Dear editor,
I deeply sympathize with the British Columbia teachers, their jobs are getting increasingly more challenging, with larger class size and more special needs children in their classes with fewer and fewer supports. However I think we need to see why this is happening. There IS a limit to where wages can go.
When wages go up, cuts have to happen elsewhere. So support staff are cut, teachers are cut, class sizes increase, teachers become over worked and stressed and the children suffer. Parents, who are able, pull their children out of an increasingly non-functioning system, resulting in less $$ to go around. The BCTF are doing to our education system what the unions did to the British docks in the ‘60s. They closed them down, resulting in thousands to land up unemployed and on the dole.
I am all for unions: they are essential to a healthy democracy, however, when militant unions make excessive demands on our tax dollar it is time to make a halt. Our children are suffering; their lives are being played with. They have become pawns in a game of politics; as a result our whole education system is failing society. It is not right, it’s not fair and something has to change.
Rachel Reynolds
Comox