Degrading Education

I have not posted to this blog in a long time, but recent news in Alberta’s education system have renewed my interest in vocalizing my disagreement with the way the Ministry of Education, and its minister, Mr. Jeff Johnson, are conducting themselves.

First, I admit that I am not objective: I work in education. Given the discourse surrounding Alberta Education, perhaps I should say that I am in the education business. I am not objective because I am passionate about education: I believe it does not just improve lives with access to better jobs simply because I think education can radically alter lives, change the perception of an individual entirely. I am not objective: I passionately believe that education improves not just individuals but creates a better society, a better Alberta, a better world. To continue employing the rhetoric of Alberta education: I am an educational fundamentalist.

Recently, there were three news items that disturbed me greatly: 1) Motion 503, to allow for the creation of Gay-Straight Alliances in all schools in Alberta (thank you Mr. Hehr!), was voted down (thank you “Progressive” Conservatives and Wild Rose Party); 2) The Calgary Herald reported on two schools—fully funded by tax payers—that discriminate based on sexuality, make their students and staff sign contracts that make “immoral sexual acts” an offence resulting in termination of employment or expulsion; 3) Several oil and gas corporations are considered “stakeholders” in the curriculum redesign (including for K-3 education).

I will first address the third point: I do not care what has been the practice in the past. Simply put, oil and gas corporations of any kind are NOT stakeholders in education. The end result of education is not a job; it is a benefit of education, a “by-product,” to use the increasingly corporatized language of education. The primary goal of education is education. That is all. I can’t believe I just had to type that. Mr. Dan Scratch (@DanScratch03) has been tweeting and blogging about this topic for some time, including this recent blog post: http://danscratch.blogspot.ca/2014/04/the-silence-is-deafening.html

Items 1) and 2) on my list of “things that disturb me” are clearly related. Ms. Paula Simons (@paulatics) has recently written a great piece in The Edmonton Journal: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/Simons+Government+duty+fund+teaching+intolerance/9746197/story.html

Item 1) Motion 503. I am not surprised that the motion was voted down. Perhaps Mr. Hehr simply wanted to bring to Albertans' attention that it is ridiculous to have a costly duplication of educational services because of religion and the inherent inequality this duplication breeds: GSAs, loss of money, and unfair hiring practices are only a few problems that emerge.  As Ms. Simons’ article (and Twitter feed) indicate, developing discriminatory educational practices based on education goes back to the Alberta Act (1905), and the educational discrimination was, if I recall, grandfathered in from the 1875 North West Territories Act. Yes, our laws on education, religious segregation, and discrimination are based on Acts created the year before Alexander Graham Bell first transmitted a voice. Think about that. 

I suppose, then, that it should come as no surprise that my children’s School Board had to hold an emergency meeting to address the fact that one of their schools was flagrantly defying the Charter. Although the school disallowed “immoral sexual acts” with contracts with their staff and students, The Calgary Herald reported that the school’s website explicitly referenced tobacco, alcohol, pornography, and homosexual acts as forbidden. This is 2014, and a school is stipulating what a teacher cannot do in her or his bedroom. Really. Further, as far as I know, students in grade seven are not legally able to sign contracts, but perhaps there is some obscure Salem Document-Signing Act of 1692 that says it’s legal for children to sign contracts (and accuse people of being witches), so long as they state the following oath: “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” To me, that seems as relevant as an Act of 1875 (before Alberta was a province) dictating how we now teach our children.

Here’s a quick summary of my thoughts: Education by the people, for the people. Religion for the religious by the religious, without public funds. Business…well, business as usual.

The Cuts and Their On-Going Results

The hash-tag #abpse has fallen silent. We no longer have a bow-tied face at which to direct our anger. We no longer have a Twitter fall-guy. I have fallen victim to this plot as well. If there isn’t a politician (allegedly our champion) actively deriding you and your research and your teaching and your 140-character attempts to defend Alberta’s post-secondary education, then we won the fight. Right? 

Wrong. Mr. Lukaszuk has also fallen silent on Twitter; I do not see the same vitriol or even the same number of tweets from Mr. Lukaszuk’s account. Mr. Lukaszuk was a decoy.

Replace him with an older minister, one who has held this position before, one who appears not to be as technologically savvy, and those who care about post-secondary education in Alberta will stop fighting. Oddly, this replacement occurs right in the middle of a four-year term for our current majority government.

It is precisely this quiet Redford wanted. We in #abpse may want to demonize our former minister, but we have to realize that the one in control, here, the one who over-sees everything is the silent, travelling, pipe-line-selling Redford herself. We may be happy that we have a Minister who wants to “get out of the way.” Please remember that this is politics: they only want to stay in power.

Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were brutalized in 2013. A chair of a department recently tweeted about the deplorable funding conditions in that department: my department now boasts a total of 8 faculty members and two instructors; when we have funds, we have one sessional (adjunct). To be fair, not all of the job losses were due to the cuts; many of them are a direct result of faculty members taking the “early retirement” package, which opens up more spaces to exploit recent graduates.

I can’t stress this point enough: we are an English department without a Modernist. We have nobody to teach Woolf or Joyce or Hemingway or Pound or Eliot or Fitzgerald or H.D. Sure, we have people who could “cover” those areas, but it is a disservice to the students that we cannot even cover the whole of English Literature.

When I was hired, the 18th century scholar resigned. Until a year ago, we did not have a scholar of 18th century literature.

Don’t get me wrong, my colleagues are excellent; we try to make up for weaknesses; we try to cover as much as we can. Like all departments, we try to cover what we are able to cover when colleagues go on sabbatical.

But students suffer.  I can’t tell you the number of times this term I have heard students say that they are happy to be able to get into a third- or fourth- year course in order to complete their degrees. Last term, apparently, there were few offerings at that level.

“Not on the backs of students” was the rallying cry of the cuts to #abpse. “Post-secondary institutions exist for the students,” our government cried, as though the professors somehow disagreed with that statement.

My only point in this entire post: Lukaszuk was a decoy. We are still $97M short, and we have no promise of future funds. We may want to blame the Sith Lord Lukaszuk, but he is just a pawn. We all know that the Emperor beneath the hood is Redford herself.

We need to make the #abpse hashtag active again; it’s illegal for us to strike, after all.