Page Content
Ladies and gentlemen, I have returned from the Inspiring Education symposium and, after listening to Honourable John Manley, PC, OC, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, I am a man with a mission. Chief Chief Manley painted an alarming picture of the precipitous decline of Canadian education in PISA rankings, but promised the assistance of Canadian leading corporate executives in improving education. Manley promised that the country’s business elite will be springing to the rescue, offering benighted educators guidance out of their current crisis of mediocrity (http://on.fb.me/1c5nbgc).
It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether corporate Canada intends to take over education or merely offer helpful direction from the side. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the Chief Executives will soon be here.
And I for one welcome Chief Chief Manley and our new corporate overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted teacher who possesses a master’s degree in business administration, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their classrooms of 50-plus students because, as we were told, teacher quality matters—class size doesn’t. I could also assist in administering the “performance pay” system being advocated by the Council of Chief Executives in a recently commissioned report written, as Manley enthusiastically pointed out, by a genuine teacher! (http://bit.ly/1eGD4N9)
In his address to the educationally inspired, the Chief Chief excoriated Canadian complacency in matters of school performance. He questioned how a country that “will experience a collective meltdown” if Canada’s men’s hockey team fails to win gold at the Sochi Olympics could possibly tolerate an education system that ranks 13th in the world in math (http://bit.ly/1d6glHo). And Manley needs to be taken seriously on this point—after all, he apparently knows his hockey (even if he is not aware that in the nine previous Olympic competitions since 1980, the Canadian men’s team has placed first only twice and yet the country has survived—probably thanks to the performance of the women’s team).
But I am confident that, like our public education system, Canada’s men can scramble to the top of the podium and, if not, I am sure Manley and his fellow chief executives will have sound advice to offer our hockey stars and their coaches to ensure improved results in the future. (Spoiler alert—think performance pay.)
Incidentally, there are other areas where Canada is clearly underperforming and could benefit from the intervention of Manley and his team of 150 top CEOs. For example, according to an international survey of sexual satisfaction conducted by Durex, a leading British condom manufacturer, Canada ranks only 10th in the world, falling behind countries such as Nigeria, Mexico, India and even—gasp—the United States (http://bit.ly/1bPxfiQ). Other rankings suggest that we are even worse at sex than we are at math (http://bit.ly/NfBQix). Clearly, this is the area demanding the personal attention of Canada’s business elite—a problem to be solved one woman and one man at a time (or possibly more than one—whatever floats yer boat) until Canada assumes its rightful position on top of the world. (Spoiler alert—think performance pay, and remember, apparently size doesn’t matter here, either.)
And having addressed Canadians’ math, hockey and sexual deficiencies, perhaps the Canadian Council of Chief Executives will turn its attention to, oh, I don’t know—how about the abysmal performance of Canadian business in fostering innovation? In the 32 years that Statistics Canada has been keeping records, Canadian business has had zero growth in multi-factor productivity, the key measure of innovation (http://bit.ly/1jblMMf). Furthermore, the accounting and consulting firm Deloitte reports that Canadian private-sector firms’ research and development (R&D) investments equal just 1 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP), less than half of what U.S. companies spend on R&D. And on a per-worker basis, Canadian companies invest only 65 per cent as much as U.S. firms on new machinery and equipment and 53 per cent as much on information and communication technology (ICT) (http://bit.ly/1dTjizn). But there is a silver lining to all this: in a slide presented by Chief Chief Manley, Canadian businesses reported that they were having very little trouble finding scientists and researchers, the folks who actually have exemplary “21st-century skills.” This is probably because our businesses aren’t really looking for them.
Getting back to the point, improving education performance is a complex undertaking and I suppose the Canadian Council of Chief Executives could actually collaborate with teachers and the organizations representing them. Together, business and the profession could work to ensure that teachers have the supports they need to foster student learning in a way that will address emerging challenges facing Canadians as global citizens. Then again, when as a Canadian chief executive you make about 171 times what the average Canadian does, it’s easy to conclude that you are at least 171 times smarter and don’t actually need to waste your time talking to anyone else (http://huff.to/1d6yrsW). So instead, there you stand, Chief Chief Manley, Canada’s capitalist answer to Vladimir Putin (albeit with fewer visible man-nipples), a corporate colossus ready to command.
I am a man with a mission and I await your instructions, sir. I know with your guidance and the proper motivation (spoiler alert—think performance pay), I can get those damned teachers to do better. ❚
Dennis Theobald is associate executive secretary of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. He does have an MBA (and the lanyard to prove it) and is not afraid of selling out, if the price is right. He wrote this after the women’s hockey team won gold but before the men did.
