Teacher negotiation model serves no one well
Aletter came this week that succinctly expresses the frustration of many B.C. teachers and administrators.
The writer, a teacher, is like many of her colleagues loyal to the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation and what it has accomplished on behalf of its members over the years.
Nor is her letter an anti-government political rant. For all I know, she might, like many British Columbians, think the current government is doing what it can with what it has and, like most governments, is not able to please everybody.
Her frustration is with the government-teacher labour relations model that, since time immemorial, has proven itself not only inappropriate, but unquestionably ineffectual in public education.
“I have been an educator in British Columbia for over 20 years,” she writes, “and have spent approximately equal amounts time as a teacher and as an administrator. Both my parents and one grandmother were educators. I am completely exasperated with the dysfunctional broken record that is the British Columbia provincial education bargaining scene. Time and time again, children, teachers and principals are held hostage by two leading provinciallevel teams who seem to be acting like toddlers fighting in the sandbox.
“Unfortunately, the argument is over something infinitely more precious than a toy — the opportunity to improve life chances for all children through an even stronger education system.”
That last sentence puts into perspective that public education isn’t just another expensive public service. It is, in terms of B.C.’s economic, social and even political future, the fundamental public service and, as the writer suggests, is time and time again held to ransom when it should be free to move into the 21st century.
For example, it is my understanding that the professional arm of the BCTF is champing at the bit to move alongside government with the careful implementation of some of the ideas in the government’s B.C. Education Plan, but that politically, right now, that’s just not possible.
The teacher-government bargaining model has not basically changed since 1987, when the Vander Zalm government’s Bills 19 and 20 left the BCTF with little choice but to adopt the labour-union model.
“In a society and country that prides itself on having grown to be a global leader in human rights and education,” the writer continues, “our province continues to use archaic methods to represent what is titled ‘negotiation,’ but is really a facade for a power struggle between two groups who claim to be acting in the best interests of children.
“Many thousands of teachers and principals invest their hearts and souls into helping children develop strong social and collaborative skills.
“The adults leading our systems are engaged in a process that in many ways is the antithesis of our goals with children … . Evaluate this broken process and collaboratively build a new way to work together. There are world leaders who have led more intelligently through much more difficult circumstances, and I suggest we look to their example to help us restore sanity and become the role models our children need.”
How frustrated are teachers with the current process? Of about 41,000 B.C. teachers eligible to cast a strike vote, 26,051 voted “yes” according to Jim Iker, BCTF president. That’s 63 per cent, a majority, yes, but one that also reveals some significant division within the ranks.
How frustrated are those educators within the Ministry of Education who are working toward the gradual implementation of the Education Plan? They, too, are shackled by the politics of the process and unable to move ahead.
The educator who wrote about her frustration is correct. Who is actually gaining through the unproductive process? Not the BCTF, not government, not public education, not B.C.’s 550,000 schoolchildren.