The dissenting judge’s view on teacher freedom
By GARY MASON
Saturday, August 6, 2005 Page A6
It was January, 2002. The B.C. government had recently enacted legislation removing class size from the scope of bargaining with the province’s teachers, and their union wasn’t happy about it.
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation adopted an action plan in response. Materials were sent to teachers to help them better inform parents about the “educational losses that have taken place at your school.” The materials included cards to be handed to parents that talked about how expanding class sizes were hurting their children’s education. The cards directed parents to the BCTF’s website to get more information.
There was also a pamphlet entitled “Our children’s education is threatened: School boards’ bargaining demands will undermine the quality of education,” that was also to be distributed.
A dispute arose when administrators in several districts informed teachers they were not to distribute the material to parents or discuss the BCTF’s position on the government’s education policies with parents during parent-teacher interviews.
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The BCTF protested. The matter went to a labour arbitrator who upheld the teachers’ right to distribute and discuss the material with parents. The school boards appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which this week upheld the arbitrators’ decision in a 2-1 ruling.
Teachers could bring politics to school.
And yesterday, that decision was still all anyone cared to discuss on the radio talk shows.
While two of the judges based their decision on a strict interpretation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it was the dissenting judge, Mr. Justice Peter Lowry, who I believe spoke for most parents. Unfortunately, most of what he had to say was lost in the public outcry prompted by the decision.
While agreeing with his two colleagues that school boards are subject to the Charter and that teachers have the right to freedom of expression, Judge Lowry said that in attempting to implement the BCTF’s action plan, teachers were attempting to achieve through political pressure what they were unable to achieve through collective bargaining. Therefore, school boards had the right to restrict those activities.
“Shortly put, there is . . . simply no place for the use of our public schools as a platform for teachers to advance political agendas.”
Judge Lowry said the matter of class sizes is directly linked to increased education funding, which is linked to ever-increasing demands on the public purse, which is part of an ongoing political debate. It was a debate, he said, in which teachers and the BCTF had the right to participate through the media and other ways.
“But it is difficult to see why parents, who are required to support the public school system, must send their children to schools where the teachers have closed ranks and are actively advancing a particular political agenda in support of one side of the debate,” Judge Lowry wrote.
He added: “If teachers are to be permitted to post flyers or pamphlets on bulletin boards accessed by students and their parents or to hand out materials carrying a political message at parent-teacher interviews that are consistent with the BCTF Action Plan, it becomes difficult to see what limits, if any, there would be on steps that might be taken to use schools to advance a political agenda.”
And that is what parents don’t want.
As Judge Lowry mentioned, parents are worried that this ruling will allow — even encourage — teachers to promote their union’s agenda in the classroom. Further complicating this is the fact that, over the years, the BCTF has come to be seen as a political arm of the B.C. New Democratic Party.
It’s sometimes said that leaders of the BCTF alternate between Marxists and Trotskyists. Or between left and very, very, very left. This is overstated. Let’s just say you’ll never see a president of the BCTF reading Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s campaign platform.
Jinny Sims, president of the BCTF, said she doesn’t know how or why her union has become so closely associated with the NDP in the eyes of the public. When it’s suggested it might have something to do, in recent years at least, with the personal attacks the union has launched against Premier Gordon Campbell, Ms. Sims said the BCTF has attacked NDP governments in the past, too.
Yes, that’s true. But not nearly to the same degree.
Frankly, I don’t care whom a teacher votes for. She could be a card-carrying member of the B.C. Marijuana Party. I just don’t want her telling me why the government I might support is bad. I don’t want her telling my child, either. And I certainly don’t want her pushing her union’s political agenda during the five minutes we have for a parent-teacher interview.
Ms. Sims said that would never happen. I want to believe her. My wife and I have gone to dozens of parent-teacher interviews over the years and never once has a teacher used our time together as an opportunity to tee off on the government. Neither have any of them tried to use class size as a crutch for poor performance by one of our kids in class.
Yes, in a perfect world there would be only five students for every teacher. But that world doesn’t exist. Myriad factors go into a student’s overall performance, and sometimes support at home has far more to do with it than class size.
The fallout from the appeal court’s ruling this week could become evident next month when students head back to school. The B.C. government will begin trying to hammer out a new collective agreement with teachers and no one is optimistic that will come easily.
What remains to be seen is whether the classroom will become part of the battleground.
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