Canada’s Debate

… continued from yesterday.

While students were obviously on the receiving end of any major education reform, the other actors in the education process were also strongly impacted. While students faced the challenges of education turmoil, education professionals and other participants in the school system faced job actions, firings, and increased workloads.¹ While these challenges were all significant, they were merely all facets of a concerted government effort to redefine the role of educators in the education system. In attempting to reorganize education in Ontario the government is required to reorient the roles of everyone involved in the education process so that their position reflects the values of the overriding education policy. The most clear-cut example of this is the clause in Bill 160 that allowed the government to “remove principals and vice-principals… at will.”² While perhaps not seeming terribly significant at the time; this move served to stratify the various roles in the education process. Now the principals were no longer just partners in education, they were management. This division of labour effectively ends the co-operative participatory role that administration and teaching staffs played in working with one another, leading once again to a stronger competitive atmosphere.

To carry the manager/worker analogy further, the roles of trustees and School Boards were also targeted for reform.³ Initially mandated by the NDP government that was ousted later that year, the Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force (hereafter shortened to OSBRTF) was originally mandated to find ways to reduce the number of School Boards in Ontario.⁴ The incoming Conservative government emphasized fiscal constraint, and highlighted this aspect of the OSBRTF’s mandate, to the point that they, “Were asked by the new Minister of Education and Training to forego public hearings.”⁵ Their response was a new goal, “A new demand for effectiveness and efficiency,”⁶ efficiency being a buzzword of the Conservatives.⁷ As a result the Board determined that Trustees’ compensation should be capped at a maximum of $20,000.⁸ It is perhaps not surprising that the government used this recommendation and limited School Board trustee compensation at $5,000.⁹ This move effectively limited the ability to attract people who were free to devote sufficient time in the process. Trustees were further handicapped by legislation that forbade them from voting in contradiction of Ministry policy; with fines and a ban from holding public office as recourse for the Ministry. The strong authoritarian overtones of this action were clearly an exercise in strengthening government influence over educational ideology.

The OSBRTF, in a potential divergence from their mandate¹⁰ further recommended, “savings can be achieved,” in the area of “lesson-preparation.”¹¹ While the savings were not specified, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that as a non-classroom expense preparation time could be eliminated. In addition, the government imposed reductions in grants for teacher salaries to boards, which created an atmosphere of confrontation in the province. “Many … believe that in Ontario the work of teachers is not valued and the teaching profession is not respected”¹² This was coupled with mandatory teacher testing, which was later changed to “regular professional development.”¹³ These policy changes effectively reduced teachers to functionaries in the education system by pressuring them to adhere to new standards of performance that for all intents and purposes eliminated the flexibility to teach creatively. In addition to being responsible for teaching new material without any consultation or transitional resources,¹⁴ the educators have also taken on the role of disciplinarian. Mandatory suspensions and expulsions¹⁵ along with stricter limitations on behaviour have forced teachers and administrative staff into a new position of authority. The emphasis on a “law enforcement” approach to education roles can be directly correlated to the superstructure priorities of the Common Sense Revolution.¹⁶ By strictly establishing the guidelines for interactions between students and teachers and students and administration the government established a strongly authoritarian relationship. By separating teachers from administration cooperation is effectively limited and once again the “competition” that was a hallmark of the Common Sense Revolution. By the weakening of middle management, in the form of Trustees at the same time, the government was able to secure its “control” of the entire education process while at the same time limiting local input and resistance, a common tool of the Conservatives that reflected on their dogmatic approach.

to be continued…

1. Brooke Jeffrey, Hard Right Turn: The Face of Neo-conservatism in Canada (Toronto: HarperCollins Ltd., 1999), 245.
2. Ibid., 244.
3. Ontario Ministry of Education, Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force: Final Report, 1996 (Toronto: Queen’s Park Press, 1996), 1.
4. Ontario Ministry of Education, Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force, 9.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 14.
7. Jeffrey, 228.
8. Ontario Ministry of Education, Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force, 19.
9. Don Johnson, Bill 160 (Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 1997), 85.
10. Ontario Ministry of Education, Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force, 11.
11. Ibid., 55.
12. Ontario Ministry of Education, Investing in Public Education: Advancing the Goal of Continuous Improvement in Student Learning and Achievement (Toronto: Queen’s Park Press, 2002), 6.
13. Shantz, 106.
14. Ibid., 105.
15. Ontario Ministry of Education, Code of Conduct, 11.
16. Whitaker, 350.