Teaching points

Re: Decertify teachers’ unions before our society fails, Conrad Black, Nov. 4 Mr. Black’s successful stint as a tutor in a U. S. prison gives credence to an oriental phil- osopher’s observation that, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Unfortunately, that is not the reality in most modern- day school classrooms.

It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with Conrad Black, but he has a point when he suggests that the way forward in improving Ontario’s, and by extension Canada’s, education system is to decertify the public service unions.

A century ago unions were the primary force in lifting the working class to the prosperity it enjoys today. In the process of achieving that laudable goal, unions have accumulated enormous economic power in the process of negotiating contracts that rewarded their members with salary and benefits that far surpass what the private sector earns. Unions, Canadian unions in particular, now use their power to enrich their executive without accountability to their members, and to a lesser degree, their members at the expense of ordinary taxpayers — taxpayers I add who, after a lifetime of working, retire on pensions that can never hope to reach the stratospheric heights of the Public Service.

I am weary, and not a little resentful, of the pensions my retired public service acquaintances enjoy after a relatively short career of what seems to me to largely consist of avoiding any meaningful work. An example of that would be the local public service employee who spent many of his days teaching people to play bridge, for a fee of course.

Our public unions have outlived their usefulness; they have surpassed their goal. It’s time for the executive to get a real job and for the members to compete in the real world and to be held accountable for their lack of achievement.

Barry Imhoff, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador