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Time to change the delivery of education...and other musings

While I don't exactly have a horse in this race, I'm as concerned as the next person about the outcome of the current pissing match between the Liberal government and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, at least assuming that person doesn't pa
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While I don't exactly have a horse in this race, I'm as concerned as the next person about the outcome of the current pissing match between the Liberal government and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, at least assuming that person doesn't particularly like sharing a bus seat or proximate bar stool with an uneducated person and isn't keen on seeing their provincial taxes go sky high.

I don't have a kid in school and I'm not planning on making any. But I am relying on the kids who are in school now to become fully functional, educated, gainfully employed adults so they can work hard and contribute their own tax dollars toward those the government sends me for CPP and OAS every month, dollars that in turn will let me enjoy not working and making fun of the way they dress, until I get too old and senile to enjoy even that.

Let me state up front I support the teachers 100 per cent. This is not to be confused with supporting their union 100 per cent. Just as the government we elect often seems to act in ways we'd rather it not, I suspect the union often acts in ways that leave many of their members saying things like, "Are they out of their friggin' minds?" For example, the union's early and oft-ridiculed demand for bereavement leave for teachers in the event someone close to them, or someone they knew, or someone they'd once heard something about, or someone they wish they'd have known, or someone who somehow contributed to the cosmic life force of humanity died was, let's be generous here, a tactical blunder. In that particular usage, tactical blunder can be defined as a move so incredibly stupid it alienated virtually everyone who might have been sympathetic to the union's cause.

But anyone who has any knowledge of unions knows union management — oxymoron alert — and the bargaining team often fails to really reflect the issues important to the rank and file. So I don't hold it against teachers when their union leaders seem, occasionally, out to lunch. I support the teachers 100 per cent.

Some of the most important and influential people in my life were teachers. Now, to be fair, so were some of the most demoralizing, ineffectual and coma-inducing, but life is like that. You get good ones; you get not so good ones. The same can fairly and honestly be said about people I've worked with in every job I've ever had, union or not.

I'm going to sidetrack into a colourful anecdote so if you're not interested, just skip down a few paragraphs. I had an American History teacher in high school that was a bona fide U.S. Civil War nut.

School started the day after Labour Day. It took us until the end of the first week to cover everything that happened from the day William Bradford led the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth Rock (1620) until the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumpter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. For the rest of the year, we studied the Civil War.

Every Monday we'd arrive for class and on all three walls that were chalkboard were intricately drawn, triptych of some battle. We'd spend the week studying the events leading up to it, the conduct of the battle itself and the results, both military and political.

When school ended in June, we were studying the battle of Cedar Creek, a post-Atlanta skirmish that resulted in the union forces driving the confederates from the Shenandoah Valley once and for all and furthering Sherman's march to the sea.

I was in university before I finally heard who eventually won the civil war. We never got around to covering World Wars I and II, the Great Depression the New Deal or Ike's warning about the military industrial complex. The fact I know about them at all probably has a lot to do with what that history teacher taught me: The facts are out there, they're fascinating — or at least they can be if you put enough passion into discovering them — and all it takes is an imagination and a library card to become a very educated person.

He's a big reason I support teachers 100 per cent.

So I support B.C. teachers when they say this round of negotiations and job actions isn't about the money. I support them so completely, I'm happy to throw my wholehearted backing behind not offering them a pay increase during the duration of any contract eventually worked out. I wouldn't want to insult them or put them in a position where they're forced to sully their principles by being forced to accept a pay raise. Don't all thank me at once. It's nothing... really.

I really do believe this clash is about quality education. And I don't believe you can deliver quality education in a classroom with 30-plus kids. I also don't believe you can deliver quality education in a classroom filled with kids who don't want to be there, kids whose parents are indifferent to their education and won't back their teachers, kids who don't comprehend the language in which the class is being conducted and kids who have needs so special they will never learn at the pace at which classes should be taught.

But the teachers' union and government are locked in a melodrama of the past. In an era of shrinking supply and growing demand, both sides need to change the way they think about and deliver education. Governments need to cozy up with business and do a lot more of what Germany's done with their formal apprenticeship education programs, especially when Canadian businesses are screaming for skilled workers to fill vacant jobs. University isn't for everyone and, frankly, you can make a better living and a bigger contribution being, say, a millwright than a PhD in romance languages.

Classrooms have to regain a focus on quality education and lose their ancillary roles as daycare, social services and healthcare providers. Teachers should teach; students should be challenged and learn. The rest of it should happen somewhere else.

And the teachers' union — and teachers — have to get real. Whether it's teachers or civil servants, the days of showing up and going through the motions are coming to an end. The days of work without real performance evaluation are unsustainable. Absurd benefits — e.g., banking unused sick days — aren't going to fly with a taxpayer base struggling to simply stay employed and watching their own benefits erode further each year.

Might work for one or two more cycles but it isn't going to contribute to better teachers or better classrooms.

And that's what it's all about, eh? Or was that the hokey pokey?