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ciroccojSo. The Tories. Rot them all.
Saw an ad for Tory leader Ernie Eves the other day on TV, and every time I think of it I feel my blood pressure rise.
On the surface, the ad seems to make a lot of sense. Eves points out that children are our most precious resource, that education is the most important thing we can give them, that a leader has to make public education a priority. And children cannot learn when their teachers are on strike. So, to show the voters how dedicated he is to Our Children, Eves will, if elected, pass a law making it illegal for teachers to strike or go to work-to-rule during the school year. "Because Children Can't Learn When They're Not In School".
How kind of him. How considerate. How caring.
How fucking hypocrital.
You know what else makes children unable to learn? No books. No school supplies. Overcrowded classrooms. No funding for teacher's aides or field trips or gym equipment or musical instruments or science equipment or testing for learning disabilities or special ed classrooms or libraries or adequate prep time for teachers or salaries that keep teachers in the profession or...
And guess who slashed funding for all of the above? The Tories.
Read on, it gets better.
***
I spent $60 on school supplies this year. Pencils, lined paper, erasors, glue sticks, etc - we got a list of required supplies from the school before the school year began. I asked my mother how much she used to spend on me when I was a kid, and she looked at me kind of blankly. "You mean, for clothes for school?"
"No, supplies."
"Like, stickers for you to trade with your friends?"
"No. Paper, pencils, that kind of thing."
"Why would I spend money on that? That's supplied by the schools."
"Uh... no. Not any more."
And my kid lives in a pretty good neighbourhood, where the parents can (mostly) afford to buy this stuff. I don't know what kids in poor neighbourhoods do.
***
A friend of mine used to be on the PTA of her kids' school a few years back, and she told us the shock she and the other parents got when they did some fundraising activity, tallied up their profits, and went to the teachers to ask what they should buy for the school. "Uniforms for the soccer team? Clarinets? New playground equipment?"
"Uh, no. Textbooks, please."
"What? Why? Doesn't the province supply those?"
"Well, yes. Except that they've designated a maximum amount of money for textbooks. Something like $20/book, to a max of 25 students per class. But the books they told us to buy cost $35, and the classes have 35 students each. And they've decided that, instead of paying for textbooks per class, they will pay for textbooks per course. So if the Social Studies teacher has three classes with 35 students each, instead of paying for 35 x 3 books, they will pay for 25 (the supposed maximum class size) x 1. Because it's only one course, Social Studies, offered three times a day."
"But... that's insane."
"Yeah, well. That's why we're not handing out homework in some classes, because the students can't take the books home. There aren't enough. So could you get us some textbooks?"
"But... but what about the clarinets, and the uniforms, and the..."
"Oh, we're not doing uniforms this year. The kids will just wear red t-shirts from home. And we only have one music teacher now, so there won't be as many students taking music anyway. Oh, and if you do some more fund-raising, can you get us petri dishes for the science classes?"
***
Another wonderful development courtesy of the Tories: job security (or lack thereof) for teachers. Every June, thousands of (mostly new) teachers get laid off. Then they get re-hired in September. This saves the boards the expense of paying for teacher salaries during the summer.
Why is this bad news for anybody but teachers?
Because, contrary to popular belief, most teachers do not spend their long summer vacations perfecting their tans. They spend them resting, yes, but also preparing for the next year. Reading the new textbooks. Planning the flow of the course. Arranging the layout of their classrooms. Making up lesson plans for the first month of school. Getting a feel for next year's batch of students, talking to their teachers from the last year to see who were the troublemakers, the learning disabled ones, the shy ones, etc etc so that they can figure out how to deal with them in the coming year.
And now, since many of them are unemployed over the summer and have no idea who (or what) they'll be teaching until September 1, the first month of class is spent madly scrambling to familiarize themselves with their subject, making frantic calls to colleagues about the challenging kids, etc etc while the students are given such stimulating instructions as, "Here - read this chapter of the text and then, uh, do questions 1-10."
"But we did that yesterday."
"Oh. Damn. Uh... read the next chapter, then."
"But there isn't one. The book's done."
"Crap. OK, then, uh... here, read this novel."
"In math class?"
***
So. Not terribly surprising, teachers periodically go on strike, demanding better pay and more (read: any) job security, but also demanding smaller class sizes, time for class prep, more funding for educational "extras" like sports, music, help for learning disabled kids, etc. And when they can't go on strike, they do work-to-rule: work the terms alloted by their contracts and no more. No supervising the chess club after school, no marking or class prep at home, no calling parents in the evening, nothing that's not strictly spelled out in their contracts.
And the schools come to a grinding halt, because what teachers are paid to do and what they actually do are two very, very different things.
So. Kindly Mr. Eves is putting out this dreck saying that he cares about our children and he will safeguard our children's education and the future of our province by making sure that teachers cannot cheat their students out of their Precious Education. Because he, The Honourable Ernie Eves, truly Cares.
Not like those other selfish bastards who went into teaching as a profession and have dedicated their lives to education despite low pay, lower status, and impossible demands from parents, politicians, and the public in general.
It makes me want to puke.
Saw an ad for Tory leader Ernie Eves the other day on TV, and every time I think of it I feel my blood pressure rise.
On the surface, the ad seems to make a lot of sense. Eves points out that children are our most precious resource, that education is the most important thing we can give them, that a leader has to make public education a priority. And children cannot learn when their teachers are on strike. So, to show the voters how dedicated he is to Our Children, Eves will, if elected, pass a law making it illegal for teachers to strike or go to work-to-rule during the school year. "Because Children Can't Learn When They're Not In School".
How kind of him. How considerate. How caring.
How fucking hypocrital.
You know what else makes children unable to learn? No books. No school supplies. Overcrowded classrooms. No funding for teacher's aides or field trips or gym equipment or musical instruments or science equipment or testing for learning disabilities or special ed classrooms or libraries or adequate prep time for teachers or salaries that keep teachers in the profession or...
And guess who slashed funding for all of the above? The Tories.
Read on, it gets better.
***
I spent $60 on school supplies this year. Pencils, lined paper, erasors, glue sticks, etc - we got a list of required supplies from the school before the school year began. I asked my mother how much she used to spend on me when I was a kid, and she looked at me kind of blankly. "You mean, for clothes for school?"
"No, supplies."
"Like, stickers for you to trade with your friends?"
"No. Paper, pencils, that kind of thing."
"Why would I spend money on that? That's supplied by the schools."
"Uh... no. Not any more."
And my kid lives in a pretty good neighbourhood, where the parents can (mostly) afford to buy this stuff. I don't know what kids in poor neighbourhoods do.
***
A friend of mine used to be on the PTA of her kids' school a few years back, and she told us the shock she and the other parents got when they did some fundraising activity, tallied up their profits, and went to the teachers to ask what they should buy for the school. "Uniforms for the soccer team? Clarinets? New playground equipment?"
"Uh, no. Textbooks, please."
"What? Why? Doesn't the province supply those?"
"Well, yes. Except that they've designated a maximum amount of money for textbooks. Something like $20/book, to a max of 25 students per class. But the books they told us to buy cost $35, and the classes have 35 students each. And they've decided that, instead of paying for textbooks per class, they will pay for textbooks per course. So if the Social Studies teacher has three classes with 35 students each, instead of paying for 35 x 3 books, they will pay for 25 (the supposed maximum class size) x 1. Because it's only one course, Social Studies, offered three times a day."
"But... that's insane."
"Yeah, well. That's why we're not handing out homework in some classes, because the students can't take the books home. There aren't enough. So could you get us some textbooks?"
"But... but what about the clarinets, and the uniforms, and the..."
"Oh, we're not doing uniforms this year. The kids will just wear red t-shirts from home. And we only have one music teacher now, so there won't be as many students taking music anyway. Oh, and if you do some more fund-raising, can you get us petri dishes for the science classes?"
***
Another wonderful development courtesy of the Tories: job security (or lack thereof) for teachers. Every June, thousands of (mostly new) teachers get laid off. Then they get re-hired in September. This saves the boards the expense of paying for teacher salaries during the summer.
Why is this bad news for anybody but teachers?
Because, contrary to popular belief, most teachers do not spend their long summer vacations perfecting their tans. They spend them resting, yes, but also preparing for the next year. Reading the new textbooks. Planning the flow of the course. Arranging the layout of their classrooms. Making up lesson plans for the first month of school. Getting a feel for next year's batch of students, talking to their teachers from the last year to see who were the troublemakers, the learning disabled ones, the shy ones, etc etc so that they can figure out how to deal with them in the coming year.
And now, since many of them are unemployed over the summer and have no idea who (or what) they'll be teaching until September 1, the first month of class is spent madly scrambling to familiarize themselves with their subject, making frantic calls to colleagues about the challenging kids, etc etc while the students are given such stimulating instructions as, "Here - read this chapter of the text and then, uh, do questions 1-10."
"But we did that yesterday."
"Oh. Damn. Uh... read the next chapter, then."
"But there isn't one. The book's done."
"Crap. OK, then, uh... here, read this novel."
"In math class?"
***
So. Not terribly surprising, teachers periodically go on strike, demanding better pay and more (read: any) job security, but also demanding smaller class sizes, time for class prep, more funding for educational "extras" like sports, music, help for learning disabled kids, etc. And when they can't go on strike, they do work-to-rule: work the terms alloted by their contracts and no more. No supervising the chess club after school, no marking or class prep at home, no calling parents in the evening, nothing that's not strictly spelled out in their contracts.
And the schools come to a grinding halt, because what teachers are paid to do and what they actually do are two very, very different things.
So. Kindly Mr. Eves is putting out this dreck saying that he cares about our children and he will safeguard our children's education and the future of our province by making sure that teachers cannot cheat their students out of their Precious Education. Because he, The Honourable Ernie Eves, truly Cares.
Not like those other selfish bastards who went into teaching as a profession and have dedicated their lives to education despite low pay, lower status, and impossible demands from parents, politicians, and the public in general.
It makes me want to puke.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-27 09:20 am (UTC)And I sympathize. B/c, after all, our Fuckwit-in-Chief has decided that we need $87 billion for Iraq, but meanwhile, the first high school I went to, which is located in an extremely wealthy town, couldn't afford to let students play sports w/o paying over $200.
I hate governments. Maybe I should move to Idaho and start my own. I'll have a liberal feminist compound. No guns, and plenty of money for education. I suppose I'll have to get plenty of money first.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-27 10:29 am (UTC)Education. Boy, I don't know.
(And I'll fund your compound with the billions of dollars i make off the sale of my first novel/screenplay/stageplay/teleplay/book of short stories/book of poetry/whatever.)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-27 12:20 pm (UTC)LOL!!!
Oh, ouch ;)
Yeah, see, the whole underfunding of public education... it's not that bad to not have uniforms and clarinets. Most of the world makes do on much, much less than even our poorest inner city schools.
But when we have billions to pour into entertainment and fashion and CEO salaries and sports players salaries, and billions of tax dollars to spend on political conferences and senator's pensions and business incentives for banks and etc etc etc... then thirty-five kids (five of them dyslexic) to a teacher, in a portable, with half of them sharing textbooks, the library open two days of the week and one field trip a year... it's sick.
BTW, can I join your compound too?