Bribing me with my own money

The Ontario government is trying to bribe me to hate teachers.  Recently the government decided to slash education funding in high school, aiming to increase class sizes up to 45 kids in some instances, and start a big trend towards mandatory online learning.  Right when Pinkie Pie is about to head off to high school... great.  When elementary teachers decided to strike in protest, the government offered to give money to parents to offset childcare costs.  They are all about not spending money on educating kids, but when it comes to tossing it around randomly at parents who vote, well, there is money for that!

I have seen arguments that these changes actually aren't so bad.  After all, in university courses often have more than 100 students, and much learning takes place online.

This is true, of course.  For people like me for whom school was easy neither of these things is all that bad.  I could have easily done high school by reading websites or in huge classrooms.  No problem.

But I am not the only student, nor am I the average student.  I am one of the top people out there in terms of finding school easy.  You could teach me that content in any pants-on-head stupid way and I would get it.  Other students will not.

Our focus should not be on whether the top students can survive, it should be on whether the struggling students can thrive.  This is the metric where the new changes are a disaster.  Kids who struggle with terrible home situations, learning disabilities, poverty, or other challenges need teachers who have the time to spare to help them.  They need educators who can see their difficulties and step in to help them.  "Here is a website" is a nightmare for those kids, and they will learn nothing. 

I have also seen arguments that online learning will be good because it can introduce competition into the school system.  This is foolishness incarnate.  Competition just means that we will find some way to score students and then we will pay companies to raise student scores.  There won't be measurements for emotional regulation, no allowances for outside challenges will be made, and the end result will be companies producing content designed explicitly to get higher grades on a standardized test.  The ability to get a high score on a specific high school test is worthless to employers and terrible for general education. 

For kids that are struggling we need teachers who can help them, and we need those teachers to be managing 20-25 kids, not 40+.  Trashing education is exactly the sort of thing that sends countries spiralling downward.

Right now my government has decided to torch the future, and their response to criticisms is to blame the teachers or tell people to go to private school.  They are trying to bribe parents to support their actions, and it is reprehensible.

I am glad that the teachers are taking a stand to push back against this awful nonsense.  Taking money from children's education to pump it into stock portfolios is foolish governance based on the Conservative philosophy of taking a dump on those who are poor or struggling to give to the rich.  It must not stand.