They didn't ask teachers or anyone else about the portfolios either. Ohhhh and those portfolios got postponed or cancelled or whatever you want to call it, didn't they???? Online learning / distance education ... whatever you want to call it ... just like any other program implemented by the government, will not work unless properly thought out and funded. It looks to me that this government has done neither as far as distance ed. goes. Maybe if this government had bothered to consult with the user groups in regards to the portfolios, then that money wouldn't have gone down the drain and the time students' had already spent on their portfolios not wasted. It might just be that history will repeat itself yet again if this government doesn't do it right.

I truely think this is a dangerous way to go in education. Schools are not just for the 3R's, but a social experience, learning the tools to succeed in society. Currently we are raising a generation of no-class boors, no social graces, no hint of real knowledge, just the pap downloaded from the internet.

Dysfunctional children will be passed over and become fodder for the criminal element. Only the elites, who can afford additional education, will be allowed to succeed and only if their parents can afford the university tax!

I shudder at what is happening in education in BC, a bunch of twits silently forcing through a social experiment and if it fails god help us.

You neocons and techno geeks out there give your head a shake and for once, see 23 minutes into the future. Remeber this, when about 35% of the population feels disinfranchised or removed from the social order, revolution happens. Give it twenty years, it will happen here. The question is: will the revolution be quiet or violent?

Grumpy, are you telling me you aren't lining up to buy all those new condos that will be built on property currently used for schools and libraries?

Remember, gov'ts that consult are gov'ts that lack leadership. Do you think Mussolini consulted with people when he already knew their answer was "no"? Of course not, that's why he had such a long history of effective leadership and happy citizens.

Did Stalin consult the Kulacks on best-farming practices? Of course not, they were just stuck in status-quo thinking my friend. It took a real leader like Stalin to move the country forward and stop doing things the same old way.

Gordo is leading a revolution in culture. Hey that would make a great slogan! How about we call it a Cultural Revolution! Whadda ya think?

Grumpy you sound like a classic crotchety old man..."in the good ol'days when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth..."

Pap isn't something limited to the internet. You'll find it in large quantities wherever information is stored, and that includes bookstores, libraries and learning institutions.

Online learning, integrated properly into an educational environment, has the ability to greatly enrich the knowledge and understanding of everyone, primarily because it provides easily searchable access to vast amounts of previously very difficult to obtain information, and subject matter experts.

That said, yes interpersonal interaction is a vital component of socialization. But I think public schools could do a far better job in that area. Online learning has the potential to force the bricks and mortar learning institutions to focus more actively on creating community among students and educators instead of their current focus of sitting them in rows of desks to force feed them endless amounts of rote learning. Frankly, that kind of learning isn't particularly effective, nor is it suited to the current cultural environment. It is industralized education. The school as factory.

The Campbell government would like us to think that they have changed from their first session in power but, here we are again, wholesale changes being made without consulting those who deal directly with the issues. That is how the child protection agancy became so screwed up. The arrogance of these people is astounding.

Gee the last cultrual revolution in China was a disaster. Sadly we have lost our way with many things.

One is not agains the internet or online learning if used in with the confines of a school.

School are not just for scholastic instruction, but for a more well rounded education. We live in a classic age of ineptitude, where education and social responcibility have been dumbed down to the lowest denominator.

Kids are not allowed to compete in sport simply because their will be a loser. Kids do not hear classical music, because johnny doesn't like it. Kids are not allowed to learn for fear they may ask questions.

We have taken children in this province and turned them into automatons, who spew out the proscribed drivel, when commanded. But this is not the school's fault, it is the education ministry.

What is happening is extremely dangerous, simply because we do not teach people to think, to understand and solve unique problems. We teach precious little history in schools, so children do not learn from past mistakes. Ask kids about the holocaust and Nazi death camps, many do not know. At least in my generation we do, my uncle was sent to evacuate one and until the day he died he had nightmares.

Putting education on-line will only further the government agenda to further dumb down education to the masses and only the elites, who can afford a proper education will be educated.

The future is very bleak.

Grumpy, one size does not fit all. I am, for example, taking an online course now. I have spent enought time in classrooms in my life and most of it was a waste, especially in university where the prof was usually a highly paid talking head.

Teachers are about the most conservative people on can ever meet. All socialists are conservative by nature and so are teachers, most being socialists.

The sky is not falling, Grumpy. Things are just changing and leaving you by.

It’s interesting to me that this article was posted on the same day the Globe and Mail published an Associated Press story with the head “Digital divide still separates white and minority students”. The report noted that in the US, “Many more white children use the Internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going on-line is hardly a way of life for everyone.” I don’t know how the access to internet situation measures up in Canada, but I suspect that for some students lack of access could be a barrier that could further exacerbate the gap between the “have" students, and the have nots.

I have worked with distance education in B.C. for some time. It is not a one size fits all solution. Nothing beats a good class with a good teacher.

The one thing that holds true about schooling is that to be successful it must involve challenging but appropriately supported learning situations with people motivated to learn. Sadly this is neither universally true of "brick and mortar" schoolrooms nor of their more flashy technological replacements. Insofar as schooling is perceived as "time served" or as "hoop-jumping" either by parents, students or teachers, it is essentially a failure, and any benefits accrue rather more by accident than by design.

It's true that students from less affluent families are statistically likely to have fewer technological
opportunities than their more affluent peers, but there is probably no less a correlation between socio-economic status and success in traditional schools.

Schools are very stressful environments for both staff and pupils/students. It is small wonder that teachers often prefer delivering curriculum through an internet medium or that students prefer time flexibility and the opportunity to learn without being bullied or suffering other indignities of childhood/teen angst. However, as Stendhal noted, "one can acquire anything in solitude...except character." Insofar as the "bricks and mortar" community we have come to know as the school prefigures and mirrors the challenges of living among one's fellow citizens in the broader world, it will likely not adequately be replaced by the pablum-coated phosphors of our computer screens.

For teachers or other academic authorities to neglect the many possibilities and benefits available through modern technology would be criminal. However, to adopt such techniques and procedures without careful testing and discrimination as to their flaws and, perhaps hidden hazards would be equally careless.

Above writers who have commented on government's(and society's) fondness for assuming that teachers are basically self-interested, comparatively lazy, unentrepreneurial twits, an attitude reflected in the ready willingness of government officials and ordinary citizens to discount teachers' expertise in how schools operate, in the psychology of children in groups, in the various processes of learning and instruction, etc., are generally correct. Society would never tell doctors how to run hospitals (although we are often annoyed at the seemingly arbitrary inconvenience and absurdity of how they often operate). The lawyers have a monopolistic lock on legal procedures and society tamely submits to their self-interested manipulation of social and economic transactions. We haven't all peered into the thoracic cavity of a living human, or taken someone to court or served on a jury. But we've almost all gone to school, and so our personal and plastic memories and prejudices become the touchstones for our hubristic eagerness to tell the teachers how they should REALLY be doing their jobs. It's an attitude that is fundamentally flawed but nearly universally indulged.

Change is on the way in all our institutions, more rapidly in some than in others. I believe we should welcome it--but warily.

I read of a Northern school taking delivery of 550 laptops. Students need them like they need a hole in the head.
As a 10 year retailer of computers, repairman, emplyer and ISP I can assure you that 495 of them will be chatting on MSN and learning even less than they do now.
I could almost guarantee every cent purchased a computer from an American mail order company and not a penny went to a retailer in Canada. Good use of your tax dollars.
THe teachers will be blamed as usual, but shit flows downhill and the source of it all is the morons in the School Boards and Ministry of Ejjamakashun.

Frank - that is hilarious (at least, I hope that's irony I'm reading).

Birch, while I agree with much of what you said, and especially the tone of what you said, your sentence,

"Insofar as the "bricks and mortar" community we have come to know as the school prefigures and mirrors the challenges of living among one's fellow citizens in the broader world, it will likely not adequately be replaced by the pablum-coated phosphors of our computer screens."

presupposes (or at least implies) what I think is another common mistake: that school "adequately" does the trick already.

For many, it does not, does not even come close: what a kid learns in school, both academically and socially, often does not generalize to what we are referring to as the "broader world" in any predictable way. We're still chucking our hands up in prayer for a lot of kids transitioning to "the real world" (what an idiomatic gem that is).

And that's not to lay the blame on teachers (a crime, I think) so much as to question whether or not the very institution of school has EVER been adequate. Afterall, doctors used to bleed people with leeches (and who knows what lawyers used to do...). They don't anymore. But what is "school" doing to kids right now, technology aside, that we are NOT seeing?

From this article, it seems that the immediate threat of DL is a further destabilization of the administrative control of the system. Might this actually be revelatory? Might we actually see how messy this system already is and how illusory our control of it has been? Maybe that will provide everyone, teachers especially, with some needed insight into how this system should change at a more fundamental level?

School has been "broken" for a long time, I believe. Better we come to grips with how broken it is so that we can change it now or come up with something new.

excellent observations chrisyak

School has been "broken" for a long time, I believe. Better we come to grips with how broken it is so that we can change it now or come up with something new.

for this reason alone I support the idea, at least it will get the two sides really, really struggling with each other in a visible crucible, burning away the distractions and coming out with the truth.

The best education system offers a continuum of services to meet the needs of all learners. Socialization and social responsibility skills are on the grid as an important experiences that children should receive with a public education. There are times in children's lives, however, when it is not in their best interest to be foisted upon a group of peers. Distance education (correspondence/online learning) can help some young learners move ahead academically while they are not able to attend school for whatever reason. In the past, many teenaged students would drop out all together because they just couldn't fit in with the public system. In a period of 25 years, the education system of BC changed a great deal to accomodate a higher percentage of learners: For the last 10 years we have had about 85% of the students graduating. Pre 1970, that number was 50%-60%. The growth in distance education is just one of those accomodations that teachers and the education system has had to make.

Distance Education is not a bad thing if (in the end) the goal is to bring children forward in their development. Children and their families should always have the option of public school with real flesh and blood interactions. After all, 80-90%, of all interpersonal communication in non-verbal. Schools have been improving a great deal over the last 20 years in helping students gain interpersonal awareness.

All the above being true, I must re-itterate, there are times when students require time-out from the traditional way for a variety of personal reasons. Those reasons include: 1) mental health issues such as one suffers from the effects of trauma and abuse not at school (or a bullying incident when at school) 2)physical illness/disability 3)death in the family 4)travel/moving - like a child actor, a parent who moves regularly because of the nature of his or her work, or a family sailing round-the-world.

As long as we keep online learning as an option, and have living breathing teachers and flesh and blood classrooms available for students who want to opt back in, then this is just one of the many ways we can serve the needs of students in this fast-paced (sometimes grid-locked - often neurotic) society of ours.

With luck this iniative will be the first step in the dismantling of the traditional custodial school and its replacment with a more flexible, post-industrial system.

Giving students choices and supporting them in those choices is a much better approach than the one size fits all, 30 kids to a class, "10,000 hours of your life gone" approach which existed when I was going to school.

I am amused at the advocated of schools for "socialization". First, I can't imagine when we, as parents, abdicated the role of bringing our children up int their community. Second, even back when I was a highschool student (and the dinosaurs stalked the Earth) socialization consisted of cutting woodwork and shooting pool at the Kerrisdale Billiard Parlour. (I make lopsided bookcases and 80% of my bank shots to this very day.) Essentially, socialization was what you did to cope with the sheer boredom of school.

There is very little which a school does now which could not be done with a combination of online courses and well organized tutorial arrangements.

Of course this ignores one rather critical function of our current system: it allows two income families to park their kids from 8:30 - 3:30. For years and years. 10,000 hours in custody. With no time off for good behaviour.

A system of distributed learning, tutorials, open access labs and well-organized sports programs might well answer the educational and social needs of children; but it does not address the custodial issue. Such a system would mean that parents would have to actually arrange their lives so that they, rather than the school system, took care of their younger children. And that would, indeed, be revolutionary.

amen Jay:

keeping children in the hands of their parents puts the responsibility in the hands that it legally is - the parents.

I agree that parents should be responsible for raising their own children but, how can this be accomplished when the neocons are destroying the middle class and both parents must work to support the family? Real change is needed to support parents (ie minimum wages that allow one parent to stay at home and the return to Canadian values of supporting the families and people instead of corporate greed). Until then the result of distance education will be a further errosion of the family unit as the kids will be at home alone either in front of their computer, or doing what they want to do instead of learning. Sanity must start to prevail in the minds of the thinking class of Canada.

Realist - I see you're back on the crack pipe this afternoon. Most families with both parents working are doing so because the Liberal lefites have increased the tax burden to the point where one income no longer pays the taxes and the bills. And, just imgaine what would happen to goods and services if minimum wages where raised to the point where one income could afford the taxes and expenses.....just plain nutty.

NoLeftNutter
I'm no apologist for the Federal liberals but your post just above is utter nonsense - in Vancouver especially, the cost of housing is the key factor behind the need for both parents to keep working. I suspect you don't have even a modest understanding of the tax system anyway.

There hasn't been any big increase in taxes in this country. The problem is that the ratio of wages to stuff like home ownership has fallen.

Go back to allowing only one income to count towrds a mortgage and you'd see house prices fall and more moms and dads staying home.

I'm on board with Chrisyak, Murdock, Jay Currie & SharingisGood on this one. Bring on more choices in education and flexibility that support learning beyond the narrow parameters of conventional brick-and-mortar schooling. That is the alleged intent beyond the changes wrought by Bill 33 (FYI, I read the complete Hansard transcript and can attest that Education Minister Shirley Bond refered to "increased choice and flexibility" something like 25 times in her stump speeches about Bill 33!).

As director of what is surely one of BC's most innovative online schools - SelfDesign Learning Community (Group 1 Independent school) - I also concur that some of the changes inherent in this legislation appear to have been crafted with very little prescience. As an example, I'm all in favour of students mixing and matching their learning options from various sources but the MinEd has not worked out a clear path about course payment or reporting.

I continue to support changes that bring about authentic democratization of education, which certainly includes providing more choices to children and parents, something that was clearly supported in the findings of the Sullivan Royal Commission on Education (1987) and the Charter for Public Education (2002). While both the NDP and the Liberals subsequently ignored such results to inscribe more restrictions on the BC education system, the rise of online learning - beyond the narrow, vested interest guardianship of the Ministry and the BCTF - has forced governments to accept and sanction Distributed Learning programs. To no surprise the vested interests who were very satisfied with the status quo are continuing to fight to retain control of a medium that is surely slipping away from their grasp. For the main their arguments are no more credible than an assertion that success in school is the only path to success in life. Bah, piffle.

- Michael Maser; selfdesign.org

....all of which they learn from their "peer groups" at the great recess institute we call school. The "economies of scale" that were tried with mega schools simply doesn't work, and they shoudl be torn down and replaced with some 21st century version of the "little red schoolhouse"....

This thread is turning into a free advertisement.

These dragons will be turning back into windmills very soon. Humans are better machines than computers at most tasks, education being one. An easy prediction: this new idea will have zero impact on public schools in BC.

So everybody just relax.

Hey, if I'm wrong, I'll kiss your ass at the next assembly in the gym...

yes Davey-boy, and you can go stick your head back in the sand.

The 'online' option will start looking better and better to those parents fed-up with the preaching antics of the 'activist' teachers (not all teachers are this way, only some, but then only one appple will cause the rest to rot).

As others have pointed out, the financial pressures mount, causing the 'brick-and-mortar' locales to appear far more costly. The bean counters get involved and the little wheel goes round....

One area where the private sector is notoriously ineffective is in the delivery of education (it's similar to its ability to deliver health care). If you have buckets of cash to throw away you can get a decent education, but if you're not overwhelmingly wealthy, or heaven forbid, middle class it's highly unlikely you can afford a private education for even one child without significant financial sacrifice.

Education as a public service is vital to the functioning of a modern society, and all the wishful ideological thinking of knuckle-dragging conservatives who would rather their women do their "god given" duty and stay at home to reproduce and raise the resulting product aren't going to change that fact. The average individual family on its own simply doesn't have the time or the financial, and material resources to educate its children. That fact is not due to an oppressive tax burden, because even without any tax the average family could still not afford to provide the services it would need to survive in a modern society.

The libertarian holy grail of greater choice in education as a solution to "custodial" education is simply a utopian myth. It is just abstracted wishful thinking and technophilia, combined with neoconservative style anti-public sector propaganda. Any kind of transformation of the current bricks and mortar form of schooling must be tied to realistic solutions that take into consideration our current educational institutional systems and provide for integrated transitions that make use of the advantages of new technologies, while ensuring that the broad base of the public's children are receving a proper education. That takes time and and understanding of the current educational process at all levels. What's more it won't happen over night.

Dropping ideologically constructed bombs to blow-up the current educational institutional framework is the height of stupidity. It will merely leave devastation in its wake, and generate immense resistence in both teachers and parents. That said, however, there can be intransigence amongst institutions when change is needed, and an occasional kick in the ass to get things moving isn't necessarily a bad thing.

What is clear is that we do know that the current form of public education can be improved, and that technology can play a significant role in delivering those improvements effectively and inexpensively. The question is how to integrate them in order to achieve that. It is a process that must involve teachers, parents, children, government, and yes even the private sector. It's not a process that should happen by stealth secretly driven by corporate market ideology, and Bill 33 certainly has that stink to it.

3 BIG BUTS
Technology supports looser, more lateral structures in many aspects of society. Giving Grade 10-12 students more autonomy
by offering online courses can be a good thing. I'd like to emphasize 3 BIG BUTS that have already been mentioned above:

1. BIG CHANGE: This is a big change to a big public system - the change must be grounded in education. There are several decades of research and development of distance learning and a large, diverse body of knowledge. Has it been accessed? Has the change been guided by education principles? Have educators been fully involved in the development of the change, and fully supported in its implementation?

2. BIG MONEY: Research shows distance learning is as costly as classroom learning - a lot of public money is involved. Beware vendor-influence in the granting of development funds and in the contracting of learning management systems.Has the Ministry developed adequate, transparent criteria for the purchase of course development, software and LMSs? What are they?

3. BIG INEQUITY TRAP: Barriers to access constitutes a serious exclusion. If the public ed system is adding online courses, then it must not only ensure easy, open access to all learners and teachers, but also support their technology learning.

How do the two of you explain away the fact federal government spending is now rougly $70 billion more per year than it was in 98/99.

Again, show me the beneficiaries of a 70% increase in federal spending. In case you can't do the math that's roughly $5,000 more per year out of your pocket. How many people could be lifted above the poverty line if they had an extra $5,000 per year.

Lastly, G West, your dismissal of anyone that disagrees with without even any factual support shows how much of a lightweight you are.......

Population growth, inflation, recovery from federal cuts. The year you're using as a baseline is very instructive. Why not use 1990 and make the comparison using inflation adjusted per-capita numbers? Why instead pick a year immediately after the federal cuts?

In the 1996 census there were 28,846,761 Canadians, now there are 32,626,377. That's a pretty big difference.

It's a little sad that people who think so little of kids (boors, lazy, unsocialized) and parents have so much to say about education. I mean have an opinion and everything, but sheesh, some of you talk like every kid is a good for nothing miscreant that will learn nothing unless it is forced down their throats.

If you see kids as problems to be solved you get the worst of the education system. If you see them as potential to be developed (and trust, me, connecting online is a critical life skill) then that goives you a whole other frame.

One leads to boot camps, one leads to learning. Take your pick

Noleftnutter
Baloney!

I've been dismissive of your right wing, uninformed postings from the very start.

I'm shocked and hurt you'd say it's only lately.

If you're paying more personal tax today it's because you're making more money; since the marginal rates of tax have being going down - until Harper raised the bottom rate on the lowest earning Canadians in his last budget.

The best breaks have always gone to corporations and business - as well as access to tax dodges that wage earners and non-capitalists never get. Don't believe me, check it out yourself. Why would I lie to you? I hope when you come here you actually learn something and go away with a new perspective on the tales you’re told in the MSM every day.

And don't come back whining about the GST - that's a tax on consumption, not income.

Murdock says:

Mr. Murdock, It is sad that you think that teachers (with 5+ years of post secondary education) are gullible and may be led to rot by "one bad apple." I, for one, am very proud of the teachers in this province for showing they have had the intelligence, the backbone, and the resolve to stand up to this dictatorial government. When I have a legal question, I will pay a lawyer. When I have an education question, I will ask a teacher. Who could you trust more to collectively have the province's children's best interests at heart. Teachers are generally Law-abiding centrists. It took a great deal of provocation on the government's part to cause them to rise up. Be proud of them for teaching students (through example) that tyranny is not to be endured. During the strike, the vast majority of parents of students in the system were on the side of the teachers. Please understand this and quit harping on a point that is recognized as untrue. It makes the truth of your other postings highly suspect.

Salishsea, agreed. But that potential is hard to spot in a class of 25 or 30 kids all of whom are going to be writing standardized performance tests.

The problem is not the kids and its not the teachers: it is the use of factory techniques to produce the "educational product". And, worse, the wilingness of the society at large to accept that this is the best we can do for the billions we spend.

Public education was a good idea when the alternative was no education. However, the sort of education and system which was the best we could do in 1960 should not set the standard for the best we can do in 2006. Instead we should be looking at online and distributed learning as ways of breaking out of the industrial mode. (And, no James, I don't want to bomb schools. But I do want to radically change them.)

Re-imagining public education in an online world is really the task at hand. Part of that will be addressing the access issues raised in this thread. (Though I suspect that there are enough decent but slightly behind the curve computers out there that no child would be left behind.)

To take our own example: while we choose to homeschool it would be great to have full access to the community school around the corner for library and gym. It would also be fair to have the per capita grant flow to us rather than to a school district for "administrative" purposes. It would be fabulous to have a "homeschooling" support center set up by the school board. And it would be excellent to have access to a teacher from time to time to check progress and get a few tips. (And I note that some of these services are available.)

In a sense the roots of the system's dysfunctionality lie in the economy of scale which a three hundred kid elementary school or a 2000 kid highschool purport to offer. For the vast majority of students these numbers mean limited teacher time and a very limited exploration of a child's potential.

Building a new system which leverages online technology (to sound like a Microserf marketer) to humanize the public education system is a grand idea. All it needs is implementation.

Because since then the highest percentage increase in government spending has been taking place. I don't see any improvement in my quality of life with the dramatic increases in Federal spending. I do see vote buying bribery taking place at an unprecedented level. If you're unable to point out the extra benefits of a 70% increase why not support 98/99 spending levels?

NLN, did you read my post? The population increased by 4 million. Those people would have paid taxes and received benefits.

Also you said 70% again, yet before you said 70 billion, which is it?

So you support the historically low levels of spending while Martin was fighting the deficit?

Of course you're dismissive, I disagree with you.

I'm paying more tax today becasue the government is finding new ways to tax me. I still say we could do with $70 billion less -per year in federal government redistribution.

Most of the tax policies designed to increase the investment in public and private companies were created decades ago. Does it cause you so much angst becaue you missed out on the benefits?

Most wage earners are bright enough to understand how to access the benefits, except of course those that share your ideology. You would rather spend all your time pissing and moaning about how everybody else has it better than you do. So sad.....

NLN,

Now you've said 70 billion twice and 70% twice. Both can't be true.

When 4 million more people are in the country they're going to pay more tax. Are you saying you want us to reduce the population? Kick 50% of the population out of the country so that the feds receive 50% less tax money?

Total gov't revenue was 44.5% of GDP in 1998, two years ago it had fallen to 41.3%. The gov't is taxing people less on the same amount of money.

SharingIsGood:

THEIR PARENTS!

This garbage about teachers know best is meaningless!

They, the teachers 'invented' the education system = so of course they 'the teachers' know best about it. But they 'the teachers' are in a union (called a federation or some other moniker, but it IS A UNION) that wants to get the most $$$ out of the public purse as possible. So the 'teachers know best' or 'teachers care' crap is dragged out and used as propoganda. Nuts I say to that! It is strictly a slogan, for otherwise Jinny Simms and 'the teachers' would have gone on 'teaching' the children FOR NO PAY AT ALL, out on the street in front of the school. If they, 'the teachers', really cared about every child's outcome then the UNION would not be needed at all, since the PARENTS would recognize this.

WE, THE PARENTS, DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE BCTF AS THE BE-ALL AND END-ALL IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.

OTHERWISE WHY WOULD WE, THE PARENTS, ELECT ANY GOVERNMENT TO OVERSEE SUCH A FUNCTION AS EDUCATION THAT DID NOT INCLUDE ALL OF THE BCTF LEADERSHIP?

No leftnutter, that's simply not true. Wage earners cannot take advantage of the tax dodges and if you knew anything about the tax system you'd understand why.
Just like health care - when you hadn't even heard of the Romanow Report - you haven't got a clue. Not then, not now, not ever.

There's no need to yell, murdock lol.

There are very few people in this world that work for free, why should teachers? Most teachers chose the profession because we wanted to help children. You may not believe it, but for the majority of teachers the holidays had nothing to do with our choice of careers. Just because we want our salary to keep up with the cost of living does not mean that we are evil, attempting to undermine the education system, or what have you. We just want to have sufficient money to live on and maybe with some left over so we can spend it in our classrooms. (The average BC teacher spends approx. $1000/year on classroom supplies which is the highest average in Canada. If we feel that we have to spend so much doesn't that reflect on the govt.'s funding formula????).

We went out on strike in Oct. and we made some gains. Bill 33 isn't a wonderful piece of legislation but at least it's a start and it wouldn't exist if we hadn't gone on strike and opened the public's eyes about the conditions in our schools. I didn't see anyone else making sacrifices to attempt to improve the situations in our schools ... only teachers. The strike could have been avoided if BCPAC and other parent groups had been willing to risk their funding and stand up to the government but they did the exact opposite.

You give the BCTF much too much credit. I am a member of my local's Executive and I've attended a few BCTF AGMs but the BCTF Executive and the Rep Assembly do not dictate the way I, or any other teacher, thinks or how we teach. If we are intelligent to teach children, surely you think we are intelligent enough to think for ourselves?? Teachers are not the lapdogs that you seem to think. The BCTF does what we want them to do. It's one of the most democratic unions around (ask anyone who's attended a BC Fed convention).

Sped, I don't know why you waste your time responding to such uninformed opinions. You can quote all the facts you like, generate arguments of bullet-proof logic, and you will never be able to storm the walls of unassailable and determined ignorance.

Your profession is an honourable one. That is why I chose it too.

Have a great September. I hope you have the same pleasure teaching open minds that I do.

" The weakness of the Internet, its unmanageable volume of information, much of it unreliable..."

Internet, hell, ounds a lot like my schooling, and the mass media as well!

Murdock,

I am a parent and you do not speak for me.

School, at least in North America, was never intended to be about education or genuine socialization. Its intent was to provide the minimum needed to function at a job and to teach obedience to authority and punctuality. Of course, there have always been teachers who tried to make schooling an education, and these few we remember fondly. If schooling was about education, philosophy would be taught, as it is in France. However, if the average person knew basic logic they would quickly see through politicians and mass media. The least educated stratum of society , the sort of right-wingers we see posting here, are an amusing illustration of the failure to teach logic. Their arguments consist of one logical fallacy pilled upon another.

SharingIsGood:

Of course I do not, that is why we have our electoral system.

Sadly we, the general public, do not have any more control over the 'public school teachers' than thru our elected officials.

These elected officials have decided on an course of action, right or wrong, they have that right and responsibility; given to them by us adults.

I detest the BCTF, or any other UNION or large group with access to immense resources or with 'special access' to our children then using those resources or 'special access' to manipulate the governance process. And yes, budgeting and finance are what this is all about ultimately.

So no I do not speak for you, nor any other parent, nor have I tried to manipulate the budgeting process such as the BCTF has on more than one occasion. Using such excuses as 'better educational outcomes', 'better for chilren', etc...

As a parent, I have used my franchise within the electoral process to affect changes withing the school system. I for one want this education monopoly broken up.

It isn't the fault of the teachers or the BCTF. The problem lies deeper and much earlier than that. As I mentioned before, education in the genuine sense of creating cultured, aware, and criticaly thinking individuals was never in the blueprint. Secondly, in the 1940's the state felt that parents had too much control over even this limited education system, so began the process of school centralization and consolidation that created the wretched mega-school and the huge school board bureaucracy. Teachers found themselves no longer dealing with parents who were their friends and neighbors, but were at the mercy of these impersonal bureacracies. What else could they do but organize a pressure group to defend their interests? What we have to do is go back to the neighborhood school - one that is decentralized enough so all kids can walk to it, one that is owned outright by the community, one that is directly controlled by teachers and parents together and one that, for the first time ever, actually seeks to educate. And I should add that the computer and the internet are some of the forces that make a return in modern form of the "Little red School House a possibility.

Your kids aren't even in public school murdock. Besides the home-school option, the gov't even gives taxpayer money to private schools, there is no "monopoly".

As for BC teachers using their own money to fight for what they believe in, its called democracy.

I realize many here would like a capitalist version of the Taliban running the country, where teachers and others simply shut up and do what they're told but we're not there yet.

Sadly Frank:

NO IT IS NOT.

The BCTF executive decides where the unioin dues go to be spent on, the exec decides to get into political events and use attack ads during a provincial election.

I know of many teachers that did not approve of those actions, nor did they ever get any chance to voice any opinion about it, ever. Niether before the $$$ was spent and the action taken, nor after - that is not democracy. So spare me your platitudes.

Frank also writes:

No, the one whom is old enough is not, nor will the others once they are old enough.

If the tax-payer is part of your beef, putting $$$ into 'private schools', as such it is with me - I think that if the government can put $$$/student into private schools then why can they not pay $$$/student directly to the parents that are home-schooling?

Better would be to decide if a generally educated populace is a desirable thing, if it is, then place the funding into the hands of those LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE for the children, THEIR PARENTS.

Finally for Frank:

Such a system already exists!

It is called the BCTF, for it is ILLEGAL to teach in BC without the approval of the BCTF. EVEN IN A PRIVATE SCHOOL.

It is illegal for me, for instance, to charge to teach geography (my degree) or history (my passion) or graphic arts (my pains); because I do not have a 'teacher certification' from the BCTF!

Moreover on a larger scale, the Nurses Union and Doctors' Professional Associations etc are also 'restricting' access to the 'club' so that their particular 'professions' can charge more for thier services because they are 'rare'.

Again spare me such silly observations as the comparison to Taliban, since the prime action of any UNION organization is to extract more $$$ from employers (be they public or private) and do less real work for more $$$.

Well both are true. So, either you can't do math or you haven't bothered to look into the facts.

Wrong again. I used to appreciate your perspective but now I recognize that you're simply an angry loser.

"It is illegal for me, for instance, to charge to teach geography (my degree) or history (my passion) or graphic arts (my pains); because I do not have a 'teacher certification' from the BCTF!Moreover on a larger scale, the Nurses Union and Doctors' Professional Associations etc are also 'restricting' access to the 'club'..."

I agree, Murdock, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, the root of the problem lies not with the union, but with the bureacratization of education that went on years ago. The union resulted from this, just as the nurses union resulted from nurses being badly paid and abused in the past. You are attacking the symptom and not the disease.

ok anarcho,

so what is the disease?

Go back and read my posting from one day ago re- the teachers. The disease is the fact that there is a split in society between those who own-control on the one hand and the vast majority who own little and have no direct say in the economy.People react the way they do because they are fearful. They are fearful because they have little or no direct control of the situation, so they try to control things as best they can, indirectly through organizations. It might seem strange to you but I look forward to the days when trade unions are no longer necessary. For us syndicalists unions are a means not an end. If you look at even traditional and rather conservative cooperatives, they have very, very few strikes. If corporate and state capitalism had as little labour unrest as these coops, they would declare it an era of labour peace. The reason for this is the division I mentioned above does not exist to anywhere near the same extent as in state or corporate sectors. Move society to a cooperative economy and the problems you mention will dissapear. Nor is this idea a fanciful utopia. Worldwide one billion people belong to coops and the total value is $1 trillion.

murdock said,

You sound pretty sure, however...

The BCTF is elected murdock, they're only doing what the membership wants. A very democratic union, I don't see how you can argue with that.

Gee, I didn't vote for Campbell either and come to think of it he never asked my permission for any of the stuff he's purchased. Guess we don't have democracy here in BC either eh?

You mentioned private schools and home schooling yourself. I assume we agree then that they exist and there is no monopoly. As for paying parents to take their kids out of the school system, why? Most education money goes to paying teachers so if you don't need one why would the money go to parents?

Really? I thought it was to stand up for the rights of their members. If you can show me where it says its to do less work for more money I'd like to read that.
As for having to actually be a teacher to be paid like one, that's life. If the BCTF didn't exist you'd still have to get your credentials from somebody else or every fool would declare himself a geography teacher.

Actually can't both be true?

Anyway, the 2004-05 fiscal year says our federal revenue was 198 billion. So there is no way that 70% and 70 billion will equal the same number. Because according to the gov't website, the 1996-97 revenue was 135 billion. The 1995-96 revenue was 130 billion.

70% of 130 billion is 91 billion. That would mean our revenue in the last fiscal year is 221 billion, but it isn't.

Instead of revenue, let's look at program spending. Program spending in 1993-94 was 120 billion. The following year it fell to 118, then 113, then 109, then 106 billion in 1997-98. The website doesn't say but I assume these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

As can be seen, the Martin-controlled dept of Finance was reducing real spending while fighting the deficit. In fact, Canada's program spending fell below the G7 average. Its program spending you're worried about, right? It fell from 15.7% of GDP to 11.6% of GDP from 1994 to 2004.

So if you're worried its out of control, don't be. I'd like to see it increase in fact, especially since provincial spending fell from 19.1% to 15.6% of GDP also.

In the 2005 budget the biggest increase in program spending was on the military, according to the CBC anyway. Yes, those are "gov't workers" and they don't provide much in return so spending more on them won't make my life better I guess.

However, except for a few items like the military, Canadian public spending is falling compared to our economy.

Frank,

The self-correcting mechanism is called 'caveat emptor', and it is working very well in other marketplace situations.

The first 'teachers' were single women in rural and suburban communities. It was not until the late 1890's that the profession of teaching even existed as such. UNIONIZATION is what brought pressures to bear on the government (whom should not be running the business of school anyway) so that they could get a 'closed shop' and control the gates of entry under the guise of standardization.

Just admit it Frank, you like the UNION control over the situation.

I like workers to have a union because it serves their interests better than each having to go cap in hand.

And I also think an overall body that makes sure your math teacher knows what he's talking about is a great idea. That's part of governance and I agree with it.

Caveat emptor is not a phrase to build an education system on.

Re: the original article..it is truly stunning how much misinformation is in the article. The conversations and planning meetings with teachers, superintendents, etc..about Virtual School and distributed learning have been going on for years? Many teachers are so inward focussed that they don't even know what is going on in their own district, or even in the own school. I have often been in a position of telling teachers what other programs are happening in their district and schools..as they are so clued out. So, this is all a bunch of crap...as the districts have known about this for ages....ESPECIALLY distance education schools. For certain teachers and principals to cry "I didn't know" must have been because they are burying their heads in the sand. Welcome to the new millenium people...wake up...

Unions are the effect, not the cause. Teachers unionized because their pay was so low and their working conditions poor. Just like all the other proles did. Decent income and workplace democracy and unions would have never been organized. The trouble with all these right-winger "blame the unions types" is that they are a bunch of free lunchers. Well, their ain't no sech thing as a free lunch. Unions are the price you pay for greed and authoritarianism. Another way of putting it, is that unions are capitalism's bad karma.

A point of correction: the BCTF does not grant certification to teachers. This is done by the College of Teachers which is a separate institution. Qualifications are rated by TQS, another body separate from both the BCTF and the BCCT. The BCTF is a union of professionals who have been accredited by non-BCTF organizations.

A further point: advocacy by teachers for decent working conditions is also advocacy for the learning conditions of students. I thank BC's teachers for so often being the lone voices in an encroaching wilderness.

Online education and virtual courses are practically purpose built, taxpayer funded and paid for, instruments for fundamental religious groups to extend their tentacles into public secular education. The learning outcomes will be secondary to promoting such farcical ideas as creationism in Biology courses and fundamentalist interpretations of history.

People should be free to choose these arguments and beliefs for their children at their leisure (and at their cost) - it's a free country after all - but the public shouldn't be footing the bill while the public system is further weakened and subverted.

Maybe it should be called the fundamentalist revolution.

Murdock says:

Barbers used to be doctors. and doctors used to be blood-letters to get the evil spirits/bad blood out of the person.

The quality of teaching inproved the most after unionization. Ivy League (traditional "protectors" of the rights of the right) studies have confirmed that union districts perform better and have better educated students than non-union districts (in the USA).

murdoch...you are wrong. You can homeschool your kids, and that isn't illegal nor does it require the sanction of the BCTF. You can also teach programs through community centres and many other places without doing it through the school system.

Do you have something to teach or do you just want to rant?