The Politics of Education

After I retired from teaching, this was my first blog, devoted to matters of education, including the institutional politics that frequently deform it. Now, more than five years into retirement, I spend most of my writing energies on my other blog, devoted to politics. However, today I would like to write a post in which the two subjects are very much intertwined, the politics of education.

Since the announcement of the Ontario provincial budget, Premier Dalton McGuinty and his Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, have become fascinating studies into what Orwell called the political use of language. It is language frequently involving demagoguery, fueled in this case by the knowledge that teachers are widely envied and despised, despite the vital role they play in society.

Take, for example, the Premier's call for a 'voluntary' pay freeze and elimination of the retirement gratuity. How 'voluntary' can it be when the province promises to legislate it if teachers don't capitulate? (BTW, although I suspect that no one really cares, the retirement gratuity is usually seen by teachers as partial compensation for the fact that they have no benefits in retirement and must purchase expensive private coverage).

My own former federation, OSSTF, has had a very muted reaction to these ultimatums, not surprising since it has essentially devolved into an opportunistic political entity itself. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, on the other hand, has shown real spine; it walked away from the 'negotiating' table. After all, since government by fiat seems to be McGuinty's choice, what is there to negotiate?

It is this principled move that has led to the government's use of some of the demagogic arrows in its quiver. Designed no doubt to both shame teachers and inflame the public, Laurel Broten, Dwight Duncan and Dalton McGuinty has all very publicly proclaimed they will not sacrifice full-day kindergarten and smaller class sizes to the implied greed and selfishness of the teachers.

The latest escalation in this campaign of intimidation is reported in today's Star, as Broten threatens elementary teachers with 10,000 layoffs unless they accept a pay freeze..

So can a government really have it both ways? Can it claim to be negotiating while very clearly telegraphing that there is nothing to negotiate? Are McGuinty and company afraid of the loss of support from the education sector, or do they feel that loss will be more than compensated for by a public that sees teachers as rather tiresome and perhaps even disposable commodities?

Time will tell.

We Have The Fraser Institute, They Have the Heartland Institute

Adding the word 'institute' into one's 'think-tank', a measure devised to give the patina of legitimacy to what is frequently simply a right-wing propaganda machine, is nothing new, given their ubiquity on both sides of the border, the Fraser Institute and the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Canada, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute in the U.S. being but four examples.

For whatever reason (and a lower collective intelligence may be one of them, he opined snarkily - my abject apologies to any intelligent Americans who might read this), American citizens seem to be more easily swayed by the blandishments masked as researched offered by these organizations.

As reported in today's Star, the Heartland Institute has plans to push for a public school curriculum questioning climate change. The leaked papers from the Heartland Institute has created a controversy within the scientific community as the American Association for the Advancement of Science gathers in Vancouver. This is the first time it is holding its annual meeting outside of the United States:

The documents, which were released via email and then reposted on blogs, say school teachers and principals are “heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective.”

Scientists say it is a frightening sign that much of the public remains skeptical about global warming.

“There are forces at work,” said Nina Fedoroff, president of the AAAS. “The polling data show that the fraction of citizens who believe that climate change is real has declined since 2006. Even as the scientific consensus has increased, the belief in it has declined.”

One can only hope that American teachers are able to put up a strong resistance to this well-funded propaganda machine.

Confessions of An Academic Criminal

Given all the time I spent in my career ferreting out suspected plagiarism, this article, entitled The Shadow Scholar, was of particular interest. Although the author seeks to justify his unethical behaviour by indicting the education system, it is still worth reading.

Bully for Him

It is probably largely due to both the verbal and physical abuse I suffered at the hands of my teachers as an elementary and high school student in the Catholic school system many years ago that I am so sensitive to abuses of authority, be it individual or institutional. I also suspect my experiences play a strong role in the visceral contempt I feel for the Harper government, so adept is it at wielding its power in ways so contrary to our democratic traditions and sense of fair play. Outside of that blanket contempt, however, I like to think that I am sufficiently critical as a thinker to recognize merit in the positions of those I do not support.

Readers of my other blog will know that I have been consistently withering in my assessment of Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario, largely over his complicity in the abuse of authority that defined the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010. Nonetheless, I have to commend him for his strong and unequivocal stance against bullying in Ontario schools, even when that position treads on the toes of the religious right.

There is an interesting article well-worth reading on McGuinty written by Catherine Porter in today's Star that explains the roots of the Premier's antipathy toward bullying.

Pity, however, that his aversion to strongarm tactics didn't manifest itself in June of 2010 in Toronto.

The Power of the Documentary

Although traditionally avoided as a rather staid and boring genre, the documentary has enjoyed a real resurgence in popularity over the past couple of decades, no doubt in part due to the important and provocative work by people such as Errol Morris, Michael Moore, and Velcro Ripper. A good documentary, for me, is one that provokes thought and provides knowledge and insights we often don't have the opportunity to encounter in our day-to-day lives.

Nature documentaries, when done right, can accomplish much. A series on the earth called Earth From Above, spectacular when viewed on blu-ray, but I'm sure almost as visually stunning on a regular DVD, has much wisdom to impart. In the episode I just finished watching, called Amazing Lands, the point is made that every impact humanity has on the earth, whether intentional or unintentional, has far-reaching ramifications.

For example, deforestation means the destruction of habitats to a myriad of species, oftentimes resulting ultimately in their extinction. It also means the loss of flora whose possible medicinal benefits to humanity will never be known. Another impact of that deforestation is land erosion that means heavy rains carry formerly fertile topsoil down in to the rivers, the mud killing the fish, etc. But while we may understand all of this as a series of abstract fact, a naturalist on the show reminds us that we have no ability to imagine what any of this really means. It is very similar to when we are talking about the magnitude of national debts. The numbers really don't mean anything to us.

The only real wisdom here is for all of us to remember that we are not above nature, but rather simply a part of it.

I therefore highly recommend the series as a way of helping us to start understanding what the environmental destruction wrought by an unfettered corporate agenda, aided and abetted both by our political 'masters' and our own rampant and very disposable consumerism, really means.

And since this is Sunday, I will not apologize for the preachy tone of this post, but instead leave you with two of my favourite poems, both written at different points in the nineteenth century; both resonate very strongly with our situation today:

The World Is Too Much with Us - William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

God's Grandeur - Gerald Manley Hopkins

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Criminal Teachers And Those Who Protect Them

As a retired teacher, I cringe when I read about wrong-doing by those in the profession. It enrages me that people occupying positions of trust and care would violate their duty to protect and nourish by exploiting their young charges. However, as one who aspires to the ideals of critical thinking, I can't turn a blind eye to these offences and wish them away.

A series in The Star, the result of a lengthy investigation, suggests a systemic problem in bringing these criminals to account. The paper theorizes that one of the reasons this is occurring, in some cases over many years, is a reluctance by teachers to inform on their colleagues. I cannot speak to that, having never known anyone to behave inappropriately in the classroom, but I do know from experience that just like the Vatican did in untold cases of pedophiliac priests, institutions try as hard as possible to conceal their problems, lest the institution suffer bad publicity that therefore impede the career paths of the ambitious.

For example, there was a case of an administrator who was stealing goods, money and services from his school; I have it on what I consider very good authority that a brave soul made every effort to bring the wrongdoing to the attention of senior administration and board officials. He was told unequivocally to drop his pursuit. Eventually, and I don't recall the precise details, his crimes became public, at which point he was permitted to resign, and the board signed a confidentiality agreement with him, an agreement that the board still insists is valid and thus binds them to secrecy. Of course, the critical thinker would immediately ask why the board entered into a secrecy agreement with him. I will leave you to ponder the implications.


The other problem, and I saw this with teachers who either had either very poor attendance or poor teaching practices, was an unwillingness by administration to confront the problem which, if done properly with several opportunities for improvement, can lead to dismissal of the teacher. The difficulty, as one of my friends and colleagues used to say was, “Lorne, they just don't want to do their jobs.”

The following example illustrates this perfectly:

Another administrator in my board, who was moved for harassing his staff as he constantly pressured them for money to feed his gambling problem, was moved to my school for a year where he was allegedly given the job of overseeing special projects which, to my knowledge, never went beyond scheduling on-calls when teachers were absent. The following year he was moved again and became an adult education administrator where, as far as I know, he finished out his career.

Note how the above shows the unwillingness to directly confront a problem employee. It was much easier to simply shift him around.


Public opinion notwithstanding, it is not unions that protect incompetence; the union's role is simply to ensure that the entire process that can lead to dismissal is scrupulously followed, which requires that administration, usually the principal, conduct many meetings with the teacher in question, offer constructive instruction as to how to improve, maintain the appropriate paperwork, etc., all guaranteed to ensure that his or her rights under the collective agreement have been observed and respected. Most principals, in my experience, did not want to put in the effort to do this, and were happy to simply arrange a transfer of the problem to another school, if one were available. Then, of course, he/she became someone else's problem.

It should be clear from the above that like so many other institution, politics in the worst sense of the word permeates education; indeed, taking a few quotes from the Star article demonstrates how officials no longer speak in meaningful ways, but use the obfuscatory language undoubtedly learned by watching the sleaziest of our so-called political leaders. Consider the following:

In an interview, College registrar Michael Salvatori said he could not discuss any individual cases. The Star had hoped Salvatori would answer questions about whether students were let down by the College or the school boards in cases where it appeared better screening or earlier detection would have saved a lot of pain.

“We are confident we have processes in place to protect students,” Salvatori said. “We can always do better.”

Asked about cases where it appears a teacher did not warn authorities of unusual behaviour (Baggio is one), Salvatori said “there are very few cases where (teachers or principals) do not carry out their duties.”

“The heart (of the College) is the public interest and safety of students,” said Salvatori, who added the College is concerned about “the welfare of students and ensuring teachers are well qualified and competent.”

I'll let you evaluate what he said, but for me, his comments do not pass the smell test.

Or consider the following criminal behaviour, which went on for 14 years, aioded and abetted by a feckless administration. I personally find the account difficult to read:

Antonio Raco

In what teachers commonly refer to as “passing the trash,” the Windsor-Essex Catholic District Board moved this Grade 6 teacher between at least four schools from 1991 to 2005. College prosecutors allege his assaults on girls from Grades 6-8 included taking students into the supply room and groping them; pulling a student close and thrusting his pelvis against her from behind; playing a game he called “Red Light,” moving his hands all over a girl's body until he touched her vagina; touching their breasts and hugging them so he could feel their breasts; and sitting on the floor in gym class and pulling girls against his groin. Raco swore at students, threw desks and played favourites. When one parent complained he told all the students he was going to “shun” her daughter. He was also, the college alleges, a dreadful educator.

One day, he told his young students never to share classroom discussions with parents: “This is Raco's circle — whatever happens in Raco's circle stays in Raco's circle.”

Raco, 53, was convicted of three counts of sexual assault in 2009 and sentenced to six months in jail. He is appealing his conviction. The College began a hearing two weeks ago but adjourned it because it was worried Raco (who was not in attendance) had not been properly notified.

Until those in positions of responsibility make the public good a priority over protecting and promoting their own careers, expect such betrayals to continue.

UPDATE: I just opened my Sunday paper, and The Star's investigation seems to be continuing. The latest headline: Sexting, cuddling with student, a teenage girl, did not cost teacher his job.

If you have the stomach for it, click on the above to read it.

Unions' Self-Inflicted Problems

Although I spend most of my blogging time on my other site, Politics and Its Discontents, I still occasionally post here, sometimes cross-posting on both blogs. the following is one I posted today on my other site, but I feel it does have some relevance both to education and to the promotion of critical thinking skills:

Allow me to be unequivocal from the start: I am a strong believer in unions as virtually the only effective means of countering the depredations that employers would inflict upon their workers if given the opportunity. However, I also believe that in some ways, unions are their own worst enemies, an opinion I formed as a member of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation during my teaching career.

Like many if not most institutions, unions have become highly political in both their structure and their treatment of members. My own experience with my former union was that they had little time or respect for those, like me, who expressed opinions that challenged their positions, especially since I was not a member of the executive. I suspect it is this refusal to both respect and to cultivate the 'ordinary' union member that poses a threat to the union movement's future greater than any that might emerge from so-called 'right-to-work' legislation that is becoming increasingly popular in the United States.

I was prompted to reflect on the topic this morning during breakfast as I read The Toronto Star. A story entitled Construction union pays $10 million to buy off employees reveals a curious kind of union-busting tactic within a union framework that has been employed by the Labourers’ International Union of North America in Toronto.

The first four paragraphs of the story read as follows:

The continent’s biggest construction local is spending more than $10 million to muscle out its own staff and their new union.

In a twist to the explosive political infighting that occasionally flares up in the labour movement, the Toronto-based Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 183 is buying out about 80 employees with lucrative financial packages after they joined another union.

Several insiders say the move will effectively snuff out the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2, which represents Local 183 staff, because replacement members won’t have any allegiances and will eventually decertify it.

“It’s disgusting what Local 183 has done to get rid of them and the union,” one insider said Tuesday. “It’s a good example for non-union companies. If you don’t want a union, just buy off the employees.”

The rest of the story describes the political machinations within the local and how the staff joined a rival union to try to circumvent revenge firings that regularly ensue when staff has backed the wrong candidates for union elections. Indeed, there is even a tactic discussed in the story reminiscent of the show-trials popularized by Joseph Stalin during the 1930's.

I hope you will read the entire article to get the full flavor of union politics.