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Worlds Apart: the BC Teachers’ Federation and the BC Government
The latest addition to our lending library is Worlds Apart: British Columbia Schools, Politics, and Labour Relations Before and After 1972 by Thomas Fleming. The author is an emeritus professor in educational history and policy at the University of Victoria. It seems that the current conflict between the BC government and the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) with the teachers working to rule and the government unable to meet their rapacious demands, is only the latest episode in a long series of similar show-downs. Yet it wasn't always thus! In the early days, the province's educational system was "fluid and lubricated with goodwill" with "great harmony existing ... between trustees, teachers, parents, and pupils".
Worlds Apart documents the road from unity to discord, identifying three main changes that shook the foundations of the amicable cooperation that had been achieved prior to their implementation.
- The school consolidation movement, and the resulting bureaucratization of education
- The increasing inability of provincial decision-makers to cope with the new demands
- The growth of teacher influence and power
The author also explains that "the post-1972 expansion of the school's mandate into the social domain, the rise of special interest politics, the decline in school populations, and shifting provincial demographics have all strained institutional relationships and exposed fundamental insufficiencies in the structures that once governed and supported public schools". Here is the author's take on the ramifications of the on-going war between the teachers' union and the province (p. 129):
"Certainly, by any standard, the bitter struggle between the provincial government and the teachers' federation over the control of public education for 40 years has proven costly. The disastrous state of labour relations likely constitutes the single most serious impediment to educational progress in the province - and has done so for some time. Decades of conflict have created deep fissures in a province already historically polarized in its political and economic outlook - and have eroded the school system's energies. Parents, the public, and even educators have become exhausted and frustrated with the stormy state of labour relations in schools and the fact they never seem to improve. This strife has tarnished public education's once-considerable lustre and, no doubt, has appreciably reduced public confidence in public schooling."
Although the BCTF has positioned itself as the defender of the sacred trust of education and the students' champion, it is obvious that its constant noisy and disruptive behaviour is in fact bad for the BC education system and bad for the children. H/T TA
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