Rumour & Innuendo In The Age of Information

TVO's Agenda did a diligent job this week of fact checking following the round table discussion they had with teachers.  In retrospect, what this discussion did was bypass the political spin of teacher unions and the government and give Ontarians an insight into how teachers themselves are seeing this on-going mess.  What I found unnerving was how insular and, in some cases, inaccurate our thinking is.

In post-show fact checking it was shown that some of the commonly held beliefs by teachers were not exactly true.  The bankruptcy lawyer story had been circulated out of the union all year.  Paikin seemed surprised that all the teachers there knew of it, but it was loudly repeated by our unions as a way of framing this disagreement prior to 115 coming in.  In fairness, these lawyers do deal with bankruptcies and they were unfamiliar with education negotiations and were aggressive in their demands, but to call them bankruptcy lawyers shows a use of absolutist language aimed at polarizing union members in order to make them feel victimized.  It's this kind of manipulation that makes me uneasy.

That the KW bi-election was a reason for the ridiculous piece of legislation called Bill 115 appears  to be a matter of record.  That Kathleen Wynn can say it was a cynical, Machiavellian move to win a bi-election while having voted for it still makes me question her credibility and these 'social justice' values she seems to have branded herself with.  In the meantime our unions are still funding the OLP, even as they encourage us to demonstrate in front of their leadership convention.  I'm not sure who is on what side any more.  With four parties involved in this (the provincial government, grassroots union members, union provincial executive who seem out of touch with the members they've tried to direct, and school boards), it's murky at best.


The followup research on the sick days/leave issue indicates just how deeply the political spin of this has cut teachers.  

"...it's strange that they would seem to think the province would just leave them in the lurch in terms of short-term disability. It either shows a colossal failure of communication on behalf of the government or on behalf of the union to its members. It certainly illustrates that the level of distrust of teachers with the government is extremely high, which is just very, very sad."

The negativity itself around 115 created such momentum that the provincial executives who were pushing it suddenly found their members turning down contracts they wanted passed.  Executive was building up this fervor as a bargaining tool, but the anger was genuine, and now the rifts between teachers, the government and internally in their unions are deeper than ever.  There hasn't been a lot of honesty with how this has been managed.  How a teacher couldn't feel manipulated in this by all the parties involved is beyond me.  Trying to get a clear eye on the issues is almost impossible with all of these giants hurling boulders at each other.

I was ardently against Bill 115, I'm still astonished that it got passed - it is one of the most offensive pieces of 'law' ever put into the books.  I was more than willing to go to the wall over fighting it, I still believe we should have walked immediately when it was passed.  As one of the wiser heads in my school said in a staff meeting, "it's a bad law, you fight bad laws or we lose everything."  

Watching those teachers on the Agenda line up behind the vitriolic rhetoric of our unions when I find union interests focused on the political self interest of certain (older) members makes me question much of what I'm hearing.  I certainly no longer feel represented by the people who lead us, and while I don't agree with all of the fact checking done, it does make me question the accuracy of what I'm being told.

I find myself a teacher who is very uncomfortable with how this has been handled, the mess in my own district aside.  The Agenda's round table only emphasized for me how insulated and groomed our thinking around the turbulence in Ontario education is.

What Do You Take With You?

Part 1: What do you take with you into the future?

We live in a time of radical transformative social change. One generation's experience is markedly different from the next. How we communicate with each other dictates our social structures, and we are in the middle of a communications revolution.  In times like this many traditions and habits fall by the wayside. If you have to cling to an ideal in order to ensure it survives this sort of disruptive evolution, what ideal do you cling to? After hearing a colleague describe themselves as unionist, and experiencing my own fall from grace, union isn't what I choose to protect at all costs.  In fact, like many other institutions founded at the dawn of industry, unions and local boards are beginning to appear less and less able to deal effectively with our times.

I didn't become a teacher to support unions, I became a teacher to support educational excellence and hone my profession.  Protecting education means protecting educational workers, but protecting educational workers does not necessarily mean protecting education. I was initially hesitant to become active in my union because of their blanket coverage of all members, regardless of competence. The occupy movement and the radicalization of economics in the past few years pushed me into action; at least unions offered protection from this short sighted narcissism. So many people are happy to give away their rights in order to dream of being rich while being made serfs. My union offered me a political mechanism to fight that idiocy.

I don't join things easily, I tend to skepticism, but OSSTF claimed moral high ground on so many issues that I couldn't help but become a believer. What's not to like about an organization that claims democracy and is founded on the idea that wealth should be fairly divided and members should consider the common good before their own?

When times were good accounts were managed well.  Grievances were dealt with, expectations of the membership were minimal, people focused on the important work at hand. In the past year we've come face to face with a government that appears to have no moral centre whatsoever, and a public that is more than willing to be lied to in order to become incensed with us.  The resultant mess has me asking some hard questions about the antiquated organizations involved in our education system.

There is a lot of history tangled up in how we manage education in Ontario, and I don't think it's creating a transparent, representative system. We've got local boards that don't actual bargain with their employees anymore, we've got local unions that don't actually bargain for their members anymore, we've got a College of Teachers who got chucked into the mix the last time a psychotic government decided to play fast and loose with education, we've got a Minister of Education who has more in common with Mussolini than John A. MacDonald, and carnage across the province with strike days, almost strike days, crippled extracurriculars and frustrated citizens on all sides. If you think this has been well managed by any of the combatants involved, you must be crazy. I argue that this is the result of a tangled, historical organizational mess, and it's time to move Ontario's education system out of a Victorian mindset.

In what follows I'm considering alternatives that actually protect education workers (what we have now obviously does not), and puts the focus on our profession rather than the antiquated political structures around it.

Part 2: Behind The Times

The stumbling approach to this last round of bargaining suggests that unions are having real trouble dealing with twenty first century realities. From social media causing a surprise grassroots movement that bypassed provincial executive plans to a stubborn refusal to change their ancient communications habits, unions in general and mine in particular have looked like confused Victorian gentlemen at a rave.


Local boards, like union locals are in even more trouble.  They have been made redundant, looking on as the provincial ministry directly bargains with provincial union organizations. There is no local bargaining in Ontario any more. With so many vestigial political interests around the table it's no wonder that Ontario's education bargaining has been a mess this year. Perhaps it's time for a historical cleanup.

I'm now wondering what Ontario education would look like without local political interests like boards and unions, assuming that we can find other ways to protect this vital resource in a centrally bargained environment. The old players certainly aren't protecting quality of education, in this past round of bargaining they haven't done anything at all except watch as provincial heavy weights speak over their heads.

This questioning began when @banana29 shared this article that questions the value of unions in Ontario education.  If you can get past Wente's heavy handed right wing propaganda in the first few paragraphs, the piece asks some hard questions about the role of unions in maintaining status quo in an education system that struggles to keep up with our times. Her intent is to dismantle public education and infect it with market interests (it is the Globe & Mail), my intentions are quite different.

Part 3: Wente Article Response:

Technology In Education and institutional drag

Wente makes some  pretty simplistic arguments for technology in education. If you think Khan Academy is the future of education then you're about as pedagogically sophisticated as a donkey. Having said that, technological implementation in education has been slowed at every turn by boards and unions, both of whom have frantically told teachers not to use new communications mediums to communicate with and teach students.  Running at the speed of the slowest adopters of technology is no way to run a relevant education system.

Technology being used in classrooms lags years behind what students experience everywhere else, and doesn't begin to prepare students for the rapidly changing world they are graduating into.  Teachers struggle to engage students on antiquated software and hardware, and no one wants to consider what a teaching job beyond concrete walls looks like. It behooves the unions and boards to keep school in the classroom where the have a lock on how to manage education as a production line. Ask any teacher who has done elearning how their non-standard work hours become a real problem to both boards and unions.

Not only does this luddite thinking infect the classroom, but also the management of both unions and boards.  Communication with members remains firmly stuck in the last century. Video meetings? Shared online resources? Social media? These things are adopted hesitantly or actively discouraged by parochial thinking. Teachers using them then bypass local roadblocks because that is what modern communications are capable of. From unions trying to control a message to boards trying to limit student access to communications - information is flowing around these road blocks on smartphones and social media, yet they don't realize how irrelevant their control mechanisms have become.

Instead of encouraging teachers to experiment with new technology, local interests tend to parrot panicky, unfounded broadcast media ideas about them. We are ruled by ignorance and paranoia when it comes to technology in education. The question is, how do we create an education system that can experiment and advance at a reasonable rate without being slowed by the insular thinking of its slowest adopters?

Can you protect education without a union?

In spite of its shortcomings Wente's article did make me wonder, what would education look like in a future without a union/board system?  I speculate on this not as a means to dismantle, demean or weaken the profession. I am under no illusions, teaching needs to be protected from short sighted business-think, but after watching McGuinty's Liberals gut years of collective bargaining I wonder if unions are the right social mechanism to protect us anymore. Could education prosper and even improve without union/board paradigms?

Centralizing control is happening already. Modern communications will continue to force this change whether unions or boards like it or not.  If we're going to evolve from a parochial, historically restrained system to something adaptive and forward thinking, we need to think of a new way to organize and manage the vital social service that is education in Ontario.

Part 4: Education: an essential service

Vital is exactly what education is. A first rate education system means that all the other essential services (police, medical, fire) have less to do because the populace isn't feral and desperate. A properly run education system means the vast majority of the population comes closer to expressing their potential. It means that socioeconomic status isn't the prime breeder of crime and poor health; failure is less an excuse of circumstance. Good education means less people in jails, greater economic output and interested, active citizens powering our democracy. In this context, how could anyone not see education as an essential service?

Education should be declared an essential service. This automatically guarantees third party arbitrated contracts, which would mean that bargaining isn't the wild west that it is now, and governments couldn't simply bypass it with cynical, undemocratic laws like Bill 115. It would also mean that militant unions aren't necessary because the system in place would be implicitly fairly bargained. 

Arbitrated bargaining would also take the unionized target off teachers' backs and let them adopt a more professional aspect in the public eye. Education workers would still be protected, but the system itself would be the protection. Depending on militant unions hard bargaining with local boards didn't work and has evolved into unrepresentative (OECTA) or misrepresentative (OSSTF) provincial bargaining. Our process of bargaining is a broken, divisive, old fashioned habit that antagonizes the general public, vilifies our profession and makes hay for cynical governments.

Part 5: Freeing ourselves from history

local vs. provincial bargaining

When union locals used to bargain individually with their school boards each area's special interests were baked into contracts. This made sense because of Ontario's vast size and the unique and isolated nature of its many settlements. If you travel around Ontario now you'll see the same Justin Bieber haircut everywhere. Clinging to isolationist thinking in an information revolution is asinine. Communities are no longer isolated, they no longer need individual contracts.  If you don't believe me, believe union provincial executives who (foolishly I think) agreed to align all contracts in the province resulting in this past round of failed provincial negotiations.

The fictional professional association for education professionals
in Ontario (except it shouldn't be fictional and we shouldn't be
 running education on socialist ideals, it's a profession!)

If we can bargain provincially (and it appears we do), why not have an Ontario Educational Association (modeled on the Doctor's OMA) bring in elected representatives from across the province every four years to iron out a contract with the government while a neutral, third party arbitrator ensures the process is fair. This is a far less dramatic, adversarial process, but I think everyone in education (except the ones who profit from the fighting) would like to see less hurtful public drama and more focus on the profession itself.  

Unions themselves have made their locals irrelevant by focusing their own membership through isolated, politicized provincial leadership. The result has been confusion and a failure to represent member's interests. OECTA agrees to contracts without even asking its members, OSSTF has the rug pulled out from under it by a grassroots social media movement.  Unions have centralized power and are then astonished when their remote members aren't thrilled.

It's time to give up the idea of locally defined educational organizations, both boards and unions, and begin a process of creating a democratic, less politically tangled system of educational representation. This isn't so much a matter of amalgamating existing districts as it is a rethinking of how best to represent educational interests in the province. A system based on current cultural divisions (rural-natural, rural-agricultural, small town, suburban, urban) would certainly allow us to continue to address regional differences without carrying the weight of a redundant, regionally defined historical system.

how many public school systems do we need?

If we're trying to free ourselves from history, it wouldn't hurt to stop funding semi-private, religious schools that are only willing to serve a specific population. 

Once again, this made sense in Ontario a long time ago when Catholics and Protestants had to agree to live together, but Muslim, Hindu, atheist and every other stripe of religious belief must all wonder what this is all about when they first arrive in Ontario.  These people constitute the vast majority of new Ontarians, it's time to recognize that in a representative, equal for all public education system.

Part 6: Removing politically inflicted value in our education system

I've always had trouble with how unions favor (and reward) seniority over any other contribution to the profession; at best this is simplistic, at worst it encourages disengaged senior teachers to interact less as their careers mature (check out who is doing extra-curriculars in any school for confirmation of this).  We are one of the few professions that, as one colleague once put it, "have all the colonel level people sitting out of leadership positions, we're led by lieutenants."  This is entirely the result of union value theory, and it harms the profession.

The basic job of teaching, if grossly simplified, becomes a person doing minimal hours of work, with nothing value added, using the same lessons year in and year out. Ultimately this hurts the learning environment for everyone. Unions and boards protect the (small minority) of teachers who approach the profession in this appalling manner more than they do teachers who push boundaries and attempt positive change.  Status quo thinking defines most educational leadership.

We need to recognize all the ways that education workers add to the learning process. This usually falls short when management attempts to grossly simplify the work in order to quantify it. If we're in the job of marking students in creative, individualized ways, we have to do that for educators too, but too often teacher assessment is simplistic or made meaningless in order to simplify book keeping or to protect union members at all costs.

Leadership positions in teaching also need to be made meaningfully. Forty bucks a week doesn't cut it (yes, that's what many department heads get for management work in teaching).  I'd also want to recognize teachers who do extracurriculars, if not financially, then at least through minimizing their required duties. The teachers who do little else could do oncalls and caf duties, those that are knocking themselves out to make their schools a learning community shouldn't be ignored for it.

The desired result in all this would be competition for headships and extracurriculars (and administration positions) with top candidates selected.  You seldom see more than a single sacrificial person dropped into any of these jobs - not exactly the way to get the best candidates.  Lineups for leadership, coaching and non-classroom school activities would be a powerful way to move us forward.  It's sad year in year out hearing the teachers trying to run these things begging for people. 

There is a climate of apathetic mediocrity in our unionized system. Members tend to be indifferent to their union and uniformed as to their work situations. They are encouraged to do as much or as little as they please, knowing that the money will always increase; hardly an environment that fosters engagement and improvement. If we want to continue to focus on improvements in education, we should be considering what is needed to put education first, not what is needed to keep the status quo.

Conclusion

Protecting education means protecting education workers, but protecting education workers does not necessarily mean protecting education. It is vital that Ontario's public school system continue to improve its high standards and fight for relevancy in a rapidly changing world, but the old paradigm of this happening only on the back of unions and boards is dying; their failure is indicated by their inability to protect and support their members. 

A mandated, transparent, less politically charged, non-localized organizational structure would result in less drama and better representation for everyone involved. Advances in communication mean that we no longer need to think locally in geographic terms.  It would also remove the stigma of unionization from teachers and allow them to adopt a more professional aspect in the public eye.

Walmarting the profession to U.S. standards will result in U.S. standards. You'll end up with business wanting to intervene with Charter schools, which aren't really public at all.  Equality of access to education is vital to any democracy, Ontario citizens must not lose access to a fair, open, world class public education system.  Never suspect that a system with a for-profit middle-man will outperform a public system founded on excellence. You'd have to be an economic idiot (or con artist) to suggest that this is possible. 

It's vital that public education be protected from the short-term gain crowd. Unions have performed this function for many years, but in recent times, and like so many other institutions founded before our age of communication, they are being  bypassed by their own member's new-found ability to communicate directly with each other. 

We keep slipping into an inevitable future, and we're often only able to bring what we hold most dear to us across the threshold.  Many assumptions and traditions are slipping by the wayside as society and technology continue dancing at an increasing tempo.  If I have to cling to a belief and have it survive this transformative time, it isn't unionism, localized education or even a political belief, it's an axiomatic declaration about the power of public education:

Equally accessible, professionally driven and maximized public education is vital to our future success. It allows everyone to realize their potential regardless of their socio-economic circumstances and creates a population that is capable of responsible democracy, meaningful economic output and reasoned problem solving; without it we are lost. The society that protects and enhances public education is the society that produces active citizens whose eyes are wide open, and who are capable of dealing with the challenges technological, social and personal, that we will all be facing in the difficult decades ahead.

I would protect that belief before I worried about keeping the politics of tradition. I would have my profession managed and led on the basis of excellence and engagement rather than nineteenth century, socialist, union ideals. By protecting and encouraging excellence, we could rejuvenate Ontario's tattered education system under a reasoned, unpoliticized, professional ideal.

Stellar work without a bonus?

One of the reasons I love teaching is that the job isn't about making a fat, old, white guy a bit richer than he already is. Every other job I've had has been inherently limited by this focus; the only reason you're there is to make a one percenter a little bit richer.  That raison d'etre infects everything about working in a money focused business. That I hear people refer to this as 'real work' always makes me laugh; it's real work in the same way that prostitution is real honest work - you lay yourself down for the money.  The argument that working for money adds real vigor and toughness to a workplace is nonsense. What it actually does is create fearful, simpering employees who believe that sucking up to their boss is more important than the work they do.

Ideas like excellence, originality, creativity and even work ethic are pretty much irrelevant.  If they can make more money by tossing out the hardest working, most creative, excellent employee, they will (and do - especially in the short term gains world we live in now). The only time businesses produce excellence is when small groups within the organization are protected from the pimps who are running it. That doesn't happen often. What usually happens is that businesses take the excellence and research they need from publicly funded universities.

That infectious economic thinking has blighted Ontario education thanks to Laurel Broten's story telling around fiscal responsibility.  Listening to the tragic prostitutes in the private sector telling us to accept their shabby circumstances because of economic necessity is purely the result of Ontario Liberal Party spin, and it has demonized my profession as a result.

Education: a reason to be optimistic about the future!

Teaching in Ontario has achieved real excellence in the past decade. We are truly world class, one of the very best. What made this happen? Bonuses? Financial incentives? No teacher ever got into teaching to make money. No teacher has ever gotten a cash payout for doing their job at a world class level (we'll leave that for all those excellent bankers out there). If financial reward isn't the point of performing at such an outstanding level, what is?

Public education is one of the most powerful social movements we've ever created. As Ray Kurzweil states his five reasons to be optimistic about the future, we are more educated than we've ever been before. We pay ten times what we used to into education as a society, but our post secondary graduation has increased by 280 times. We are making better use of the talent of our people; that is the crowning achievement of public education: social efficiency on a previously unheard of scale. The irony is that this very socialist mechanism, designed to realize the potential of all members of our society, also drives economic growth.

I'm back at school again tomorrow, dropped in to the political maelstrom of a forced contract, listening to blathering idiots whining about how much teachers get paid and how little they do. I'm tempted to get stingy about my work, but I don't think I can. I didn't get into this profession for the politics or the economics, I got into it because it's one of the finest possible reasons anyone could have for going to work; to help human beings recognize their potential. 

What I do is the opposite of the pyramid scheme most people find themselves working at each day; it's a good in itself, economically, socially, personally. I can't help but want to over achieve, no matter what the lowered expectations around me might suggest.

Five Big Wishes For 2013

2012 has been a challenging year for me as a teacher, a Canadian and an online citizen. My five big wishes for 2013 range from recognizing digital literacy to changing the way we run organizations, but the underlying theme becomes obvious:  technology is changing how we interact with and influence each other.

A flattening mediascape means everyone can publish information. From wikileaks to Anonymous to social media induced political upheaval, technology is unhinging how societies control their members. Organizations that used to control their message through limited access, broadcast media are stumbling while whole populations are discovering that they can now speak to more people than multinationals could in television commercials only twenty years ago.

Here are my five big wishes for these interesting times in which we live:

We stop wishing for digital literacy and actually do something coordinated about it.

Students flounder in this strange new world as much as anyone else.  We've not been very organized about trying to get them up to speed. A Digital Skills Continuum needs to be integrated into curriculum. We need to stop putting our faith in myths like digital natives and BYOD and begin to intelligently address the revolution we're in the middle of.  We do a real disservice to students with the half-assed way in which we deliver digital literacy.

As a teacher I'm worried not only for students I see being graduated into a time of radical change with virtually no preparation from their education, but also for the teachers who seem intent on patently ignoring these changes to both their own detriment and those of their students.  If I could get Ontario education leadership to stop playing politics and get back to, you know, education, this is what I'd be begging them to begin taking seriously.

Listening to business types begging us to graduate people who are useful in a digitally enhanced workplace is panic inducing! I really wish we'd start taking this seriously and build it into curriculum so technologically illiterate teachers couldn't just ignore it.

Ontario politicians stop using teachers in their shabby games.

Watching the Ontario Liberal Party thrashing around in its death throes was been startling, getting black eyes from their their dishonest, manipulative politics has been very disheartening. Ontario has one of the cheapest, highest performing education systems in the G20 and performs favorably when education costs per GDP are concerned with even many third world countries. We don't pay much for the fantastic results we get. Watching politicians (who get to magically become my boss when they have no background in what I do at all)  heap lies on their mistakes and vilify my profession has been very demoralizing.

I'm sorry that I let the divisive nature of this battle turn me on Ontario Catholic teachers. I think the dual nature of our public/Catholic boards in Ontario must enrichen our educational process somehow, and it isn't breaking the bank as many might have you believe. If we're this good for this little, just leave us alone to do our work; go play your shabby political games by yourselves.

Perhaps begin by not bailing out giant multinational banks and lousy car makers.

Teachers vocalize how difficult their job is

Part of the political angle played against teachers is that they are overpaid and under-worked. This plays to an uneducated idiot's view of the profession - I'm surprised by how many people swallow this, and it isn't helped by many teachers not saying anything in response.

I don't doubt that there are a few that do as little as they can while milking the system, but in my experience these people are a tiny minority. The vast majority of teachers I know put in sixty hour plus weeks while in school, and still spend hours a week working on preparation and research when not actually in class. 

I recently did the math, if you look at the time I put into my job, I make about $15/hour... and I need two degrees, first aid qualifications, a clean driver's license, a clean criminal record and years of experience to make that much. Starting teachers make less than minimum wage if they are also doing the requisite extra curriculars and extra class work.

Watch any teacher who is active online and you'll see how much time they spend collaborating on lessons and building good pedagogy. If we judged every profession by the 5% who bottom feed, no one would be looking very good.

I wish more teachers would open their mouths and explain to friends and family what it is they do. The chance to spread this information far and wide lies at your fingertips.

No more charter school American education consultants brought up here at great expense in order to tell us how to do something we're already much better than them at

I've been begging Canadians to put away their be-polite mantra and recognize what we are doing well.  Apparently being proud about hockey is as far as we're willing to go.  Watching (evidently) cash strapped boards throwing out thousands of dollars to push bankrupt American philosophy makes me financially, culturally and educationally sick. If we do something well, recognize it and bring in the local talent that is making us world class. I'd love to see more Canadian content in the educational conferences I'm attending. I'd love to see more Canadian educators publishing and presenting on what we are doing; the rest of the world would benefit from it... especially the Americans... even the Charter school ones.

Radical transparency in our institutions... all of our institutions.

Social media is wreaking havoc on the status quo. Organizations used to a hierarchy based on one sided media transmission are floundering. The signal is no longer owned by the few rich, anyone can now publish information to the world.

An active democratic population isn't what most of these organizations want though. They are far happier with an apathetic electorate that hands them sufficient power every few years and then does what they are told. This came home to me not just with the Ontario Liberal nonsense, but with my own union's nonsense too. It's a tough thing to have two organizations that are supposed to be representing you instead threatening you for exercising your voice.

After making mistakes that would make any individual blush, these 'leaders' are incapable of a simple apology, which only indicates the arrogance still found in the crumbling halls of power. Many of these people in positions of power still feel that they are superior human beings to the rest of us. I'm all about the healthy dose of humility coming their way.

The democratization of media is forcing a democratization in organizations too. I tried to do this in my union and was demonized for it. At least the inevitability of progress is on my side with this one. With individuals having more voice than ever before, the idea that organizations can force their members into a lockstep, parroting the company/union/government line is an old idea whose time has passed. 

Democracy is messy, loud and boisterous; forcing a single voice in this noise is factory thinking.  As is said in Radical Transparency, "Radical transparency means you don't have to stand up and read a script, you don't have to wonder how the numbers will play out on a new policy... you know your beliefs and you act on them."  

Leaders who are managers and don't stand for anything shouldn't be leading. I'm looking for people who believe in what they say, and say it consistently   Clever people who think they can manipulate people to their own ends? Those people have an uphill struggle in a flattening mediascape.  The leader who is transparent and direct in their communications? That person need never fear many voices, their transparency is their strength.

Wrap Up

What I'm really wishing for is a digitally literate population who makes effective use of our new ability to speak loudly to each other without being pushed to distraction  by it.  The weak link in our current digital maelstrom are the people using it.  If we could manage:

• Social media that respects and empowers its users without hypocrisy
•  Digital tools that clarity and amplify their users rather than obfuscate and distract them
• Technology companies that respect user effectiveness, and aren't solely purposed to get in the way
•  Educational systems that produce technically and socially competent students, especially in the middle of a digital revolution

 we'd be able to begin to exercise the real power of a global village.  Classrooms that range across the world, world wide democratic voices empowered by free information, transparent organizations that prevent abuse by being only what they are, publicly... that's all I'm wishing for in 2013.

Radical Transparency

Mr Universe Knows!

I just read an email from our union lamenting the lack of control when it comes to presenting our contract information to us.  In the 36 hours OSSTF took to put together a two page comparison of our deal with the one the Catholic teachers had land on them, details leaked to the press and were already flowing around social media before that.

When we finally got 'official' information it was formatted entirely in comparison to the OECTA deal - we don't get to see actual details, we get a selection of facts designed to look better than the pile of manure OECTA provincial executive signed off on for their members (none of whom have ratified it) last summer.  I'm having trouble seeing the democracy through the political machinations.

Watching the government, the forth estate and our union trying to manipulate the flood of information in an increasingly flat mediascape is rather tragic to watch.  These lumbering dinosaurs try to breach holes or spin facts, only be swamped by crowd-sourced social media.  They want to harness the crowd for their own ends only to find their carefully laid plans designed to manipulate results thrown into the weeds.

We might have evolved into Web2.0, but it is also causing a more democratic means of understanding the world and ushering in a Democracy2.0 wherein people have access to more information sources and are no longer held captive by traditional organizations and the big media that served them.  The Arab Spring, Occupy, Anonymous and many other social movements are happening because governments and corporations don't own the signal any more.  Anyone with an internet connection can publish to the world, find information and create community with like minded people.

How is a political organization to survive in a time where they can't control their own message?  Perhaps by putting out a message that doesn't need controlling in order to be accepted.  This would mean un-spinning and de-lawyerizing your organization and simply being direct and consistent with what you stand for.  Being accessible and open about communicating wouldn't hurt either - if you're working behind closed doors, you're not getting the point..

Your political party shouldn't be trying to win elections, it should have a clear vision of what it stands for and then never waiver from that goal in word and deed.  If you're consistent, radical transparency and the flattening mediascape doesn't frighten you, it empowers you.  If you're a shifty, manipulative organization that is used to getting its own way by having direct access to big media, your days are numbered.

Radical transparency means you don't have to stand up and read a script, you don't have to wonder how the numbers will play out on a new policy, and you never have to come back to an interview and say, wow, we really screwed that up.  You don't have spin doctors telling you what to think about issues, you know your beliefs and you act on them.

As insane as I think Tim Hudak's tea party Conservatives are, at least they are consistent in their insanity.  The NDP are also consistent in their left winged-ness.  The Liberal party (whom I used to vote for and was considering membership in after I became a Canadian citizen) are something unique to Canada, but in trying to be centrist they have ended up being worse than the right wing bullies; a manipulative party that only stands for being in power, consistency be damned.

I'm having trouble being unionist at a time when my union seems to be playing the same kind of Liberal game, of speaking out of both sides of their faces.  One moment the offered contract is a disaster and we're ordered to go on work action; the union is overjoyed at the crowd sourced support they are seeing online and myself and others are more than happy to vocally convey the unfairness of the situation.  In the next we are suddenly accepting a similar contract.  Communication has stopped and online voices have turned from supportive to hurt and confused.

I'm a creature of this flattened mediascape.  I cannot understand or condone the backroom politics or spin.  I don't want to be manipulated, I don't want to be treated like an idiot who can't know details, I want the facts, and if I'm not given them, they are easily enough found online.

Hostage Situation

 I'm being held hostage by an authoritarian government.  These fascists (they certainly don't believe in democracy) have demanded that I surrender my rights and work under their terms.  In this impossible environment the people who speak for me have begun a legal battle on this government's attack on my fundamental Charter freedoms.  The process of overturning that legislation will take time, but it will eventually be overturned and will result in the end of this nasty, self-serving government and their illegal legislation.

My rep has also tried to bargain a deal to protect me in the meantime.  The bargain was made with a Bill 115 Magnum aimed at our heads, so a fair deal wasn't exactly the result of the process.  

There was no negotiation, it was more like begging for our lives.  This government was happy to turn the public against us in order to further their agenda.

If you're held hostage you look for the basics, you don't start asking for more than you had. It's a moment of desperation.

If we don't take the deal our rep has scraped together for us, this authoritarian regime will put us in an even worse situation because it has legislated our rights away.  In either case we will no longer have anything like we had.  We either lose a lot and keep a bit because our rep got some concessions out of the regime, or we end up in their even worse MoU prison, either way, we lose.

When someone has a gun to your head, do you start moralizing with them?

So do we vote for a contract that strips us of years of concessions because this government would rather flush money down poorly managed ehealth experiments, semi-privatized air ambulances, quarrelsomeness wind power and on again/off again power plants, or do we go to the wall and burn it all down because this is just wrong?  

If we don't vote for this, something even worse is imposed on us anyway.  This is divisive no matter how you play it.  Junior teachers lose their grid increases, senior teachers (who are the majority) don't lose their retirement sick-day payouts.  Some boards may OK this, others may not.  This isn't going to create labour peace, it's going to create an uneven mess across the province.

In the meantime that fight to overturn the regime continues.  In a year and a half, we could very well be standing over the ruins of Bill115 (and the Ontario Liberal dream of being the government) and be able to bargain a fair deal under Canadian law; we can't do that right now.  Whether we vote for this or not, our agreements will be in tatters because the Ontario Liberals and their Tea-party-Hudak lapdogs have pushed through this ridiculous, undemocratic legislation.

Do you go along with what you know is wrong hoping to protect you and your family as best you can or do you say, "NO, this is wrong, I will not be a party to it"?  This isn't an easy decision.

The lack of clarity, both moral and professional in this makes this a very uncertain, difficult decision to make.  Unfortunately I'm a bloody minded kind of fellow; I fear I'll vote for what's right, whatever the cost, politics be damned.

PRIVATE TEACHER, PUBLIC JOB

A Modest Ontario Education Proposal

The politics of teaching are on my mind lately.  Ontario has financial issues, and cutbacks seem certain.  I've previously talked about how good Ontario's education system is, the frustration of being an active educator in this political climate, and, most recently, the simplicity of the salary grid.  I've asked hard questions about Ontario's historical assumptions, and I think I haven't been entirely one sided in the process.

Being active in my union, I fear that I don't tow the line as much as I should.  Being a department head, I fear that I don't tow my employer's line as much as I should.  The sidey-ness of this whole thing frustrates me.  Why this is an adversarial process in which one side tries to take as much as possible from the other, to the point of hurting them if possible, in order to score political points.  It all seems very inefficient to me.  Along with the inefficiency there is the hypocrisy.  How we can expect, even demand, that students be rational, collaborative and unselfish when adults seem so intent on doing the opposite?

I'd like to make a modest proposal.  Now, this modest proposal won't win you political points in media that cares more about emotional confrontation than truth, and it won't inflame issues by fabricating lies; this proposal is all about fixing problems, and working collaboratively to do it.  If you want to look revolutionary, this won't do it for you.  If you just want to hate on something ideologically then this will not suit your style.

This modest proposal is for mature, collegial people who begin with the premise that everyone involved in developing an economically sustainable education system with the highest standards of excellence isn't going to throw these noble goals away for their own benefit at first opportunity.

This modest proposal won't play to invented deadlines and the fictional drama that ensues.  It asks for an honest, transparent assessment of what is financially available for sustainable education in Ontario, and then it asks the parties involved to look at how they can maintain the levels of excellence currently achieved while meeting those transparent and accurate financial goals.  People playing games about the value of education need not apply.  If you think quality education isn't important to the prosperity of Ontario, then you're an idiot; it's important that we do this well.

In this proposal, unions don't protect older teachers at all costs into the largest possible retirement they can get, we consider everyone involved in the system fairly.  We have to consider that no education system is sacred and the end result is focused on fairness and excellence.  This proposal will consider what has worked world wide in terms of meaningful teacher assessment (because OCT sure isn't it), and all parties will create a better way forward with it.

The first part of this proposal is a voluntary freeze for the next school year while the ministry, boards and unions sit down in a collaborative manner, agree on the finances, and then move to meet them.  If the union wants to offer early buyouts for expensive, senior teachers in order to free up positions for lower paid, new teachers, at great savings to the province, then this should be considered.  Putting money into the hands of people across Ontario isn't a crime, especially if it helps them retire more independently.  If the ministry wants to restructure the grid in order to encourage excellence in teaching rather than stubbornly holding to a seniority only focus, then the union should join them in creating a grid that recognizes the many ways that teachers contribute to and improve their profession - just showing up to work shouldn't get you within 5% of maximum salary on any reasonable grid.  If, in the process, senior teachers who do nothing other than show up and go home suddenly find themselves making $15,000 a year less, I'm ok with that, and any sane thinking person should be too.

The historical assumptions around public and semi-private religious schools that receive public funding should be removed, this isn't 1850.  If we are really worried about the bottom line, trying to run 4 public systems is a needless waste of money.  If people want specialized schooling, private schools eagerly await their cash.  Religious expression has been welcomed in every school I've worked at, this isn't a removal of religious impetus from schooling, it's an inclusive embracing of it.  If the province is in dire straits, nothing should be sacred other than ensuring the most inclusive, best possible education we can provide.

A clear eyed, honest assessment would allow us to restructure education in Ontario in a rational, economically appropriate manner with a clear focus on excellence.  Old habits die hard, but if we can shed them, there is no reason why unions can't do their job of protecting members without having to compulsively over protect to the point where the incompetent take advantage of the situation.  There is no reason why the ministry can't focus on producing the best education possible instead of being a political puppet to whichever government has the reigns.  There is no reason why boards can't facilitate the collaborative relationship between these two educational poles instead of being used as a scapegoat between them.

Step one?  Remove the panic of an artificial deadline.  All sides agree to meaningful and progressive dialogue on what needs to happen.  Strikes aren't threatened, legislation isn't threatened, this isn't a threatening environment, it's a collaborative one.  If students are expected to be collaborative and honest, why on Earth are adults acting this way?  It's not very flattering to anyone, and it reeks of hypocrisy when administration and teachers demand it in school next year, from children.