The Editor,
I have been a high school science teacher in Coquitlam for 10 years.
I had a great deal of respect for the teaching profession while I was in high school in the early nineties. I believe at that time that the vast majority of the public shared my respect. I chose this profession because I was inspired to become a teacher by my own high school science teachers around 1993.
I used all of my electives to take science courses and I experienced a flood of knowledge about the world around us. A cycle began whereby the more I learned, the more questions I had and the more I wanted to learn. The cycle has grown somewhat exponentially and continues in me to this day. I feel everyone has the potential to start this type of cycle and once it has started, it is like an engine that gets more powerful with every revolution. The joy I find in teaching is when I can jumpstart and/or feed into this cycle in my students.
I enjoy my job and I do believe I have had a positive influence on some students' lives. I have had to work very hard to get into this profession and have incurred significant student loans in the process. During this time, I have seen a deliberate and systematic attack on my profession by the BC Liberals in the provincial government. It started while Christy Clark was education minister and the teacher contract was unconstitutionally stripped in my first year of teaching. Her new funding model for education has led to a constant attrition and underfunding from that point on. My class sizes have risen consistently and I have had more and more special needs students.
Sadly, this government is taking us in the wrong direction. I see far too many similarities between British Columbia and George Orwell's society called Oceania in his novel, '1984'. Oceania is a society ruled by a government that uses 'doublespeak' to control the minds of the population. Doublespeak enables the speaker to hold simultaneously contradictory beliefs while saying one thing and doing the opposite. In Oceania, the Ministry of Peace supports perpetual war and the Ministry of Truth creates propaganda and rewrites history.
Here, in B.C., we have the Ministry of Education and here are some examples that scream doublespeak. 1) The government has said they have been 'negotiating' with teachers...they have clearly done the opposite. 2) While under pressure, the Liberals finally agreed to appoint a 'mediator' at the last minute...but this mediation is a sham with predetermined outcomes. 3) Now that Christy Clark is premier, she is touting the 'Education Improvement Fund'...this fund is actually the result of a Supreme Court penalty to her unconstitutional contract stripping that occurred in my first year of teaching. This is like getting a speeding ticket and then claiming the payment is a donation to the police! Lastly, in 2001, around the time I began teaching, the BC Liberal platform specifically stated as their No. 1 vision that they would create a 'top notch public education system' that is the 'envy of the world'
It is apparent that the teachers of B.C. have been the unwilling subjects of a 10 year long joke with a terrible punch line.
What bothers me the most, is the way the BC Liberals have gone out of their way to degrade the entire teaching profession. My colleagues and I have constantly been belittled and bullied to the point where it has affected how the entire profession is seen in the eyes of the public. The profession no longer gets the respect it had when I chose to become a teacher. Teachers deserve respect and it is time for the BC Liberal provincial government to show it!
Edward Csuka
Terry Fox teacher
