Our school systems are so last century

Pity the poor parents in British Columbia. For the past three days, their children’s teachers have been off the job and, although they’re expected back Thursday, the end of labour strife is not in sight. The teachers’ union is demanding a 15-per-cent raise. The government has offered zero. The union is run by left-wing militants who sound like they’ve come straight from a Marxist-Leninist workers’ rally.

Relations between the government and the teachers union in B.C. have been toxic for as long as anyone can remember. The teachers, too, are trapped in this mess, trying to do more and more with what seems like less and less. As John Watson, one young teacher, said in a letter to The Vancouver Sun, “We cannot face the 21st century with a 19th-century education model and 20th-century technology.”

Mr. Watson nailed it. Our schools are run like a bunch of factories from the early industrial age. They have rigid work rules, negotiated for the benefit of management and labour (but not the parents or the kids). Seniority reigns, everyone has job security for life, and a distant, top-heavy bureaucracy decrees exactly what gets taught and how. Students of wildly varying talents proceed in lockstep down the assembly line until the system spits them out.

Globe and Mail.com