BCTF Will Continue To Call the Shots in BC Education 

(This essay was published Dec 10 in the Vancouver Sun's blog, "The Report Card")

The Avison Report clearly illustrates how the current BC College of Teachers is dysfunctional to the fulfillment of its mandate.

Even if the BC Teachers’ Federation would agree to any concessions, or even if it is unwillingly dragged in to a different future relationship with the BCCT, the teachers’ union will likely remain unchastened and unbowed.  The BCTF’s political and union agendas will continue.

The attitude that the BCTF sees itself as THE boss in BC education has been borne out by several recent statements from BCTF Headquarters — as IF the BCTF is the parent to whom children must come.  This is an attitude of grandiose self-appointed superiority!

In a CBC interview President Lambert said that in a forthcoming meeting with the Minister of Education she will ask why the BCTF was not contacted about these three cases as revealed in the Report.  My inference here is that the BCTF feels this was a negotiable issue between the Ministry and the BCTF.  

The BCTF just doesn’t get it, does it?  After a certain point, some things are just NOT negotiable!

Avison made this point in the Report.  After some rather blatant delay and waffling in a child pornography case, Avison wrote about this inappropriate behavior: “With respect, this response acknowledges that the member who didn't get it right the first time wouldn't get it right the second time either.

"Why this was considered an acceptable response is, at best, puzzling,"

A regular reader to this blog, DLM, also picked up on this haughty attitude: “… why does the president of the BCTF believe that the minister of education should contact the BCTF regarding the specific cases rather than the college who are the regulatory body responsible for certification?  I would like an explanation on Ms Lambert's comments as to why she believes that the BCTF should have been contacted on this issue.”

A further instance of arrogance came up in a recent interview with News 11:30: "We are left kind of perplexed as to what the intention of the report is and why it's been released without any consultation with us."  http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/154786–report-bc-teachers-college-is-dysfunctional

I’ve written in other essays that the BCTF has, by stealth and intimidation, acquired the role of “parallel government” in BC education.  How has this happened?  

From a research article we see that the newly formed socialist government in 1972 seems to have given away the keys to the schoolhouse to the BCTF leadership. 

Please read Thomas Fleming’s article: “Decline and Fall of the BC Ministry of Education 1972-1996”, especially the section, Teacher Power.  “Through the help of the Teachers Political Action Committee (TPAC) the NDP for the first time in BC swept into power in 1972 …The BCTF executive was by now firmly in the hands of militants, notably supporters of the ‘radical Marxist’ Jim MacFarlan, to use historian F.Henry Johnson’s description.”

http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/view/454/611

Don’t forget, we are entering into a collective bargaining period between the BCTF and government representatives. Is this ever a peaceful time?