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Pique n your interest

Schooling the teachers

By the time their term is up four years from now, the B.C. Liberal Party will have made a lot of powerful enemies. Wielding an unprecedented majority in the Legislature, they have downsized the government workforce by a third, cut funding to hundreds of programs, overruled past legislation, overturned past judgements, reneged on assorted government contracts, and played an unflinching game of chicken with various public sector unions.

Premier Gordon Campbell is going to get the province back on its feet, even if it means knocking it down first.

Why? The main reason is to make the province more attractive to businesses that apparently need a ruthless government with no social conscience in order to thrive. Quality of life is evidently less a concern to these companies than lower taxes and the freedom to do what they want.

As much as many people hate this government, however, you have to admire how cold and unswervingly practical this government is. To trim the fat, it pays I guess you have to be lean and mean.

I believe they can balance the books in four years with this approach, and at the same time increase investment in the province and its resources.

At least I hope they can do it in four years, because if they continue to alienate voters at the current rate, they have about a snowball’s chance in hell of being re-elected for a second term.

I can think of about 45,000 people who will be casting their votes elsewhere – the teachers.

Before the teacher’s contract with the province ran out at the end of the summer, Campbell’s government passed legislation making education an "essential service," which makes it illegal for teachers to strike.

Stripped of that bargaining chip, but doubtful that the essential services designation would hold up in practice, the teachers boldly asked for a 34 per cent raise an smaller classes. They lowered that figure to 22 per cent, and during the latest round of negotiations, pared it down to 18 per cent.

Working overtime last weekend, the provincial government imposed a new contract on B.C.’s teachers that will increase wages by 7.5 per cent over three years. In another piece of legislation, the province set the responsibility of setting class sizes and workloads on the shoulders of our notoriously cash-strapped school boards.

The teachers walked out on Monday to protest these new laws, and were legislated back to work on Tuesday. The Premier then said that teachers who continue to strike would suffer the consequences, meaning they would likely be docked pay.

But whether this contract is fair or not – considering the generally poor economic climate within the province and the fact that the Liberal government was facing a $5 billion deficit this year without drastic cuts – is not really the issue anymore.

The teachers, who have become used to getting their way in recent years, have been schooled by the government. That won’t sit well with them.

Apparently they are no longer trusted to negotiate their own contracts and wound up looking greedy by initially trying to get a raise of 34 per cent.

The province also left the issue of classroom sizes up to the same school boards that had to fork out for new teachers when classroom numbers exceeded the limits imposed in the last teacher’s contract. Now student numbers are likely to go up for teachers to previous levels, and because it will be the school board’s decision, it’s won’t be the provincial government’s fault.

For years the teachers have emphasized their importance in past contract negotiations, drilling home the that children are our most important resource and the future of the province. By doing so, they made it easier for the government to classify teachers as an essential service. The evil genius of it.

The old "pay me more so I can teach your children better" routine has backfired.

While all of this is going on, the teachers are more accountable for their results than ever through the Provincial Learning Assessment Program. PLAP uses standard tests to determine what the average level of knowledge and ability is among students in the province, which also allows the province to determine which students, and which teachers, are behind. That’s just has to be stressful.

The provincial governments’ most recent contract wouldn’t do a lot for a teacher’s sense of pride either.

So how do they get that pride back?

The union can probably afford to pay the teachers $50 a day for months while they strike illegally, but that’s not going to win a lot of sympathy from the public. Neither will any job action that interrupts extracurricular activities.

The only way to win the public over and silence education critics is for the teachers to go for broke and teach. Go above and beyond in the classroom and show people how committed they are to the kids and quality education. Instead of grumbling about contracts, class sizes and standard tests, teachers should be grumbling about the lack of books, supplies, athletic equipment, and resources available to them.

Not that the teachers aren’t working hard and don’t deserve a better raise, but the truth is everyone works hard and everyone thinks they deserve more money. If you want to get ahead in this world you have to go that extra mile and dazzle the people at the top.

If the teachers can win the public back with their good work, in four years the public might help the teachers to elect a government that’s more sympathetic to their needs.

That’ll learn ’em.

By the way, Premier Campbell is not the enemy of teachers the union has made him out to be. He was a teacher himself once, and his wife climbed the ranks from teacher to vice-principal. He knows just how hard teachers work.

— Andrew Mitchell