The best days of our lives

School days are often romanticized as a time of imagination, discovery and development. Indeed, the classrooms and schoolyards of Canada continue to occupy the imaginations of many of our writers, playwrights and actors. But are Canada's students enjoying their school experiences as much as we're often led to believe? Surveys certainly suggest that many do. In the mid-1990s, a survey of 10- and 11-year-old students revealed that 69% liked school quite a bit or very much, 78% said they were doing well, and practically all believed it was important to do well in school. Teachers attached high expectations to our students, predicting that over half would eventually graduate from a postsecondary institution—a quarter from a college, a business school or a CEGEP institution, and over a third from university.