Path: utzoo!lsuc!nrcaer!heraclitus!rayt
From: rayt@heraclitus.UUCP (R.)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Community College Teachers on strike
Message-ID: <7531@heraclitus.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 89 19:04:45 GMT
References: <606@alias.UUCP> <12258@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <7470@cognos.UUCP> <12309@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: rayt@cognos.UUCP (R.)
Distribution: can
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 58

In article <12309@watcgl.waterloo.edu> lyn bartram writes:

>This same conservative British magazine [The Economist] published an article
>a few months back relating Sweden's exceptional worker productivity to its
>education programmes. The view of the article was both admiring and a touch
>surprised.  I believe the point here is
>	"you gets what you pay for" ...

Interesting that you should bring Swedish productivity up; the same (liberal!!)
British magazine just this week noted that:

      "On an average day in Swedish industry, at least one out of four
       people is absent from work. Some have respectable reasons (illness,
       holidays), but others stay away because of the disincentives to
       work built into the tax system." [Nov 11;59]

Evidently, while worker productivity is up, it is not necessarily channeled
into areas they are paid for. I think that this is important for Canada: as
it becomes increasingly more socialistic and paternalistic, one has to decide
what what point the overhead and the cotton wool defeats the objective -
promoting creativity and, if not wisdom, at least a modicum of maturity.

>A few years back, when Bourassa decided to cut yet more funds from
>the Quebec universities, on the grounds that they were "too costly", while
>meanwhile forbidding them to raise tuition, the head of Concordia wrote an
>open letter to the Premier, in which he said:

>	"If you think education is expensive, M. Bourassa,
>	 you should just try ignorance for a generation".

The fallacy of the excluded middle is one of the oldest rhetorical tricks:
one presents a position favourable to the conclusion desired and gives the
opponent the choice of this or something which you know _must_ be rejected
(governmental agencies and their minions are the modern masters of this).
While this may get you points in a formal debate, it is really an _impediment_
to undertanding. What is education _suppossed_ to do? Why? Is it being achieved?
If not, why? If it is, is it _worth_ it? What are the alternatives? etc. etc. 

>Underpaying our teachers is like paying slave wages to child care workers. 
>We're shortchanging our children, just because we may have been shortchanged.
>What's the point of that?

Formal training is probably the _least_ important aspect of a person's
education. Modern art, for example, is stuffed with good journeymen - kitch
and decoration we have enough of. _Can_ one train a person to be creative and
independently motivated? That is the question. Such a teacher or guide would
be worth the wage we pay the modern drillers and dispensers of facts - more.
Anyone with a modest amount of patience, concern, and respect for their
students can be an instructor - these are average qualities, why pay an
above average price for them? (Yes, I have done this myself with some success.)

							R.

-- 
Ray Tigg                          |  Cognos Incorporated
                                  |  P.O. Box 9707
(613) 738-1338 x5013              |  3755 Riverside Dr.
UUCP: rayt@cognos.uucp            |  Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1G 3Z4