thought you might enjoy this article by Barrie a high school teacher.
Anti-Teacherism 101
I couldn’t avoid it: there it was, posted like obscene graffiti on the wall right above the photocopier in the staff room: “Teachers Need a Dose of Reality.” (thebarrieexaminer.com 15/12/2008) As I scanned the editorial, which appeared in the Barrie Examiner along with numerous other Sun Media owned papers across Ontario, I wondered if it was just my imagination or did the thing actually sound a bit like a racist rant against teachers. Well, as a teacher who covers To Kill a Mockingbird and In the Heat of the Night, both of which feature Afro-Americans being “framed” as a metaphor for racism, it’s hard for me not to see some strong parallels to the primitive racist thinking process.
They’re all the same: The editorial is ostensibly concerned about elementary teachers’ rejection of a 12% pay hike over four years, but they are only mentioned briefly in the introduction—the rest of the article is about teachers in general. The fact that one teacher’s union seemed to reject a deal (although they never did get a chance to vote on it) is used to imply that all teachers (even the other three unions who accepted the deal) are guilty of the same crime.
They are outsiders: Immigrants, people of colour and even aboriginals are often characterized as being alien or “other” no matter how long they have been “here”. They can never been seen as one of “us”. Teachers are presented here as coming from their own planet: “Seriously, did you ever wonder what colour the sky is, on the planet where teachers live?”
They are ingrates: Probably the worst sin in the racist book is for the minority group to not take what they are granted and be grateful for it: teachers who ask for a better deal call on the wrath of the rest of us for being uppity. In an enlarged caption, the article asks, “Is there any segment of Canadian society being offered a similar deal in these strained financial times?” Certainly no one writing editorials for the pleasure of Pierre Peladeau, President of Sun Media, wants you to believe there is a segment doing better than the rest of us, but a January 2009 publication by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, entitled “Banner Year for Canada’s CEOs: Record High Pay Increase,” suggests that the captains of industry , such as Peladeau (who ranks 75th), aren’t exactly about to go down with the ship.
They have enjoyed a decade of record pay hikes and will enjoy a softer cushion if they stumble from their lofty heights in the New Year. Average pay for the top 100 CEOs was up 22% from its $8.5 million average in 2006. In contrast, average Canadian earnings rose by only 3.2%--the best increase in the past five years, but a small fraction of the CEOs’ pay hike and barely keeping up with inflation.
They are to blame; never mind the facts. Racists like to scapegoat minorities for everything from high interest to crime, no matter how selective they have to be with the facts. A classic example would be the allusion to the “fact” that students are performing poorly, as implied by the following reference to EQAO results: “And, dare we mention the less than stellar results from the EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office)?” The sarcastic tone implies that the dismal facts are just too obvious to mention. Also not mentioned is the Chair of EQAO’s summary:
The results from this and other recently released international assessments paint a clear picture: Ontario’s students stack up quite well on the international stage, but there is still work to be done to ensure they are consistently among the world’s top performers. (EQAO.com)
Gee! How less than stellar can you get?!!!
They’re all like that: Stereotypes about factors which the targeted group is unable to control are the hallmark of bigotry. A certain skin colour or religion makes one prone to drunkenness, greed or terrorism. The fact that pretty much all teachers everywhere have their summers and major holidays away from the students makes them lazy: “They work nine months a year. They never work weekends, very few evenings (parent-teacher meetings and school concerts excepted), and no statutory holidays.” Of course, the fact that teachers couldn’t change these arrangements if they wanted, or that most do put in great amounts of extra time makes no difference to the anti-teacherite.
I know a good one. To prove he is open minded, the bigot invariably broadcasts that he “knows a good one” or accepts some of them as “individuals”—just as long as they don’t associate or identify with others of their kind. The editorial concedes: “Individually, teachers may well be very fine, compassionate, dedicated people” but it is “as a group” that their attitude is intolerable.
They are parasites: In racist belief, “we” are invariably characterized as the victims of a parasitic minority that is catching an easy blood-meal from the host society. The article concludes that teachers are “either blissfully unaware of economic reality or trying to get blood from a stone. The rest of us? We're the stone.”
Indeed, when continually “framed” in this manner, it seems almost as if the teachers are somehow almost benefiting from our insecurity.
When teachers look up at the sky on that enviable planet where they live, they should be thankful they do not see the lowering clouds of insecurity, increased hours, negotiated concessions or even the lightning bolts of joblessness.
What’s the solution? For one thing, it makes us want to take them teachers down a notch. And, judging by the virtual lynching that teachers have received in the online responses to the article, it worked. It got people to agree that, as the title suggests, “teachers need a dose of reality,” and such job insecurity as mentioned above is precisely the dose prescribed. More telling, however, is the fact that that the author doesn’t really see the “clouds of insecurity, increased hours, negotiated concessions or even the lightning bolts of joblessness” as a bad thing at all. Moreover the author views “increased hours” (which would obviously increase unemployment) as a solution. That’s because such things can be very beneficial to the profit of corporations by driving down wages: it’s the very reason why they so frequently shop jobs to places like Mexico and China, where insecurity makes people only too happy to accept the realities of increased hours and reduced pay. Furthermore, with fewer human rights and social services, these workers aren’t in a position to ask for more.
Which brings us back to the question of why there’s an almost racist feeling to the editorial’s depiction of teachers. One reason could be that many corporations feel that—even though the public sector has no role in causing such recessions as we are currently experiencing—any economic downturn is an ideal time to ramp up the anti-public sector, pro-privatization rhetoric. But, another, perhaps more important reason, might simply be that teachers can be used as the ideal warning to those still with jobs of what not to be: they see jobs as a hard-earned right, not as a lucky win in the global employment casino or as a corporate donation. They demand a fair wage, a secure pension, and a union to protect their working conditions. Finally, and perhaps worst of all (if you want a cheap and docile workforce) they educate people.
The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect any of the organizations with which I work or volunteer.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Building Hope
‘If we want to have an effect on the world,
we need to emphasize those things which will make
students more active citizens and more moral people.’
– Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Building Hope
It is hard to find reasons for hope in the education wars these days. Brutal budget cuts and data-drenched testing schemes are enough to make progressive activists believe that “rethinking schools” is a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream (Rethinking Schools Editorial Spring, 2010). The more that we, the people, sense that resistance is futile, the more the privileged and the powerful will pick up on our collective sense of futility and run with it – all to our collective detriment.
Recent events in Jane and Finch offer hope to despairing teachers, parents, and education activists throughout the Greater Toronto area, specifically in poor racialized and marginalized communities like Rexdale in Etobicoke-North. From my location and point of view, I am painfully aware of the enduring nature of social exclusion, as is evidenced by much research (Roots of Youth Violence, 2008; School Community Safety Advisory Panel Report, 2008; TDSB Census Report K-8, 2008; United Way of Greater Toronto, 2004) in an educational realm as it affects the educational outcomes of young African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth in Rexdale, Toronto.
Since the Ontario province and the Toronto District School Board began their Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) process this school year; a remarkable struggle has unfolded in which grassroots organizing has temporarily stopped what appeares to be an inevitable selling off of our schools.
Jane and Finch seems an unlikely site for a progressive victory. Like many other urban communities inside and out of the city’s priority neighbourhoods, the community is challenged with deep problems- both in the schools and in the community. Large sections of African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth have been suffering depression-like conditions for more than a decade. Racial gaps in school achievement, as well as the city’s rates of poverty (United Way Toronto- Colour By Postal Code, 2004), and disproportionate number incarcerated black youth (Dei G, 1997; Galabuzze, G.E., 2009), are among the worst in the Province.
In Jane and Finch, social justice advocates like Jane-Finch On-The-Move along with progressive minded unions like C.U.P.E. 4400, and the Jane and Finch Green Anti Poverty Coalition have presented strong leadership in the struggle against the sale of our public schools. It demonstrates a ‘social movement’ toward a more just and equitable world.
Meanwhile, school politics have been dominated by privatizing forces for over two-decades. The 13th straight year of TDSB budget cuts and the pressure to sell off our public schools coupled with Bill 177, which gives government control of the day-to-day operations of schools without actually having to take the heat for its decisions, has produced one ‘front of resistance’ involving a wide range of parent, teacher, community and labour organizations.
What we can learn from this coalitions’ success is that patent organizing and coalition building, which at times are neglected when activists focus mainly on large mobilizations and public demonstrations, are important ingredients of any movement. But it was the building of relationships and a deep understanding of the issues within the community that laid the foundation for this coalition.
As a quick aside…U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will keynote speak at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s education summit in September, 2010, announced last summer that the solution to the similar challenges Toronto Urban communities has suffered by the Milwaukee educational system was a mayoral takeover of the school system (Rethinking Schools, Spring 2010). This Milwaukee mayoral takeover reflects a national trend in the United States. Promoted by Arne Duncan, who told the Associated Press last spring that he “will have failed” if, when his tenure is up, more urban districts aren’t in the mayors’ hands. Increased ‘accountability’ (sound familiar?) is what proponents of the plan argued would curry favour with Duncan and almost guarantee Wisconsin’s selection as a recipient for the much-sought ‘Race to the Top’ funds. When pressed by opponents to explain how a Mayoral takeover would help the students of Milwaukee, the mantra became “Something has to be done in the Milwaukee Public Schools.”
Here in Ontario the Ministry of Education continues to impose – and intensify -- a regime of standardized testing to police its “human capital” curriculum or “expectations” fragments (referred to as ‘an overcrowded jumble of disconnected facts that fail to prepare the province's 1.4 million students for the future’ (Toronto Star, December 1, 2009))… Not only do these tests, like the expectations, structure out the human core of our arts and sciences, but they also harden class and racial divisions in our schools. Tests scores can go up (with easier tests, shorter testing periods, and increased focus), but the gap between the test scores of rich and poor children never changes substantially over time. Furthermore, the testing process itself encourages increasing numbers of poor children and racialized children to drop out or lose interest in their studies – a reflection of the emptiness of what is being tested and the hostile judgments these tests impose. An entirely new agency – the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat – has been set up to force teachers to teach to these tests – functioning as templates for the expectations. Everywhere teachers turn, there is bureaucratic pressure to focus on test score production rather than student learning. Merit pay, tied to test-score production, is on the horizon, coming up from the United States. School boards in Ontario can now face provincial takeover if their test-score results do not please the Province.
What I have heard from many of my teaching colleagues and the community at-large is that they want to see broad curriculum areas of study, determined by a significant range of educator, parent and community partners. In this framework, our teachers should be encouraged to reflect and to build upon the experience of the children and the communities they serve. They should be engaged with their students in exploring the world. They should be supporting their students’ capacity to make judgments on what should be loved in the world they discover and what should be changed in the interests of social justice and solidarity with nature. It is these larger human purposes, which must frame the work we do as teachers. It is only these purposes that will ignite our children’s interest in school and learning.
Turning the Province away from a testing regime will not be an easy task. And it will be especially challenging in TDSB, given the entrenched political power and overwhelming ‘fiscal restraint’ discourse in the municipal, provincial, federal and corporate circles. To create a pathway to a stronger educational system, a mobilized teacher, parent and educational worker coalition will have to march into the halls of power and rewrite the rules-at every level of government.
We cannot be naïve about the obstacles. A grassroots movement strong enough to achieve that aim would have to quickly become as big, sophisticated, and morally appealing as the greatest democratic movements of the last century. And yet building just such a movement is the central challenge-and the highest calling-of our time.
Success in this endeavour will require genius, courage, a Herculean effort-and a great deal of luck too. But we must begin. Fortunately, we have good examples and role models to guide us along the way.
When facing grave dangers in the last century, our parents and grandparents routinely faced up to the peril, overcame cynicism, and beat the odds. Today, as new generations climb onto the world stage, we are blessed to be able to learn from heroic examples of those in the past who faced down totalitarianism, beat back an economic depression, and ended overt racial apartheid and colonial oppression in most parts of the world.
Their proud histories teach us that a successful movement for change requires three things. First, change must be grounded firmly in moral principles. Second, change must move rapidly to reinvent and realign politics. And third, change must effectively pursue and implement smart policies. Those of us who are concerned about the future must take those lessons as our own instructions and guideposts as we go forward.
We can ordinary people support the transition to an inclusive, more just society-not just as smarter consumers, but as fully engaged citizens, informed voters, and active community members.
Nigel Barriffe
nigelbarriffe@yahoo.ca
For additional information on my educational platform, please visit my website or blog at: www.nigelbarriffe.com
we need to emphasize those things which will make
students more active citizens and more moral people.’
– Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Building Hope
It is hard to find reasons for hope in the education wars these days. Brutal budget cuts and data-drenched testing schemes are enough to make progressive activists believe that “rethinking schools” is a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream (Rethinking Schools Editorial Spring, 2010). The more that we, the people, sense that resistance is futile, the more the privileged and the powerful will pick up on our collective sense of futility and run with it – all to our collective detriment.
Recent events in Jane and Finch offer hope to despairing teachers, parents, and education activists throughout the Greater Toronto area, specifically in poor racialized and marginalized communities like Rexdale in Etobicoke-North. From my location and point of view, I am painfully aware of the enduring nature of social exclusion, as is evidenced by much research (Roots of Youth Violence, 2008; School Community Safety Advisory Panel Report, 2008; TDSB Census Report K-8, 2008; United Way of Greater Toronto, 2004) in an educational realm as it affects the educational outcomes of young African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth in Rexdale, Toronto.
Since the Ontario province and the Toronto District School Board began their Accommodation Review Committee (ARC) process this school year; a remarkable struggle has unfolded in which grassroots organizing has temporarily stopped what appeares to be an inevitable selling off of our schools.
Jane and Finch seems an unlikely site for a progressive victory. Like many other urban communities inside and out of the city’s priority neighbourhoods, the community is challenged with deep problems- both in the schools and in the community. Large sections of African-Canadian and English-speaking Caribbean, Latino and poor youth have been suffering depression-like conditions for more than a decade. Racial gaps in school achievement, as well as the city’s rates of poverty (United Way Toronto- Colour By Postal Code, 2004), and disproportionate number incarcerated black youth (Dei G, 1997; Galabuzze, G.E., 2009), are among the worst in the Province.
In Jane and Finch, social justice advocates like Jane-Finch On-The-Move along with progressive minded unions like C.U.P.E. 4400, and the Jane and Finch Green Anti Poverty Coalition have presented strong leadership in the struggle against the sale of our public schools. It demonstrates a ‘social movement’ toward a more just and equitable world.
Meanwhile, school politics have been dominated by privatizing forces for over two-decades. The 13th straight year of TDSB budget cuts and the pressure to sell off our public schools coupled with Bill 177, which gives government control of the day-to-day operations of schools without actually having to take the heat for its decisions, has produced one ‘front of resistance’ involving a wide range of parent, teacher, community and labour organizations.
What we can learn from this coalitions’ success is that patent organizing and coalition building, which at times are neglected when activists focus mainly on large mobilizations and public demonstrations, are important ingredients of any movement. But it was the building of relationships and a deep understanding of the issues within the community that laid the foundation for this coalition.
As a quick aside…U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will keynote speak at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s education summit in September, 2010, announced last summer that the solution to the similar challenges Toronto Urban communities has suffered by the Milwaukee educational system was a mayoral takeover of the school system (Rethinking Schools, Spring 2010). This Milwaukee mayoral takeover reflects a national trend in the United States. Promoted by Arne Duncan, who told the Associated Press last spring that he “will have failed” if, when his tenure is up, more urban districts aren’t in the mayors’ hands. Increased ‘accountability’ (sound familiar?) is what proponents of the plan argued would curry favour with Duncan and almost guarantee Wisconsin’s selection as a recipient for the much-sought ‘Race to the Top’ funds. When pressed by opponents to explain how a Mayoral takeover would help the students of Milwaukee, the mantra became “Something has to be done in the Milwaukee Public Schools.”
Here in Ontario the Ministry of Education continues to impose – and intensify -- a regime of standardized testing to police its “human capital” curriculum or “expectations” fragments (referred to as ‘an overcrowded jumble of disconnected facts that fail to prepare the province's 1.4 million students for the future’ (Toronto Star, December 1, 2009))… Not only do these tests, like the expectations, structure out the human core of our arts and sciences, but they also harden class and racial divisions in our schools. Tests scores can go up (with easier tests, shorter testing periods, and increased focus), but the gap between the test scores of rich and poor children never changes substantially over time. Furthermore, the testing process itself encourages increasing numbers of poor children and racialized children to drop out or lose interest in their studies – a reflection of the emptiness of what is being tested and the hostile judgments these tests impose. An entirely new agency – the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat – has been set up to force teachers to teach to these tests – functioning as templates for the expectations. Everywhere teachers turn, there is bureaucratic pressure to focus on test score production rather than student learning. Merit pay, tied to test-score production, is on the horizon, coming up from the United States. School boards in Ontario can now face provincial takeover if their test-score results do not please the Province.
What I have heard from many of my teaching colleagues and the community at-large is that they want to see broad curriculum areas of study, determined by a significant range of educator, parent and community partners. In this framework, our teachers should be encouraged to reflect and to build upon the experience of the children and the communities they serve. They should be engaged with their students in exploring the world. They should be supporting their students’ capacity to make judgments on what should be loved in the world they discover and what should be changed in the interests of social justice and solidarity with nature. It is these larger human purposes, which must frame the work we do as teachers. It is only these purposes that will ignite our children’s interest in school and learning.
Turning the Province away from a testing regime will not be an easy task. And it will be especially challenging in TDSB, given the entrenched political power and overwhelming ‘fiscal restraint’ discourse in the municipal, provincial, federal and corporate circles. To create a pathway to a stronger educational system, a mobilized teacher, parent and educational worker coalition will have to march into the halls of power and rewrite the rules-at every level of government.
We cannot be naïve about the obstacles. A grassroots movement strong enough to achieve that aim would have to quickly become as big, sophisticated, and morally appealing as the greatest democratic movements of the last century. And yet building just such a movement is the central challenge-and the highest calling-of our time.
Success in this endeavour will require genius, courage, a Herculean effort-and a great deal of luck too. But we must begin. Fortunately, we have good examples and role models to guide us along the way.
When facing grave dangers in the last century, our parents and grandparents routinely faced up to the peril, overcame cynicism, and beat the odds. Today, as new generations climb onto the world stage, we are blessed to be able to learn from heroic examples of those in the past who faced down totalitarianism, beat back an economic depression, and ended overt racial apartheid and colonial oppression in most parts of the world.
Their proud histories teach us that a successful movement for change requires three things. First, change must be grounded firmly in moral principles. Second, change must move rapidly to reinvent and realign politics. And third, change must effectively pursue and implement smart policies. Those of us who are concerned about the future must take those lessons as our own instructions and guideposts as we go forward.
We can ordinary people support the transition to an inclusive, more just society-not just as smarter consumers, but as fully engaged citizens, informed voters, and active community members.
Nigel Barriffe
nigelbarriffe@yahoo.ca
For additional information on my educational platform, please visit my website or blog at: www.nigelbarriffe.com
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Building respect for teachers
Building respect
The work we do with children has the power to transform their lives and those of their families and communities. Current educational policies have undercut the crucial role that Teachers play in the education of students, and that has long-term consequences for everyone.
As professionals, we know what students need to succeed. A democratic school structure would include Teachers as one of the key decision makers on issues such as staffing, allocation of resources and curriculum development.
I believe that Teachers need adequate resources and decision-making power to meet the educational requirements of our children. I believe that modifying the funding formula and eliminating EQAO testing will allow for implementing a more strong and meaningful curriculum matched by authentic teaching and assessment.
It is essential to lay the groundwork now in preparation for future contract negotiations with the province. Building strong relationships with the communities we serve will give us the support needed to build respect for our profession and a quality educational system.
Eliminating EQAO testing, fixing the funding formula and implementing a strong and meaningful curriculum are part of that vision. Learn more at http://www.nigelbarriffe.com.
Nigel Barriffe
nigelbarriffe@yahoo.ca
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