Doug Ford's image -- thanks to the pandemic -- has undergone a makeover. But, Linda McQuaig writes, when it comes to education, there's been no make over:
It may seem like a lifetime ago -- that carefree day in pre-pandemic times when two million Ontarians crowded into downtown Toronto to celebrate the victorious Raptors -- but Premier Ford is unlikely to ever forget the unmistakable jeering that followed his introduction.
One of the key things that had made him so wildly unpopular on that day back in June 2019 was his move toward defunding -- no, not police -- but something more precious to Ontarians: public education.
There had been widespread anger over the government's announcement a few months earlier that it planned to increase class sizes throughout the province (enlarging high school classes from 22 to 28 students and eliminating 3,500 teachers) and to force students to take online courses.
These moves, designed to cut $850 million out of provincial education spending, weren't mentioned during the election campaign and were clearly seen as putting the interests of students behind business demands for deficit-reduction.
A leaked internal document confirms that, on the education file, nothing for Ford has changed:
COVID aside, smaller classes, by allowing teachers to devote more individual attention to students, have long been seen as a bedrock principle of good education.
But the Ford government has never seemed particularly interested in such bedrock principles, according to a secret internal document obtained last January by Star reporters Rob Ferguson and Kristin Rushowy.
Rather than demonstrating a commitment to "do absolutely everything, everything" to support our public schools, the document reveals a profit-oriented approach to education that sounds straight out of a corporate boardroom.
Along with plans to cut funding to school boards, the document expressed dissatisfaction that "the [public school] system does not generate any revenue for the province."
The document suggests developing "a business model" for producing online courses that could be marketed to other jurisdictions so "maximum revenue generation may be realized."
Since when is public education about "maximum revenue generation" -- rather than about educating our children, instilling in them civic values and respect for others, and helping them develop into adults who can fully participate in our economy and our democracy? Why is this government so keen to turn the crucial institution of public education into a profit-making centre?
For modern conservatives, profit should be behind everything. If you can't make a profit, you're a parasite.
Image: strategiccfo.com
4 comments:
... "educating our children, instilling in them civic values and respect for others, and helping them develop into adults who can fully participate in our economy and our democracy." Hmmm, that's the sort of thing Conservatives call "Marxist brainwashing."
No, Conservatives want a privatized system that produces obedient workers. As Mr. Carlin put it, "People just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it."
Cap
Conservatives know that education is their enemy, Cap. There is a reason Donald Trump says he "loves the undereducated."
Probably Ford chanelling his inner kenney. Out there in the people's Dystopia of Alberta, they dug up some old right wing PhD name of Champion (there's a laugh) to come up with a new school curriculum that keeps the facts about how Canada treated First nations away from tender young ears. Among other things.
If you can't stop greenies telling you you're an antedeluvian bible thumper of a petro-praising wacko, and organizing imaginary underground rebellions against you that your lizard mind tells you must be there even when they're not, well, why not start propagandizing the young people in school to become docile tarsand shovellers willing to work for minimum wage in God's country when they grow up? Who needs nurses, doctors or health sector civil servants doing their job? For the latter, outsource everything to private sector "friends", so that greedy people can skim off the difference between current pay and mnimum wage. That's near enough the way Cons want to treat the common person. Like dirt.
A scourge on the earth is the modern day Con. I have a quite deep dislike of these phat fakers and ghoulish profit takers.
https://albertapolitics.ca/2020/10/handpicked-ucp-advisors-call-for-mention-of-residential-schools-to-be-erased-from-primary-grades-social-studies-curriculum/
BM
Thanks for the link, BM. William F. Buckley wanted conservatives to "stand athwart history and yell stop!" These folks want to erase it altogether.
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