By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON December 9.2010 This from a parent that does not want her name used for fear that her children will be treated unfairly by their teachers – how did we get to a situation where teachers and parents are on different sides of an argument with the kids stuck in the middle. Sounds like a messy, emotional, irrational divorce doesn’t it.
“And btw the teachers are telling the students it’s the union not them AND they will be teaching units that students will miss if they attend the walk-out. Always nice that the teachers have the leverage to walk out when they want but not the other way around. No wonder students are frustrated.”
Our parent, a well-educated, informed and successful business person actively involved in the evolution of our community goes on to say:
In a free society anyone can stand up any time anywhere and say what they think. Can parents who want to talk about the plans teachers have to walk out of their classrooms really do that in Burlington?
“Someone needs to remind teachers that with e-learning their days are numbered. Teachers count on the fact that parents need “baby-sitters” for their kids so they need the education to happen within walls that keep the students safe. With e-learning it won’t take someone long to figure out how to fill the gap between child care, socializing, tutoring, education and bring them all together. Only the best educators will be in demand – the rest can go retire.”
Our parent with the post graduate degree continues: “Another bee in my bonnet – the latest trend by teachers – the students mark each other’s work since the teachers don’t want to spend their evenings marking (guess that counts as extra-curricular).
And that was where this parent left it adding: “Please don’t use my name, I don’t want it to impact our two kids.”
OK – off my soapbox. Thanks for letting me vent.
Our Burlington, a newspaper on a web site, allows any reader to respond instantly. The response we got from a person we presume to be a teacher elicited the response above from a parent with two young people in high school.
“If I can respond in a civil manner to the comment on your article I will – but right now her comment “we have agreed to a wage freeze due to a situation we didn’t create” is just far too annoying. They certainly weren’t offering to help when the rest of us in the private sector were struggling from 2009 to 2011. They were nicely protected by their collective agreement.”
There will be more in the way of comment.
Our children are being taught under a unionized environment, unions are used in auto sector etc, but we are not building trucks here, we are raising children.Hopefully parents can teach their children the importance of values and priorities. This is the next generation of entrepreneurs and they won’t be to interested in unions but more interested in creating ang growing their businesses and hopefully building our economy.
We got this from Casey Cosgrove’s FAcebook response:
“You know what the moral of the story is for me here Pepper? – that even ‘your parent, a well-educated, informed and successful business person actively involved in the evolution of our community’ can be tremendously narrow-minded, and ‘out loud’ too. Im not thrilled with the actions of the union in any way, shape, or form, and I have some kids I am coaching that are very hurt by these sanctions, but I just can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t at least recognize both sides to an issue .”