I think parents and taxpayers should revolt.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of being held hostage by all stripes of the civil service and their unions.
The teachers strike is just the latest of actions that seem to occur almost yearly by one group or another, all paid by the public purse. The teachers are already enjoying excellent salaries, sick days off, copious holidays and a pension plan envied by everyone.
Their union spends like drunken sailors on advertising and they are politically NDP because they know that party will give them anything they ask for.
It’s really all about money. Forget the baloney about it being all for the children.
Ronald Reagan fixed this type of problem in the United States many years ago when he fired the Air Traffic Controllers and their union. I wish we had someone with the guts to do the same thing.
Signing bonuses? What is that about?
Our public school system is broken, so why try to fix it? Change all schools to private schools operated by the city, town or community.
Stop the practice of promoting children to the next grade even though they really didn’t pass. The current thinking is to not hurt their poor little fragile egos, but what really happens is that they cannot keep up the next year either and it continues until the child gives up completely.
Another overused term is attention deficit disorder. The real truth is that the teacher is not qualified at finding another way to get the child to understand. This labeling of children is demeaning and promotes failure. What’s wrong with repeating a grade? It prompts the child to try harder so that it doesn’t happen again.
Older people all went to classes with 30 or more students. If anyone disrupted the class, they were punished immediately and nobody else was brave enough to try the same thing.
Today there are reports of students actually swearing at the teacher in class. Who’s in control? Obviously not teachers or principals.
Have you ever heard of a teacher being fired for incompetence? They don’t even want class test results published just to keep us in the dark, at what benefit to the children.
It appears to me that private schools do have the competent people and the ability to operate on a budget, so why not change our system dramatically?
Ren Olson
Qualicum Beach
