No easy answers

On one hand, politicans are lousy examples. They give themselves pay raises while denying the same privilege to everyone else on the public payroll. City staff in Nanaimo are getting a pay raise this year, even as the rest of the city is tightening their belts and suffering yet another hefty tax increase. City staff deserve every penny they earn, but our property taxes have been increasing way above the rate of inflation.

On the other hand, teachers do OK in my opinion and student enrollment is declining. School boards have difficult choices to make. The best solution would be to close those schools that do not have adequate capacity, and to let go surplus teachers.

The whole system need to be redesigned - no easy task in a profession that is used to lifetime employment.

Education and healthcare are threatening to absorb all our tax dollars. It just ain't gonna happen.

What can you say when John Furlong is paid $250 per hour to look into the Stanley Cup riots, to a cost of over $300,000.00 etc. etc. It makes no sense at all.

anything they want...

Whenever I spend any time in a classroom, I walk away thinking teacher's should be paid whatever they want. A million bucks a year, I don't care. It is amazing to me that someone can handle so many kids with such grace.

And let's face it, my kid is great, but your's are monsters.

I think the teachers should ...

just walk out and leave the schools barren.

Let the government try to legislate them back to school and, if necessary, peacefully oblige if they are hauled off to jail.

Let the parents outrage come to a boil when they have to stop their own lives to deal with their own offspring.

Let the businesses suffer as tens of thousands of employees need to make sweeping arrangements for the youth.

Then let's see how this government of misfits handles the situation.

Just a thought ;)

Teacher bashing is the new racism.

I often wonder why teachers are the new ni****s? (I use that word to make a point only.)

It seems that the same people who made mindless, stereotypical, bigoted comments in the past, about Negroes and other minority groups, now do so every time a discussion about teachers occurs. You see it whenever an article about teachers appears in the Tyee, or anywhere else:

"They are all lazy!"
"They are overpaid."
"They only work 5 hours a day!"
"They do nothing!"
"My son failed because of a teacher..."

etc. etc. etc.

If the same comments were regularly applied to any minority group, the bigotry would be decried at all levels. However the bigots can continue to denigrate teachers with impunity, encouraged by the government.

Teacher bashing is the new racism.

No doubt the "bashers" will be out in force now to point out how evil all the dedicated people who work with our kids every day, really are.

Bash away ...

igbymac

I agree, labour has the right to stop working. If the teachers simply quit en masse the government can't do anything. Nobody can be legislated back to work at a job they quit.

If unwilling to do that, tactics become paramount. And on that subject, the teacher's only chance is to get public support and they will only do that if they drop their wage demands completely and instead focus on issues like school closings and class sizes. If teachers go to the wall because kids aren't getting a good education then the public will back them, if they go to the wall for a 15% wage increase then the public will turn away from them.

What the union has so far given up means nothing because none of those demands were ever taken seriously by the public.

Umslopogaas

No, teacher bashing is not the new racism. Equating the troubles of well paid professionals with those historically incurred by natives and blacks and Chinese is way over the top.

When teachers start demanding the right to vote, the right not to pay a head tax, the right to own land, the right to enter "whites only" restaurants then I'll join you on that.

I wonder

what the operational cost of the teachers union is?
Maybe cut back this cost and all the perks, and you may find out if you reduce the cost of your overhead, you would have more money on your check.
In my house hold,lowering operational costs is always the first thing to analyze.
Maybe a course in cost analysis is a subject that should be offered.

the process is broken

One thing that is not generally reported is that, while the BCTF bargains on behalf of teachers at the provincial level, and the BCSPEA bargains on behalf of "employers" (ie, schools), it's up to the local school districts and local teachers associations themselves to hammer out collective agreements.

So, you have the BCTF doing dumb things like instructing its members to refuse to issue report cards. You have the BCSPEA making equally dumb demands on behalf of school districts.

In fact, if you look at the SD61 website, you'll see a couple of news releases that directly contradict BCSPEA bargaining positions; school districts, which have to work with teachers (and boards of trustees generally are comprised of former teachers), are being hamstrung by the inflammatory power politics of BCSPEA.

In the same way, local teaching associations (there is one for every district) are forced to follow policies set by the BCTF, which has its own agenda separate and distinct from the needs of local communities.

Not sure if there is a solution, but it would sure help if there was more informed reporting on what is a multi-faceted bargaining process.

It's not just two sides at the bargaining table, and not everyone (including the BCTF) has the students' best interests at heart.

Re: A Voice

You make an interesting observation!! Without the Teacher's Union this Government would have destroyed the Education system in BC, they started in 2001. We should look at what has and does happen in the USA. California destroyed their education system years ago and then had to try to restore it at an incredible cost, they were recruiting teachers from Canada and paying more than they were earning in Canada.

Our system is not totaly broken, just bent thanks to the Teachers and their Union. If the Government wants, as stated at the start of their reign of terror " we want the best educated and healthiest citizens in the World" what in the hell happened along the way?

funding

It's not easy to compare the BC system with California, simply because in California funding can be dependent on revenues (taxes) raised by local authorities. In BC there is a per capita funding model, so all school districts are equal.

Frankly Frank ...

How has the term "Teacher Bashing" even come about?

Discrimination is discrimination:

Teachers have rights under the charter that have been sadly abused. How about the right to not have your contract torn up for one? I didn't see the government apologize for that when they lost that in court. Nor are they in any hurry to fix it. They took a billion dollars out of pubic education and gave it to their corporate friends as tax cuts.

How about the right to have some input into your profession? How about the right to meaningful bargaining? When the government violates the rights of one group and gets away with it, it will come for your group next. Get ready.

(Frank bashing...what a sport that will be.)

Even the United Nations condemns the B.C. Liberals for their labor practices. And it is not just teachers, it is every working person being bashed Frank. Health Care workers, construction workers, any Union workers. RCMP bashing is next ... all those doughnut-eating, Taser-happy, fat, cops with their ridiculous salaries...

The workers who make it all happen are heavily taxed to bail out the 1% failures and the banking-crap-game goes on. If the 1% win they win big and pay low,low taxes. If they gamble and lose we have to bail them out with our tax money so that they can keep on gambling.

Mitt Romney only pays 15% income tax and I suspect that many of our Canadian 1% don't even pay that!

But carry on bashing the people who try to make it all work for our next generation.

Bash the teachers, bash the health-care workers, bash the union members, bash the occupiers, bash the cops. Bash. Bash. Bash. Who cares if it hurts anyone.

Umslopogaas

RCMP bashing is next ... all those doughnut-eating, Taser-happy, fat, cops with their ridiculous salaries...

The problem with this example is that the RCMP, as an organization, does not fundamentally work for the people but as protectors of the state. And the state is, by definition, corrupt. Corrupt in the sense that it has monopolistic authority to use force to meet its objectives. Thus its protective forces are equally corrupt despite the rhetoric and contrary to many of its members' earnest intentions.

On the other hand, it is hard to envision a state without some necessary enforcement of the rule of law.

Umslopogaas

"(Frank bashing...what a sport that will be.)"

You're not the only one to get a warm and fuzzy feeling when that idea popped into your head. There have been others who had that epiphany before you.

Anyway, "teacher bashing" is the result of what happens when professionals work in the public service and therefore have to have an adversarial relationship with other taxpayers. Assuming that taxpayers who make less money will always support you in your wage demands is not realistic. Other people will always have other priorities, if there's money to pay you an extra 15% they'll immediately begin thinking of other things that money could be spent on instead.

There's a strike going on in Ontario where a group of people are being told by a private company to take a 50% wage cut. Government is not going to help them and we all are pretty sure the company wants to move their jobs to the USA anyway. Now I know its a different province but when public sector workers make demands on people being told they have to take a 50% wage cut its going to create a toxic situation.

Here in BC we saw the real median income fall by 5% from 2000 to 2005. That's a lot of people who made less money than they had a decade before. So I'm simply pointing out that when you tell them they have to pay you more you're not going to get a lot of sympathy from them. And this government is going to exploit that to keep their own very well-paid jobs as long as possible. At least until their incredible pension benefits are locked in.

So as I said on the subject of tactics, a 15% wage increase at this time will not go over well. If you want public support you need to fight for something the public would like to see, like better schools, more programs, smaller classes.

That's just my observation from the sidelines as I don't have a dog in this fight.