{"id":70483,"date":"2021-02-23T16:21:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T21:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/?p=70483"},"modified":"2026-04-01T19:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:36:09","slug":"opportunity-is-knocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/opportunity-is-knocking\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity is knocking"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Owen Charters<\/em><\/p>\n

An item out of the U.S. caught my eye last week and reminded me of the stark contrasts to Canada. A pilot project<\/a> took students from underprivileged communities and gave them access to Ivy League classes, such as you might experience in the first year at Harvard or Stanford. And these students, who struggled to get GPAs that might grant them access to these prestigious institutions, excelled in the classes. The study demonstrated that perhaps it wasn\u2019t their GPA, their perceived intellectual capacity that held them back from these schools. It was having access at all. The system they are in is holding them back, driving down their academic scores, and leaving them perennially overlooked for higher education in elite academia. But given a chance, they can compete with the best of them.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have a system like this in Canada.\u00a0We don\u2019t have legacy admissions<\/a> (where preference is given to family relations of previous alumni).\u00a0We have a much more equitable access system for postsecondary education.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t have something to learn from the experiment in the United States. There are real barriers in Canadian neighbourhoods, in communities where there are fewer opportunities, fewer supports for students.\u00a0Few role models and mentors who themselves have completed and succeeded in postsecondary education. Teachers who are overwhelmed. A support system that\u2019s thin and almost breaking.\u00a0In the Toronto District School Board, fundraising for school improvements is discouraged, and outright banned for some capital items.\u00a0The reason is that wealthy neighbourhoods would pour private money into their neighbourhood public school, creating a drastic imbalance for those schools that don\u2019t have access to this type of fundraising.\u00a0The system would be out of whack.\u00a0Many school boards likely follow a similar policy.\u00a0Ideally, any fundraising should go to fill significant gaps first\u2014but there\u2019s not much appetite to give to a public, government-run system in communities that are out of sight, out of mind.\u00a0So the system continues.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where we come in at BGC. With formal programs like RBC\u2019s Raise the Grade, or informal mentoring, or teaching STEM, like Fidelity\u2019s STEAM Ahead, our Clubs try to fill the gaps. Because the gaps exist. While our students have better access to postsecondary education in Canada, many are still often overlooked. Sometimes it\u2019s teachers who don\u2019t see the hidden potential, sometimes it\u2019s biases in the system, and sometimes it\u2019s that the individual was taught not to believe in themselves. But if we can help them find it and take advantage of it, opportunity exists for everyone.<\/p>\n

Opportunity changes everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Owen Charters An item out of the U.S. caught my eye last week and reminded me of the stark contrasts to Canada. A pilot project took students from underprivileged communities and gave them access to Ivy League classes, such as you might experience in the first year at Harvard or Stanford. And these students, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[535,65,83,75,960,1094],"class_list":["post-70483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bgc-news","tag-canada","tag-ceo","tag-clubs","tag-opportunity-changes-everything","tag-postsecondary","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bgccan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}