Teachers best-positioned to save public education system — Salutin

Union bargaining brought about all the important education reforms.

September 13, 2012: In light of the recent legislation depriving teachers of their collective bargaining rights, Rick Salutin argues in The Toronto Star that effective teaching is nothing more than people doing their jobs. “Effective teaching” cannot be analysed, compartmentalised and applied uniformly in all classrooms. Salutin sees correlations between the current trend in privatizing public education and the Liberal education bill, yet disagrees with one union’s decision to abstain from extra-curricular activities as it doesn’t put teachers where they need to be: with their students.

“Who will save our schools, and public education?

Not Premier Dalton McGuinty, who’s bought into the common obsession that the money “just isn’t there.” So he freezes public sector wages, pulling even more money out of the economy, assuring there’ll be even less in taxes to spend on programs, leading to the same death spiral that Europe is following. I know high-school kids who understand this better than Dalton, but maybe it’s because they can still take economics and business courses — although his stress on standardized tests in the “basics” is undermining all that.

Not titans of business like Bill Gates or the Weston foundation, who have anointed themselves to solve a (still unproven) crisis…”

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