E-learning Is Expensive But I think Ontario Public School Teachers and Their Union Would Rather E-learning Be Even More Expensive – January 23, 2020,
We’re no longer in an era, where an argument can be made that Public School teachers are underpaid, you’d only make an ignorant assumption like that if you fail to understand that amount of money Public Sector workers Provincially and Federally make every year.
Starting salaries for new Ontario Public School teachers start at $40,000+ Canadian dollars, after 10 years expect about $70,000-$100,000+ for being a public school teacher in Ontario, also they have better pensions than most of us working in the Private Sector could ever imagine. Now, The Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) the professional body representing teachers in Ontario’s publicly funded schools has over 160,000 members. So I’ll do a little conservative math.
$40,000 x 160,000 members = $6,400,000,000 per year taxpayers minimally payout to Ontario School teachers, that’s $6.4 Billion dollars and of course, the number is much higher, I just wanted to use that number to illustrate why class sizes are so large in the first place.
Now, we haven’t talked about supplies to the schools, paying contractors to rebuild schools or expand schools, or maintenance people to clean the schools, air conditioning or heating to existing schools energy costs and a whole bunch of other school-related costs that have to be accounted for in Private Sector schools in which wasting money to the extent the public schools waste money, would result in the owners of the Private Sector school boards looking into properly thought out economic solutions to problems that don’t include using a union to extort politicians and taxpayers to give teachers more money, for the same or even in some circumstances less work than the Public school teachers already do.
In the private sector efficiency and care for the customer(the children) come first. In the public sector schools, the teachers come first. Because of course if the teachers feel cheated, then they can’t teach the students, right? Now, there are prestigious private schools in Canada in which parents pay up to $100,000 per year(if not more) which spend less per capita than Ontario Public Schools spend.
Why? Because the school has to meet the demands of the parents, in public schools, the teachers and their union pretend to care about the students, but they really don’t, it’s a Unions job, after all, to look out for the best interests of their client, the Ontario Teachers union thinks of the children secondarily, the union is the lawyer of the teachers and if you’ve ever been through a divorce, the lawyers don’t care about their opposition, the lawyers want to destroy their opposition or make their opposition appear to be the problem, the lawyers do this so they can get a better deal from their opposition.
But in the private school system, teachers can have as many unions or lawyers as they want, the paying customer decides if they want to continue to do business with the private school and this is for course the reason for the school vouchers, which is really what the noise is all about as it relates to Ontario School teachers and E-learning. There is a lot of thing about the Ford Government that I don’t like, but I do like what he’s tried too strategically against the Public School Teachers and their demonic Union.
Now, although the CBC article below points to the Alabama Department of Education as their E-learning blueprint of success, but the truth is Ontario’s public school system would be in far better economic shape had the teachers put students’ needs first. When one public sector worker gets a pay raise, the rest want a pay raise also and to make matter worse they make it harder for any entity to compete with them, whereas a Private Sector school board will. Now, if you’ve ever taken an online course from a reputable private sector educator, what often is the case is those educators will create streamlined systems to not only address the needs of students, but they’ll do things to make their lives easier as well, which then brings their costs down.
The last thing a public sector school teacher wants to do is bring their costs down, because bringing the cost down, would lead to a surplus of capital, which could potentially lead to cuts in spending or god forbid redistribution of financial resources to the needs of the children. What do you think Ontario schools aren’t being upgraded because Ontario school teachers aren’t making enough money? or could it possibly be that Ontario school teachers want a wage that far exceeds the value they bring to the market?
The end result is the Public Sector Teachers are rewarded for endless wasteful spending. Technology has long upset that Applecart of old ways of thinking. Let’s be honest there are a lot of courses in the school curriculum that don’t need to be taught in class, but you see, technology is a threat to the public sector teachers, especially if competition via a voucher system is able to compete with the inefficient Ontario school board.
Now not every school course can be taken online, but we all know that Public School teachers don’t want to take their work home with them, whereas Private School teachers (the good ones) are more than happy to take their work home with them and find economical ways to make their work lives easier for themselves as well as their students.
That sort of thinking I imagine strikes fear into public sector teachers because initially, public teachers will possibly have to do some additional work themselves, work that they might not be paid for. If unionized public sector teachers have to do any extra work, they want to be paid per hour and most (not all) want to make sure that collectively all the teachers will benefit financially from these E-learning changes, the students are an afterthought when it comes to E-learning and it’s pretty clear to see that.
My argument against the article below is that the Teachers Union in Ontario is Striking primarily to make education in Ontario more expensive, they’re trying their best to ward off competition. It’s abundantly clear to me what Doug Ford is doing and the Teachers Union is trying it’s best to prevent its Private Sector competition from being a real threat in the very near future. because with e-learning, which is nothing more than an expansion of correspondence courses threatens their economic stability and more and more Private Sector educators can realistically become an option, especially if the school voucher system in Ontario is allowed to grow.
A school voucher, also called an education voucher, in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for a student at a school chosen by the student or the student’s parents
Imagine if Parents were allowed to choose? Now, let me make something clear, there are public school teachers that do care, but collectivism dictates that all parties in the labour union have to stick together, with E-Learning, there’s no hiding lazy teachers or inefficient learning techniques.
If parents can opt-out of bad teaching for a better alternative, which may or may not be in the public sector they will and this will, of course, put into question the so-called educators who are the real trouble makers. Understand that there are people who just love to complain about things, there are teachers who are looking for any reason to strike, teachers who genuinely believe that they’re entitled to their position whether they do a good or bad teaching job. The unions protect these individuals, school choice is the fear that plagues lazy teachers because the reality is if public school teachers weren’t collectively greedy and politically driven, Private Sector schools wouldn’t stand a chance against them.
E-learning is no boogeyman, but would be costly to implement properly, expert says | CBC
Interesting times ahead!