OISE: The Mordor of Education

Sitting like an imposing fortress built in a style that has come to be known as Brutalist architecture, the spawning place of the policies and curriculum that form the basis of education in Ontario sits like an evil presence on a quiet stretch of Bloor Street in Toronto's Annex neighborhood.  Inside are bitter academics and angry students who are actively trying to undermine the values upon which Canadian society has been based for years.

It's the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, or as it's known by its acronym,  OISE. This faculty of the University of Toronto has been the center of controversy for years. Criticism of practices there has become more intensified since 2010, when an anti-Semitic thesis produced at OISE was condemned across party lines in the Ontario Legislature.

OISE has yet again become the center of a storm with this week's news that one of its most senior academics, Professor Ben Levin, was charged by police with a number of offenses related to child pornography.

So far, much of the focus related to Levin's position at OISE has concerned his role as an advisor to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. The question is an apt one, as Wynne has pledged to impose a curriculum that was withdrawn by her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, after it succumbed to widespread denunciation about its introducing highly sexualized material to children at an inappropriately young age.  (more...)

OISE: The Mordor of Education