Page Content
The following are excerpts from newspapers throughout Alberta. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the ATA.
Bill 2 would empower children as complainants
Paul Faris is the chair of the Home School Legal Defence Association of Canada. When parents home school, he argues, there’s no clear line between school lessons and dinner table conversation. To him, Section 16 [of Bill 2] amounts to censorship of private family speech. "We’re hearing from people saying ‘I really don’t want my children being taught to respect religions that I don’t like,’ "he says. "Parents have a right to communication to their own children in their own homes. This is about the government not trusting parents and trying to extend political correctness into homes." If Bill 2 actually did what Faris and the other home-schoolers claim, I’d agree with them. … But Bill 2 doesn’t do that. It can’t. Alberta’s Human Rights Act was specifically amended in 2009, via the controversial Bill 44, to enshrine parental rights. … Could home-schooling parents who explicitly indoctrinate their kids with homophobic hate and religious intolerance face sanction by the human rights commission? Hypothetically … But in practice, since the commission’s investigations are complaint-driven, it’s extremely unlikely that any home-schooling parent would ever face its proceedings—unless, of course, their own children filed a formal complaint.
—Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal, March 22, 2012
Struggles of young graduates not unique to teaching profession
A couple of years ago, a colleague’s son got his teaching degree from one of B.C.’s top universities, whereupon he immediately discovered the truth about the job market. There was none. … The real struggle for him and thousands like him is a demographic fight, not a fight between union and government. He is young: the established teaching corps is old, and getting older. Meanwhile, the shrinking provincial market for teachers can’t absorb the waves of new teachers like him. … This age problem isn’t unique to the BCTF [British Columbia Teachers’ Federation] and teaching. The same phenomenon can be found in other industries, including my own. More and more seniors are not going gentle into that good night, while the young have to postpone their day in the sun. But the young caught in the fight between BCTF and the government seem doubly burdened. You desperately want to work while your older colleagues strike, while the government refuses to lower class sizes that might bring you work.
—Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun, March 20, 2012
E-books an alternative to Wi-Fi?
Give them books! Make the kids talk to each other! Let them use their imaginations! That’s the gist of online comments under a recent news story about Wi-Fi on rural Alberta school buses. A pilot project that will connect commuting students in certain areas to the Internet has been condemned and praised since it was recently announced by the province. … Some of the children in one of the pilot project areas reportedly travel up to two hours each way. That’s four hours a day. It would be foolish for educators, students and parents to not consider ways of making that time more useful. … Naysayers point to books as an educational solution to the tedium of the bus trip, and few would disagree with the value of reading. Perhaps instead of wireless Internet, schools could experiment with loaner e-readers that students could check out and load with books and Internet articles at school or home. They could then read on the bus without an Internet connection. This would eliminate the blips and beeps of Wi-Fi connected devices that can distract from reading, and may be cheaper than outfitting school buses with Wi-Fi (which will cost $210,000 in a pilot area near Medicine Hat).
—Jeremy Klaszus, Calgary Herald, March 19, 2012
