Education’s Gone Rogue

In a comment to my "Form Over Function" blog, Karin Litzcke made a passing reference to "the Wynja case". I wondered what this was all about and so it looked it up and found that Karin had written about the case of Cornelius Wynja here. More than 20 years ago, Mr. Wynja launched a conflict-of-interest lawsuit against two Vancouver trustees who were employed as teachers by the Richmond school board. By voting in a lavish new contract for Richmond teachers, the Richond board made it possible for the Vancouver teachers' union to "whipsaw" their own contract into an equally-lavish settlement. Mr. Wynja won his suit, which went all the way to the BC Court of Appeal, but it didn't make any difference - as the teachers' unions quickly adopted compensating tactics.

"However, the vested interests that profit from public education empire growth learned a lot. Those interests have adopted a variety of methods to continue to corrupt the trusteeship, resulting in the bizarre phenomenon of some whole boards that consider themselves advocates or activists rather than trustees. In addition, a campaign of public misinformation has left the public blithely believing that a big and unresponsive education empire is perfectly aligned with the public interest."

These days, we're actually worse off, what with most school boards being dominated by teacher union representatives and puppets, making a mockery of the principle that the role of the school boards is to represent the voters.

Karin Litzcke writes with a piercing logic and clarity that is a pleasure to read. She has 26 other pieces here, and they're all good. I haven't read them all yet, but I found "This Program Saved My Life" of great interest. 

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