Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sachin Maharaj, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Program Evaluation, Faculty of Education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

The Ontario government has introduced legislation that will make its school boards run more like businesses. The recently announced Putting Student Achievement First Act reduces the power of elected trustees and creates a powerful new chief executive officer (CEO) position to head school boards.

Unlike previous directors of education who were required to have education backgrounds and shared power with elected boards, CEOs will be required to have business qualifications and will have ultimate authority over decision-making.

CEOs will lead the preparation of school board budgets with elected trustees relegated to an advisory role. Instead of elected trustees representing the public at the bargaining table, CEOs will negotiate and ratify collective agreements at both the local and provincial level.

The goal of all of these reforms is to bring a more business-like focus to schools. The CEO is expected to focus on “effective resource allocation” and “corporate services oversight.”

Over the past five years, we have been studying the challenges to implementing equity reforms in Ontario school districts.

Decades of educational research, including our own, confirms that attempts to force efficiency into schools serve to sacrifice student equity and the material needs of the most vulnerable for short-term cost savings.

‘Chief education officer’ under CEO

School boards will be required to have a chief education officer position, with required teaching qualifications. This role will focus on academic programming.

However, this “CEdO” will be hired by and be subservient to the CEO. What this means is that the traditional educational mission of schools is now going to take a backseat to financial considerations.

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For a preview of how this will impact students, we only need to look at the changes that have been made at the eight school boards that have been placed under provincial supervision.

Lowest per-pupil funding in 10 years

These boards were repeatedly accused by the minister of education of financial mismanagement.

While there were instances of questionable expenses, subsequent reporting found that two-thirds of Ontario school boards were either running budget deficits or close to it. This suggests the problem was really chronic underfunding.

According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario: “In 2024-25, real per-student provincial operating funding to school boards was $14,504, the lowest level over the last 10 years.” But instead of addressing this underfunding, the province installed supervisors that have been making cuts to staff.

Reductions, layoffs

In the Thames Valley District School Board, there have been staff reductions in its equity and human rights office.

The Peel District School Board is looking at possibly laying off hundreds of teachers.

In the Toronto District School Board, class sizes have increased and summer school programming has been cut by more than half.

The board will no longer provide additional staff for its highest-needs schools, and it will cut almost 300 teachers and 40 vice-principals next year.

LBGTQ+, racialized, Indigenous students

The province is also ending the requirements for boards to conduct school climate surveys, which examine the degree to which students from different backgrounds feel welcome and accepted or experience bullying and discrimination in schools.

As a result, many Ontario schools will no longer even know how their racialized and/or LGBTQ+ students are being treated.

Also concerning is its approach to increasing school attendance by making it part of students’ final grades.

The reality is that the causes of school absenteeism are complex. Taking a punitive approach may end up further marginalizing Indigenous and racialized students.

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Read more:
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Risk of exacerbating disparities

Taken together, it’s clear that, while all students and families will be impacted, those who are already disadvantaged will bear the brunt of the cuts and provincial reforms.

This will only exacerbate disparities in schools on the basis of race, social class, gender and sexuality, and disability that exist in our education system. This is especially true of Black students, whose continued marginalization was documented last year by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

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As put in a recent letter to Premier Doug Ford by the Black Trustees’ Caucus: “Ontario cannot address systemic anti-Black racism while weakening the governance and equity structures designed to confront it.”

Advocating for vulnerable students

In part of our study, already presented at academic conferences and now under peer review for publication, we interviewed around 100 people working in several different school boards across Ontario. Participants included trustees, directors of education, associate directors, superintendents, people working in equity departments, school principals and teachers.

What we heard is that in districts across the province, school board staff and trustees have consistently reported struggling to advocate for vulnerable students in the face of a provincial government that appears determined to undermine such efforts.

This includes public comments like Ford repeatedly accusing school boards of indoctrinating students.

Interviewees noted that over recent years, as the province has asserted greater control over school boards, senior school board staff have received ministry guidance to focus more on literacy and numeracy and less on equity and social justice initiatives.

As a result, educators engaged in equity work reported feeling like they were constantly under surveillance and that any real efforts made to help vulnerable students — including racialized and LGBTQ+ students — would put their careers at risk.

Improving outcomes: A better approach

Educators understand that best practices for improving outcomes for all students depend on strong connections between schools, families and communities; a focus on overall well-being (physical, social-emotional and mental); decision-making that reflects the larger contexts in which schools are situated and individual circumstances; and giving educators the respect, autonomy and resources they need to strengthen their teaching.

The Putting Student Achievement First Act promotes the opposite approach — another reason why those with classroom expertise, not CEOs, should be making the key decisions about schools.

An education system that is run like a business ultimately views students with the highest needs as a liability to cut rather than a collective moral responsibility.

It erodes the accountability of leadership under a democratic system, leadership that is responsible to communities it serves. It also erodes the autonomy of teachers who require professional respect and the ability to access resources to serve the specific needs of their students.

Some ‘too expensive’ to serve?

When public school is treated like a commodity to be optimized rather than a fundamental right, it’s a betrayal of the values of a system that should instead centre students and their learning.

Although there were significant challenges with school governance under the previous model, the solution is not to diminish local democratic control, but to strengthen it.

Once we view education through the lens of a balance sheet, we have already decided that some students are too expensive to serve.

Sachin Maharaj receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Beyhan Farhadi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Vidya Shah consults in school boards. She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. What Ontarians need to know about ‘student achievement’ reforms that will run school boards like businesses – https://theconversation.com/what-ontarians-need-to-know-about-student-achievement-reforms-that-will-run-school-boards-like-businesses-280618

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Suiyang Liao, Postdoctoral researcher in Nanomedicine, University of British Columbia

Canadians swallow millions of pills every day to treat common health issues like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type II diabetes, but scientists are working at the molecular level to turn patients’ cells into pharmacies.

Nanotechnology, where atoms and molecules are manipulated on a tiny scale — a billion times smaller than a metre — is already incorporated into everyday products like sunscreen, waterproof clothing and smartphones.

In nanomedicine, it’s being used to prompt RNA to make protein-based drugs to treat diseases. Now we can fine-tune protein production by dialling it up or down, creating personalized medicine on an invisible scale.

Protein production and health

The human body is a precision instrument, and its smooth operation relies on the balance of proteins like keratin, which creates structure for your hair and nails, and collagen, which gives your skin its strength and elasticity.

Factor VIII is a clotting protein that acts like molecular glue at wound sites, and if your body doesn’t make enough of it — like people with Hemophilia A — a seemingly small injury can cause dangerous bleeding. Conversely, if you make too much of apolipoprotein C3 (ApoC3), it blocks the breakdown of fats in the blood called triglycerides, and these high lipid levels increase the risk of pancreatitis, heart disease and stroke.

The body maintains this delicate protein balance through an elegant molecular system, one that nanomedicine is now learning to control.

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Immunity and Society is a new series from The Conversation Canada that presents new vaccine discoveries and immune-based innovations that are changing how we understand and protect human health. Through a partnership with the Bridge Research Consortium, these articles — written by experts in Canada at the forefront of immunology, biomanufacturing, social science and humanities — explore the latest developments and their impacts.

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RNA’s balancing act

How does your body make proteins? Think of your cells as factories, with DNA as the operating manual.

In order to make the proteins it needs, your body’s cells act as factories, with DNA as the operating manual. The blueprints are safely locked away in the nucleus, and cells can’t make anything directly from the precious original.

Instead, when the cell needs a specific protein, it makes a temporary copy of the blueprint, called messenger RNA (mRNA). This single strand of nucleic acids carries the instructions to the cytoplasm, or the factory floor. There, molecular machines called ribosomes read the instructions and build amino acids into a protein.

This is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA → RNA → protein.

When the body needs proteins, it makes mRNA copies and transfers them to the cytoplasm. The factory foreman is a mechanism called RNA interference, which ensures proteins are not over-produced or under-produced.

For example, small interfering RNA (siRNA) or Antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) molecules can stop the production of proteins by silencing genetic instructions from DNA and cutting target mRNA apart. In both cases, the mRNA degrades and protein production stops, like hitting the emergency button on a conveyor belt.

Turning RNA into drugs

What does this mean for future disease treatment? Unlike small-molecule drugs such as antibiotics or protein-based drugs like insulin, RNA drugs work upstream, at the instruction level itself.

As scientists in nanomedicine, we harness cellular machinery to treat diseases with RNA drugs by dialing up or dialing down protein production. Want more of a beneficial protein? Deliver more mRNA. Want less of a harmful one? Use siRNA or ASO to silence the gene.

Teaching cells to make what’s missing

When the human body lacks an essential protein, disease follows. In hemophilia A, the problem lies in the blueprint. A mutation in the DNA means the gene for factor VIII contains errors, like a typo in a recipe that calls for salt instead of sugar. The cell follows this flawed instruction, and makes messenger RNA that produces either a broken protein or none at all.

Without functional factor VIII, a simple nosebleed can last for hours, not minutes and a little bump can lead to a big bruise that takes a long time to heal. Even a minor cut can lead to prolonged bleeding.

Scientists can now synthesize mRNA in the lab — for example, by making a correct, error-free copy of the instructions for factor VIII — and package it in lipid nanoparticles, which are little protective bubbles of fat.

As a materials scientist at UBC working with researchers Anna Blakney and Pieter Cullis, I design formulations of lipid nanoparticles. When these particles are infused intravenously, they deliver the synthetic mRNA to liver cells, which then read the instructions and manufacture fresh factor VIII protein. The cell becomes its own pharmacy.

Silencing the trouble-makers

Over-expression of some proteins can also cause disease, for example, in familial chylomicronemia syndrome where the messenger RNA makes too much apolipoprotein C3.

ApoC3 helps regulate fat metabolism, but too much of it blocks the body’s ability to clear triglycerides from the bloodstream. The instructions from the DNA manual may be correct, but small interfering RNA molecules are not doing their job to keep production in check. Like an out-of-control assembly line, fat accumulates in the blood. If it reaches dangerous levels it can cause acute pancreatitis — a painful and potentially fatal inflammation of the pancreas.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada recently approved Plozasiran, an injectable drug that treats familial chylomicronemia syndrome by delivering small interfering RNA to liver cells.

This siRNA molecule is a short double strand of nucleic acids to be unzipped as two single strands, one of which complements ApoC3 mRNA, like a key fitting a lock. The binding event will be recognized by the cellular machinery to cut the mRNA apart. No mRNA means no protein production.

The same technology offers different levers: mRNA amplifies production of beneficial proteins like factor VIII; siRNA silences production of harmful proteins like ApoC3. Together, they represent medicine’s new ability to program biology, turning genes up or down as precisely as adjusting the volume on a stereo.

Suiyang Liao is affiliated with the University of British Columbia.

– ref. How nanomedicine gets inside your cells and treats you from the inside out – https://theconversation.com/how-nanomedicine-gets-inside-your-cells-and-treats-you-from-the-inside-out-270414

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Joanna Pozzulo, Chancellor’s Professor, Psychology, Carleton University

Reading is experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z and millennials, many of whom are actively seeking alternatives to “doomscrolling” and the mental fatigue associated with constant social media use.

In North America, an estimated 57 to 61 per cent of Gen Z and millennials identify as readers, averaging 3.5 to 4.5 books per year, with a preference for physical books. Younger readers are also more likely to purchase books in a bookstore and be active library users, which is notable in an era dominated by digital media.

Although reading is often viewed as a solitary activity, it can also foster meaningful connections with others. Participation in a reading community can reduce social isolation, alleviate loneliness and increase a sense of belonging and connectedness — something younger generations report struggling with.

Book clubs can serve as a natural extension for those seeking the benefits of reading and community. Among younger adults, interest in book clubs is growing: about 21 per cent of Gen Z and 29 per cent of millennials report belonging to one, but they’re putting their own spin on them.

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Hobbies can bring joy, well-being, and focus to our busy lives, but so many of us don’t have one. If you’re ready to replace scrolling with stitching, or hustle with horticulture, The Hobby Starter Kit (a new series from Quarter Life) will help you get going.

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A brief history of book clubs

Book clubs aren’t new. They can be traced back at least to the 16th century, when groups — often women — gathered for education and debate, often about religious texts.

In later centuries, reading groups became important spaces for women’s intellectual lives at times when formal education was limited.

In more recent popular culture, however, book clubs have often been portrayed through the lens of the so-called “wine mom” stereotype. These clubs are typically depicted as gatherings of mothers using the meeting as a rare night off from parenting, where alcohol and socializing take precedence and discussion of the book itself becomes secondary.

While this portrayal can be reductive and overlooks the real emotional and intellectual value those clubs provide, it has nonetheless shaped perceptions of what book clubs are and who they are for.

A new generation rewrites the rules

Gen Z and millennials are moving away from, or at least expanding beyond, the “wine-and-gossip” model to better fit their lives, values and energy levels.

One of the fastest-growing formats is the silent book club, where members gather in public spaces such as libraries or cafés to read their own books quietly. After about an hour, readers may choose to socialize with the others or leave.

It gives members an opportunity to read as part of a community without the other demands associated with book clubs of the past. Silent book clubs now span 60 countries with over 2,000 chapters worldwide.

In addition to silent clubs, niche book clubs have grown among younger readers, including groups centred on specific identities such as queer, BIPOC, Indigenous and disability-focused clubs, or interests like genre-specific clubs.

Book clubs going digital

Social media has reshaped how readers find each other and decide what books to read. Hashtags like #BookTok and #Bookstagram are now influencing club selections more, favouring genres such as fantasy, romance and horror, rather than celebrity-endorsed bestsellers.

Unlike traditional local clubs, digital platforms can act as virtual hubs where readers join discussion groups, share recommendations and participate in other activities without geographic limits.

These clubs often place a greater emphasis on understanding the book with facilitated discussions, and sometimes include a question-and-answer format with the author.

For many young adults, this flexibility makes book clubs more accessible and better suited to busy and mobile lifestyles. If you’re struggling to find the time and energy to attend in-person clubs, a digital one might be just what you’re looking for.

Reading for mental health

This reading resurgence matters because Gen Z and millennials report higher rates of anxiety and depression than previous generations. Many are actively seeking low-cost, sustainable ways to support their mental health, and reading fits that bill.

The therapeutic use of books, known as bibliotherapy, is supported by clinical guidelines. The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments recommends books as a supportive, second-line treatment for certain mild to moderate emotional difficulties.

Book clubs amplify these positive effects. One survey found that 98 per cent of respondents said it improved their mental health and helped them cope during difficult periods.

Given this connection, I created and run the Reading for Well-Being Community Book Club at Carleton University, which focuses on evidence-based books about mental health and personal growth. The club operates digitally and is open beyond campus, and roughly half of participants are Gen Z or millennials.

Finding a book club that suits you

For those looking to engage more deeply with reading, book clubs offer a flexible way to connect with like-minded readers and build community. Here are some tips for how to start:

1. Identify your reading interests and type of community connection desired. Consider the genres you enjoy, how often you’d like to meet and the type of social connection you’re seeking.

2. Explore online communities such as Goodreads, Bookclubs and Book Club Hub, which host a wide range of virtual and in-person groups.

3. Consider trying alternative formats, such as hybrid or silent book clubs, if a traditional book club doesn’t work for you.

4. Check your local libraries and independent bookstores, many of which host free, community-focused book clubs.

5. Start your own. If you can’t find a book club that suits your needs, resources from organizations like public libraries or tips from professionals can help you create your own.

Engaging with reading in these ways not only stimulates your mind but also help you build community, belonging and mental well-being.

Joanna Pozzulo receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. Is reading your favourite hobby? A new era of book clubs is reshaping how we read – https://theconversation.com/is-reading-your-favourite-hobby-a-new-era-of-book-clubs-is-reshaping-how-we-read-274406