JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Support the teachers in their childish behavior?

I think it a bit shameful that the question can be asked.

All they were asked is to give a tiny slice back, and that after years of receiving inordinate new returns as measured by the general standards of our society today.

Instead of accepting their responsibility as very well-paid citizens of Ontario, they squabble like unthinking and privileged teenagers about rights being abused.

Many parents are afraid of not saying they support the teachers because they are concerned about the treatment of their children afterwards.

And that implicit intimidation is an important part of why strikes have absolutely no place in education.

Our teachers are subject to no scrutiny in their work, are not measured in any way by results or performance, receive quite extraordinary benefits, and are paid at what can only be called an extraordinary level considering their educations and expertise.

Most have only bachelor’s degrees, many just general (close to meaningless) general degrees, and many, many are expert in absolutely no subject.

On top of that they have a genuinely useless certificate from a teachers’ college, reflecting about 8 months spent in a completely non-academic environment, one where people like the disgraceful Director of TDSB earn “graduate degrees” with second-rate thought, much of it plagiarized, from “professors” who can’t tell the difference.

Take just those credentials and see what other work you can obtain today.

The effort will result in an honest “not much.”

People with such qualifications work, by the tens of thousands, as store clerks, restaurant staff, salespeople, and low to medium grade office clerks.

Overwhelmingly, they do not, nor will they ever, earn $80-90,000 with the most generous benefits on the planet short of senior government officials. All for a short work day and a very short work year.

Yet, we’ve heard over and over nonsense like, “Well, if you want university-educated teachers, you have to pay for them.”

We do pay for them, in many cases at nearly double the going rate for their levels of education.

What is so distressing about this matter is the genuinely childish and insanely melodramatic behavior displayed by a great many teachers and their leaders.

Show some civic-minded leadership, show some concern for kids, show some concern for the communities in which you live.

But, no, all we get is the equivalent of a pack of petty beasts fighting over a bone or two in an alley.

By the way, the Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, has done an outstanding job in difficult circumstances. Always calm, always in command of the facts, always available to CBC for interviews, and clearly sharply intelligent.

If we had more people of that quality in government, our society could only benefit.
___________________________________________

“I thought this government wanted to stop bullying. This latest tactic is bullying pure and simple!”

Bullying?

Yours is a complete misuse of language.

The government is the employer.

The teachers are the employees, extremely well paid ones.

The employer today has financial problems, and it has asked a very modest sacrifice of its employees.

Do they pitch in to help?

No, they whine about rights and other irrelevant nonsense at a time when many would just like decent job.

It is the teachers who are bullying, bullying the kids.

_________________________

“So many people who comment on these stories have no idea of how hard teachers work.”

Oh yes they do know how hard (some) teachers work.

In fact, teachers are the ones who seem oblivious about how hard others work.

Your comment is just the kind which irritates so many decent and thoughtful people.

It is special pleading, and it reflects genuine ignorance about the work of others.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I can’t see this claim at all.

Constitutional rights are fundamental and apply to all and in all circumstances, no matter what the situation.

Being able to form a union and bargain is not of quite the same nature.

It is a right in law, but not in Constitutional law which takes precedence over other laws.

The teachers’ union is making a bigger fool of itself in this than it already is.

From those to whom so very much has been given, comparatively little is being asked now.

To try making that a Constitutional issue the same as free speech or freedom of religion demonstrates a complete lack of reality and invites scorn from the public.

The fact is teachers are free to have their union still (free association), but the government, owing to financial exigencies, could not accommodate their demands.

This is not tyranny in any possible sense of the word, but represents only the realities of governing at times.

When I hear representatives of the union say babyish things like the financial mess is the government’s own problem, I want to puke. The government is us, not some third party out there in space. That fact too is an essential part of democratic values.

The teachers’ union of course is a form of monopoly, a monopoly in the supply of labor to a large and important institution in society, and we all know monopolies do not think like competitive firms.

Monopolies in the economic realm themselves share some of the very characteristics of tyrannies in the political realm.

In all of this, the public would do well to remember that the union basically refused to come to the table when the government asked them.

And why was that?

It was a cheap trick to buy time so that the automatic salary increases could go into effect before the government could act. Hardly heroic or brave or having to do with any right.