TORONTO – Those who remember the “good old days” of any kind of education (military, athletic, artistic, philosophical…) may recall the importance of mastering skills and taking ownership of outcomes… and the need to apply remediation when required. 

Many of my hyper-competitive school mates, “addicted” to the need to do at least four hours of homework, nightly, in order to ensure success in the inevitable exams, eschewed the innovations of “slide rules” and “calculators” because their use was forbidden when writing exams. My father (may he RIP) agreed. Who could argue? With a formal education that ended following grade three, he could “whiz through” my grade eleven Physics, grade thirteen Algebra and Geometry.

From his perspective, life’s success is determined by discipline, mastery techniques and focus. He would have had little, if any, patience with the dishonest shirking of responsibility exhibited by  the four school boards who are taking Meta, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Facebook , Bytedance et al to Court to recover $4.5 Billion in damages to students while in the care extremely well-paid “professionals”. If you think there something more precious than your children, please do not read further.

The Four school boards (whose leadership upon even superficial examination reveals a interwoven connection that would raise eyebrows in the political arena) Toronto’s Catholic and Public, Peel and Ottawa Carleton, are guided by 127 Superintendent-level “senior staff”.  Together, they were paid a minimum of $22,018, 282, plus benefits, according to Ontario’s Sunshine list in 2023. (click here for compiled Excel summary of names and amounts)

Their Statement of claim against Meta et al (click here for complete Claim), summarized by a National Post article Wednesday, summarizes the “harm” as “deliberately creating this new addiction and negligently ignoring evidence of its harms”. So, while Facebook et al were busy in their laboratories divining these new algorithms “to fry the brains” of our children, what were these education experts doing? Were they abetting, being negligent or ignoring? Or were they waiting for Law firms to come to them and make it worth their while?

Corriere reached out to TCDSB and Neinstein LLP, but as of going to print without specific responses. They did not have trouble communicating their messages to other media.

For supporters of Catholic schools, they should begin considering law suits against Minister Lecce and Premier Ford for allowing the Catholic educators to shirk their fiduciary duties.