Sitting at my school’s graduation was everything you hope for when you are a high school teacher: a beautiful and poignant send-off for children to become successful and productive adults. It is one of the highlights of the year.
No matter how challenging a school year has been, the graduation ceremony always helps us all focus on why we do our job as teachers: to help create a better future through a public education system that reflects the needs of society.
During the ceremony, the valedictorian said something that struck me as both profound and shocking: “Most of us were in Grade 1 in our first week of school when the tragedy of 9/11 happened.” The audience in the University of Victoria Centre Auditorium collectively went silent and you could sense the profundity of the moment.
And then it hit me. What a world these children have had to grow up in. A world of fear, constant world tensions and the inundation of security, worry and a general societal paranoia. A world where distrust and an overabundance of precautions are now the norm.
And then the other shoe dropped for me. The government I work for wants to lock in a contract with B.C. teachers for 10 years. I am by no means suggesting the tragedy of 9/11 is the same as our contract struggle. Not at all. But it did get me thinking.
I suggest that we look at how much the world has changed since 2001, and how changes in B.C. education that will be required in the next 10 years will be significantly thwarted if we don’t have a school system and a collective agreement that will be flexible and adaptive to students’ and teachers’ needs.
Nobody would deny the world is changing. So is education in B.C. Technology and individualized learning models are now the norm. Locking in for 10 years to anything would just not make sense, given the rapidity of change in our world.
And while educators recognize the need for a system that will be adaptive to 21st-century needs, we are being told labour peace is the primary benefit of a 10-year deal. But what about the needs of a system to evolve and serve our province’s children and educators? A 10-year deal thwarts and throttles that because so much cannot be negotiated for 10 years.
Of course I’d like labour peace. I take zero pleasure in disruptive job actions. But to suggest a 10-year deal is good for B.C. is much like suggesting we all should just stick with the automobile we have now and not get a new one if the current one no longer runs, breaks down or needs new tires.
If asking to keep up with the cost of living and returning contract rights that were taken from us illegally (not rhetoric here, but court-determined) is considered greedy, then yes, I am greedy.
If asking for the government of B.C. to respect both students and teachers by funding education is the stuff of pipe-dreams, then call me a smoker.
I notice that each year, my municipal taxes go up. I don’t like it, but I understand it, because I know that my roads need to be fixed, that the police and firefighters in my municipality deserve to keep up with inflation, and items like this must be funded.
But somehow, fundamentally, our provincial government has gone to such a neo-conservative extreme that even the words “tax increase” are seen as heretical. Why is this?
One cannot deny the disturbing correlation between the destabilization of public education through funding freezes and the increased funding to independent schools.
And before anyone asserts that education funding is increasing at an adequate rate, just look at Statistics Canada’s data that show in per capita funding, B.C. is supporting education to the amount of $1,000 less per student than the national average. That is not something that makes me feel we are living in the Best Place on Earth.
As many teachers at my school were discussing in the staff room last week, nobody would sign a 10-year cellphone deal — why would we do it with our children’s futures? And our careers?
Colin Plant is a Saanich teacher.
