Dear Editor:
Re: Tell those 'good teacher stories,' Letters to the editor, Burnaby NOW, June 28.
Ms. Louise Hazemi invited readers of the Burnaby NOW to write to the premier in support of more education funding.
This is not the letter she asked for. In addition to a reply, I will use the opportunity to get a few things off my chest regarding the inferior product she and her comrades deliver and believe can only be improved by throwing yet more money at it.
In all fairness, many of my gripes are a result of the curriculum, which is not controlled by teachers, and the reluctance of the ministry to deal with matters of discipline. To point at strong unions is just a cop-out by those who look for excuses for their weak management.
However, lately I am a bit encouraged, because more and more pundits have questioned the wisdom of putting students through secondary education for which there are no jobs. For the record, this is something I have talked and complained about for as long as I can remember. . Great savings could be achieved.
Even though the value of a decent education does not escape me, I always think of education as the first area to cut back when the funds have dried up. My apologies, but education is not the sacred calf I am supposed to believe it is.
I say this in all sincerity and challenge anyone who argues why they couldn't have gotten through life if a half-dozen activities were cut out of their Grade 3 schedules.
Next, no amount of funding or number of special needs assistants would have made a hockey player or a political cartoonist out of me. I was never interested in hockey, and I lacked the talent to even draw a crooked line. It is total folly to think money could have fixed that. Yet, what I always hear from teachers is, they want to prepare their charges to switch back and forth from being astronauts, go into sports, law, medicine or whatever else they conjure up. In the meantime, someone who would be perfectly happy driving a truck or a bus and could, obviously, provide for his family doing it, is looked at as a failure.
To refer to "more cuts" is, however, pretty darn sick. There are fewer children and more dollars. We all know it. But Hazemi keeps talking about reductions.
Sorry, to have disappointed Hazemi. She earned it. What makes it worse for her is that my views are shared with quite a number of my friends. So get used to it.
Ziggy Eckardt, Burnaby
