Today there is a crazy blizzard blowing through Nova Scotia, but there is a political shit-storm brewing in the legislature. The Liberal leader Stephen McNeil wants the legislature opened up this evening during the blizzard so they can push through legislation forcing a contract onto the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, which has been on "Work to Rule" action since December.
Craig Paisley/CBC
I wrote this to the Liberal Party:
Dear Liberal Party members,
I have been teaching in the HRSB for almost a decade now, in the Junior High level. We have reached a crisis point. I challenge any MLA to come into Fairview Junior High, where I work, and observe the needs that we try in vain to meet every day. I am tired and disillusioned. Teachers have been going above and beyond our duties for years, while being told through administrative channels that we are never doing enough. It's become an absurdist inside joke now. When I heard the words "Education Reform" during your campaign, I admit, I was cautiously optimistic, thinking that finally people are seeing the importance a quality education system, but I am now loosing faith in party politics.
I have to thank you for this, because it has become a blessing in disguise! The blindness, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the state is driving interest alternative political and economic models that will make the old models obsolete. The theatricality the of the political football game is more concerned with perception, deception and distraction than with solving serious economic problems. The message I am getting from your party is that we cannot afford quality education right now, we are under austerity measures. Your education reform ideas have turned out to be uninspired and non-innovative, spewing out more of the same doctrine of reductionist goals to improve math and reading scores.
Kids care less and less about extrinsic motivations like grades. They are ready, willing and able to learn new technological skills and question the destructive philosophical assumptions of our culture. They don't want to feel herded through giant industrialized testing factories. The economy is changing dramatically and we need to offer our youth a fighting chance. They need technological and entrepreneurial skills, as well as the capacity to think critically and creatively in order to collaborate in a thriving local economy. I would plead with you to reconsider your legislative coercion, but I have no faith in your sense of values.
Andrew Hennebury
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