She had promised that things would get better. Six years, she had said, let’s try to make it last six more years. But it didn’t last six months before she started in on us again.
Actually, I never really believed her; I didn’t think that it would last. She had never kept her word before; why would this time be different?
We all know that “old saw “about insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I’d seen this movie before. I knew how it ended; I just didn’t want to admit it.
To give her her due, this time was a little different. Instead of going after my colleagues and me – the teachers – she went after school boards. Premier Christy Clark’s promise of six years of peace in education proved to be as meaningless as all her other election promises.
With Bill 11 it became perfectly clear that her real goal has always been to destabilize and underfund the public system while nurturing and fostering the private.
Imagine this: 12 years of cuts, underfunding and downloading only to tell boards to eliminate “the low-hanging fruit.” Clark must know at some level that that fruit has already been harvested and the scraps have been shared amongst the starving. School boards, with the help of teachers, have managed a loaves-and-fishes kind of miracle. But even miracles have a shelf life, and that has come. There’s nothing left to feed the starving.
One has to wonder why the government would introduce a bill like this – a bill that cuts funding, centralizes power and attacks the professional autonomy of teachers. The only reasonable explanation is that there is a desire to keep things upset. Six years of peace with teachers might mean six years in which the public regains its faith in the public system. And that goes against the government’s real agenda.
Teachers have been saying since 2002 that the B.C. Liberal government, with the prodding and encouragement of the Fraser Institute and other right-wing think tanks, is an all-out assault on the public sector. Schools are the first line of attack. Why? Because an educated society might demand real social parity. Because an educated population might ask that government be accountable. Because an educated population might want a just society.
In some ways, this fight has to move beyond those who work in the system. If I had a child in the public school system today, I’d be asking MLA Jordan Sturdy every day: Why it is that some children had access to a system with supports while mine don’t? Why is it that some children had opportunities that mine don’t?
The premier and her acolytes are probably wallowing in the recent decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal that found that the government was within its rights to rip up contract language on class size and composition. But even if it was within the legal rights, does it make it right?
Six years? I’m already feeling the seven-year itch.
