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March 28, 2019
Resistance
Building to Ford Government's
Anti-Social Offensive in Ontario
All Out for the
April 4 Walkout
and April 6 Rally!
 
• Students
and Educators Take Up Their Social Responsibility
• Petition
from Ontario High School Students
• Working People Reject Ford's Campaign to Make
Ontario Education Open for Business Profit - K.C. Adams
• Teachers and Students Resist the Ford
Government's Anti-Social
Offensive - Enver Villamizar
• Anti-Democratic Nature of Government Attacks
on Education
• Government Proposed Changes in K-12 Education
Resistance Building to Ford Government's
Anti-Social Offensive in Ontario
University of Windsor student walkout, March 20, 2019.
The working people and youth and students of Ontario
are showing what they are made of in rising as one to reject the Ford
government's latest assault on public education, and on those who
provide it and the students who rely on it for a bright future.
Students to Walkout En Masse
On April 4, high school students across Ontario will
hold walkouts to say No! to the Ford government's attacks on public
education, which the government claims are in the name of students and
designed to make them more "resilient." Students have set up a central
Facebook page for
coordinating their activities and listing their events here.
They have also launched a petition to make their views
known, which is gaining thousands of signatures (see below).
Mass Rally at Ontario Legislature
On April 6, all the education unions in the K-12 sector
have joined together to organize a mass rally at Queen's Park to defend
public education. Everyone is encouraged to mark their calendars and go
all out to bring all those concerned about the future of public
education to the rally. See Facebook events page here.
College and University Students Hold Walkouts
University and college students already held walkouts
and rallies across Ontario on March 20, to reject the Ford government's
assault on post-secondary education and the students' unions ability to
exist and organize.
University of Windsor
University of Toronto
 
K-12 Teachers and Education Workers Launch
Sustained Acts of Solidarity
OSSTF District 20 wear black shirts, March 18, 2019.
Since March 15 when the Ford
government laid out its latest assault on public education, teachers
and education workers have made it clear that they intend to fight for
their rights and those of their students.
An announcement for educators and K-12 students was
made on Friday, March 15, when many schools were on March Break. The
following Monday, March 18, many
educators came back to school wearing black to stand in solidarity.
Then on the following
Friday the Elementary Teachers, Catholic Teachers and Secondary School
Teachers' federations called for their members to wear Red for
Education,
or Red for Ed on all Fridays going forward. This takes up similar
regular actions called by teachers and education workers across the
U.S., who have made red the symbol of their defence of public education.
High Park Toronto
Peel Region
CUPE 1238; Halton Region
 
Sarnia; Merlin
 
Political Protests at PC Party Activities
Protest in Essex, March 22, 2019.
A large protest was held by unions representing teachers
and education workers and other workers outside a political event being
held at the Walter Baker Centre in Nepean, Ontario on March 22. Premier
Doug Ford as well as Education Minister Lisa MacLeod and other Ottawa
area MPPs were hosting a dinner and had to face the lines of
educators making their stands against the attacks on public education
very clear.
In Essex, District 9 of the Ontario Secondary School
Teachers Federation and the Greater Essex local of the Elementary
Teachers'
Federation of Ontario organized a spirited protest outside a local golf
and country club to defend public education. The Essex PC Riding
Association was holding an "Essex Open for Business" Dinner with
Minister
of Economic Development Todd Smith and MPPs Rick Nicholls
(Chatham-Kent-Leamington), Randy Pettapiece (Perth-Wellington), and
Donna Skelly (Flamborough-Glanbrook).
On the same day Premier Ford made a provocative remark
while in Nepean warning teachers and education workers that they had
better think twice about protesting the government's attacks on
education alleging this would "harm students." This shows clearly that
in the name of protecting students the Ford government is seeking to
prepare
the ground to criminalize the political opposition of teachers and
education workers as well as students in the name of "protecting
students." The ongoing actions of students themselves to these attacks
are exposing the Ford government as unfit to govern.
High school students in Ontario are circulating the
following petition. It is directed at Premier Doug Ford as well as the
leaders of the opposition parties in the Ontario Legislature. The
petition is part of their actions in preparation for mass walkouts on
April 4 to make their No! to the attacks on public education clear to
the government and
the other parties in the Legislature.
Stop Ford Changes to Ontario Education!!
Education is meant to prepare students for their life
beyond school; it helps to create a skilled economy and ultimately
levels the playing field for all people. The proposed Ontario education
cuts would target arts courses and programs, cut approximately 5000
teacher jobs, increase average class sizes, make E-learning mandatory,
cut funding
by 20%, and essentially strip away extracurricular activities including
sports from schools. The Ford government has set out to "balance the
budget," and in the short term they will, but the myopic policies
entirely disregard the fact that students are not numbers. Teachers are
not numbers. Our communities are not numbers. We as a generation have
inherited problems that no other generation has faced before. Issues
such as climate change, income polarization, and mounting social
tensions, and without a good education, we won't have the skills
required to solve them. We are asking the Ford government to reconsider
their proposal and think about the implications of their policies.
E-Learning is an innovative alternative to conventional
classrooms, but it is not a substitute. Every student learns
differently and making E-Learning mandatory is not an effort to
modernize education, but rather only works to help the bottom line.
Research by the Centre for Public Education has shown that the ideal
class size is between
13-17, but the Ford government once again is compromising students
learning experience in favour of cheaper alternatives. Education is an
investment whose value is unquantifiable.
With the Ford plan for education reform, the people who
will suffer most are those with disabilities and we who are too young
to have a vote. We have a voice. That's why we need to come together as
students to save our education system, for our communities, for
ourselves, and for future generations who will suffer the
repercussions. It's
not left or right, it's forward. Forward together. By signing this
petition we are fighting to protect our education system, our teachers,
and the students within. On April 4th at 1:15 pm we encourage you to
participate in the provincial walk out.
#cutshurtkids #StudentVoice #StudentssayNO #April4th
To sign the petition, click
here.
- K.C. Adams -
The ruling class in power in Canada is pursuing its
assault on public education as part of its broad campaign to Open
Canada for Business. This means handing over public education to narrow
private interests from which they can expropriate profit. In Ontario,
the Ford government wants public education open for business for
enterprise
profit for private education, interest profit from private money
lending to the public treasury, and business profit for contractors and
suppliers such as E-education equipment from Microsoft, Apple and other
monopolies.
 In opposition, the working
people uphold the modern
definition that education is a right for all at the highest possible
level. They want governments to assume with honour their social
responsibility to organize the productive forces to guarantee the right
of all to the highest quality education.
The Ford government's attacks on public education, on
teachers' right to decide their working conditions and on students'
right to conduct their own affairs are an abdication of its social
responsibility and expose it as unfit to govern. Instead of increasing
investments in public education and giving the teachers a say and
control over the
direction of the sector and the right to say No! the government is
determined to make Ontario education open for business and a target for
private profit.
The open for business mantra leads to finding all
possible ways for private interests to profit from educating the youth.
For private enterprise to expropriate profit directly, public education
is debased so that those who can afford private education for their
children will do so. Governments guarantee an expansion of the sale of
education
supplies from the global monopolies with public and individual purchase
of high tech equipment necessary for e-education. The refusal to
recognize and exchange the social value of the capacity to work of
educated youth with the big companies that consume it means that
general tax revenue must be used for investment in education and when
that
is insufficient governments continue the discredited and outmoded
practice of borrowing from private moneylenders.
Apart from directly profiting from education being open
for business, the anti-social offensive seeks to divert public funds
that have been or could be invested in public education into the hands
of the financial oligarchy through pay-the-rich schemes of subsidies,
grants, guaranteed contracts and prices, tax exemptions and other
handouts to big
business. Paying the rich has become a standard component of being open
for business.
 The education sector is more
worker intensive than
most. This presents two problems for the ruling elite in terms of
enabling their anti-social offensive and making Ontario education open
for business profit. They seek to reduce the quantity of teachers in
relation to the number of students and they seek to eliminate any
resistance from the
human factor to their anti-social program.
The human factor however is essential to the quality of
education. To lower the ratio of teachers to students necessarily
lowers the quality of the relation between teachers and students.
Anyone who has done any teaching would attest to the fact that once the
number of students in a K-12 class exceeds 20 the quality of the
relation between the
teacher and students begins to deteriorate. The deterioration does not
build "resilience" in students but simply reduces the education quality
regardless of how hard the teacher may work. Private schools are a
testament to this as they consistently offer smaller class numbers. To
expropriate their enterprise profit, the private schools charge large
tuition fees, demand subsidies from the public treasury and put
enormous pressure on teachers to reduce their claim on the value they
create.
Teachers and other education workers are in the best
position to formulate a path forward to guarantee a quality education
as a right for all. Instead they are being attacked with their voices
silenced and their rights abused. As a modern society this is
unacceptable. The Ford government in its anti-social offensive to make
Ontario education
open for business profit and to attack the human factor in education is
proving itself unfit to govern. It has shown in practice a refusal to
assume its social responsibility to mobilize the productive forces to
guarantee the right of all to education at the highest level and to
mobilize the human factor in education as the greatest resource and
voice for
opening a path forward to assure a bright future for all our youth.
Stand with Teachers and Students in
Opposition to the Ford Government's Anti-social Offensive on Education!
- Enver Villamizar -
The Ford government believes it can divide teachers and
education workers by specifically targeting secondary teachers and
education workers at this time. The attack is spearheaded with
restructuring of class sizes and imposing new minimum on-line learning
requirements for students in high school.
 In doing so, the ruling class is
attacking all
teachers, education workers, the entire working people and youth of
Ontario. The working conditions of teachers and education workers at
all levels are their students' learning conditions. Teachers have
adopted the action of wearing Red for Education as a sign of resistance
and solidarity showing the
common cause amongst the teachers and education workers to defend their
rights and the right to education for all at the highest level society
has attained.
Since the neo-liberal assaults began on public
education in the 1990s by the Bob Rae NDP, followed by the Harris and
Eves PCs,
McGuinty and Wynne Liberals and now the Ford PCs, teachers and
education workers have led the resistance in defence of their rights
and those of their students. Teachers know from experience that
privatization and
destruction of public education are attacks on the right to education
for all. In leading this resistance they know they are defending their
students. The same is the case today with the resistance to the Ford
government's anti-social offensive.
In Ontario, the NDP government of Bob Rae ripped up the
post-war labour relations regime by imposing neo-liberal contracts on
teachers and other education workers to extract money from public
education to pay the rich, without the agreement or consent of those
who provide the education. This was not accepted by the working people
who
felt betrayed by the NDP and refused to re-elect them.
The Harris PC government that came to power followed
suit using its legislative majority to ram through massive attacks on
education and those who provide it, while criminalizing any resistance
to their agenda. This too was met with resistance including Days of
Action in which the working class shut down major economic centres of
the
province from Windsor to Sudbury to affirm their power, rights and
demands for a new direction.
In 2003, the McGuinty Liberals were brought in to
achieve labour peace until the ruling class decided it could once again
proceed with its anti-social offensive. Their mantra was to establish a
more fair way to impose the theft of public funds to pay the rich by
spreading the attacks around and trying to get the people's consent to
this
anti-social direction.
The Liberals, joined by the Hudak PCs, launched a new
all-out assault with Bill 115. At that time however, neither party had
a legislative majority and each wanted to lead the march to austerity.
At each step the ruling class was faced with the resistance of the
people and especially teachers and education workers. This came to a
head when
the Liberal Party of McGuinty was brought to its knees in the
Kitchener-Waterloo by-election after attacking education workers.
Neither McGuinty nor Hudak could gain a majority from
which to criminalize the movement for education and workers' rights
that had emerged. The ruling class selected Wynne to lead the Liberal
Party to buy another period of peace until they could sort out how to
achieve what they could not with Bill 115. They brought in provincial
bargaining and prepared the ground for what was to come next, the Ford
government. The ruling class now believe they have the bull in the
China shop, which can follow through on their threats to make Ontario
education open for business profit.
 The ruling elite have
refused to accept the widely held
public opinion which calls for increased investments in education to
ensure the right to education for all, and to meet the demand of a
modern economy for educated workers who can then work to guarantee the
well-being of all, including themselves, and open a path forward for
society.
Public opinion for increased investments in public
education in defence of education as a right for all and that workers'
rights must be respected is well entrenched. Public opinion holds that
education and health care should not be sectors open for business
profit. The frustration of the ruling elite with this reality can be
heard in the threats of
Premier Ford against teachers and education workers telling them they
dare not protest his attacks on their rights and those of their
students. He is defying the teachers to resist, which they are already
doing, so that he can invoke emergency powers to once again impose
contracts and force teachers to give up their resistance to his
anti-social
offensive. Ford's provocative words show that the ruling class want a
confrontation, which they believe they can win by using their police
powers. They have no political or moral arguments to justify their
actions, yet they have the power to do so according to the cartel party
system of governance, which has given the PCs a majority of seats in
the Legislature. It is medieval and undemocratic and the working people
refuse to accept this dictate.
The working people including teachers and education
workers have great experience in how to mobilize public opinion. The
fact that the resistance to Ford's anti-social measures has been
immediate and widespread including the movement of the youth and
students themselves walking out of classes in political protests shows
that the
anti-social offensive will not be accepted.
Ontario Minister of Education, Lisa Thomson released
the government's "vision" for elementary and secondary education on
March 15. The vision was delivered in the form of a number of
government press releases with bullet points about the various parts of
the vision, the Minister's remarks and a memorandum to school boards
from
Deputy Minister Nancy Naylor.
One issue of significance is the undemocratic way the
government is operating. Its election platform did not present its
vision for education. Instead, it focussed on emphasizing the following:
- changing the way math was taught and requiring new
teachers to take math courses as part of their bachelor of education;
- rescinding the sections of the physical and health
curriculum dealing with sexual education;
- initiating a moratorium on school closures and reform
of the process for school closures;
- increasing funding for children with autism;
- and "fixing" the current standardized testing regime
overseen by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).
Now that the PCs are in power they have issued their
vision of what should be done. They claim they have a mandate to do as
they please since being elected. They did not put forward these
proposals during the election because they clearly knew their vision
would not be acceptable to Ontarians. This itself shows the extent to
which the cartel
political parties have ceased to function as mechanisms for the people
to participate in political affairs and put forward a vision for the
society around which they find acceptable and can organize.
Instead, these parties employ marketing and consulting
agencies whose only purpose is to ensure they take power and once in
power serve the biggest financial interests. Of note in this respect is
that the PCs do not claim a mandate for their proposals but instead for
a "mandate to govern." In other words, having a mandate to govern is
not
related to what the cartel parties are putting forward for the society
but simply a matter of gaining the power to do as the government
pleases irrespective of the public opinion that exists amongst the
people.
This shows the serious crisis in which what are called
the democratic institutions in Canada are mired as governments are
elected without any popular mandate and then use their police powers to
impose measures that harm the people and the programs they rely on.
Teachers, education workers, parents and students demonstrate outside
Conservative Party fundraiser, Etobicoke, February 27, 2019.
The Ontario government claims that all its changes are
aimed at "modernizing" Ontario classrooms. The mantra of modernization
hides the overall direction in which it wants to take Ontario. The
government proposes to remove billions from the public education system
through increasing class sizes and attacking the working conditions of
teachers and education workers, while permanently handing over portions
of the education of the youth to private interests on a centralized
basis.
Class Size
The government announced that changes would be coming
to average class sizes in Ontario. Average class sizes do not actually
determine how big classes are or must be, but rather determine the
funding a school board will receive for teachers and support staff.
Thus, going from an average class size of 22 to 28 in grades 9 to 12
for example,
means that for every 28 (instead of 22) students the school board will
obtain funding for one teacher. The board then allocates teachers to
ensure the overall average across the entire school board is at or
below the average set by the government. (TML Weekly will deal
further with how education is funded in Ontario and the relationship
between average class sizes and class composition in future articles.)
As for class sizes, the government announced that the
limit for the number of students in full-day junior and senior
kindergarten will remain at 29 students. However, the funding for early
childhood educators (ECEs) who work alongside teachers in these classes
when they have more than 16 students will be reduced from 1.14 to 1.0
full-time
equivalent (FTE). This will result in greater pressure on school boards
to attack the number of ECEs and/or their working conditions. In
addition, in January, the government made it clear that full-day
kindergarten is guaranteed for only one more year.
Average class sizes for students in grades 4 to 8 will
be
increased from a school board-wide average of 23.84 to 24.5 students.
As noted above, the government intends to increase
average class sizes in grades 9 to 12 from a school board-wide average
of 22 to 28 students. The average will be calculated across the entire
school board and all grades of that assigned average (grades 4 to 8 or
grades 9 to 12). The Minister of Education has self-servingly claimed
increasing
class sizes in this manner is "evidence-based" and will better prepare
students for work and university and even build "resilience." This is
equivalent to an abuser claiming that their abuse was only to make the
victim tougher.
Along with changes to average class sizes, the
government is changing the way schools are funded. It is eliminating a
number of discretionary funds that previous governments used to fund
education. This will result in overall cuts to the supports students
require in their schools. These changes include the elimination of the
Local Priorities
Fund, Cost Adjustment Allocation, and Human Resource Transition
Supplement. It will also change "Classroom Loading Factors" to reflect
the new class averages it wants to impose, increase Utilities Funding
to reflect increased cost, increase and "review" Student Transportation
Funding that funds busing and other forms of transportation to
schools.
E-Learning
The government plans to "centralize the delivery of all
e-learning courses" and require students in grades 9 to 12 to take a
minimum of four e-learning classes to graduate high school with
"exemptions for some students on an individual basis." These e-learning
classes will have an even higher average number of students per class
than the
proposed increased average of 35 students to be raised from 28.
Currently e-learning courses are delivered by school boards. A central
hub for all e-learning courses being offered by boards across the
province into which students can register already exists. The
government may well seek to hand the delivery and content of e-learning
over to a
private e-learning company financed by public funds and use this to
remove thousands of courses from the requirement of having to be
delivered by teachers employed by school boards and represented by
unions. No explanation as to how such a direction would benefit the
youth was provided. The government's own e-learning site, prior to the
announcement, clearly pointed out that e-learning is not beneficial for
all students; a claim that was removed after it was pointed out by many
on social media.
"Up to the Minute" Curriculum Changes
The Minister of Education announced in her press
conference that the government plans to put in place new arrangements
to permit itself to change what is taught in schools on an "up to the
minute" basis. She presented the measure as a money saving move to save
on printing and distribution of new curriculum documents, something
that is
currently the practice when curriculum is updated so that educators and
the public know what is expected to be taught and learned in the
classroom. By the next school year, the government plans to "bring in a
new digital curriculum platform" where curricula will only be available
online and there can be "up to the minute" changes made. The
Ontario curricula is already available on the Ontario government's
website and is accessible anywhere and downloadable, including onto
smart devices.
These measures are very similar to changes made at the
Federal level by the then Harper Conservatives to how regulations made
by Ministers were promulgated to the public. The Harper government was
harmonizing many Canadian regulations with those of the United States
and slipped within an omnibus budget bill, including a law that it
would no longer have to print new regulations in the Canada Gazette
when passed. The new regulations were typically sent out to public
institutions and legal firms that needed to know the laws under which
they were expected to operate.
The Harper government claimed that it was simply making
things more efficient and less costly by having it solely on-line. In
fact, the aim was to hide from view changes to regulations that were
being enacted to serve the biggest North American monopolies. These
regulations establish the entire way of life in Canada and the
standards that
individuals, public institutions and businesses are expected to uphold.
The move to have the government make changes to curricula "up to the
minute" will no doubt be part and parcel of efforts to tie what is
taught to the short term with the narrow demands of high-tech and other
monopolies for trained employees paid for by the public purse. It
may also be used to criminalize teachers based on claims that they did
not follow the most up-to-date curriculum.
Changes to How Standardized Tests are Used
The Minister of Education announced that the Education
and Quality Assurance Office (EQAO) will be given a "stronger, broader
mandate." The Board of Directors for the Office has had a new full-time
chair imposed on it, replacing its previous part-time chair David
Cooke, the former Minister of Education under the Ontario NDP
government of Bob Rae. The new chair, Dr. Cameron Montgomery, is being
tasked with working to modernize "what and how [EQAO] evaluates."
This is likely linked in part to the government's
announcement that it intends to change the way teachers are hired and
placed. The government claims that teachers are currently hired and
placed based mainly on seniority and this prevents teachers that would
be a better "fit" from being selected. This is to fool the gullible, as
experience in
teaching is a key factor in the quality of how content is delivered.
What the government is trying to do is to divide new teachers from more
experienced teachers to bring in new regimes of tying teacher promotion
and possibly even pay to standardized test scores or what the
government calls a measure of "student achievement."
In the name of promoting better teachers, the
government hopes to introduce greater competition amongst teachers for
jobs and promotion to attack their unity to defend their working
conditions, which are students learning conditions. The McGuinty
Liberal government too began its assault on teachers and education
workers in this manner
during the 2011-12 contract negotiation period. The McGuinty government
imposed through regulation a system of seniority for hiring teachers
for full-time contracts and long-term appointments, while at the same
time imposing contracts onto all teachers and education workers in
violation of their rights. In both the case of the Liberals then and
the PCs now, the aim is not to defend younger teachers but to divert
them from defending the teaching profession as a whole from the attacks
of narrow private interests.
New Law and Order Measures
The government is prohibiting cell phone use in schools
during instructional time by adding it to the provincial code of
conduct, "unless teachers use their professional judgement to decide
otherwise." What this shows is that the government does not recognize
teachers' professional judgement on a whole, but only when it comes to
whether or
not to criminalize student behaviour. It shows that the government will
empower teachers only when it comes to how they will enforce arbitrary
rules that they had no say in establishing. These changes do not
empower teachers' professional judgement when it comes to the direction
of education. In fact, it further reveals the attempts to
disempower teachers in the name of affirming their professional
judgement only in specific instances.
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