Polls Can Easily Become A Tool Of Totalitarianism

BC is experiencing a deluge of organized attacks and destabilization maneuvers to force more funding for government schools. 

Even though throughout the rest of the world the same constraints on public spending are being felt, and school spending is seriously being cut back, BC seems to be experiencing more than its share of grief from the lobbies which benefit from the education tax dollar. 

Thus, we see the call for more funding for public service workers – teachers — in our schools, rather than more efficient spending of money.  That independent schools do “more with less” is a thorn in the side of the public government schools.

On another blog, one in Ontario (School for Thought), we were discussing tools of totalitarianism and how the media was used to ensnare citizens to totalitarian thinking.  The article started out with Hitler having said  “Your child belongs to us already”’ and then we discussed how a totalitarian state used propaganda techniques to brainwash.

I contributed a classic case of how polls can be used to contribute to totalitarianism and I provided the link to the Vancouver Sun story about the Angus Reid poll:  “Most British Columbians want more public-school funding: poll”.

This poll was commissioned by a group whose aim is in the name:  BC Society for Public Education.  Therefore, you know that  they lobby for more public education and, of course, for less competition from independent schools.  And that is what the poll delivered. 

Briefly, there were three questions: 1) Should the government do more to support public education; 2) to increase funding for public education, and 3) to continue funding private schools?  The scores were 81% YES 79% YES and 64% NO.  What an outstanding result!   It garnered considerable mileage in the press and meetings. The poll achieved what the client wanted.

The newspaper, however, through its blogging ability, received over 100 comments and, unfortunately (for the lobby), some serious questions were raised:

1.  Were the questions loaded? Or leading?
2.  Isn’t Angus Reid polling rather questionable considering they are left-wing and support massive social spending?  Don’t they use questionable polling techniques, that is, online polling?
3.  Who is behind this poll and who pays?

The answers:

1.  See the pdf for the questions  http://www.scribd.com/full/30311572?access_key=key-u1vfkvolw0eiygqp0qj
Note how the preamble leads to a “correct” answer.  How it “primes the pump”, so to speak, for the waterworks to follow.  The questions were well “crafted”, manufactured.

2.  The online polling is questionable. The “random selection” was done from the Angus Reid Forum, a self-volunteered array of citizens who get points for surveys taken, and qualify for monthly awards of $1000, $100, or other perks.  The left-wing swing of the principal of the company is well noted in his writings.

3.  The group commissioning the poll has been in place since 2005 and with Board members long associated with “progressive” activism, including Patti Bacchus, current chair of the VSB.  (Wouldn’t they  just love to deflect an accounting probe away from the VSB?)  Two current BCSPE Board members, Helesia Luke and Catherine Evans, run a communications, public relations, guerilla marketing company.  Their literature includes these statements: “How you ask questions is important – language matters”, and “Asking questions influences groups in some way.” Funding for BCSPE and expensive polls  – who know?

What if, what if the poll did have more credibility.  That is, what if a disinterested group (one without an agenda or self-interest) commissioned a poll on these issues?  Suppose someone, just for an academic exercise, repeated such a survey, but with a different slant to the questions and preamble, could they have achieved a result of 81% NO, 79 % NO to more support or funding for public education, and 64% YES for continued funding for private schools?

The headlines would scream:  “8 out of 10 British Columbians want government to stop supporting and funding public education: poll”.  “2 out of 3 want more funding for private schools: poll”.

Wishful thinking?  SURPRISE.  The Angus Reid Chief Research Officer, Andrew Grenville, coincidentally on the same day as the BCSPE newsrelease came out (Apr 21, 2010), illustrates my point –  that with the right questions you can get exactly 180 degree different answers, 100% opposites!  Please see this article:  Why The Way You Ask a Question Can Determine The Answer.  http://www.visioncritical.com/2010/04/why-the-way-you-ask-a-question-can-determine-the-answer/

So, is this education underfunding crisis in BC a magnificent example of engineering disinformation and propaganda by ideological stakeholders? Isn’t that how agent provocateurs work?

Continuing to add to Private/Public debate…This SECOND essay was published by our local newspaper education blog on the topic of meeting with the Minister of Education.  The issue arose, again, limiting funds to private schools and giving them to public schools.

BIG Difference between Public Education and Government Schools

Public education is a public good.  Everyone benefits from an educated public.  While many protest high taxes, most agree that, at least, education is one outcome they expect from giving up some of their income. 

That does not mean a public good has to be a government commodity, a virtual monopoly at 90% market penetration, delivered by public employees.

Non-government education is now being delivered by many other means, – home education, independent schools, online learning, correspondence, tutoring agencies, etc. – all expanding methods.

That is why I welcome the innovative idea from Jerry Clarkson who posted a new plan. He says “The province should get out of the education business…Instead of funding schools…” provide an education card, like the health cards we now have.  Let the consumer find the best options and teachers would bill the financing agency, the government. 

This idea strikes me as being eminently sensible, since the education reform literature points out that the most effective schools are often those organized and led by teachers themselves.  Think of all the innovations that would emerge from others as well. 

The education dollar would more directly reach the child and not be creamed-off by various administrators, school boards and other infrastructure mechanisms.  Accountability and transparency would have to be upfront as competition would require full disclosure to attract customers.

Clarkson computes a figure of $9054 per full time student.  Another figure we’ve seen for this term in BC is $8323.  Whatever the amount, this is plenty to fund good schools or other opportunities to obtain an educated citizenry. 

Hey, Mr. Clarkson is not unique or alone in this idea.

Though we’ve often heard about choices being provided through vouchers, tuition tax credits or scholarships, and though the charter school movement is growing steadily in other parts of the world, BC is stuck with our old industrial era model of delivery – central planning, industrial-type trade unions, distant managers, heavy-duty quality-control testing, and on, and on.  This system depends on a captive audience.

No, Jerry (sounds like he’s an educator himself) is on to an idea which has successfully been practiced in Sweden (a socialist country) for over 15 years now.  Their free schools paid by vouchers are still state schools, but with freedom beyond belief.  Now, David Cameron, leader of Britain’s Conservative opposition is all for Free Schools too, and would bring them in should he get elected in the expected spring election.  He would go a step further than the Swedes.  He would privatize much of the school system and legislatively enable Free Schools.  See The Economist:  http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14506392

Speaking to a recent convention Mr. Cameron said: “Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.”

Margaret MacDiarmid’s office which signs off most correspondence with this rejoinder:  “The Ministry is always considering innovative ideas that can help improve student achievement in BC schools.” should actively look into these alternatives.   Certainly, all the ills that befall big government and big ministries are here and now.  Let’s loosen up, release the money to the intended subjects, stand aside a bit, and watch achievement and satisfaction soar, eh?

(by Tunya Audain, 091011, comment to blog, Report Card, by Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun education reporter on story:  “Christy Clark has a go at the new education minister”, 091009)

Private/public schools issues keep recurring.  These debates are healthy but they can be divisive and unhelpful at times.

It should be very instructive to explore these issues more thoroughly in the 21st Century as we consider different  viewpoints through various lenses — history, economics, politics/ideologies, etc.

I will be adding pieces here that, hopefully, will be informative and useful  This FIRST is an essay I did in March 2009 when local teacher unions were becoming more active in school board elections, and which I have today revised slightly. 

Public Education is the End, Not the Means

An educated public is what is desirable in a civic society.  Democracies benefit when citizens can participate in informed ways in the controversies of the day, when the media is articulate about the issues, and citizens vote for the institutions that govern or provide services. 

What is talked about now as public education is really government directed and produced schooling for the young.  Government schools are taught by public servants called teachers, and the trustees are the middle men for the government.  Trustees can be replaced if they are dysfunctional to government interests.

However, the public good called public education is the end that is achieved when many forces can provide this educated public so desired.  We now have many forms of education:  government schools, private and independent schools, religious schools, home education, online education, self-education, etc.

Public health is a measure of how healthy the population is and results from hundreds of different ways in which this is accomplished.

Public education is the end, the result, the outcome, the payoff, the harvest, the intended consequence, the expected benefit, of the various forms education takes.

That public education has come to mean only that which is delivered through government as an agency is a distortion of the true meaning of public education.

Thus we now see the gross abuse of the democratic system where teacher unions have over the last 50 years obtained such a stranglehold on taxpayer funding for education that they can be called a parallel government, a de facto regime, controlling a system, a monopoly, that controls and “educates” nearly 90% of BC’s children. 

Thus we see the teachers unions very active in school board campaigns. The teacher union, the BCTF, is proud of its control and brags about its democratic right to support those in oversight positions on school boards – the people who would normally be seen as in conflict of interest: educators, BCTF operatives and subjugated trustee candidates (subjugated due to signing pledges for teacher causes and obtaining union aid to election for school district trusteeship).

The BCTF (BC Teachers Federation) is opposed to real choices outside the government (public) sphere.  It opposes competition. It is for worker control of the workplace. A monopoly with a captive audience serves their self-interest. Serving the public interest is just lip-service and not on their operating agendas.

This is curious and scary indeed.  Because, while they trumpet democracy, they actually mean rule by elites.  In reality, dig deep, you will find that the leadership of the teacher unions in BC is composed of small, very militant and aggressive cadres sharing similar agendas and ideologies.  They shape and frame the issues, the agendas, the strategies.  They depend on an acquiescent membership and public.

The sooner we stop this nonsense of insisting that public education can only be obtained through government (public) schools, the better.

We need a lot of choices.  Yes, publicly funded choices, through vouchers, tuition tax credits, scholarships, or whatever.  Civil society NEEDS public education.  However, we do NOT need government, state, “public” schooling run by public servants.

 (By Tunya Audain, 090320, comment to blog, Report Card, Vancouver Sun by Janet Steffenhagen, education reporter “Unions hope trustees will help defeat Liberal government”, 090319…updated 091215)