Why I Fight for Post-Secondary Education

Why I Fight for Post-Secondary Education

I’m not sure that my job, my career, is as protected as “tenure lite” (officially: “continuing appointment”) might suggest. I’m not sure that I won’t get called into the office, as I did in high school, for misbehaving.  But we have encountered a bully who is attempting to tell nerds what to do and how to do it. I thought that post-secondary education had changed me, my life, but Mr. Lukaszuk has apparently proved me wrong.  Every time I read one of his tweets, dismissive of faculty and staff, or underestimating the intelligence of our students, I react emotionally.  And I fight back.  In the past (and present) I have fought back with name-calling, but it’s a sad reality that Mr. Lukaszuk has made Alberta’s post-secondary education a play-ground shoving-match.  I will refrain from calling Mr. Lukaszuk names if he refrains from dismissing the important work that staff and faculty do at post-secondary institutions across the province.  Mr. Lukaszuk needs to understand that if he wants students to learn, then our institutions need quality researchers, quality teachers, quality staff to make these institutions operate in a way that will make sure that Alberta’s economy is not based exclusively on the oil and gas industry.

Sadly, I believe that Mr. Lukaszuk and his Party are still trapped in the bitumen bubble and believe that commercializing research immediately will pay dividends immediately.  But that is not how research works.  It is those research projects motivated by curiosity (and not money) that eventually pay dividends.  Let smart people who have dedicated their lives to their fields of expertise determine what is important to study.  I really hope that the government does not dictate research programs, but that seems to be what Mr. Lukaszuk is determined to do.

I am not fighting for Alberta’s post-secondary education because of my job; if it were only a job, I would shut up and say no more, safe in the net of “tenure lite.”  I am fighting for Alberta’s post-secondary education because post-secondary education both changed and made my life.  And this is a story I hope Mr. Lukaszuk and his Party begin to understand.  Post-secondary education made me a better person.

When I left home (London, Ontario) and started studying at the University of Waterloo, I thought that I might make my love of reading and writing into something profitable.  I decided to enroll in “Rhetoric and Professional Writing.”  I thought my love of language could be practical.

I took one course and dropped out of that program.  I didn’t want to study how to write for people.  I wanted to study what I loved.  I took many courses in English Literature, often having to get a semester’s essay-heavy course-selection signed by someone in the department (back when we had forms in triplicate).  But I loved what I was doing.  For the first two years, I was not receiving very good grades.  But I was challenged as I had never been challenged before.  And I loved it.  In a later post, I might explain how some of my seemingly insignificant decisions led me to the life I now have and love.

I said that I would explain why I fight for our post-secondary education system, but this is embarrassing for me to admit.  I said that my education has made me a better person, but I haven’t explained how.  When I arrived at eighteen on the University of Waterloo’s campus, I was racist and homophobic; I like to think now that it wasn't intentional.  Were it not for the strength of my Mom, I expect I would have been misogynistic, too.  And I probably was, anyway.

But after I dropped out of my “study English to get a good job” program, and after I started reading and understanding literature, after I listened to my professors and began thinking for myself, after I started really listening to what writers and narrators and professors and peers were saying, I began to change.  I became embarrassed by my previous racism and homophobia, by some of my previous idiotic statements.  In short, I began to learn.

My education made me a better person.  If someone wants to say that I was hood-winked into the “leftist conspiracy” or whatever, then fine.  I can actually state, without reservation, that I am a better person because of my undergraduate post-secondary education.  I now believe in equality; I believe that all people deserve equal treatment; I believe that all students--even those, especially those--who disagree with me should have a voice in my classroom.  University education is about voicing ideas and debating them; it’s not about silencing them.  I am most excited in the class when I have a thoughtful student who disagrees with me and speaks up.

So, when our Monster of Advanced Education comes along and decides that fewer people will teach, fewer people will learn in Alberta at this level, I revert back to my play-ground responses to bullies.  I am not proud of it.  Some well-respected teachers and researchers have tried reasoned discussion with Mr. Lukaszuk, and have then been told that they have “nothing to contribute.”  I honestly do not believe that Mr. Lukaszuk understands or cares for what post-secondary education can do for a student, for a person.

I fight for Alberta’s Post-Secondary Education system because now fewer people will have the potential to have life-changing experiences; fewer people will have the potential to help those students attain those experiences.  I fight for #abpse, in short, to fight against ignorance, which seems to be what Mr. Lukaszuk is fighting with and for.