COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE TORONTO STAR
This is the dumbest, most Daltonesque stunt yet by McGuinty’s
successor.
Unions are private organizations whose job is to get
concessions from employers.
The teachers' unions are already well endowed because their
members are well endowed, thanks to taxpayers.
Paying the unions money because you change the way
negotiations are conducted is an idea straight from cloudcuckooland, and it
should make clear to everyone in what a sad state of affairs we find ourselves.
Quite possibly, the original change in the structure of negotiations was itself
a hare-brained idea.
But then I must remember the Premier and her Education
Minister are both former teachers.
God, will no one ever make a serious effort to get control
over public education?
It is simply out of control.
Teachers who've left the classroom run the entire thing from
principals to directors and to the Education Ministry.
Not only is the average public school teacher not skilled at
management, many of them aren't even very good teachers because they have no
special knowledge or strong motivation.
Unions belong in steel mills and plumbing shops, if
anywhere, and not in schools. The very fact that they are there and function
the way they do supports the previous observation about teachers’ skills.
The proof is in the pudding: Ontario's schools are not
overly successful, and they are not even close to world-class. They are so-so,
but they cost a fortune to run, almost all of it in the form of salaries and
benefits.
Our teachers often can't use a computer, and computers have
not been integrated into how we educate children. There are computer programs
which should have replaced paper exercise sheets and even text books long ago,
but Ontario doesn't exploit their learning strengths and cost reductions.
Self-correcting programs designed by really capable people expert in their
fields will beat the average drone teacher hands down in communicating a
subject. They also can provide greater challenges to brighter students while
allowing slower ones to go at a suitable pace.
We only get fraudulent reforms from our government such as
making teachers' college a two-year program. Twice as much of nothing is still
nothing, and it costs everyone twice as much. All this “reform” did was
grandfather a lot of college staff who would have lost their jobs under
mandated reduced student enrolments, itself a simple management housekeeping task
which should have been done years ago. Teachers' colleges are where to go if
you want to witness junk-science being taught as professional-level material.
Moreover, they are staffed, again, with teachers who have left the classroom.
Ridiculous.
We are backward in our public education, but the people
responsible for the fact are never accountable and only ever want more pay and
privileges, and our silly government is always ready to give it to them,
sometimes even in elaborately disguised ways.
There are no checks or controls over the quality of our
public education. No one assesses our teachers for their knowledge, curiosity
about what is new, classroom demeanor, or methods at any point in what may be
some forty years of exposing young minds to them. The only assessment ever is the
fiasco that goes on in the teachers’ colleges. Their superiors, the principles,
are only ex-teachers who’ve taken additional piles of academically-undemanding
courses at a teachers’ college. They know nothing of management except by
accident.
There are no able managerial people handling public
education’s vast resources. None. If you have been exposed to a number of board
superintendents and directors, you know how just how ineffectual a bureaucrat
can be. They pretty much beat anything in all the old jokes about government
agencies.
Local curricula for the most part are just nonsense because
there is only a world curriculum if you want to be competitive.
Our public education today is a one-way trip to nowhere.
