Category: Education
Blaming unions
Saint Mary’s professor Larry Haiven thinks blaming unions for unnecessary snow days is silly:
This is part of a syndrome of “if in doubt, blame the unions.” So convenient. So wrong.
A few years ago I was taking a tour of the new Toronto opera house. We were allowed to go everywhere except on stage, even though the stage was bare, with no current production going on.
One of the tour members asked the docent why we couldn’t go on stage. The tour member said he had been on tours of all the great opera houses of Europe and had never been barred from the stage. The docent looked serious and said “union rules.” All of the tour members (except me) nodded their heads sagely in rueful agreement.
It just so happened that I had an interview with the head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (the stagehands’ union) on another matter later that day. So I asked him if this were true. He got very angry and told me that there was no union rule, no union prohibition and, in fact, the union was very much in favour of tours visiting the stage when there was no production going on. He said that “union rules” have become a pernicious legend in his field. I later phoned the management of the opera house to complain about the docent’s mistake.
What I found most interesting was not the docent’s duplicity but the tour group’s acceptance of it. As a former union staffer and a person who researches and teaches about unions, I’m amazed at the difference between the real power that they actually lack and the perceived power people think they have.
As I said before, I regret making the union issue part of this discussion, because it permits people like Larry to wrap themselves in solidarity’s flag and ignore the core issues:
- In the management of risk, our society increasingly allows knee-jerk caution to trump common sense, and important social values like child-rearing suffer as a consequence.
- After their sub-par performance during Hurricane Juan was criticized, Environment Canada and the CBC began to over-hype forecasts of routine weather. Ironically, this monomaniacal focus on safety has created a very unsafe situation.
- Senior managers in our school system either belong, or kinda-sorta belong, to the teachers’ union. The apparent willingness of class-struggle buffs like Larry to countenance this absurdity is astounding.
- We have far too many snow days, and the ones we have apply to far too wide an area.
I honestly don’t know whether point three plays any major role in point four, but it ought to be changed anyway. No one above the level of small-school teaching principals ought to belong to the Teacher’s Union, and the law should be changed to reflect this.
As for the accelerating trend toward a New Jerusalem of ‘fraidy cats, Contrarian will continue to rail.
Snow days – another view
Educational consultant Paul W. Bennett, a former principal of Halifax Grammar School, thinks we should not be too quick to dismiss the connection between unsnowy snow days and the provisions of the teachers’ collective agreement.
[T]he key factor [in school closures] is the collective agreement which has been in place in Nova Scotia since the mid-1970s. In that sense, the Education Department is just as culpable as the NSTU.
The teachers’ agreement originally included an understanding that about five days a year would be written off as “throw-away” snow days. The Agreement with the NSTU also stipulates that if buses are cancelled and schools closed to students, then teachers do not have to report for duty. This is very unusual and has been eliminated in most other provinces.
What’s the impact? No one in NS worries if four or five days are lost each year. The problem only surfaced when school boards canelled from eight to 14 full days last school year. Then it became apparent to everyone that there was no provising for reclaiming lost days, or any real policy to contain or even limit cancellations.
I am just completing a major comparative study of school storm days, demonstrating conclusively that Maritimers are the biggest “fraidy cats” of them all. It also shows that Maritimers are the outliers when it comes to protecting valuable teaching-learning time and that this is a major factor contributing to our chronic “below Canadian average” student performance results.
Dept. of Amplification & Correction: School closures
Several readers have questioned, taken issue with, and even canceled subscriptions (!) over my criticism of overly cautious school closures, particularly my suggestion that union sympathies may play a role in unwarranted snow days.
Since when are school administrators (who make decisions about snow days) part of the teachers’ union? [TB]
Snow days are decided upon by the School Board. The teachers and their union have nothing to do with it. Teachers have to show up on snow days to babysit any kids dropped off by parents. The fact that you are so silly as to blame Unions—good heavens how silly!—I have now figured you out: Another Conservative who will blame the victims for all the country’s ills. [AMcG]
At least in HRSB, the school officials who make the call are school board Superintendents – not unionized, but management. [AB]
Another possible explanation is the requirement to please big, risk-averse insurance companies. [BW]
OK, so now I’ve done what I should have done before posting, checked with Peter McLaughlin, my ex-Daily News colleague who now speaks for the Nova Scotia Department of Education. Turns out the situation is at once more complicated than I suggested, and less clearcut than my interlocutors believe. Full explanation after the jump.
Contrarian and friends on blogging
Contrarian will be at the Inverary Inn’s Thistledown Pub in Baddeck this evening to lead a discussion about blogging sponsored by the Cabot Trail Writers’ Festival, the group that organized this event last fall. In addition to an annual fall festival, the group plans a series of satellite events, of which tonight’s discussion is the first. I’ll be talking about the writerly (journalistic, aesthetic, ethical) aspects of blogging; Mike Targett will be on hand to backstop me on those issues, and to add his technical smarts to the discussion.
The pub serves supper from 5:30 to 8; The fireside blogging discussion, upstairs in the lounge, will begin at 7, followed by live entertainment at 8. So come any time before 7.
A world map of AIDS
On World AIDS Day last week, UNAIDS published new estimates of the number of people living with AIDS around the world, and Xaquin G.V. turned the data into a cartogram, or a value-aread map:
Click image for larger view. Hat tip: Flowingdata.com.
Canadian army officer finds detainee policies ethically dubious
The National Post ferrets out a Canadian army officer’s surprisingly critical master’s thesis on Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees.
In an exhaustive critique, the author concluded Canada’s decision to hand over suspected insurgents to Afghan authorities with a history of abuse violated Canadian ethical values, could turn ordinary Afghans against foreign troops and likely increased the stress of this country’s combatants. The policy might even have contributed to the alleged mercy killing of a Taliban fighter by a Canadian soldier, she wrote.
Major Manon Plante’s thesis, completed this year as one of the requirements for a master’s degree from the Canadian Forces College, shows a level of candor the Harper government has thus far been unable to muster:
Based on the Afghan human rights track record and its primitive prison capacity, how the Government of Canada came to the conclusion that the Afghan authorities had the capacity to detain personnel is perplexing, The decision may have been legal but it appears that it may not have been the right ethical choice.
View Plante’s 122-page thesis in html, MSWord, or .pdf formats. Hat tip: Chris McCormick.
The Moneybags School of Law – updated
Question: What’s the name of the school at Dalhousie that trains lawyers? You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that it’s no longer Dalhousie Law School. Following a $20-million gift from Ontario businessman Seymour Schulich, it officially became The Schulich School of Law on October 15. Haligonian Warren Reed runs the numbers:
In 2004-5, the total Dal budget seems to have been around $200 million—all but $13 million coming from government grants and tuition payments. One could doubtless find more recent data on the Internet. Schulich’s gift, if added to the endowment and invested conservatively, will add about $1 million annually to the revenue stream. Half a percent.
As in all these kinds of transactions at public institutions, the contribution of taxpayers is forgotten, their investment sold at far below par. Nova Scotians have hundreds of millions invested in Dalhousie and in the principle of publicly funded education. Along comes Schulich, whose entire success is due to faithful observance of “buy low, sell high,” and the guardians of the public trust hand over our best asset. Schulich knows a good deal.
In another long tradition, taxpayers will continue to foot most of the bill. I paid for that law school and I wanted it to belong to future Nova Scotians.
[Update] Contrarian reader Colin May’s taxes also paid for the law school:
Not to mention “Medjuck Architecture School” on Spring Garden Road. I don’t know when the sign went up, but I find it amusing. When did Ralph Medjuck ever build an architecturally notable project?
I propose we commence new labeling with, “Your taxes paid for this university,” or, ‘This hospital unit built with taxes paid by members of the plumbers and carpenters union.” We could even extend it to the private sector with a sign on all the machinery in a Michelin plant: “This equipment funded by increasing the Nova Scotia public debt by $200,000,000.” I think every bus should be painted on the front, “Your taxes paid for this bus—take a ride.”
Class size vs. achievement
How much does class size affect performance on standardized tests? The charts displayed below plot US state-level student-teacher ratios against against the results for three parts of the SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) used in US college admissions.
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These tables, from the wonderful FlowingData website, obviously use US data, but the results may have implications here.
States with higher SAT scores are shown in green, and generally have lower student-teacher ratios.
The ratio is not perfect, however. Utah has the largest classes in the US, but maintains better-than-average test scores. Maine has the smallest classes in the country, but ranks among the lowest in SAT scores.
Click for a larger version and a fuller explanation.
Whether SATs measure anything that could remotely be termed “aptitude” is another question.
