Kenney Government's Despicable Attacks on Teachers
- Kevan Hunter -
Education rally, Calgary, November 29, 2019.
As Alberta teachers, students, and parents are
stepping up their resistance to attacks on public education, the
Alberta government and its allies in the media have escalated their
campaign to throw mud at educators, threaten them, and spread
disinformation about what takes place in Alberta classrooms.
 In Question
Period on November 27, the United Conservative Party (UCP) MLA for
Calgary-Fish Creek, Richard Gotfried, asked the Education Minister
about a Grade 10 Social Studies test that a parent had sent him, with
"deeply concerning anti-oil and gas rhetoric," and what he
characterized as "radical left-wing ideology."
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, who was
obviously prepared for the question, said that it was deeply troubling.
"Our educators have a duty to tell the truth about our responsible
energy industry. We said that we were going to take politics out of the
classroom, and that's exactly what we will be doing," she stated in the
Legislature.
In a column published in the Calgary
Herald and Edmonton Journal, former
Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith picked up where LaGrange left off.
Apparently, the same anonymous parent had also sent her a copy of the
Grade 10 Social Studies test. After a diatribe against communism, the
Soviet Union, and "public school social studies teachers [who] seem to
lean toward Marxism," Smith said "This is not education. It's
indoctrination. And it's got to stop." She concluded that rather than
saving the 300 Calgary public school teachers who are set to be laid
off,
school boards should start firing teachers whose methods are not to her
liking.
Far from Alberta teachers being the problem, the
Minister of Education is clearly the one who is unfit to carry out her
position. The Grade 10 Social Studies curriculum states that students
are expected to understand different points of view regarding
globalization, including environmental perspectives.[1]
This is precisely what the questions at issue are designed to test.
Students should be able to associate a particular argument with a
broader political position, and to understand different perspectives on
issues, such as those held by workers, business owners, Indigenous
peoples, governments and environmental groups. As others have pointed
out on social media, the Minister's suggestion to "get politics out" of
a course dedicated to studying political issues is as absurd and
laughable as "keeping chemistry out of science" or "keeping exercise
out of physical education." If the Minister cannot tell the difference
between being asked to understand someone else's point of view and
being told what to think, not only should she resign, but perhaps she
should re-take high school social studies.
Normally, at the very least, an education minister
would be expected to be informed about the curriculum that students are
supposed to be taught, as it pertains to the issue at hand. But this is
the new normal, where the aim is to provide a pretext for the wrecking
of public education, as well as to threaten and try to silence teachers
and any opposition.
 Since its
inception in 2017, the UCP, and before that its predecessors, the
Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party, have been spreading
disinformation about public education, teachers, and their
organization, the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA). In 2013, a
slight drop in scores on a standardized test of math skills in OECD
countries was used to suggest a crisis in math education, with newer
"inquiry" and "discovery" teaching methods used by teachers being
blamed.[2][3]
This also served to divert from the reality of increasing class sizes
due to the ongoing failure to adequately fund education.
In 2016, Wildrose MLA Leela Aheer, now the
Minister of Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women, began
agitating for the public release of the names of 400 teachers involved
in redesigning Alberta's curriculum (aspects of which have not been
updated since the 1980s). This demand and the baseless accusations
that the curriculum review was being done in secret were continued by
Jason Kenney during his time in opposition as leader of the Progressive
Conservative Party and later the UCP. Following the provincial
election, the government arbitrarily ripped up the agreement giving
Alberta teachers a leading role in curriculum development, and created
a new curriculum review panel dominated by fans of private, charter,
and faith-based schools, none with any teaching experience in this
century.[4]
Claiming to take politics out of the classroom is
a diversion. There is a modicum of truth in this assertion, because
what the UCP stands for cannot be called politics. Rule of the
financial oligarchy through the use of arbitrary or police powers is
not politics. Saying, in the manner of George Bush, that either you are
with the UCP and Jason Kenney or you are the enemy and anything you say ipso facto has no
legitimacy, is not politics. It is dictate. The Minister of
Education is using state power to try to divide the polity on the basis
of ideology, and demand teachers concede,
for example, that the only opinion which can be discussed concerning the
environment is that Alberta has a "responsible energy industry." It is
also aimed at discrediting the resistance which is developing to the
cuts to education. None of this is succeeding.
This latest attack also appears to be fodder for
the agenda debated at the UCP policy convention which took place from
November 29 to December 1. Policy 15 states that the Alberta government
should "implement an education 'voucher system' that will provide for
equal per-student funding regardless of their school choice." The
disastrous effects of voucher systems in the United States are well
documented and must not pass. Their impact is to create two tiers of
education, one system for those with the means to access private and
charter schools, and one for everyone else.
In standing up for the honour and dignity of their
own profession, teachers are defending their rights, those of their
students, and the interests of our society. By continuing to step up
our resistance, to speak in our own name, to present our concerns
publicly and connect with all those forces engaged in defending public
education, we will be a force to be reckoned with.
Notes
1. The
Grade 10 Social Studies curriculum, last updated in 2005, can be found here.
The most relevant sections are on pages 21-25.
2. In
2013, Canadian students ranked 13th among OECD member countries. If
Alberta were compared to other countries in the OECD, it would have
been in 11th place, down from eighth place in 2009.
3. For a
discussion of "inquiry" teaching methods and the important distinctions
between "discovery" and "inquiry," see
here.
4. For
more on the changes to curriculum review in Alberta, see here.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 30 - December 7, 2019
Article Link:
Kenney Government's Despicable Attacks on Teachers - Kevan Hunter
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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