H

Bob Hunter

® strictly personal ©

2.

SOME READERS will be familiar with the work of
West Vancouverite Tunya Audain, a founding member of
the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, who has been work-
ing for the past dozen years as a parent advocate, fighting

the school system.

A charming lady with
boundless positive energy, Tunya
looks forward to a_ possible
breakthrough in her long and so
far fruitless struggle to see a
voucher plan for education made
available in B.C., at least, if not
immediately across the rest of the
country.

The idea of a voucher system
isn’t particularly a Seft-wing or
right-wing idea, although “I’m
sure most unionized teachers are
no doubt hostile to the idea, just
as the schoo! boards themselves
probably are—since vouchers
would introduce an element of
competition into the
monopolistic public school
system we have.

Vouchers do fit in quite nicely,
though, Tunya notes, with the
grassroots-is-beautiful musings of
a certain garden colum-
nist-turned-premier. Bill Vander
Zalm mentioned the idea of
vouchers several times during his
election campaign.

Whether anything comes of it
remains to be seen. Dave Barrett,
after all, privately looked with
favor on the voucher system back
in 1973 during his brief sojourn
as provincial Poo-Bah. It is
hardly a new idea,

Yet it may well be one whose
time has come.

In the U.S., the voucher
scheme has been touted by the
likes of Milton Friedman, who
wrote in his 1983 book, Tyranny
of The Status Quo:

“The fundamental reason for
the deterioration of schooling is
increasing centralization and
bureaucratization ... Professional
educators—not parents or
students—have increasingly
decided what should be taught,
how, by whom, and to whom.
Monopoly and uniformity have
replaced competition and diversi-
ty ... Controls by producers have
replaced control by consumers."’

He adds: ‘'As parents have
become more and more
discouraged about the education

of their children, support for the
voucher plan has grown.’* One
effect would be ‘‘to give all
parents greater control over their
children’s schooling, similar to
that which those of us in the up-
per-income classes now have."’

The case for vouchers has been
made by rebel educator David
Seeley, who writes: “Under a
voucher system, instead of
schools being accountable collec-
tively through a political process,
they would be accountable to
each family individually, through
the market process.

“Another virtue of the com-
petitive system would be that
parents would not have to
remove their children from a
school to make public educators
notice them; the mere fact that
they COULD move their children
might keep school officials
alert."’

The voucher concept has been
applied in this country before,
under the War Service Grants
Act, to help returning war
veterans complete their educa-
tion.

if such a system were to be
designed to help young people,
parents could either be given a
tax credit or a transfer payment
could be made to the school of
their choice.

Parents could therefore choose
between puolic schools, indepen-
dent schools, or they could help
establish new schools of their
own,

It costs roughly $3,500 a year
to put a child through the public
school system in B.C. The
average teacher's salary is
$35,000. Some people think a
voucher should be equal to the
amount spent on a public school
child. Others think $2,090 a year
would be plenty.

The parents, in any event,
could determine how they want
that money spent. Opticns would
quickly open which, right now,
simply aren’t there. The meat
grinder is still basically the meat

LIGHTING

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grinder, despite the often heroic
efforts of individual teachers.

Alternatively, parents might
choose to invest in home-based
computer systems and yank their
kids from the public schools en-
tirely,

As it is, you have a right to |
remove your kid from school so |

long as you arrange to teach him
or her the core curriculum. The
department of education can’t
stop this, although officials all up
and down the line discourage
such a practice, since it
diminishes their turf and creates
what they perceive as an ad-
ministrative hassle.

Which, of course, is the whole
problem. it is a lot more trouble-
some to have to cope with indi-
vidual educational desires than it
is to impose a formula on a mass
student body.

To which Tunya Audain says:
tough!

Yet without some direct con-
trol over the ways educational
funds are to be spent, individual
parents will never be able to ex-
ercise anything more than the
most vague degree of control
over what happens in the
classroom.

I like the voucher idea. It
might just end the sense of
alienation from schooling on the
part of most parents which is
almost as pervasive as the sense
of helplessness you get stepping
into a post office.

More on this.

Province
seeks

| assessors

THE PROVINCIAL Emergency
Program of the Ministry of En-
vironment and Parks is currently
compiling a list of assessor and
appraiser firms in British Colum-
bia.

The list will be used as the basis
for the arrangement of the assess-
ment and appraisal services re-
quired in post-disaster situations
when they occur in the province.

Firms wishing to be included on
the list should advise the ministry
of their experience, the number of
trained staff available, and the
general area they have knowledge
of and which is readily accessible
from their location.

Correspondence should be ad-
dressed to the Director, Provincial
Emergency Program, Ministry of
Environment and Parks, Parlia-
ment Buildings, Victoria, B.C.,
V&V 1X5.

i &ehtiterrh B
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PHILIP HAINES
980-0571

GREASE TRAILS

Dear Mr Tiley

Box 425, Stn A, Kelowna, 8.C, VI¥ 7P)

! walked in the steps of Sw Alexander Mackenzie, wearing my

a Tilley hat

2] The Alexander Mackenzie Tra Assocation works to preserve and
2] enhance 450 km of Mackenzies overland route trom the Fraser
River near Quesnel, BC. io the Pacific The tras he followed
were the prehistoric indian “grease trails". many of which remain
today as Mackenzie recorded hem
{like the hat, so | bought shorts and pants as well So did
my wile. if you have been to Expo you will have noticed the nods

, of recognition among the Tilley hat fair goers

John Woodwarth

Mr Woodworth 1s president of the AMTA, we thank him for tus

= letter

Alexander Tilley

Drop in, Phone or Wiite
Mon.-Sat. 10-5

Barbara Tilley
1559 Pemberton Ave,
North Van. V7P 2S3

980-2631