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.

Fifty Million Dollars!

Fifty Million Dollars?

Today, Mr. Lukaszuk announced that there will be fifty-million dollars restored to the funding of Alberta’s post-secondary (#abpse) institutions!  Huzzah!  This is welcome (if not expected) news, indeed.  But I am writing this post because (and I am not naming names) some people think that we in #abpse should be thankful for the return of this funding.  Indeed, we are, if I were to be so bold as to speak for all #abpse stake-holders.  We got fifty-million back!  Why should we complain?

Well, here is an analogy that I tried to make work on Twitter but could not make happen in 140 characters.  Let’s pretend (since Mr. Lukaszuk is quite fond of pretending to fulfill promises) I’m a cook in a restaurant; you are a server (already the analogy breaks down, but bear with me).  We are preparing to serve (once again, a poor analogy) a table of four.  I have already handed you a BLT, and you expect me to complete the order, to meet my promise, at the very least.  The shift bell rings and a new cook begins his work.  “That’s not a BLT!” he shouts.  “Actually, it is,” you say.  “It’s not and you have no idea what you’re doing! Do I have to come out and serve this food myself?” shouts the new cook.  “Give me back that sandwich!”  The cook takes back the sandwich, makes a face at you, but proclaims that he is doing this for the now ravenous customers.  “I’m not talking to you anymore,” says the new cook.  “I have to do this all myself.”

When the “customers” become angry and start shouting at the cook that they are hungry and require more servers and not a bigger restaurant, the Monster of Advanced Cookery replies, “I know what is best; give me eight months!” 

The cook then says, “You had a sandwich, but I promised more.  I took back the sandwich another cook gave you before you could bring it to our diners. But LOOK, I’ll give you this big lump of bread.  It’s a big wad of uncooked dough, and I will determine it’s ultimate outcome, but you got something, right?  That outta do it for you.  Kneel before my greatness and the bounty I have provided for you.”  (Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic.)

Meanwhile, outside the restaurant, desperately peering into this wreck of a restaurant, are thousands of former customers and workers of another diner this aggressive, arrogant cook administered before (#abed).  “Look!” they shout, “They’ve been served a dod of uncooked dough!  Let’s get them and their raw bread!  Screw the lettuce and tomato.  What is bacon, anyway?”

So, when I have 140 characters to try to make that analogy work, I expect that you can imagine why I might fail.  I can only hope that the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta might begin to understand that having fewer characters (people, programs, jobs, seats for students) might make “serving” an adequate message (education) difficult or impossible.  Yes, a wad of raw dough is great if you’ve been given nothing; yes, 140 characters is great if you don’t hope to say something of substance.

When I hear someone tell me that I should be glad of a lumrp of dough when I once held in my hand an adequate (and I stress the word adequate) BLT, I am going to complain.  I still have to seve that raw dough to “customers.”

While this is happening, incidentally, I have willfully voted myself a decrease in pay (1%), just so I don’t lose this wonderful job I have.  Also: I have been told that in the near future I will be taking over another section of the restaurant’s tables, serving more raw dough to even more of my “customers.”  Perhaps the people “bitching” about this windfall of $50M really should shut up.  We have it great. This is the land of plenty, after all.  Still, I would like some bacon, lettuce, and tomato on my BLT.  The BLT begins with a wad of raw dough; it doesn't end there.

From nuts to soup to raw dough, Mr. Braid.

Why do I "bitch" and "complain" about this "renewed" funding?  Because we were promised a BLT.  Actually, what we were promised was peanut-butter and jelly: not great, but enough to get by, and STILL people whinge that we have the AUDACITY to say THIS IS NOT WHAT WAS PROMISED! 

Yes, Fifty Million is great, more than I could ever imagine seeing.  The government only has ninety-seven million to make up.  Plus the 2% increase that was initially promised.

Later this month, Tommy Lu's party has a leadership race.  Let's see how the dough rises.

Twitter and Alberta Postsecondary Education

Recent exchanges on Twitter regarding the cuts to Postsecondary education have, in my opinion, taken a turn for the nasty.  Now, I will first say that I find Mr. Lukaszuk to be smug, arrogant, and dismissive of his critics who are passionate about defending postsecondary education.  I have found him to be very unprofessional at times.  He has suggested that people have nothing to contribute; he retweets pictures of his critics.  It was this last exercise that led me to call Mr. Lukaszuk an arse.  That was unprofessional of me, but it was in response to an unprofessional tweet from the Monster of Advanced Education.  Yes, it was an ad hominem attack.  No, I am not proud.  Yes, I would do it again.

However, recently, Mr. Lukaszuk’s family has been dragged into the mess his government created.  One tweet I read mentioned Mr. Lukaszuk’s daughter.  I asked the tweeter if s/he would consider deleting it, since I would certainly not want my children mentioned in these Twitter discussions.

Yesterday and today have dragged Mr. Lukaszuk’s wife into the discussion, as well.  Although I have been no angel tweeting to and about Mr. Lukaszuk, I would ask that all who are discussing #abpse to put the blame on and direct tweets at those responsible for, and not those associated with those responsible for, these devastating cuts.  I know that we are angry; I know that we are enraged, but direct the anger at Mr. Lukaszuk and the lying con artists that are the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta.

#Abpse folks:  we are better than this.  Let’s move on and in future refrain from dragging any family into these discussions.  Let's keep our focus and fight the cuts and not the families of politicians.

Alberta's Enterprise and Advanced Education

is Waiting to Hear from You

Alberta's ministry of Enterprise and Advanced Education has started a new blog:  http://albertaadvances.wordpress.com.  The blog accepts moderated comments.  I wonder just how many of these comments are, in fact, accepted.  I have submitted two (nearly) identical comments, both under my real name.  Let's see how much this government and ministry actually want to hear from real Albertans.

The first blog post is Mr. Lukaszuk's reminiscences of the wonderful day announcing the new renovations and expansions to University of Calgary's Engineering school.  I left the following comment (in two different versions, both with the same tone, with only slightly different wording):

"I think it would be a wonderful idea to name a brick after each person who has lost a job due to the $147M cuts to Alberta’s post-secondary education system.  If you were to include one for each student who no longer had access to the education system or each staff or faculty member who was not hired due to these cuts, each brick, wire, and bolt could have a name inscribed on it.

I do not mean this comment disrespectfully.  If the Redford government were to act on this suggestion, it would at least indicate to Albertans that the government knows what it is doing:  constructing buildings and destroying lives.  We could all rest easy in the knowledge that #buildingAlberta really means populating Alberta with shiny, new, empty buildings and the people who build them."

Both comments, one with my G+ account and one with my Twitter account, are awaiting moderation.  These posts were an experiment to see what kind of "dialogue" and "consultation" the Government of Alberta will tolerate.  Are the comments harsh?  Yes.  Do cuts to Alberta's post-secondary education system deserve harsh criticism?  Yes.  I have followed the guidelines for the blog's comments.  These posts are angry but they do not cross any lines as stipulated on the blog.

Will the current government recognize the damage they have caused, not only to the post secondary education system but to the lives of individual Albertans?  Does this government actually want to hear from Albertans?  Or do they want to hear their own voices returned to their cotton-stuffed ears?

Government of Alberta: I and my posts await your moderation.

UPDATE:  Much to my surprise, the quoted comment in this post was actually posted to the E&AE blog. So, there's that, at least.  Get on the blog and start commenting!

More Teaching, Less Education

So, I had a bit of a melt-down on Twitter (and on the departmental e-mail list) when I heard rumours that my faculty is considering adding another course to my already onerous course-load.  Full faculty members would also have their course-count increase by one.

I want to explain why I became so angry.  I teach three English courses (a total of 160 students) each regular semester and one during the summer semester.  As I have stated in a previous post, this course-load requires a ridiculous amount of grading.

I can assure you that with an additional course added to my load, students who take my courses will suffer.  If this extra course is added, I will eliminate at least one of my two essays.  I expect that my exams will become multiple choice.  And the quality of education that students receive will be greatly reduced.

However, I do not see my job--my career--as just teaching and grading.  I do a fair bit of work on campus to try to build community.  I run the Creative Writing Association; I am faculty advisor of the ill-funded Whetstone Magazine; I chair the committee of the “Striking Prose” prize that sees $2500 go to three winners of this creative writing competition; I do other service (committee) work for the department (even though I am not required to do so because of my “teaching-only” position); I frequently teach “independent studies” courses in creative writing, experimental poetry, literature and nothingness, and Canadian Literature because often students require courses that are not offered that semester because our department is already horrendously under-staffed.

I do not list this sample of my work to suggest that I do more work than my colleagues, only to say that much of what we do as academics does not happen in the classroom.  I expect that many colleagues across Alberta have similar or more demanding non-classroom duties.

I am angry because I believe that education is not about conveying information but about building a community of learners.  If I have one more course, all of that other work I am doing will, by necessity, be eliminated.  I simply do not have the time to grade that many essays, attempt to mentor students, seek to create community, while teaching what is already an untenable teaching load.

Sadly, my view that education is about community is not shared by Mr. Lukaszuk or his government, who seem to think that education is an assembly line.  But I guess that’s what happens when “enterprise” gets rolled into the advanced education portfolio.

The Elite Universities in Alberta

I recently read an article that suggested, well, actually argued and stated outright  that the cuts to Alberta’s post-secondary education system are both good and bad.  The “cuts” are bad because “cuts” are “bad.”  But those “cuts,” the “article” “argued” are “good” because they raise admission standards, and only those people who “deserve” to be in post-secondary “education” will finally be able to be in the “education” system they "deserve."

Are you wondering why I have put so many “words” in quotation “marks”?  It’s because our “esteemed” Minister of Advanced Ignorance has put the very word "cuts" in quotation marks.  He actually, apparently, “believes” that these “cuts” are not actually “cuts” but some variation upon not-cutting.  Those ideas, I would like to emphasize, have cost REAL PEOPLE REAL JOBS.  That is the price of your quotation marks, Mr. Lukaszuk.  Let me reiterate: “real people, real jobs.”  “Cuts” are not “arbitrary.”  Your government had choices, and your government chose elitism and some bizarre idea that those with money should rule.

To return to the article that suggests it’s a good thing that admission standards are rising at the #UofA. I disagree with the passion of a thousand burning stars.  I have had students who are “qualified” to attend university who should not be there.  I have had students who should not be in university excel.  And yet we determine admissions by what? Grades from high-school? By what the student or the students' parents can afford?

Nevertheless, I agree with the article:  the University is an “elite” place, but only if we are forced to make the university about money.  But, really, what would happen and what would we lose if we did away with tuition and student debt?  What would happen if we cared about where students are going as opposed to where they came from?  What if education were free?  What if our government cared for students (by which I mean people, Mr. Lukaszuk)?  What would happen if everyone thought it was possible to achieve a post-secondary education?  Would the elitism of that article die away? I hope so.  Would the idea that deep and important thinking was only available to the elite die a grisly death? I also hope so.  Post-secondary education does not need to be elite.  What our dear minister wants is a war among the houses so that he might make money immediately.

I bet “cutting”education makes money now.  But education is not something you happen to run into.  Education pays out in the long run, but Mr. Lukaszuk and the Progressive [snicker] Conservative Association of Alberta are just in their jobs for the sprint.  Who cares about the long run?  Who cares about the marathon?

Are Universities elite?  Absolutely.  Should they be?  No. Are universities equal?  Absolutely not.  I say this as someone who is a second-tier “faculty” member; I say this as somebody working in what some call a “third-tier” university.  And yet, would I put my students up against any other student from any other school in Alberta?  You bet your ass I would.  And I guarantee that the undergraduate students at the U of L would excel, would do as well as (if not better than) their “first-tier” compatriots.

Despite my protestations, is the UofA a flagship institution? Yes, it is.  Should it remain so?  I think so.  How could we have a higher education system that is entirely equal?  The institutions in Alberta’s advanced education system are not equal; they do not repeat themselves.  In other words, Mr. Lukaszuk, each institution has already differentiated itself.

What Lukaszuk and his cronies want is that we who are not part of that “flagship” institution to sit quietly and not speak up about this abuse of education, about whatever Mr. Lukaszuk has against his Alma Mater.  I refuse to stand for that.  We are all in this together:  scientist and artist; social scientist and humanist; student and professor; U of L instructor and U of C staff member; U of A student and Mac U faculty member.  We have to realize that this assault, though concentrated on the University of Alberta’s Arts and Humanities, is an assault on our education.  It’s an assault on all of our educations; it is an attack on education itself.

Raising admission standards is not a simple “good.”  Elitism is not a simple “good.”  Raising tuition (as it will sky-rocket next year) is not a simple “good.”  Those who care about post-secondary education, about education at all, have to stand together.  All of us.  I stand with the real Campus Alberta; I stand for education and refuse to let it fall to the whims of the oil and gas industry.  I urge you to do the same.  We need to stand together to protect ALL education across Alberta.  If we don't do it now, it might be too late.  Stand with the Real Campus Alberta: those who actually care about education.