http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-find-better-way-to-negotiate-1.1071958
“If the government and the B.C. Teachers’ Federation are putting the welfare of students first, we don’t see the evidence. Despite all the rhetoric about finding a new approach, bargaining has degenerated into the familiar tooth-and-nail nastiness that has characterized contract talks for most of the past 30 years.
It’s tiresome. It’s not good for education. It needs to change.
“Schools are not factories,” former deputy education minister Don Wright wrote in 2003 after being called back into service to examine teacher bargaining. “There are all kinds of intangible factors that make for a successful school. This is all put at risk when labour conflict is brought into the school.”
Wright, a Harvard PhD and an expert highly regarded by educators for his common sense, said what everybody knew: The teacher bargaining model simply did not work, never had and was serving nobody well.
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Which brings us to the shameful situation where the victims of all the game-playing and charades are children and their parents, not a company’s bottom line.
Shameful, because the number of families headed by single parents or where both parents work has increased significantly. If teachers strike, parents will have to stay home and lose income, or live with the anxiety that their children might not be adequately looked after.”
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Read entire editorial here: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-find-better-way-to-negotiate-1.1071958
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