Author: Lizanne Foster

Dear Journalist,

We are wondering if you can help us to understand why Cisco Systems shows up whenever we look behind the curtain to find out what has been going on in the Ministry of Education since 2001? And, can you tell us whether it’s just a coincidence that the Premier’s upcoming trade visit to India includes a stop in Bangalore, home of Cisco’s Global Development Centre?

We  are hoping that your access and your knowledge of how to gain information in various ways can shed some light on something many of us are puzzled about.  It’s like we’ve been looking at one of those Magic Eye images where an image is hidden in plain sight behind the weird dots and shapes.

We don’t believe, as some do, that the Premier woke up one morning in 2002 and just got mad at teachers and so she decided to strip them of their rights in their collective agreement. No one can survive as long as she has in politics without having at least some level of control of their emotions. So we don’t believe it’s emotional or that it has anything to do with her relationship with her father.

We think that something else has been unfolding or being built over the past 13 years.

Like those dots in the Magic Eye images we have noticed little dots of circumstances and information that seem to form a picture of the privatization of public education in BC. We are really hoping that you and your colleagues can disabuse us of this notion.

We have pieced together a timeline of what we see as a road to privatization. We are wondering if Cisco was involved in any way with Premier Gordon Campbell’s  Premier’s Technology Council that was formed in 2001. We notice the presence of Microsoft on the Council and are curious if Cisco was involved as well.  We also notice that there were many members of the business community and relatively few members of the education community who participated in the publication of the Council’s  Vision for 21st century education report in 2010.

The next date we have on the timeline is when Christy Clark as Minister of Education in 2002 introduced Bill 28 which stripped teachers of their rights to bargain their working conditions. Why was this necessary?

When Bill 28 was struck down in 2011, Bill 22, a replica,  was introduced, to replace it. It again was struck down in the courts, a judgement that is being appealed. Why so much time and public money spent on attempting to violate teachers’ constitutional rights?

But, I digress.  Let’s get back to talking about Cisco’s involvement. In 2005 Cisco hosted Cisco Public Services Summit. What we find particularly interesting about this meeting is this sentence in the document:

Increasing Private Sector involvement in the delivery of
services, allowing Government to focus on its core
business

We’re curious to know what this means. What is government’s “core business” if not to ensure the delivery of services to its citizens?  Why would it abdicate this responsibility to the private sector, where the main objective is profit?

The next time we notice Cisco’s involvement in education is through the three White Papers they published in 2008. The first one, Equipping Every Learner for the 21st century seems to have been the “cheat sheet” for our own BC Education Plan that was launched in 2011.  So many similar terms: flexibility, blended learning, choice, technology.

The focus on technology confuses us since the technology we currently have in most public schools  is extremely outdated and rarely maintained so is the government planning to invest millions into new technology for schools? Will this be within the “affordability zone”?

The second of Cisco’s papers is Learning from the Extremes where this paragraph strikes us as being quite interesting since it mentions Charter schools.  Should BC parents expect Charter schools to be a choice for their children soon?

Reinventing School: Cracking the Code
Different kinds of schools are needed to teach new skills in new ways. Around the world, innovators such as the Lumiar Institute in Brazil, charter schools in the U.S., and independent schools in Sweden are reinventing school by using technology more creatively and providing more personalized, collaborative, creative, and problem-solving learning, in schools that have many informal spaces for learning as well as classrooms.

The third of Cisco’s papers is  The Learning Society where this paragraph is particularly interesting:

Despite reform and investment, advanced education systems still fail too many people: they often reproduce inequality, and they are too inefficient. Because of their industrial scale, they also tend to crush disruptive innovations that would help solve some of their problems but that challenge the way established education systems work. 

On first reading it seems that the author can see nothing innovative happening in schools which is in complete contrast to our experiences as teachers. We are aware of numerous ways teachers have not only embraced new teaching methods such as project based learning but have also  integrated the latest research in neuroscience into their teaching practices. So this makes no sense to us.

Is it possible that the paragraph can be read as blaming unions for resistance to change and innovation in public education? What are “disruptive innovations” anyway?

Is this why the BCTF seems to be in the line of fire with the BC Liberal government?  Is BCTF seen to be an obstacle on the road to “disruptive innovations”?

When we consider that the government is spending $12million a day to keep children out of school and is spending millions on litigation in its appeal of Judge Griffin’s ruling and on social media ads that attack the BCTF, it makes us wonder what the payoff is for all that expenditure. Who is set to gain the most when 500 000 children are being kept out of public schools while private school enrolment is booming?

Can you help us to understand please?

I’m sorry but you don’t get to say no. You don’t get to hold 500 000 children hostage without consequences. You don’t get to ignore the law. You don’t get to spend millions of dollars of public funds on the spewing of lies and distortions and misinformation without being called to account.

Does the echo chamber you live in prevent you from hearing the sounds of the widespread dissent to your actions?  How much longer do you plan to ignore the voices of hundreds of thousands of people who provide the money that pays your salary?

You are public servant.

You are supposed to serve the people.  You are especially supposed to act on behalf the most vulnerable people in society, our children.

What have you done for children lately?

You have done nothing about childhood poverty. You have denied parents help with daycare. You have instead chosen to spend millions keeping children out of school.

I cannot understand how anyone would want that to be part of their legacy: that they kept children out of school deliberately.

Do you remember what you learned in Socials 11?

Did you not study the role of citizens in a democracy?  Do you understand your teacher explaining to you  that the very thing that separates a democracy from other kinds of governance is precisely that citizens have a say in the way they are governed?

Did you not write an essay or do a project on “How Citizens Can Influence Government” If you need a refresher the question and the answer key is available on the MoE website under Past Provincial exams.

Here’s your cheat: Citizens should participate in a democracy and also influence government by voting in elections, by responding to public opinion polls, by joining a political party, by joining a pressure group, by writing letters to the editor and sometimes by engaging in civil disobedience.

Those are the things that ordinary citizens can do but some citizens are more powerful than others. These citizens can hire lobbyists to do this work for them. These lobbyists are usually former members of government who know the ins and outs of how government works. They have an important list of phone numbers. They have drinks with the people that “matter”. They get paid millions of dollars for this work. Amounts of money that ordinary citizens can’t afford but corporations can.

How much influence on this government have lobbyists for mining corporations had? How much influence have they bought through election campaign donations? Through paying lobbyists to convince a politician to vote a certain way? Through publishing “reports from “think tanks”

We may not have millions of dollars but there are millions of us who you ignore and we are tired of it.

We are tired you allowing mining companies to treat our province as a dumping ground for their waste after they have extracted resources that hardly contribute anything to our collective wealth.

We are tired of you readily finding money for corporations while hundreds of thousands of children starve.

We are tired of being told that we just don’t understand fiscal policy and that the only way we can pay for a quality education for our children is through the raising of taxes.

This is yet another of your many outright blatant lies and distortions as many have continually pointed out.

I realize that Plato gave politicians permission to lie because he said that ordinary people would just not understand why things had to be done in certain ways.  I bet he did not have 41 000 educated teachers in mind  back then.

We understand quite clearly that you have distorted democracy. Your government is not representative of the people it governs. Your government behaves as though the only people it is responsible to are corporations or the affluent. Your government acts as though it is above the law.

You are not.

You don’t get to just say no.

 

We are future taxpayers. We are also future paramedics, nurses, electricians, firefighters, lawyers and doctors, but we notice that you appear to only be concerned about taxpayers and so we have adopted your language to help you to understand.

Privatization… what images come to mind when you read that word? Do you get flashes of dirty rooms in hospitals? Do you think about the loss of ferry routes? Are you reminded of all those tolls you pay when you cross bridges these days? Do the faces of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher come to mind?

Today’s neo-liberals know that you have all these bad images of privatization in your minds. That the word strikes fear into your heart. And so they have a new term they will use when they sell the idea of privatizing  BC public education to you.

School Choice.

Has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? The idea of having a choice? That you have control? That you have a say?

Trouble is you have to pay for that say. 

Your choice is going to cost you at least $4000 per child per year.

It would have been at least $10 000 but,   denials notwithstanding, it’s still possible that sometime in the near future you’re going to be offered a $6000 education voucher so that you can exercise your choice of where to spend it.

Except they may not call it that – an education voucher. They know that word has negative connotations now so expect to be told about “opportunity scholarships” for your child.  Also expect to be told that the government only has your best interests in mind because now the “money follows the child” while you exercise your choice.

They will omit to mention where the money comes from and the impact of this “moving money”.   They will omit to mention that the money will come from the public education budget and that moving money away from it  will lead to further starvation of already struggling public school districts.

Expect to be told that the government is making all these changes because the public education system is broken, PISA scores notwithstanding.

Expect to be told that taxpayers cannot afford to pay for public education while at the same time taxpayers can apparently afford to pay $750million to California to make a lawsuit against Powerex go away.

The BC Liberals love to exercise all the choices they have available to them for how to spend public funds. They love that they can choose not to fund BC students to the Canadian average of $9000 per student per year. Since 2002 they have chosen to provide only $8200 per student per year for the education of future citizens/taxpayers in BC.

They have also chosen not to be guided by two Supreme Court Rulings.

They have chosen not to negotiate with teachers, not to mediate with teachers and not to accept arbitration either. 

They have chosen to put the education of 500 000 students on hold while they blackmail teachers into giving up their constitutional rights in exchange for better learning conditions for students.

Choices.

We all have them.

We can all choose.

What will citizens choose to do about a government that is unresponsive to calls to end the public education crisis that they created?

What will citizens choose to do about the commodification of a public good?

Will citizens choose to inform themselves about the corporate interest in the “education sector”

Will citizens choose to learn the lessons that others have experienced when their public schools were privatized?

Are choices in lottery numbers going to be the only choice a child growing up in poverty will have to get a quality education?

What kind of democracy will citizens choose to defend?

Back to school sales should not include the sale of public education and the BC Liberal’s version of government making a choice about who gets a quality education and who does not.

Perhaps it’s because I was born without constitutional rights and that I was 32 before I even had the RIGHT to vote but  when Premier Christy Clark declared my Charter Rights invalid with regards to my working conditions, something in me rose up in fierce objection.

I came to Canada because of its democracy, its constitution, its civil rights. I am stunned to note the complacency of citizens as those rights unravel right before our eyes.

It took Canadians over 150 years before we gained all the political structures that underpin a democracy but it has taken the BC Liberals just 12 years to undermine the very foundations of  democracy in this province.

Are we citizens going to watch the unravelling of all the work that was done so that future generations (that would be us) would benefit from having a representative, responsible government? Are we going to simply forget that our autonomy from Britain was hastened by the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers at Vimy Ridge?

Are our memories so fragile that we have forgotten that it was just  32 years ago that we got the Charter of Rights and Freedoms after a long struggle to repatriate the constitution?  Do we take those fundamental rights for granted and just allow the current government to do as it will, regardless of what the Charter guarantees?

Twelve years ago Christy Clark, then Minister of Education, used the Legislature to strip teachers of their Charter Rights. It took 12 years of legal struggles before teachers’ rights were confirmed by the Supreme Court of BC. Twice.

And now the government is essentially blackmailing teachers to give up their Supreme Court wins in exchange for a promise of better learning conditions for students in classrooms. It is behaving as though it is above the law.

Remember that the very cornerstone of a true democracy is the rule of law, that the law applies to all citizens equally. Can you imagine if all criminals in BC had a “get out of jail” card like the E80 clause Christy Clark is insisting the teachers agree to?

Today the BC government holds 500 000 students hostage while it waits for teachers to capitulate to its blackmail. MLAs, the representatives of the people, have closed their doors and have been instructed to not meet with their constituents.

Yes, BC is where representative government has come to die.

This death could have been foretold given the fact that MLAs meet only 36 days a year to discuss what can be done about the needs of BC citizens.

It seems though that the only “needs” that the representatives are concerned about are those of taxpayers, a strange new creature in BC that is everyone who is not a parent, not a lawyer, not a ferry user,  is not concerned about the environment/climate change, does not want subsidized daycare, does not care about poverty, does not mind the oil pipelines, is not worried about the loss of agricultural land, is not a trucker or a midwife or a nurse or a paramedic or a teacher.  Not sure how many citizens are left after that. Perhaps 1%?

These taxpayers, the ones represented by this government also seem to be okay with the millions being spent on an intense public relations campaign aimed at discrediting teachers who are in the invidious position of having their union dues used for paying for the lawyers fighting to protect their Charter Rights and their taxes being used by the government to attack those Charter Rights.

Are we so easily distracted by false claims of $3000 massages that we don’t notice what actually is at stake in the dispute between the teachers and the government?

Do the citizens of British Columbia know that if the government gets away with undermining all that was fought for to build a strong democracy then no citizen is safe. No contract is safe if the government can get away with ripping up a contract with teachers.

If we don’t honour the rule of law, then what will we honour instead?

I like massages. I like the complete and total relaxation they give me. I like that for an hour at least, there is less labour in breathing, in being. Once after a particularly stressful semester, I had to have massages weekly just so that I could sleep at night. My body was in so much pain, having twisted itself into several knots in response to unrelenting stressful situations in the classroom.

At first when the tweets and comments about the $3000 massages began to surface I ignored them. That was such a preposterous accusation surely everyone knew that teachers would not be asking for a luxuries like spa massages. But the tweets persisted, not unlike the pain I experience when I know I need a massage!

And then I began to pay attention to them. I could not believe the malice, the meanness in the deliberate twisting of our proposal to increase the amount of massages someone who experienced chronic pain and discomfort could claim.

Why would anyone want to deny someone who was suffering from fibromyalgia some relief so that they could do their job?

But the disparaging remarks about massages kept spewing all over social media.  The taunts about them could  not be quelled. The onslaught came to a peak when the Premier took to broadcast media to amplify the discrediting of teachers who dared to request physician-prescribed massages.  She was so indignant about this proposal from teachers she displayed her disdain over and over again throughout the broadcast.

But her disdain was based on incorrect information.

Teachers had not requested unlimited massages. That was what was already granted to another public sector union. A union that the Premier had already signed a contract with. A public sector union whose unlimited massages was somehow well within the “affordability zone”.

When they learned of this, citizens were confused…. If unlimited massages were within the “affordability zone” for one public sector union,  why was the teachers’ request for a modest increase in the number of massages available to them outside of this  “zone”?

If the Premier was insisting that the teachers’ proposals were in line with what other public sector unions were getting, how did the unlimited massages she had granted to other public sector unions make sense in light of her response to the teachers’ proposal?

So much confusion for the BC citizen/taxpayer as they watched the premier massage her message about fiscal constraints.

I can imagine that it could cause quite a few knots of tension to develop in the bodies of citizens who voted for a premier who would at the very least be well-informed about the salient issues at stake in the billion dollar negotiations with teachers.

One would expect, given all the assistants and secretaries who work on her behalf, that the premier would have accurate information available to her. One would expect that at the very least those assistants ensured that their boss did not make a fool of herself in front of the entire province.

But on Wednesday, 3rd September, 2014, it became clear that one would be expecting too much.

Information is an interesting thing. It can so easily be manipulated and twisted and turned into something that does not actually inform but instead misinforms, disinforms. Orwell had much to say in this regard.

Information can sometimes reveal the truth but it can also distort it, turn attention away from what is actually going on.

Information can be a distraction. Pay attention to what the Kardashians are doing and you will miss the civil war in the Congo.

Pay attention to what the  BC government calls the unaffordable demands of  teachers and you may miss the fact that the government considers Education Assistants and Learning Specialist teachers as salary benefits for teachers. A salary benefit in the same way a nurse would be considered a salary benefit if doctors would allow the premier to get away with that twisted logic.

And if you pay attention to all the ruckus about massages, you may miss the fact that teachers are being asked to give up their Charter Rights in exchange for a promise of better learning conditions for students.

No amount of massaging a political message can detract from that fact.

But are you paying attention?

After the original BCPSEA was fired in August 2013 when they were close to a deal with the teachers,

and after the government has now twice been found guilty of violating Charter Rights,

and after teachers have been sitting at the table for 18 months trying to get a deal with the government,

and after the government locked teachers out of their classrooms in June 2014 during lunch time, forcing them to eat their lunch on the sidewalks outside their schools,

while imposing a 10% punitive daily salary cut,

the government is now asking for a “cooling off” period before it will agree to mediation,

and is using social media ads that promote the Cisco corporation inspired BC ED plan to persuade parents that the obstacle standing in the way of getting children back into the classroom

are the teachers.

I am incensed at the insistence  by BCSTA that “both sides” are equally to blame for this dispute. I am incensed at the massive disrespect I am experiencing at the hands of this government.  I am incensed that BCCPAC, the parent body that claims to represent 80% of the voices of parents in this province, demonstrates only support for the government’s position.

Since those who use the divorcing parents analogy also claim that both sides are ignoring the children, let’s examine that.

It is teachers like Carrie Gelson who have raised the issue of childhood poverty in this province. It is teachers who spend an average of $1200 of their after-tax income on classroom resources. It is teachers who often spend more time with their students than with their own family during the school year, giving up holidays and weekends to accompany students on field trips.

It is a growing number of teachers whose health is suffering due to the enormous load they continue to bear in an underfunded public education system.

And what has the government done “for the children”?

It has refused to subsidize daycare, the $40 bribe notwithstanding.

It has refused to do anything about the fact that BC has the highest childhood poverty rate in the country. In fact, a representative of the government, Marc Dalton says that childhood poverty does not exist.

It is planning to not just cut but to completely eliminate designations for special needs in classrooms.  If you don’t have students with special needs, then clearly you don’t need to provide support for students with autism, with learning disabilities; students who are gifted, students who are deaf.

This government has gone to a corporation, Cisco, an organization of dubious ethics whose main purpose is to create profit, for the ideas that it implemented into its new BCED plan.

In what ways can the Cisco corporation have the best interests of students in mind?

Teachers do not hold the purse strings to public funds in this province. Teachers cannot pass legislation. Teachers cannot ignore Supreme Court rulings without risking jail.

The government can and has done all these things.

It is the government who can end this dispute. It is the government that can ensure that each student in a BC public school is funded at least to the Canadian average. It is the government that can stop spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on litigation and instead invest that money into public education.

Doing these things would demonstrate that the government does indeed have the children’s best interests in mind as far as public education goes.

But it would not be enough to indicate that the government was anywhere near considering helping the millions of children who starve each day and whose parents cannot afford daycare.

This government has many opportunities to do something “for the children”.

If they need any ideas about which opportunities they should consider first, they can ask a teacher.