I don't know how exactly to arrange this. I know there is preparation time required and marking and things to do, but I think teachers should be paid and they should be paid well but they should be able to confine a day's work and not have to be doing homework.

I think we are in a rut. We put a lot of emphasis on take-home assignments. The other thing it does is it disadvantages some children, Mr. Chairman. We expect that parents are all equally capable of helping their children with their homework or having the discipline to make sure their children are disciplined to do their homework. That puts some kids at a distinct disadvantage. Some homes are single parent homes or maybe their home is where there are a lot of children and they don't get the kind of one-on-one or the kind of attention they need to help with their homework. We are assuming that when they send them off at the end of school day with their books under, that everybody is going to get the same attention. That's not necessarily true. I also think we discriminate against children whose parents are uneducated. Did you ever notice that teachers' kids do really, really well in school?

I am telling you myself, personally, I don't consider myself uneducated, but there is stuff that my kids bring home for homework and I couldn't help them if I had to because I wouldn't know how to do it. I think that we have too much emphasis on what kids are expected to do independently and away from the classroom and not enough focus on getting the basic training in during the school day and in the classroom. I think we could do a lot less socializing at school and a lot more attention on the basics and academics.

There is time after school for extracurricular things like sports, drama and all those kinds of softer subjects, shall we say. Maybe that's something else that could take place between 3:30 and 5:00 as part of that day. I think kids need the basics. They need a good, solid base and a foundation for their education, that will equip them for whatever they choose to do later on in life.

Maybe it's just because I am getting older, but now we are talking about full-day kindergarten. Oh, my goodness. When do you ever get to have fun? You are born and now you are going to be shuffled off to day care and now you are going to start school when you are four and you are going to graduate when you are 18, and then you are going to go to post-secondary or get a job. When do you get to relax? It just seems like we are trying to get kids engaged younger and younger. I think we should give parents who stay home to look after their kids a great big fat tax credit. We should figure out ways to be creative like they are in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should pay grandparents to look after their grandchildren.

We need to be more creative. I just think we are in a rut in how we do things. We don't ever think outside the box. I just think life is too short to have kids in a structured environment taking homework home when they are four years old. It's the younger grades. Maybe some of you don't have kids and don't know that, Mr. Chairman, but kids are taking home homework at a really young age and I don't know what's to be accomplished by it. Anyway, I would like to know if the Minister in his capacity for being responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, ever has an opportunity to affect the culture of our education here in the North and to bring any kind of creativity to that. If he doesn't have any ideas, maybe he could convene some kind of a dialogue with people to find out how we best and most successfully educate our children without having to stress them out before they even get into their adult years.

Mr. Chairman, there are so many things that could be said about Education, Culture and Employment. I think I will just ask the Minister if he could respond to that. Thank you.