After serving three decades on a variety of local school boards, Ron Marks is spending the summer training a boisterous new puppy and golfing almost daily with his favourite partners.
It’s not that he retired as a school board member, but rather Premier Stephen McNeil sent all board members packing by disbanding school boards across Nova Scotia this spring.
“I’m disappointed, no question, but I’m enjoying the summer,” he said.
Libby, his seven-month-old golden retriever, a bundle of eagerness and energy, is the newcomer among Marks’ three dogs.
“She is hard work but I’ve always been attracted to the sporting breeds and we are making progress,” said Marks, who has taught dog training for 40 years and judged obedience trials for the Canadian Kennel Club for 35 years.
His golf partners are his 11- and 14 year-old grandsons, who are visiting from Ontario, and most days they put in four hours at the golf course.
“At the point I am in life, I think I’m very lucky to be able to spend so much time with them. Out on the course together for long stretches, we have some amazing conversations.”
Days spent on the greens bring back memories of similar times with his two daughters, but it is mostly about sharing time – and golf tips – as the boys grow up.
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” said Marks.
Marks has a deep interest in how children develop and the schooling they get along the way. He was first named to the Stellarton board of school commissioners after joining town council in 1980. He later served eight years as mayor during which time he served on the Pictou County school board.
“I really enjoyed my years as mayor, thanks to a very strong council and a great town administrator.”
After the Pictou County amalgamated, Marks was elected to the recently dissolved Chignecto Central Regional School Board.
“I think the premier has taken one of the loudest voices for education in the province and put it out of commission. The government has its interests, the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union has its interests and it was parents and school boards who had the children’s interests exclusively.”
He sees the province’s action as taking increasing control over the delivery of education – too much control, in his view.
“The government wants to run education, like health care, as a business and that is not going to work for our students. You’ve seen the relationship between the government and the NSTU. We definitely need people on the outside looking in and demanding accountability.”
Essentially, teachers will now be employed by the premier, he pointed out.
“There is a real danger there, that having taken many years to get rid of it, we’ll go back to a system where teachers are hired based on their political persuasion.”
Marks said he is not opposed to change, having seen plenty of it over the past three decades.
“We’ve had many necessary changes. We can’t operate high schools with 30 kids in them, for example, and provide a good education. The loss of literally thousands of students across Nova Scotia in recent years is very concerning and has had a big impact on education.”
He points to the semester system as one of the changes he does not believe has been beneficial for students.
“It was forced on us so that you could run two subjects a year rather than one. It increased course offerings but was driven by economics. I don’t think it has been beneficial, certainly not in sciences or math or French.”
He also feels boys are increasingly at a disadvantage with the current school system, in general.
“We accept that children learn differently but we don’t address boys’ needs anymore. We’re very short of male teachers in the elementary grades at a time when many children do not have a male role model at home.”
He also cites a move away from competition as being detrimental to boys.
“I think we’ve been quite successful in creating opportunities for girls to achieve in the school system and I know that was needed but we also have to look at what boys need. In my experience and in what I’ve read, boys thrive in a competitive environment and that is not how schools operate today.”
He points to local media coverage of recent high school graduations to back up his argument.
“The girls winning prizes very seriously outnumber the boys. We’ve been seeing that for quite some time.”
Marks finds it ironic that some of the recommendations in the recent Avis Glaze report on education in Nova Scotia were previously made by the Nova School Boards Association but fell on deaf ears where the province was concerned.
A long-time resident of Stellarton, Marks and his wife, Eleanor, grew up in Imperoyal, a Dartmouth neighborhood created by Imperial Oil which had a nearby refinery operation.
“We even had our own school which took in students from a couple of nearby streets outside Imperoyal. It was next to Woodside, before Shearwater,” he said, adding there was a lot industry in the area at that time.
He graduated from university as a chemical engineer and came to Pictou County soon after to work for a company that had a contract with the former Scott Maritimes. He still works in water treatment, choosing the jobs that suit him.
A few years ago it was Marks who took the Town of Stellarton to task for the way it was operating its water treatment plant.
“It was not being operated up to standard. There were ongoing problems and we were not being told. As a professional engineer, I had a responsibility to speak out when I became aware of what was going on. Happily, the operation was brought up to standard.”
Rosalie MacEachern is a Stellarton resident and freelance writer. She seeks out people who work behind the scenes on hobbies or jobs that they love the most. If you know someone you think she should profile in an upcoming article, she can be reached at [email protected].
