collectively with Giles School parents, teachers and administrative staff—comprise The Giles School learning family. The school’s precepts are embodied in “six pillars” of learning cited on the School’s website at www.gilesschool.ca.
Bio for the founder and Director of Education of The Giles School: W.H. Giles, CM, QC
Mr. Giles has over a forty-year history of pioneering innovation in the field of education. As founder and, for twenty-five years, headmaster of the Toronto French School, Mr. Giles introduced bilingualism to Canada. Today, over 300,000 students enjoy the benefits of a bilingual education because of his insights and courage. He has worked tirelessly to improve the state of education in this country for all children, to draw attention to its many flaws, whether this concerns unsound or misdirected pedagogies, inadequate standards or substandard textbooks.
He has scoured the globe for superior pedagogies, incorporating Russian, French, British, or Swiss approaches and methodologies as the need arose, and purchased mathematics and science textbooks from Singapore when it become recognized as a world leader in this field. He did not hesitate to recruit teachers from other countries if this meant securing the best and the brightest for his school. The Giles School is the only test centre in Ontario for the British O and A levels administered by Edexcel, a rigorous, world-renowned standard, the successful completion of which represents the equivalent of two years university training.
Mr. Giles' aspirations for his school for the near future are to include:
- Introduce an engineering sciences program,
- Construct a nanotechnology centre,
- Utilize groundbreaking research in the areas of attention deficit disorders to empower children suffering from these challenges to learn at a level of equality with others, and
- Implement a standard that combines the breadth of the International Baccalaureate with the depth of the British A levels to give North Americans an unparalleled benchmark of excellence.
One highly revealing testament to the quality of Mr. Giles' stewardship is evident in some of the results achieved during his years as Headmaster of the Toronto French School. The Putnam Mathematics Competition is the top mathematics competition in North America. During his last twelve years at TFS, graduates from the school, now scattered at leading universities throughout Canada and the United States, made up between 4 and 7 of the top 9 students every year. In that same time span, only one other school in all of North America appeared more than once—the Bronx High School of Science, a school filled with math and science prodigies who filled two placements in the Putnam Mathematics Competition. No other school, anywhere, before or after, has ever come even remotely close to approaching these results, a telltale sign of early education's staggering potential and the efficacy of its use by TFS.
Ultimately however, as remarkable as these achievements were and are, it is the welfare of children that lies at the heart of Mr. Giles' social experiment. If properly conceived, the enterprise of education, Mr. Giles says, is to “fashion a society where love triumphs over hate, tolerance over prejudice, and decency over mean-spiritedness.”