State-run public grade-schools set to compete against private, traditional citizen-run schools? Only in Canada.
This question of mine has been a constant refrain for years: what kind of government competes against its own citizens for profits, for TV viewers or radio listeners, for train riders, for wine and whiskey consumers, for folks’ car insurance needs, for small package and expedited envelope delivery, for web site viewers, for readers of columnists’ political thoughts, for public education… and on and on and on? Canadian governments compete against their own citizens—all over the map, all day long. Personally I think that should be banned and that ban should be enshrined in our constitution. But then I’m not a socialist or a Marxist and I believe in freedom and that we shouldn’t have to compete against our own government which uses our own tax dollars to defeat us. What a nut huh? Almost American—and we’ve seen how that country has failed to become the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known.
Now it seems government has seen some of what the rest of us have known for ages: non-government, private citizen-run traditional schools are best. It’s not just the good Fraser Institute that proves that, it’s parents who actually know better than the state what’s best for their kids (yes liberals, it’s still true, despite “evolution”!), and the smart, well-behaved, and well-adjusted, balanced kids who have grown through that traditional system.
Private traditional schools in Canada have somehow managed to hold onto the, well, traditional, often Christian, “actual learning!” turf since Canada’s beginnings; and they have even grown increasingly popular recently as the state-run public schools seem destined to continue to follow the liberal-left’s “progressive” tack, where they arrogantly tread on turf properly reserved for family values and the moral teachings of the kids’ parents themselves. In British Columbia, for example, the state (and I mean right from the top—BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell himself) has directed that a path toward the forced instruction of gay and lesbian and transgendered and cross-dressing “values” and “culture” for the young ‘uns be followed immediately in its public schools. That’s on top of the condom on the cucumber classes, and the how to get an abortion classes. And the George Bush is an evil terrorist classes, Islamist jihadists are misunderstood classes, the corporations are bad classes, the any Christianity is completely banned in schools because it’s so awful classes, and the conservatives are total morons classes, and of course atheism is best classes, commonly and increasingly found in public schools today all over North America.
And all this is before the liberals’ state-run child daycare (and “early learning” —wink!) schools are instituted to replace those horrible community and church and family and citizen-run and those blasted stay-at-home mommy-style daycares.
Of course parents and families, which liberals find annoying and which they hope will be soon be replaced by government (and they’re succeeding), aren’t nearly as far left-wing, nor as Godless and Marxist as that. But as I always say, liberals always think everyone in the room agrees with them, so they simply don’t stop pushing all the yummy “progressive”. And conservatives being conservatives, well, you do the math, and God help you with that if you attended public schools. Irony abounds.
In short, the “progressive”, liberal-left indoctrination schools, which are in fact religious schools as led by the church of liberalism’s clerics—the teachers—are clearly leading kids (and the whole nation) in the wrong direction, parents are revolted and revolting, and they are taking their kids back to the tradition schools and to home-schooling, so that their kids can once again be instilled with their good values and morals and a proper education—like they used to be—instead of the far left’s increasingly “progressive”, Godless, God-awful values. And where the kids don’t call their teacher “like dude”.
Now, in Delta, British Columbia, where on top of the parental outrage with the “progressive” public schools, and where like many areas of Canada the population is actually struggling to stay the same and the number of kids (and therefore students) is actually dropping, the state-run public schools boards are trying to find ways to attract students and stay relevant, and are finding the growing traditional private schools ripe for competition. Not emulation, mind you—competition. So they will embark on just that. Remembering that this is Canada, that makes good taxpayer sense to liberals. And to Marxists.
The (public!) school board is exploring the possibility of establishing a “traditional” school by September of next year. Naturally, being government, they will be exploring this by way of a “committee” and a “task force” following which a damn good “report” will be written. By the way, so badly are student numbers dropping in Delta that they actually have a student “recruitment and retention committee”. The “recruitment and retention committee” even admits they will look at the exemplary model set by one private Delta school called Southpointe Academy—a private traditional school at which the kids wear uniforms, and actual discipline is, like, enforced, dude.
The public school board
chairman chairpersonage
chair told the local Delta Optimist newspaper, “I’m hearing some dissatisfaction in the community as to what opportunities there are for children who want to be in more of a structured school setting with uniforms and more structure within the education,” said Saip. Apparently fixing the old public system is a lost cause, and they can only learn from the private sector who does it better. Right over his head.
The Optimist reveals more of the school board chair’s candor: “Saip said he visited several schools in Greater Vancouver and Edmonton and was impressed with what they had to offer.” That whooshing sound was the clue going over his head again. The private schools are doing better, yet he only sees that as a reason to compete against them with taxpayer dollars and the might of the “progressive” and growing power of the ever-growing government. Next up: a government replacement for Trojans!
Coming right out of the proverbial socialist government closet and admitting that the state is setting up to compete against the citizenry, he told the Optimist: “What we’re exploring is the different models of charter and traditional schools that are being offered in both B.C. and Alberta. We’ll come back with what we think is an opportunity for parents within the public school system to have those advantages they may be seeking elsewhere in a private setting.” And this ostensibly makes sense to him as only it could to someone weaned on big liberal “progressive” government-think, in Canada.
Clearly, by their own near-admission, and if they were truly concerned about the kids’ education and the parents’ desire to have their kids properly educated, they’d simply close the public schools and let the proven success of the private schools flourish, starting with vouchers, for example. But no, this is Canada. And the people making the decisions are, at best, “progressives”, self-anointed elites, bureaucrats, and the state, instead of citizens. Parents.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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