The Alberta Teachers Association yesterday accused the Kenney Government of planning “a massive power grab” with Bill 15, legislation to strip the association of its power to discipline members and replace it with a politicized process run by a government-appointed commissioner.
The bill isn’t what’s best for students or education, the ATA said in a news release. “It is a vindictive attack and a sad effort to distract from the government’s infighting and the minister’s own inability to handle the education file.”
But ATA President Jason Schilling’s warnings about the flaws he sees in the Education (Reforming Teacher Profession Discipline) Amendment Act, 2022, are unlikely to dissuade Premier Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party from picking a fight with the 46,000-member organization that now acts as both teachers’ professional association and their union.
After all, picking fights and creating divisions that can be turned into electoral wedge issues has worked well for Mr. Kenney, and he’s not about to change course now when many polls suggest he’s in deep trouble with voters and his own party’s members.
If there’s an opportunity to start a fight with the ATA and then accuse the NDP Opposition of being too close to unions, Mr. Kenney isn’t likely to listen to the ATA’s arguments about why Bill 15 is bad legislation – or to realize that the UCP should be careful about what it wishes for, because it just might get it.
Mr. Kenney is quite prepared to cast aside years of mutually beneficial co-operation with the ATA and saddle Alberta with the worst model for teacher-government labour relations in Canada – already a strike-prone failure in British Columbia – for transitory political gain.
But that’s just the kind of guy Alberta’s premier is.
Speaking at a virtual news conference, Mr. Schilling identified three fundamental flaws with the UCP legislation, which was introduced in the Legislature a week ago today by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, who is actually a fairly minor actor in this drama as she just does what her boss tells her to do.
First, because the government will get to hire and fire its so-called commissioner, “the design of the entire new system from bottom to top is very susceptible to political influence, and the entire discipline process is at risk of being further politicized,” Mr. Schilling said. “This is nothing less than a blatant grab for power.”
“No other profession in Alberta has a commissioner to govern the profession,” Mr. Schilling added. (Other public sector unions, however, might argue that previous UCP legislation effectively strips all health care professions of self-regulation by requiring 50 per cent of their council memberships to be made up of government appointees.)
Second, Mr. Schilling continued, because Bill 15 removes the notion of self-governance for teachers, the legislation will strip teachers of their ability to regulate their own profession, “ a hallmark of professionalism.”
He asked, “How can teachers trust the people who appointed Chris Champion to write curriculum?” (Dr. Champion, of course, is the right-wing historian and former Kenney aide known for attacking reconciliation with First Nations as “agitprop” and “an ongoing fad.”)
Third, Mr. Schilling argued the government plans to adopt a model used only in B.C. that is “rife with conflict.”
He also pointed to other flaws with the bill, prominently its half-baked structure that will take much longer than the eight months assigned to the task to get into place while no one knows what to do about new and continuing teacher discipline cases.
The trouble is, with the possible example of B.C.’s notoriously bad labour relations with the teaching profession, none of those points are likely to much engage the public.
The ATA treated the reality that the Kenney Government is about to create a militant teachers union cautiously, presumably for fear it would sound as if it were making threats.
Clearly, though, the current leadership of the ATA doesn’t have much enthusiasm for that approach. But Bill 15, once passed, will likely swiftly put the ATA’s long history of “collegiality and collaboration” with successive Conservative governments behind it.
The moderating influence of teachers in the old Progressive Conservative Party’s caucus and cabinet was part of the Tory Dynasty’s long success. But Mr. Kenney’s UCP apparently has little time for moderation or public education.
The government argues the ATA’s role as the disciplinary body for teachers is in conflict with its duties as collective bargaining agent for members – a view that some unions representing public-sector professionals share.
Alberta’s nursing union split from the disciplinary college in 1977, a change that has benefitted members of the United Nurses of Alberta.
When the government states Alberta is the only province in which teachers’ unions also act as professional regulators, it is misrepresenting the facts. Teachers unions with disciplinary roles are found in Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
In Saskatchewan and Ontario there are teacher-run disciplinary colleges in addition to separate teachers’ unions.
Up to now, only British Columbia, with its famously bad teacher labour relations, has a government-appointed commissioner to regulate the profession.
The militant new teachers union likely to emerge in Alberta from this situation is sure to aggressively represent its members in discipline cases, as unions are required by law in all Canadian provinces to do.
ATA Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Theobald, participating in the news conference, conceded that this part of the change proposed in Bill 15 might benefit some teachers, especially those facing discipline.
The UCP are just out on an attack mode, and are absolute power zealous. They want control over anything and everything. It’s that simple. The UCP opposes anyone that disapproves of their draconian, backwards policies. If you speak out against them, you’re the target.
Alberta conservatives and their supporters seem to behave like adult children. Their bodies are mature but their minds are stuck in their teens. Greed is their motivation and long term means 3 months.
Their petulant, ignorant complaints about everything they do not like or understand is all part of growing up on the Alberta farm. I spoke to some of the Alberta farmer protestors who where assautling Edmontonians with their big, scary and brand new John Deere farm equipment (Say, I wonder who funded the parade of all those brand new John Deere machines?). Their home-schooled ignorance and arrogance is breathtaking.
Jason Kenney and his UCP government’s behavior is tolerated in Alberta because this is the way rural conservative Albertans are. Selfish, greedy and woefully ignorant.
Anyone who spends time in any rural Alberta community learns this very quickly.
And the UCP and Cons peddle the idea that government is too intrusive in our daily lives. Freedom!
Apparently though, the sheep are not bright enough to really fundamentally know what’s Right (wing). So a series of nudges to push the proles in the Right direction is needed. And who better to lead that charge than jason kenney?
After all, the intellectual horsepower in the province and country is concentrated in Right wing minds. Who knew? Freedom? Sure, if you agree with Kenney and his ilk like Poilievre, who already is planning his own renovations at Sussex Drive. Bitcoin terminals will feature in every room, mirrors will adorn the walls so he can primp endlessly at his own genius, the CBC will be canned and the airwaves consumed with vapid country music and lowbrow reality shows everywhere. Makes you want to move to Quebec — at least they have some innate idea of who they are, even if at the present time progressives might well deride their blinkered outlook.
You might want to change the „engage the pubic“ line, although it made me smirk at 5:50 in the morning.
Thank you, Kevbo. Freudian slip, obviously. It’s been fixed. DJC
This move to take over the disciplinary function of the ATA is yet another lever the UCP are putting in place to ensure Alberta’s children get the education the UCP wants them to have.
First they have someone write a curriculum which is heavily based on rote memorization of facts that anyone could look up if they actually needed that information. The curriculum is also laced with questionable information about Indigenous issues, if they are mentioned at all.
Then they plan to have standarized testing to ensure that this memorization is taking place.
Then they tie teachers’ salaries and job security to the performance of students on these standardized tests, thus incentivizing teachers to devote most, if not all, classroom time to making kids memorize the test material. This, by the same token, disincentivizes teachers from adding things they may feel are valuable; critical thinking skills, research skills, perspectives on current events, etc.
And now they want control of any disciplinary processes involving teachers. Teachers are not off-base to think this is the stick that is meant to keep them working to the letter of the very bad curriculum.
These things came out at different times, but they are all connected. The UCP seeks to fully be in control of shaping the minds and world-view of the next generation of Albertans.
In the past, Jason Kenney has railed about how teachers are indoctrinating students with socialist or collectivist ideals. Presumably, he means things like sharing and co-operation. In any case, he seems determines to put a stop to that.
Kenney has repeatedly referred to students, children, as “trainees”. It may well be that this is all he sees when he addresses children and education. Indeed, the UCP are planning to open up a lot more vocational programs and would like to see junior high school students working on job sites.
“Kenney said a UCP government would quadruple the number of students placed with employers in paid apprenticeships, establish a $1-million trade scholarship fund for high school graduates, and change provincial employment codes so junior high students can work in co-op programs on job sites.” (https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/ucp-pushes-trades-apprenticeships-for-young-albertans)
While there is certainly nothing wrong with someone choosing to enter the trades as opposed to going to university, there are reasons we have labour regulations that restrict the kinds of jobs younger children can do, and the conditions in which they can work. As the quote above indicates, the UCP plans to roll back some of those restrictions to open up the under-18 work force to employers. And, recall that the UCP lowered the minimum wage for workers under 18, making it cheaper for employers to hire younger workers over adult employees.
Now, some may see all of this as just “getting a head start” on making sure we have skilled tradespeople. The other way to see it is edging towards an Industrial Revolution economy, where the average person works long hard hours starting from a young age for very little pay, and the owners get filthy rich.
Is this the future anyone wants for Alberta? Is this the future anyone wants for their children? The UCP is not making any of these changes to benefit regular Albertans. This approach to education is designed to benefit the very wealthy donors and friends of the UCP.
Good points about “trainees”, which also indicates something more basic about the UCP’s attitude towards education in general. Vocational training doesn’t promote critical thinking except in a narrow, technical sense. Critical thinking in the broader sense appears to be something that the UCP doesn’t want our edcuational system to encourage.
Both my parents worked in television, but we kids were allowed one, one-hour TV show after dinner per week (one show for all of us together, not apiece) and otherwise were encouraged to read (the extent of our ‘home schooling’). I went to a two-room school in rural Ontario, grades one to eight, which closed in 1965; thence bused to another school where there were only two grades per room; thence to an Anglican boys school to cane some literacy into me before attending high school —which I quit at the earliest opportunity to head out to the West Coast where I eventually did college and university.
My life partner was schooled in BC. She and her sister attended UBC and became accredited librarians; thence my better half became a teacher for many years. Her daughter was likewise educated and is now a teacher. My own sister moved to BC as a teacher, mid-career, and is now retired. Our Daughter-in-law works for the school board. We know many teachers, current and former, teachers’ assistants and principals (my son’s wife is a principal in the Catholic school system in Ontario). Most of our grandchildren are in or have graduated from university —but there are a few yet in grade school. It wouldn’t surprise me if one or two became teachers or professors.
We’re like a lot of people in this way. And, naturally, related issues are discussed—most recently about Covid, distance-learning, and protocols…
…except this: if you have a choice, DO NOT do what BC did with teachers and schooling! It’s been an unmitigated (so far) disaster. (My sister was absolutely appalled when she moved out here.)
I watched, detached from institutionalized education, as the education minister in the new BC Liberal government, Christy Clark, tore up the teacher’s contract which was freely negotiated with the previous, NDP government. That set off a lawsuit which lasted nine years, and an ideological war between the teachers’ union and government which exists to this day despite the teachers’ inevitable victory (Christy’s act was blatantly unconstitutional) and defeat of the 16-year BC Liberal regime in 2017.
The current NDP government naturally has no ideological bone to pick with the union, but the tension still exists because Christy’s ministerial misdeed and the BC Liberals’ legal sandbagging and ideological grandstanding (Christy had left politics for several years to be a right-wing radio talk-show host for much of this period)— which cost BC tens of millions of dollars and for which the government was eventually fined $2 million for breaching the court-ordered restitution of wages and working conditions (after Christy had returned to become premier following Gordo Campbell’s resignation in disgrace)—is so very hard to undo, at least not very quickly.
The neo-right ethos is to diminish democratic potential, including that of labour unions, that might interfere with private profit-making. The difficulty of undoing this kind of sabotage is an intentional tactic—along with slashing social welfare, privatizing public enterprises, and bankrupting government by way of tax cuts. But smashing unions, especially public-sector unions, is the more overt of neo-right agendas which, of course, resorts to the most demagogic of partisan rhetoric.
Today the neo-right finds itself discredited and in steep decline, thus resorting to the most divisive demagoguery it can muster. How else can otherwise decent citizens be duped into attacking the ‘caring professions‘—especially with respect children to whom teachers are daily entrusted, not only for their education, but health and safety, too?
The name-calling and demonization is the only thing left to a failed, moribund movement whose rabidness is skunk-like in its throes—the only distraction it has from the fundamentally unethical and heinous hostage-taking of our most precious and vulnerable citizens.
Putting it too hyperbolically? Well, just look at where it leads, down to our southern neighbour whose own struggle with the dying neo-right witnesses, almost daily, the outrageous attempts to demonize social democracy by calling partisan rivals “pro-child-porn” and ginning the likes of Q-Anon, the utterly bonkers movement which accuses Democrats of the most heinous crimes imaginable—the same ones antisemites have used for centuries: satanic, sexualized, ritualistic murder of children. Don’t take my word for it, just turn on your TV: it’s really happening.
It might be a thin-edge-of-the-wedge or slippery-slope warning about a phenomena which have been happening gradually hitherto, but Kenney’s UCP “has little time” —too little to wait for insidious perfidy to happen unnoticed. It’s a blessing that he and his party are so unpopular and that the next election is not too far off.
But, in a way, it might also be a blessing if K-Boy rushes to get this done: we know Stephen Harper’s rush to ram through controversial policies came off as unpopular rashness and led to his first majority being his last. If the UCP is likewise retired, there might still be time before the poison gets too far metabolized in a system that has worked well hitherto.
In any case, take this advice, my Alberta friends: don’t do what we did in BC to teacher-government relations. If it gets implemented in a hurry, fire the party whose leader is over his head in mire and now breathing through a thin reed, and then undo that rash policy ASAP.
You can do this!
I’m not sure I have anything more to say about teachers and teaching than most people do
Regardless of the benefits and costs of splitting the ATA, it is important to remember that the UCP are Christofascists used as useful idiots by the oil oligarchy. This is acted out by the dynamic between Kenney and the fundamentalist Catholic Minister LaGrange. These are the same people who were worried about Sharia law being introduced to Canada while hating a secular state. In Red Deer the Orange Lodge used to meet the immigrant trains and direct the Catholics to the north. Fundamentalist Christians seem to thrive on misery for themselves and are prepared to inflict it on others. The opportunity to torture secular teachers who talk about global warming, multiculturalism and even gender roles must have been irresistible.
Thank you for this as always, DC! In the early 1980s when I was the executive director of United Nurses of Alberta I was invited to speak at an ATA collective bargaining conference. I pointed out that two structural changes would make ATA a more effective union: province-wide bargaining, which could be implemented unilaterally, and losing the burden of professional regulation, which would require legislative change. My comments were well-received by teachers involved in bargaining, by the ATA brass, not so much. The Lougheed government of the day was way too savvy to foster such a move.
Can’t help but wonder how many ATA members voted for the UCP in the last election? Also wondering how many ATA members still support the UCP?
Next election do the right thing for your profession and students and the concept of education and vote for Rachel Notley. She is educated, and believes in the vital role of teachers in a free and democratic jurisdiction.
Hey teachers, lesson learned?
“…is sure to aggressively represent it members…”
A typo – thought you’d want to know.
Thanks, Lars. It’s been fixed. DJC
I believe there are good arguments for and against having a professional association also deal with discipline matters. Part of being governed by ones peers, who have the best understanding of the situations and issues a member faces can be fair and effective, but it can also sometimes appear to be self serving to the public particularly when they are not involved at all or the process is not transparent enough. I think separating discipline also creates more complexity and cost. If that is for the benefit for the public more than the members, then who should pay for it? Does who the payer is affect the process?
Here is Alberta it seems this separation has occurred mostly in the field of health care and some other professional associations less connected to the public sector have remained as is. The motive seems to be in large part a government initiative to weaken or split up powerful professional associations they see as antagonistic. I am not sure the main motivation is really good governance or serving the public better, although this is usually quickly trotted out to justify it.
Interestingly, this change may have unintended consequences as you indicated. Certainly a professional body freed of the difficult, very time consuming but important work of dealing with member discipline may focus more on others things, like advocacy for members.
I am not sure the UCP will actually be around to see the full consequences of this, but it would not be surprising if members of such professional bodies will become more focused on public policy matters that affect or are of concern to members. So, in a small way, this may change may help contribute to the UCP’s downfall.
As someone who has spent a cumulative total of seven years on the governing Council of the largest health professional College in Alberta, including two as President & Council Chair, I feel the fully justified criticism of this measure calls for more explication.
Firstly, the power of professions to regulate themselves has been under intense public scrutiny in recent years, largely as the result of a perceived lack of diligence by some regulators when it comes to putting the interests of the public ahead of those of their own members. At times that perceived lack of diligence is simply a reflection of legislated constraints on the regulatory body’s powers and authority, since they are almost universally creatures of the province or territory. But, from time to time, we do see regulated professionals receiving very lenient sanctions for what the public sees as highly problematic behaviour, and often very long after the fact.
Then there are the true horror stories, such as the notorious “Mid-Staffs” scandal out of the UK from 2009, which was one fact that led to the creation of the Professional Standards Authority in that country.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/06/mid-staffs-hospital-scandal-guide
https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/what-we-do/improving-regulation/right-touch-regulation/reforming-regulation/road-to-reform
So, it is an entirely reasonable, valid, defensible opinion that the ATA should be divested of its professional regulatory role in favour of an independent College or equivalent body; indeed, it is an opinion I hold. Teachers, after all, stand “in the place of parents” for several hours of the day during the school year, and so are responsible for our most precious resource: our children. We need to hold them to just as high a standard of conduct and competence as health care professionals.
But is this Bill the way to do that? No. Firstly, no one- person “Commissioner” should have such power. A true professional college would be composed of a mix of regulated members — who are after all most qualified to evaluate professional standards — and members of the public — who are most qualified to represent and protect the public interest. It would also apply to all practitioners of the profession, regardless of who employs them: a public or separate school board, a charter school, or a fully private school.
In addition, the legislation does not grant to the teacher regulator any authority over granting or revoking of teaching certificates, leaving that in the hands of the Minister. The Health Professions Act, in contrast, assigns that role to the Registrar of each College, and sets out criteria for granting, retention, suspension and revocation of Practice Permits.
So, while I agree that the ATA should no longer be the regulator of the teaching profession, I do not feel that this legislation is the right way to change that.
Finally, the ATA also functions as a professional association as well as the bargaining agent. In addition, principals and vice-principals remain “in-scope”, i.e. they are not “excluded management employees” for the purposes of the Labour Relations Code. In my view, there is no compelling reason to change these two facts, although some might disagree.
I know Albertans are victims of the “firehose effect,” but this issue is worth paying attention to for non-parents as well. When governments abuse teachers, some of it comes out sideways on students. Today’s impressionable students are tomorrow’s resentful, alienated, cynical, poorly informed, easily manipulated voters. If you try to protect your child from an abusive education system by homeschooling them or putting them in a private school (the free market solution), you are helping to create a future where people who are informed and engaged, and who consent to Canadian society, are consistently outvoted by people who are/do not.
How BC treats teachers, as explained by someone who did 12 years time in BC schools:
1)Parents throw lots of unfair, vapid, self-righteous blame at teachers while also expecting them to do a bunch of free work, never giving them credit for anything, and acting like the teachers should be grateful for the opportunity to be shat on.
2)Teachers’ CBA ends, negotiations fail after bad-faith, performative efforts from both sides.
3)Teachers go on strike, saying “yes more money, but holy crap, please let us actually educate your kids! Also we have been marinating in anger and resentment for 40 years which makes it a lot harder to negotiate with us so have fun with that.”
4)Parents miss their free babysitting. Employers get upset that their employees are at home raising their children instead of at work making them richer. Parents get anxious about missing income. Elected officials start getting heat from those employers and parents.
5)Government tells teachers “go to work or go to jail.” Society as a whole doesn’t know enough history to say, “our unions were broken by extralegal Police violence decades ago, at least you still get to have a union, must be nice.”
6)This somehow works, which absolutely flabbergasts me every time. If I was a teacher and the government told me my strike was illegal I’d dare them to arrest me. Good luck trying to explain to a class of 30 children why Mr. Lore is in jail now in a way that isn’t going to poison their image of Canada. Also, do you have room in your prisons for ~45,000 teachers? Somehow this never happens, and I’m not really sure why. If there is a group in Canada who should be able to understand that they have nothing to lose but their chains, it’s BC teachers.
7)Rinse and repeat with slightly more toxicity in each iteration.
I truly believe that, if they apply themselves and work hard, Albertans can have an even worse education system than BC – nobody races to the bottom like Alberta. It’s going to take hard work and dedication though – that magical blend of bitter indifference, thoughtless, petty cruelty and cud-chewing, clock-worshipping mediocrity doesn’t just happen overnight. You won’t cripple your kids quite as badly if you bind their feet, but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to do, perhaps Mr. Kenney might consider that as a cost and time saving measure?
*What I have of education, I have because of my parents and my choices and in spite of the best efforts of BCs “education” system.
**I’ve thought about this a lot, and my current best guess is that teachers, as a profession, defer to government authority because they wield that authority themselves over helpless children and are not accountable for their actions. If teachers were to question the legitimacy of the government’s authority over them or want accountability from the government for how that authority is used, they would also have to question the legitimacy of their own authority over these children, which would, in turn, lead to questioning specific actions those individual teachers have taken against the individual students they find challenging to deal with, which most teachers would find difficult to do – cognitive dissonance is unpleasant. Because teachers, like Police officers (with whom they share many interesting commonalities), often justify the means they choose to use to exert their authority by begging the question, they also commit that same fallacy when examining government authority being exerted upon them. I’m still not satisfied with this theory, because it fails to explain why Police officers do not fall victim to the same effect, and because it seems overly dark and pessimistic. There are people who remember prison more fondly than I remember school, which certainly colours my perceptions. When the system works correctly it does not produce adults who read Foucault and say, “This makes perfect sense, why is something so obvious so controversial?”
Neil: I suspect we are members of different generations. Or perhaps I was just lucky. Notwithstanding a few duds, I was the beneficiary of a fine public education in B.C.’s public schools, and I am grateful to a number of excellent public school teachers who were also devoted public servants. DJC
Definite generational differences, and I was definitely unlucky. From what I understand some of those issues have been addressed. I can only speak for what I saw, but every BC classroom I was in except in grade 12 had two or three students who everyone knew the teachers would allow them to abuse and who were consistently punished by teachers if they tried to resist being abused. When I talk to adults from my parents generation it sounds like things were worse for them. I’m not sure what sort of adult I would have become if my teachers had been allowed use the strap on me, for instance, and when I listen to old-timers tell stories about hazing in sport/university/private school/etc I am left shaking my head and wondering how such spectacularly cruel and vulgar acts being publicly performed was ever okay (details are omitted because holy crap you guys). I think the institutional cruelty in schools has been slowly and steadily decreasing over the generations, but I have only anecdotal evidence. I think that teachers are part of the solution more often than they are part of the problem, for what that’s worth.
“The Strap” was certainly a thing when I was in school. My sense is that most teachers were sickened by it and wanted nothing to do with it. The sadists carried it forward, of course. DJC
Neil: excellent comments, but I am also of David’s generation and had a decent public education experience in Alberta. A couple of university degrees later I watched an idealistic friend teaching at Eckville High bullied by an ATA lawyer who arrived on his doorstep the very next morning after he raised Keegstra’s behavior with the ATA. Fast forward 15 years and I ended up homeschooling my own children because our so-called public-school board had been taken over by the religious and the Klein cutbacks had gutted the rural system. This suited the oil service sector just fine and produced a generation of docile workers in rural Alberta. BC may be bad but rural Alberta is colonized. Both my children have advanced degrees from prestigious Canadian universities and they and their friends will likely never be back to Alberta. The Harper/UCP have done to post-secondary in Alberta and Canada what Klein did to public education in Alberta.
PS: I can’t decide if Foucault is incomprehensible or just anodyne.
Yeah, sounds very much like you already know what I’m warning against. As for Foucault…
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/352
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/343
God I love that comic strip. Infotainment at its finest. In an (overly snide and simplified) nutshell, Foucault says schools (among other institutions) are prisons designed to crush our spirit and dull our perceptions so that we will accept Capitalism, which he sees as so obviously against the interests of everyone who works for a living that we would only accept it from a position of desperation, ignorance and necessity.
Not being well read in philosophy, I was confused by these references to “Foucault”, wondering what huge pendulums, gyroscopes and electromagnetic eddy currents had to do with Alberta politics. Who knew it was an allusion to Michel Foucault, the 20th century philosopher, and not Léon Foucault, the 19th century physicist? Oh, wait, I guess our host & a couple of commenters knew … lol.
Under the guise of exacting more discipline over “bad teachers”, the Act gives considerable leverage to a variety of means to redefine (public) education in Alberta. For one thing, eliminating the notion that there is even something called public education (a special version of cancel culture at work) leaves room for all kinds of “modernization” measures to be applied to education in Alberta. This means more charter schools, more specialized school boards, more faith-based educational alternative schools, more home-schooling options, etc. All of this will be financed by the public, of course. As for oversight, what oversight? FreeDUMB is more important than effeminate book learn’in.
In the end, education in Alberta will turn into a wild hodgepodge of methodologies, curriculums, voodoo, as well as giving in to the higher-power learning nonsense that will turn the province into more of a freakshow than it is now.
I can’t wait for the text books that declare humans rode domesticated dinosaurs and ‘The Flintstones’ is a documentary.
I guess smart people will have to be found in other provinces.
“Under the guise of exacting more discipline over “bad teachers”, the Act gives considerable leverage to a variety of means to redefine (public) education in Alberta. For one thing, eliminating the notion that there is even something called public education (a special version of cancel culture at work) leaves room for all kinds of “modernization” measures to be applied to education in Alberta.”
Just Me: You are exactly right. There is more to this story. Even if I don’t know exactly what they are up to, I don’t trust them. It’s underhanded at best and sinister at worst. The UCP is a libertarian government which, among other things, aims to considerably shrink public services. And if people think that an old Wildrose leader (Brian Jean) would be better than Jason Kenney, think again. That party was just as libertarian, if not more.
Albertan voters would be wise to seriously consider this when they vote in the next election.
Kenny and the UCP’s political version of Munchausen syndrome by proxy seems to have taken a very dark turn in the last few days. They are quickly removing barriers to fully implementing Kenny’s agenda so that everything will be in place following the next election, which will likely be this summer. They don’t seem to be too concerned about the collateral damage, which continues to accumulate.
Can someone provide a reasonable explanation of what separates teachers from other professionals? Practically every other profession separates its professional association/college from its collective bargaining unit for good reason. The conflict between the college, which seeks to promote performance, and union, which seeks to obfuscate performance measurement is obvious. Honestly, I’m surprised the current arrangement is legal. I’m also interested in the how many teachers face disciplinary action or dismissal with cause vs. other professions. I suspect the frequencies are much lower.
Is the ATA actually going to do anything this time? When teachers returned to the classrooms in the fall of 2020 and there was insufficient PPE, just words no actions. When school boards mandated medical treatments they actually supported it. This angered many teachers I know some left and started teaching outside public system. Not sure how widespread this is but union inaction sure is contributing to the issues.
Being a teacher is a tough job not everyone can do it, the more good ones that leave the faster the system fails. The ATA needs to stand up for these teachers if we are ever going to fix public education in this province. Public education can be the great equalizer providing for equality of opportunity to all Alberta children.