4 - Friday, May 7, 1993 - North Shore News Un I HAVE a few bedrock beliefs about mankind. Some give me no joy. One is: given the opportunity, underdogs become over- dogs. Take the teachers. You will hardly believe it from my youthful face (see photo), but 1 am old enough to remember with great clarity when teachers began their first gentle and dignified atre-pts to get fair pay and indeed -ctive rights in my Ontario home town. That was in the fate 1940s. While it would be difficult to find anyone in this materialistic world who thinks he is paid adequately for his faultless (and sadly under-recognized) economic con- tribution, teachers at that time seemed to have a strong case that they weren't being paid in propor- tion to their education, responsi- bility, and dedication. We students at my high schoo! were, I think, almost universally supportive when the teachers tried to get collective bargaining rights and union status by any name. And I don’t think it was just because we hoped for a few days of sanctioned hookey if the teach- ers actually put down their chalk and walked out. It never came to that. The point is that teachers were held in generally high regard, and erdog te: re Trevo Lautens to with great interest. It was astonishing to think that ‘they had lives outside of the classroom, and secing one’s teacher at a store or on the street caused a kind of shy excitement mixed with fear, At such times you'd try to catch the eye of your teacher or even say hello, while being alert to the possibility that he/she would see you doing or saying something on the street that would be disap- proved of in the class. That was the general picture. There were exceptions. And cer- tainly some teachers were held in low respect; many, including those well liked, were given droll nicknames or mimicked. “Supply” teachers were likely to get an especially, though usual- ly just cautiously, mutinous recep- tion, Especially since some were ac- tually retired — brought back because of the shortage of teach- ers. When the Baby Boom crested in the late '50s-carly ’60s, the Globe and Mail carried pages of desper- ate ads for teachers. Boards in remote areas offered inducements and outrageously lowered qualifications, sometimes hiring young people with no teacher training at all, provided they agreed to take {wo summers at what was then called ‘normal school,”’ And today? Teachers are getting around 25 times as much as the $2,000- $3,000 range pay of less than half a century ago. Their working days total barely half of the year. They belong to a powerful, and powerfully- connected, union, They are under terrific pressure 10.25% INTEREST RATE AND THE to update skills, sit around boring committee tables, keep up with frequently crazed educational fashions, deal with ‘‘exceptional’”’ children, play politics, and mollify the parents of the few really trou- blesome children in every class — often without the backing of ca- reer-protecting principals and weak-kneed boards. In British Columbia the bill for the education system, excluding colleges and universities, runs around 33.3 billion and absorbs 26.2 cents of each tax dollar. And it isn’t enough. I remember a decade ago doing a study of the pay of a certain Lower Mainland board's superin- tendent: he was earning, with ad- justment for the difference in the value of the dollars, more than J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI in the United States. And he was typical. Yet the money is still not enough. And the teachers are buckling with their burdens, My peers who are teachers — only yesterday, alas, they were schoolboys themselves, mimicking old Mr. Nelson, aping the uncon- scious gestures of dear Mr. Smith! —~ are taking early retirement, The North Shore's a * A % working out formulas that allow them to bail out in their mid-fif- ties. So today the former underdogs go on strike or work to rule: over issucs that are a long way from life-threatening in places like North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, and currently the Big Lotus itself, Vancouver. Personally, I’ve never en- countered a teacher of my children who didn’t impress me with her/his strong dedication, ability, and energy, — including my wife, who is a teacher. I hope his students say the same of my eldest son, who is a univer- sity professor. - But the “‘image”’ of teachers’ has plunged. They have power. They have, collectively, low respect. It is all very sad and dismaying. Teachers mouthing platitudes and leaving their students in the lurch! } think | know what the poorly paid teachers of old in their stained suits, the underdogs who were paid so little, would think of their modern overdog counterparts with their arrogant, cliche-spouting dogma. They'd have despised them. CGAY! Second Most Famous Bridge. | ~