What we have here is a failure to communicate. And educate.

We might not all agree on the nuts and bolts of education — say, “discovery math” versus “back to basics;” sex-ed versus the ideology of chastity. But we can all agree that education is the foundation of our growth — personal, intellectual, financial.

When striking teachers are off the job, that gets our attention. But if fewer teachers will be left on the job in future years — creating overcrowded classrooms — that gets even more attention from parents.

We know this because my Toronto Star colleague Kristin Rushowy has revealed the results of the latest government survey that Premier Doug Ford tried to keep secret. Bad enough that his Progressive Conservatives won’t tell us what we already know, what’s worse is that the premier keeps pretending he knows what’s best for our children.

Better than the rest. An education premier unlike any who came before him.

“I don’t go by some online poll,” Ford insisted this week when confronted with the results he refused to share.

Despite his dissent, we now know there is broad public agreement on four key points:

First, people want consultation on education.

Second, they oppose larger class sizes.

Third, they are skeptical of obligatory online classes in place of in-person learning.

Fourth, never forget the first point — people want to be consulted.

Campaigning in the 2018 election, Ford promised the “largest consultation ever in Ontario’s history” to overhaul sex education reforms he claimed were too controversial. When he finally took those sex-ed soundings, he discovered Ontarians were still broadly supportive (as they had indicated in previous consultations) and quietly backed down.

But there is more to education than sex education. For all the energy Ford expended on sexing up his sex-ed wedge, he now refuses to concede a far more important point: Class size matters and bigger isn’t better — for people of all persuasions. Virtually no one believes otherwise, according to the government’s own data.

Those results didn’t stop last year’s announcement by Ford’s Tories that they would raise average class sizes from 22 to 28 students in Ontario’s high schools. Lisa Thompson, Ford’s education minister at the time, not only disregarded but distorted the views of Ontarians.

“We’re hearing from professors and employers alike that (students) are lacking coping skills and they are lacking resiliency,” she told CBC Radio. “By increasing class sizes in high school, we are preparing them for the reality of post-secondary, as well as the world of work.”

Interestingly, Ford used similar phrasing this month when boasting that his government was delivering on “schools that prepare our young people for the jobs of the future.”

How do increased class sizes prepare people for the future? How does an untried experiment in mandatory online learning — found nowhere else in North America — equip students for the jobs of tomorrow?

No matter. Our populist premier is taking the pulse of the people.

“Ontario finally has a government for the people,” Ford told his fellow Tories. “Promises made, promises kept!”

Except that Ford never said anything in the 2018 campaign about raising class sizes and increasing online learning at the expense of teachers in the classroom. And he never listened to what parents told him after he won power.

“Do not increase class sizes” was the main message from the more than 7,000 public submissions during those consultations. “Larger class sizes negatively impact student learning (and) will reduce the quality of education.”

Bigger classes had “virtually no support” among school boards, students, educators and the general public. The government research found people do “not support mandatory online learning,” because they fear teenagers “are not disciplined/motivated enough to succeed in online learning.”

Amid the fallout from last year’s plan to increase class sizes, Thompson’s successor as education minister, Stephen Lecce, has partly rolled back the cutbacks by saying high school classes will only rise from 22 to 25 students. (Bear in mind those are merely averages — caps on the maximum number of students are also disappearing under the Tories, leaving some classes with as many as 40 students.) Lecce has also halved the number of mandatory online courses for each student from four to two, but the plan will still be untried in North America and no less half-baked.

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Perhaps Ford is right and everyone else is wrong: Fewer teachers in class, and more compulsory classes online, may ultimately “prepare our young people for the jobs of the future.”

But it’s time he explained those cutbacks, clearly and publicly. By pretending to be listening and consulting on education — while privately disregarding his own secret survey that demonstrates the opposite — Ford is insulting the intelligence of every educator, parent and student in the province.

It is an illusion within a delusion wrapped in a distortion.

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