Althea waits in line at a local food bank in Winnipeg. Her youngest son, less than six months old, is bundled up asleep in a stroller and she holds her two-year-old in her arms. Nearby, her oldest son, now four, plays with a toy car.

INSTEAD of making students memorize a bunch of useless facts, we should help them think like scientists and historians. This is best accomplished by an inquiry-based approach that allows students to guide their own learning process.

Does this reasoning make sense to you? It probably does if you’ve recently attended a faculty of education where teachers are trained. This is also what teachers are often told at their professional development sessions.

The problem is that this approach is wrong. Not just wrong by a little, but by a lot. Despite claiming to be based on solid evidence, the real science of learning points in the opposite direction.

In fact, students learn best when they are immersed in a content-rich learning environment that builds up their background knowledge. Practice is also a key part of helping students master new skills. Learning is hard work, and for this reason alone it is important for teachers, not students, to set the direction in the classroom.

ON Sept. 12, 1977, the Carnegie Council on Children concluded that “The single greatest harm to children is poverty.” I believe this to be an apt description of the greatest threat to the education of a large number of children in Manitoba.

It remains worrisome that, even with the demise of Bill 64 (the Education Modernization Act), the most serious matters facing education are still off the table, and particularly so when it comes to the issue of child poverty, which presents probably the biggest challenge to any government wanting to achieve meaningful and lasting school change.

It’s the end of September. Children and young people are back at school for another year. This includes the children of the poor. The schools know who they are by now. They know they’ll have to pay special attention to these young people because they face challenges most of their other students do not.

Teachers will lie awake at night trying to think of new ways to mitigate the educational consequences for these children. They need help with this formidable task.