Just prior to the holiday break I was sitting in our school's staff room chatting with some colleagues and the conversation turned, rather organically, to the topic of academic rigour. The question, which elicited a robust and fulsome discussion, was essentially "How hard should school be"? In my experience, there are very few people who don't believe that school has somehow gotten less challenging over the years.

In the current battle for our libraries, the concern seems to be that specific communities are being portrayed at all, writes Grant Frost.

A few weeks ago, I joined about 40 other souls in the Carbon Arc Theatre in Halifax to watch a screening of an independent film called “The Librarians”. Not to be confused with the action packed television series of the same name, the documentary was no less compelling. It told the story of how in recent months, a new type of hero has emerged in the battle for control of America’s cultural conscience.

After a summer of record breaking dryness, terrifying forest fires, and a long list of ridiculously unhinged policy decisions from our neighbours to the South, September has, at long last, arrived. In the quiet moments of summer's last gasp, schools are a magical place. Hallways hum with invisible energy, gymnasiums echo with the silent sound of last year's competitions, performance spaces resonate with June's final crescendos and buzz with the remnants of closing night applause.

"I'm worried that teachers coming up behind me will not last 35 years in this profession because there are pressures in today's classroom that didn't exist when I first started out." This quotable truism is one of dozens of such statements that can be garnered from a series of videos recently launched by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU). The video series, tag-lined "Our Kids Can't Wait", features a set of real-life testimonials from a variety of educators across Nova Scotia speaking about the realities of today's classroom.

"If you can not read, you can not learn...we have seen such...failure in our schools, because we are not teaching our children to read." This rather succinct summation of all that ails American schools was offered by Education Secretary Linda McMahon a few weeks ago at a congressional budget hearing. The hearing was called in response to Trump's evisceration of the Department of Education, a move which saw thousands of employees laid off and federal funding reduced by approximately $12 billion.

If you are a parent of a Nova Scotia grade 10 high school student, you may have recently had your child arrive home with an odd little envelope. In it you would have found information indicating that your child has been one of the lucky few to be selected to write this year's iteration of the PISA test. PISA stands for the Programme for International Student Assessment, and its test, which is written globally on a three year cycle, purports to offer a bench mark of comparison between international educational systems.

When Donald Trump was first elected, I opined that he and his billionaire band of merry men would set about trying to reshape the world in their own image. The speed at which Trump and Co. have embarked on that task has been nothing if not terrifyingly impressive. The thing about being a school teacher, however, is that even as the systems that have held democracy together for the past few centuries are being shredded, the kids keep showing up.

Well, the hits just keep on coming. As the world watches on with a mix of idolization, awe, revulsion, and fear (political stripe depending), US President Donald Trump and his band of billionaire merry men have continued their blitzkrieg on the very foundations upon which their country was built: Democracy, Rule of Law, and the ideal of a government "Of the people, by the people, and for the people."

After only a few short days in power, Donald Trump has thrown what is left of the American education system into complete chaos. That description has not come from me, nor, indeed, has it come from front line teachers. It has rather come from educational leaders at the upper levels of the system who have been left scrambling since Trump took office.

"The deal is done, and Donald J. Trump has been sworn in as America’s 47th president," writes Grant Frost in his latest column.