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Schooled in educational opportunities

School daze, school daze. What to do about school daze. The Whistler Task Force on Learning & Education — yes, that's learning & education, not learning and education, meh — delivered its report to Council last week.
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School daze, school daze. What to do about school daze.

The Whistler Task Force on Learning & Education — yes, that's learning & education, not learning and education, meh — delivered its report to Council last week. We shall hope the report and its recommendations do not join the storied archive of other documents collectively referred to as "dust collectors" somewhere in the labyrinth of muni hall.

The L&E was formed in October, 2012 and given the task of developing recommendations for a strategic framework for the RMOW to advance and evaluate education opportunities for the benefit of the resort community.

Two things will immediately strike the reasonably astute reader. First, the task force managed to do its job in eight months or, as they like to say around the hall, "Only eight months?" This is remarkable but not surprising.

It's remarkable given the second thing that may strike reasonably astute readers, which is the language of the mandate seems uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has ever read an instruction manual for a Japanese device written by someone with only a passing familiarity with English. It is not surprising though given the impressive and intimidating credentials of the task force members. I'm humbled to know such talent walks among us and hope the RMOW keeps their numbers on speed dial.

The task force laid out a road map for this, and with any luck, subsequent councils to follow when contemplating learning and education opportunities dangled before it by well-meaning and hopeful entrepreneurs, as well as those with less noble intentions.

Those of you with History Deficit Disorder or Compromised Short-Term Memory Retention Syndrome may be asking yourself, "Why does the RMOW care about opportunities in learning and education?" Good question. Let me refresh what's left of your memory.

There are two reasons council is/was/may be interested. Okay, there may well be more than two reasons but I'm sure you're not interested in the others and wouldn't remember them anyway.

The first reason is Whistler U, a.k.a .Whistler International Campus a.k.a. the Zen lands, an idea that's been kicking around so long it may be eligible for CPP. It's an idea, not unlike alchemy, that would turn a marginal piece of land with zoning for a handful of Really Big Homes into a university campus with housing for 1,500 students and all the learning and hard drinking that goes along with them. Notwithstanding the uncomfortable analogy of quacking like a duck, it is not, as the proponents stress, simply a real estate play disguised as a university. It is more like B.C.'s LNG strategy, designed to make us all wealthy and debt-free in our lifetimes.

The second reason is money. Okay, nothing as crass as money. Let's call it economic diversification. Learning and education is becoming indistinguishable with living and leisure, and where better to live and leise than Whistler? And let's be honest, Whistler's been in the education business for as long as there have been people who wanted to learn to ski and people who were willing to encourage them by saying, "Nice turn."

This may be a good time to reference the Economic Partnership Initiative committee report that also came out last week. Then again, I don't want to lose the HDD and CSTMRS kids. Oh well, nothing ventured....

The EPI committee, after 10 months of work, or, as they like to say around the hall, "What took you so long?", discovered winter visitors spend more per day than summer visitors. While this is not surprising, given lift tickets cost $100 and sunscreen costs $5.99, it does raise some interesting questions important to L&E.

Do winter visitors have enough money left to spend on L&E or are we better off targeting summer slackers for learning? Do summer visitors really want to learn anything more challenging than how to find Lost Lake? Are summer visitors a good target market for financial education? If we had free concerts in winter would winter visitors spend less?

Fortunately, the task force has provided a framework to evaluate such questions. Even more fortunately, I'm not going to tell you what that is. If you're interested, go read the report. Here's a link: http://www.whistler.ca/sites/default/files/related/rmow_learning_and_education_task_force_final_report.pdf

What I would like to say about the L&E report is this: think small. Remember, we're a resort. Embrace the opportunities identified in the field of arts and culture. Forget the nonsense presented by the Canadian Sport Institute. RIP Whistler U.

Arts and culture is a natural adjunct to what has been unfortunately termed educational tourism. More baby boomers retire every minute than drop dead, a statistic many believe should be turned on its head but reality nonetheless. They have time, they have money — well, at least some of them do — and they generally like to learn things if for no other reason than there aren't that many things they're particularly good at. As they age, the things they like to learn are more suited to their declining virility, things like art and photography, yoga, cooking, scotch tasting. Notably absent from that list is clubbing, pretty much Whistler's only after-dark activity.

If we want to separate visitors from more of their money, regardless of the season, we have to offer things they (1) want to do and (2) are willing to pay for. A&L L&E opportunities seem a natural strategy.

As does the interest shown by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Emily Carr University of Art + Design. One important similarity of all these initiatives is their ability to operate within Whistler's built environment. All these things need is a nudge.

Unlike the presentation of the Canadian Sport Institute or, as one wag put it, a White Elephant in search of a mate. The head of one of Canada's most successful FIS-sanctioned sports once told me, in an unguarded moment, "Canada doesn't have a sports culture. Canada has a hockey culture. Once every four years it feigns interest in other sports." Okay, so once every two years now that the summer and winter Olympics are staggered. But point taken.

Elite athlete tourism is a phrase in search of both a meaning and a reality. Not only should this fatuous presentation be redacteppd from the L&E report, but council should do what it can to send our existing White Elephant to the secret place elephants go to die. There is zero potential for increased tourism, zero potential for increased tourist spending and 100 per cent potential for developing yet more infrastructure that is a drain on the public purse and the local tax base.

And Whistler U? Please, let us observe a moment of silence.