I am on strike! For one day and one day only I am sacrificing my pay to support the teachers of BC. We hold hands in a show of public solidarity! We unite! We rise up against the unfeeling state and its reprobate Bosses! I told MC yesterday, when the job action was still tentative, that I hoped we would join in the politics. It will satisfy some deep blue-collar urge, said I. Oh, so you’ll be going to the protests? said he. Goodness no, said I, envisioning a nice lie-in and a chance to catch up on my reading with a cuppa. Perhaps I would make a poor Wobbly after all.
The teachers’ illegal walk-out has sparked non-stop debate and a few lawsuits. JC argued that BC educators are the second-highest paid in Canada, that they agreed in 2003 to take a two (or three?) year pay freeze, that this particular act of civil disobedience is morally unjustified (a society rests on an agreement to respect its laws).
Overall grossly uneducated on the issues, I make a gut response in order to frame my day away from the classroom as meaningful, or perhaps only to justify my laziness. If BC educators are the second-highest paid, if their contracts are relatively fair, I don’t understand why that’s necessarily a reason to chastise the teachers rather than to scrutinize the rest of the country’s education system. As for the morality of civil disobedience—sure, it’s not 1960s Harlem, but I think the cause might still be just enough to warrant action. It depends how necessary you understand to be funding for children with disabilities and reasonable classroom sizes, I suppose. (But who better to understand that necessity than those who work with children with disabilities and try to wield authority surrounded by a swell of little bodies?) Yes, the teachers are breaking the law: it is illegal for them to strike, because they were classified as an “essential service” a few years back. Whether they break the law justly depends, again, on how essential you deem their demands for the effective execution of their essential service. Of course, if the service is “essential,” surely that lends some authority to—or at least speaks to how highly we ought to value—those who perform it.
As to the argument that the strike is “hurting the children,” I have less and less patience for it. Yes, the teachers want a pay increase, but that is not the key issue: they fight precisely for the children. Taking two weeks’ pay cut, facing fines for contempt of court, jeopardizing Christmases and summer holidays: these are not the actions of people who care for no one but themselves. The children will get to make-up the classes. Their education has not been irreparably, or even significantly, imperilled.
To the picket line, then! Or, you know, to my novel. (The Diamond Grill by Fred Wah).
The teachers’ illegal walk-out has sparked non-stop debate and a few lawsuits. JC argued that BC educators are the second-highest paid in Canada, that they agreed in 2003 to take a two (or three?) year pay freeze, that this particular act of civil disobedience is morally unjustified (a society rests on an agreement to respect its laws).
Overall grossly uneducated on the issues, I make a gut response in order to frame my day away from the classroom as meaningful, or perhaps only to justify my laziness. If BC educators are the second-highest paid, if their contracts are relatively fair, I don’t understand why that’s necessarily a reason to chastise the teachers rather than to scrutinize the rest of the country’s education system. As for the morality of civil disobedience—sure, it’s not 1960s Harlem, but I think the cause might still be just enough to warrant action. It depends how necessary you understand to be funding for children with disabilities and reasonable classroom sizes, I suppose. (But who better to understand that necessity than those who work with children with disabilities and try to wield authority surrounded by a swell of little bodies?) Yes, the teachers are breaking the law: it is illegal for them to strike, because they were classified as an “essential service” a few years back. Whether they break the law justly depends, again, on how essential you deem their demands for the effective execution of their essential service. Of course, if the service is “essential,” surely that lends some authority to—or at least speaks to how highly we ought to value—those who perform it.
As to the argument that the strike is “hurting the children,” I have less and less patience for it. Yes, the teachers want a pay increase, but that is not the key issue: they fight precisely for the children. Taking two weeks’ pay cut, facing fines for contempt of court, jeopardizing Christmases and summer holidays: these are not the actions of people who care for no one but themselves. The children will get to make-up the classes. Their education has not been irreparably, or even significantly, imperilled.
To the picket line, then! Or, you know, to my novel. (The Diamond Grill by Fred Wah).
posted by Precocity at 3:42 PM
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