Pct2017

You bring up an interesting point. Why is it that a teacher automatically gets a raise upon completing her Masters? If the end goal is to get into admin, then give her the raise when she gets that job, not before. If that system were in place, I can say with no hesitation that there would very few teachers seeking a Masters degree.

This is hands down the winner of the most ridiculous, un-informed uninformed post in history. Many teachers nowadays have a Masters of Education and are not paid accordingly according to their level of education. Many school districts are pushing for teachers to get their masters Masters, Why so why do you think that is?There can only be three explanations for this type of shoddy English. One, you simply do not know better. If this is the case, then as you so love to state, educate yourself. Two, you are sloppy and lazy. Given that you say you are a teacher, this is the likely explanation. Or three, you are just not very smart. Given the content of most of your posts, this is also a very likely explanation. Sorry, 2/10 redo. Three sentences and seven grammatical mistakes. Did they not cover basic English in teacher school? Maybe you dropped that class so you could fit in Whining 101 and Poor Poor Pitiful Me 253. So, the obvious question here is, what does the deep seeded sense of entitlement prevalent within the vocation of teaching have to do with a few teachers getting their Masters? It is no secret that many teachers indeed do have their Masters, but they get it for the simple reason that it gets them more money, both now and in retirement.

So, that teachers have a deep sense of entitlement and an inflated self worth has long ago been established. What I do not get is where does this originate. Entitlement is a learned behaviour, so how can an entire vocation be populated by people who have this trait? I think that we can assume that the recent high school grad who heads off to university has not acquired the trait yet, nor has she when she gets her BEd. I think that we can also assume that she is not sullied by entitlement when she first joins the teaching work force. But, sometime thereafter, her sense of self worth gets skewed in an egregious manner. The lingering question is how and why. Is it a defence mechanism relating to their embarrassingly short work day/week/year? Do they learn it from their peers, with no chance of a balanced debate due to lack of contact with real working people? Is it through union indoctrination? I really do not know the answer. But it is a fascinating question to ponder.

I have played that video several times, and it will go so far to say that it is a speech that you can interpret however you want to, depending on your personal views. Yes, I can watch it and see what Michael et al are saying, but I can also watch it with a less forgiving view and come away satisfied that he did just say what I thought he just said. This is particularly so when you view the speech as containing two separate elements. First part is dedicated to why is the union disliked and then the second part is what is the union and what are it's guiding principles. Michael, you asked why he would verbalize his views that the union is dedicated first and foremost to it's members rather than students. I believe you are missing two things. First, it is his retirement speech. There will be no repercussions for whatever he says. And second, he just seems like a cranky old fart who is going to say his mind. One way or the other, it was a speech that should have never survived scrutiny before being delivered if his intent was not to say what I hear him saying. In other words, why give those of us who believe that teacher unions are the scourge of the earth such easy pickings.

Wow, where to start. The most obvious and laughable statement to take to task is the assertion that a class of 28 back in the day is now equivalent to 12 today. Talk about pandering to the hard of thinking! The sole difference between the time frames referenced is the integration of mentally handicapped kids into mainstream schools. The rest of the argument about more kids with learning issues is bunk. There were just as many back then, but instead of them having acronym labels, they were just called turds. Now they are turds with a pile of letters in their file. Then there is the mantra that teachers love so dearly: just hire more of us and everything will be perfect. Well, let's test that. First, can we all agree that French Immersion classes are touted as desirable because they are smaller than their English counterparts? So, it would seem obvious that those students will crush their English class counterparts, right? Well, hang on. In reading skills, the French Immersion kids get killed by the English kids. But that makes sense you say. They are learning an entirely new language. But the French kids will prevail in science and math, right? Again the contrary is true. And it is not even that it is a statistically insignificant difference. So, how do you explain that kids in smaller classes achieve lower results? I cannot, but as a taxpayer, I am very unwilling to see a pile more teachers hired just for the sake of increasing union dues and making life easier for teachers. I am a results oriented person and the results in this case do not justify the expense.

Ah yes, one of the BCTF's favourite tactics. To take this piece of information at face value, it would appear simply terrible. But, alas, you can never, ever take anything from the most reviled public sector union in BC at face value. They chose to omit two slightly important details in this table. First, and quite frankly of lesser value, is the fact that in 2001, the numbers of teachers and others in the education system in BC were at historic highs. Glen Clark had commenced his burn it to the ground campaign because he was very aware that his party was in ruins (they would elect two members to the Ledg in the next election). So, anytime the BCTF references this timeframe, it is obviously highly advantageous to them. It would be a very different looking table if they referenced 1998 versus today. But that is minor compared to the real whopper. Why of why do they always forget to mention "Did you know that there are 72.000 fewer students today than there were in 2001"? They always forget that minor detail in their cries of injustice.

Ah, you are just hurting because I called you out on citing the largest source of unverified information the world has even witnessed. Namely Wikipedia. I am sure that we will get along again sometime in the near future.

Thank you for posting the video there Plink. Boy oh boy, when you watch from around 3:30 on the video to the end, well you sure get me good. He says exactly what I quoted and you cannot even argue that it is contextually skewed. But enough about that. Back to the dispute between the most reviled public union in BC and the government which just recently received a strong mandate to manage all public affairs. Pretty aggressive move by the employer this week. They have told the union that seeing show you are not currently under contract, then you can pay for all of the bennies that your membership has come to enjoy. Here is the bill for June, and that will be five million dollars please. Don't want to pay it? OK, but no medical or dental for your whiny members. As I said, it is aggressive, but very cunning. The individual teacher is not impacted, but it puts a ton of pressure squarely on the union's shoulders to get back to bargaining seriously.

The fact that he said before the days of camera phones does not prove in absolute terms that he did no say it. By all accounts, he was candid enough to have come up with this type of statement.BTW, I generally like your posts as they are neutral but provocative. But using Wikipedia diminished my respect for you!!!! As for your statement that the war for public sentiment is "silly", maybe you are right, maybe not. But at the end of the day, it is all the BCTF knows. Their mantra has long been if you oppose our wage demands then you are against students. As I said previously, it was refreshing to hear of teacher union leaders who were willing to state that the sole purpose of their union was to put gold in the pockets of it's members, nothing more, nothing less.

The BCTF is ramping up all the usual rhetoric about how giving the teachers a raise and better bennies Is " for the children". Blah blah blah. Would it not be refreshing for the head of any teachers union to be honest and forthcoming. Well, it turns out that this does happen on very rare occasions. Take for example what Albert Shanker, then the head of the United Federation of Teachers stated: "When school children start paying union dues, that is when I will start representing the interests of children" Then there was Bob Chanin, who was the outgoing General Counsel of the National Education Association who stated in reference to what the ideology of the NEA was: "it is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. It is because we believe that we are the union that can most effectively represent teachers and can protect their rights and advance their interests as employees." Look up the video of this speech and you will see the room erupt in a standing ovation when he states this. But of course, it is always for the children.

The two court decisions that teachers and their groupies love to tout as massive victories are very misunderstood. Basically what Judge Griffin stated was that the government had to allow class size and composition to be part of the contract negotiations. And, what did Bill 22 state? That class size and composition could be part of this current round of contract negotiations. The judge has never stated that the province has to regress to the levels that Glen Clark gave away to the BCTF as part of his burn it to the ground strategy late in his term. The biggest difference that her judgement made was the starting position for the two parties. She has said that the negotiations will start from 2001 levels while the government would have preferred to start from 2012 levels. But, regardless, the provisions of class size and composition were always going to be part of these negotiations. The other myth out there about this ruling is that The class sizes and composition referenced by Judge Griffin had been in effect forever. They were brought into effect by legislation in 1999 and then tossed in 2001. Finally, teachers just love to say that they sacrificed a pay raise in order to get class size and composition in that contract. And, as usual, this totally disingenuous on their part. Their total compensation package (pensions etc) was increased by 11% in that contract. It is very similar to Wilbur stating that the teachers have not had an increase for three years. Again, that is playing fast and loose with the facts. Their last two year contract which ended last June had no increase, just like all other public sector settlements. Whether they get a raise for this, the third year has yet to be determined, but if they do, it will be retroactive.

Sounds like Alberta is thinking this through better than BC. Our B Ed grads outnumber available jobs by something like 1500 per tear. I have long said that a golden opportunity is being lost by not limiting seats in that faculty to only the brightest and best available. Then, perhaps the future quality of teachers would be higher.

Well, that is true. Here in BC, particularly at UBC, you have to have a 120 credit degree before you enter the Faculty of Education. So there is four years. But, what you are kind of forgetting to mention is that the actual B Ed is then completed in 12 months.Hence, I am still assuming that if you refer to a teacher attending university for almost 10 years, that is due in part that she has to flunk out of at least one other faculty before fleeing to teacher school.

The obvious response to this is - well done provincial government of British Columbia. Keep up the outstanding work. If, in the very unlikely case that a BC teacher does move to another province to make $300/month more, do not worry. There are thousands and thousands of unemployed or underemployed teachers waiting to take her position.

In regards to the duration of a B Ed, Cybercoma is rightfully taking into account that the majority of students in that faculty have already flunked out of their original faculty, so you really do have to add one or two years. The best analogy I have ever heard about the Faculty of Education at any university is that it acts as the landfill. Send us your cast-offs from science. We will take your failures from Nursing. Bombed out of Applied Sciences, c'mon over. You can get a Fast Eddie in only four years and you will enjoy the more relaxed pace of cream puff courses.

Ah, Socialist, you simply crack me up. In your whine fest above, you refer to "your" class as between 25 to 30 kids, yet in the very next post you say "your" class is 24 kids. In previous posts you have stated that you do not live in BC, yet you state in reference to BC "We fund our system worse than any other province...." And, your writing style changes dramatically from one post to the next. And what is the deal with picking up the discussion about some budget, and you were not even smart enough to fill in some of the pre-amble that had occurred? I challenged you to not be lazy and to actually present your own thoughts, so what do you do? You cut and paste the thoughts expressed by others. You are one lazy little teacher!! Are you really so devoid of original thought that you have to resort to plagiarism? BTW, could you pass onto whoever wrote that she teaches for 7 to 8 hours day in and day out that when the bell rings at 9am and then again at 3pm and she gets 45 minutes off for lunch, that does not equate to 7 or 8 hours! Are you this lazy at your job? Never mind, I already know that answer. I am afraid we are going to have to rescind your name of Socialist along with your tag line. I hereby bequeath you the name Plink-a-Plink the Plagiarist. And your tag line henceforth will be "Piss me off and I will expose you, but I will use other peoples words because I am not smart enough to come up with my own".

Well done there Socialist. With a bit more work on your part, you may earn some respect around these parts. Now, can you do this for a whole month? One minor grammatical error, but that is outstanding for you. Just for future reference, when you start a new thought, you separate it from the previous thought with a period, not a semi-colon.

Socialist, I hope that you can comprehend that you personally epitomize just what it is that most of us in the general public dislike about teachers. Anytime you are challenged to express an opinion, you very consistently revert to citing loopy left wing websites, or worse yet, you present someone else's cartoons and posters. It takes much more effort and energy to express you own opinion in a forum such as this, but it is just plain lazy to continually refer to the work done by others. And what is the general consensus about teachers? That they are lazy and whiny. So, my challenge to you is that you go one month without citing other's work, but instead you develop your own thoughts and present them in your own words. Preferably with correct grammar and spelling, but that may be a bridge too far.

Wow, another hard hitting response. This is breaking news if I ever heard it. You kind of edited out the part that the courts have stayed this ruling pending the appeal in the Supreme Court. And, don't loose sight of the fact that what Griffin said was that the BCTF had to be given the right to negotiate class size and composition, which is ironic as Bill 22 stated that the BCTF could negotiate class size and composition. Still waiting for your response on where this theoretical support for our poor, hard done by teachers is going to come from. I was just listening to the most popular political events radio show this morning, and as soon as the BCTF story came up, the phone lines erupted, all stating that the teachers should shut up and appreciate how good they have it. But, I guess you have a better feel for this from whatever province you are in!! I do think the Liberals were heavy handed back in 2001, but at the end of the day it is estimated that they saved us tax payers about $300 million per year, which makes the $2 million fine the bargain of the century.

Ah Socialist, you crack me up every time. You do not live in BC, you only read websites that conform to your rather unique view on the world and yet you state that you, and you alone know without doubt that public sentiment is on the side of the whiny teachers. And, I happen to know that if someone were to ask you to back up that statement with empirical evidence, you would go off on one of your boring tirades about neo-liberals ( plink-a-plink). At the end of the day, who really cares what the public thinks. The government received an overwhelming mandate less than a year ago to manage the public purse responsibly. And since that election, the NDP has imploded, so the Liberal party really has no opposition. But somehow, you believe that the government should capitulate to the demands of the most detested public union in the province. Yeah, right.

Ah yes. Out here in BC, there are many sure signs of spring in April. The sound of lawn mowers, cherry blossoms are in full bloom, golf clubs are coming out of the garage. And, of course, the teachers are going on strike. Oh, pardon me, they do not strike. They have job actions. That is a very important distinction!

OK,OK. The finger painting was sarcastic. Get over it. My point about the curriculum as it currently sits is that it is getting diluted in quality twofold. First, as young Socialist is gleeful to pronounce, cursive writing, grammar, basic math skills (ok - my words on that one, not his) etc etc are being eliminated. What has replaced these skills? They now sit in organic shaped groups and bond. There are four C's, but basic math and grammar had the misfortune of not starting with C, so they were sacrificed. I just do not think that kids leaving school without good writing skills and a basic grasp on math are going to be desirable employees. Yes, there is higher level math to be found in high school, but it is optional. Pretty much only kids who are destined to go onto post-secondary take these types of courses. The rest leave high school with very poor math skills. The second area of concern about the quality of education our kids are getting is the amount of time that is spent doing nothing in class. Video and movies are prolific (WCR asked me about statistics to back this one up. Well, I have two. They sit at the same dinner table as us every evening and we discuss their lives. Weird huh. And they make open jokes about which movies they watched in class today or which all important Olympic hockey games were shown.) I appreciate that teachers have to teach to the level of the dumbest kid in the class, but time spent doing anything else other than teaching is time simply wasted. This thread is about whether any corporation should have a say in the curriculum in the public school system. Until it was posted here, I really had no idea that it was even a possibility. And it probably is a really bad idea, but I get where industry is coming from. If the product that is available to hire is not being educated to a high enough standard (I will be the first to admit that I am assuming that this is the driving force behind the idea), then maybe they should have a say in the expectations for high school grads.

C'mon, young Socialist has no spare time. He has posted many a cartoon stating just that. No, I am not saying the public school system is churning out students who are well versed in producing videos and movies. What the school system is producing is students who are experts on watching movies and videos ad nauseum when our highly motivated teachers have one of their "I don't feel like doing much today" days. And, again I apologize for putting stress on your ability to process information when I fairly clearly stated that the social engineering that is happening to our kids in school is done by our teachers. And just so that this is very clear, this is a bad thing. When a grade 2 teacher has her students write a letter to the premier stating that the government is bullying teachers because they will not give the teachers more money, that is social engineering (and obviously abuse of position) . To quote the exasperated sales clerk I overheard today at a store in which a customer was quibbling about a discount that was not due to her, I will ask you the same question that the clerk asked of her customer: Are you a school teacher?

Ah Socialist, you crack me up. When do you actually do prep time for this alleged teaching job of yours? But, hey when you only put in 5.5 hours per day, I guess you have plenty of time to surf the web looking for conspiracies and whacked out left wing websites that support your view on the world. Where to start? Well, let us deal with the obvious. What is wrong with the corporate world (yes, the same entities who will eventually hire the kids in school) having a say in the curriculum? Mayhaps they are looking the what is being produced now and are saying we cannot hire these kids. We don't need experts on fingerpainting and videos/movies. But what about the social engineering that they will demand, screams young Socialist. That is the sole job of teachers. Only teachers can take their own personal opinions and "teach" them to kids. Yes, children, oil is bad. Clearcutting is heinous. Fish farms are evil. The government is corrupt. THAT IS THE JOB OF TEACHERS, NOT GREEDY CORPORATIONS you shout. But, hang on, what about the petition. 26,000 people in Alberta signed it right? Well, not quite. Turns out about 1/4 of the signatures were from Alberta. The rest were from the usual cast of characters across Canada. You know the ones. They would gleefully sign an online petition if it stated "Endangered species like the common mosquito or the Norwegian rat must be afforded special protection". Lastly, yes, Alberta is right on the cusp of voting in an NDP provincial government. That was clearly underlined exactly one year ago when they elected 4 NDP MLA's out of 87 seats. Good math skills there Socialist.

You are doing a bit of cherry picking. The article you quote from goes on to say a couple of times that public sector employees will not make the same gains as their private sector counterparts in the timeframe referenced. Look, the employer opened with a low offer, the union countered high and they will eventually settle in the middle. The only remaining question is how much unnecessary posturing will the teachers do between now and then.