Crossing the lines

It seems that, in the face of the Provincial Government locking the BCTF out of the ability to issue strike pay, several of the teachers currently engaged in illegal strike action are backing down, crossing the lines to go back to work …

to them, I say it’s about damn time!

This teacher’s strike infuriates me to no end, even to the point that if I had my teaching certificate right now, I would be ashamed to say so. I understand that there are some issues to be addressed within the education system as a whole, but two of the main arguments that the BCTF is citing are that (a) class sizes are too large, and (b) they need more funds for new equipment and supplies.

Lets’s start with (a), shall we? The average class size in public education nowadays stands at approximately 25 students per teacher. In many cases, teachers have assistants within their classrooms, to the extent that one class at our local school has 3 teachers’ aides for a class of 20 students. Doing the math in correlation to the argument, the teachers are saying that they cannot handle a 5:1 student-teacher ratio, which raises the question as to exactly what the hell the teachers are doing?? In addition to this, students often move around from one teacher to another for different subjects (even elementary students are doing this now), often limiting the time a teacher has with a class to an hour at a time … so a teacher can’t handle 5 kids for an hour?

The second part of their argument, citing a need for more money for supplies, is directly opposed and even defeated by their argument about class size. While it may be very realistic to expect that new supplies are needed, if you intend lower class sizes, you subsequently have to spend more finances on expanding teacher rosters. The Ministry of Education operates within a limited annual budget–if you spend in one area, there is less for another.

Getting past those issues, there are several other things happening to ping my bitch meter as a result of this strike that I could fume for days:

First, not only are the teachers on strike, but several other sectors linked to the schools are being essentially locked out by their illegal action. One such sector is the support staff, which includes janitors, repair crews, and transportation staff. My dad is a bus driver, and as such has been locked out of being able to work–the teachers have essentially taken the money out of his wallet, and the food off his table. What’s worse about this is that the drivers’ union has sided with the teachers in a show of union sympathy, neglecting their duty to ensure that the members they protect are fairly capable of work.

Second, any parent who is unable to stay at home, such as dual-income families or single parents, are forced to expend countless dollars on daycare services, make other arrangements, or at an extreme, stay home themselves, risking their employment security to take care of their children who are displaced by an illegal strike. Depending on the length of the strike, these parents will also have to pay out for tutors and home schooling materials to ensure their children keep up with the level of education they should be receiving–where exams are required, there are no invigilators available through public schools, meaning that parents must commute to colleges and universities with the hope that post-secondary instructors will have the availability to invigilate, and that they will not refuse to do so out of sympathy for the BCTF

Thirdly, and undoubtedly the most important of all, are the students who are losing out on their education, despite the BCTF’s bogus statement that students will not be adversely affected by strike action. In addition, the BCTF seems to have turned a blind eye to the fact that, whether intended or not, they are still teaching students a very powerful lesson–the teachers already state that they have difficulty managing class sizes … how then, do they expect it to become any easier after they have subliminally extended the lesson to students that if a rule is unfavorable it should simply be broken?