Continuing on the media beat,

Sue Rickards has an interesting letter in the T-J today about the ways in which the current provincial government has adopted a corporate model:

Offering performance bonuses to deputy ministers is a disturbing indication of the tendency of this government to model itself on business corporations, thereby subverting its own purpose. Government is not motivated by profit and individual gain; it’s meant to be driven by justice and the interests of all citizens, which are often at odds with the goals of the private sector.

She decries the offering of bonuses to government bureaucrats and ends — rather touchingly, given what we know of Shawn Graham’s Liberals — with the hope that

That bonus fund should flow not to executives, but to the budgets of community organizations who struggle daily, doing the government’s work on a shoestring.

The problem is, of course, that not only do they not work for “justice and the interests of all citizens,” they seem disinterested, at best, in anyone else doing it.

 

The T-J continues its stepped-up policy

of union-bashing with a hysterical article that practically has poor old Abel Leblanc lobbing a Molotov cocktail into Market Square. But what can you say about a newspaper that continues to put the phrase “big business” in quotation marks, as if the term were some biased product of the radical left rather than a spectacularly understated statement of fact?

I don’t know Abel Leblanc from, well, J.D. Irving. But at least as far as he has been reflected in the local media, he is angry and hurting about the ongoing attacks in this province on the dignity of working people, and in that, I am with him.

One of the commentators picked up on the following segment of the article:

LeBlanc also pointed to protests last fall over concerns the Liberal government would merge the University of New Brunswick Saint John with other community colleges. He said many union members were in the crowds, and their opposition convinced the government to reconsider the reforms.

She writes,

I also wonder where he was when the protests for UNBSJ were happening. He mentions union members being in the crowd but no mention of himself being there as an MLA. I also do not recall if he added his voice to the Harbour cleanup issue or to the North of Union debates. I haven’t heard him speak of the abysmal infrastructure issues of Saint John nor the ever increasing property tax rates in the city.

While it is true that the unions, UNB’s and others, were out in force last fall — along with the rest of the city — we were certainly frustrated at UNBSJ that not one of the Liberal MLA’s from Saint John broke ranks and stood up for the campus, particularly as we knew that most of them must have been cringing behind closed doors. Given how dissenters tend to get savaged — we need look no further than Abel Leblanc — one can understand the impulse to keep ones head down. But “divide and conquer” is a long-standing tactic and all of us in New Brunswick who consider ourselves progressive on any issue would do well to consider working in coalition, wherever possible, with each other. Difficult when we are each exhausted with constantly trying to put out local fires, but you know the old saying: we stand together or we fall alone.

Particularly, er, being in a place where there are such, ah, common denominators.

 

A case study

on the complications of collaboration: “Collaboration Among Colleges: Impossible Mission?” Alice Brown, Inside Higher Ed (Aug. 19/08):

Collaboration as a concept is great, but as a reality it rarely exists. Centralization (providing benefits that each college can access) and even cooperation (helping when it doesn’t hurt) are far easier practices to implement than true collaboration (working for the benefit of the whole even when some of the individual parts have to sacrifice).

Especially when that “whole” is one political party’s agenda, individual parts be damned.

 

I’m lovin’ it

 

Or take night courses

 

The conclusion seems inescapable:

given that random sites on university grounds are apparently bursting into flame, there can be only one explanation: Athena is angry with what is happening to education in New Brunswick. We may regard this as a mild warning, but if we don’t mend our ways, well, let’s just remember that she was a war-goddess before she became the goddess of wisdom.

 

More than just mild

[source of quote]

 

Place

Jennifer Dunville’s article, “UNB says province doesn’t interfere in hiring,” in the category of highly optimistic preemptive strike, and batten down the hatches.

Andrew Holland, spokesman for the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, said the New Brunswick government has never intervened in the search or appointment of a university president other than the involvement required by UNB’s Act.

Well, if there is going to be a first time, it will be this government that tries it.

 

Recruitment poster

 

Recruitment poster

 

You know what’s really

Liberal caucus, learning to carry a tune

getting on my wick? All these apologists who think that whatever disasters the Liberals propagate, they should be forgiven as long as they appear “contrite” and “rueful”, as long as they “learn.” Of course, Graham and Lamrock set the tone themselves and their supporters are only too happy to take the hint. This from the government that wants to give merit raises to government bureaucrats. That wants performance-based contracts. That wants to “measure outcomes” and impose repercussions for anyone who doesn’t “produce.” And we are supposed to wryly shake our heads after each cock-up and say indulgently, “Well, I bet they won’t do that again! Kids, eh? But did you see how abashed they looked? How cute is that? Look at Shawnie with his hands in his pockets, and little Kelly, shuffling his feet.” The ever-consistent Marcelle Mersereau writes, “The Graham government has survived its first serious crisis. There have been lessons learned from this exercise that will not be quickly forgotten.” Not very reassuring from someone who herself seems to have forgotten the serious crisis of last fall, for starters.

Me? I say, “spare the rod.”

[Cross-posted to La maison.]

 

Student recruitment

 

See you in September

 

John Steeves

has an excellent commentary in today’s T-J which compares our current premier with the late-lamented Louis Robichaud. Of particular interest to the PSE beat:

I also don’t remember voting for sweeping changes to our province’s post-secondary education institutions. Especially changes that would bring our universities and community colleges under much more direct government control.

If Ed Doherty listened to news from Europe, he might realize that this is a concept that’s been tried rather unsuccessfully. According to a report on the BBC, most of Europe’s universities are concerned that, on a world scale, they are now considered second-rate. They intend to change that. And guess what?

They’ve come to the conclusions that their biggest problem is too much direct control from government.

Their best hopes:

1. find ways to become more independent from government; and
2. make absolutely certain that government has no role in determining what sorts of curriculum they offer.

No surprise here that this government is failing to look beyond national borders when they don’t even seem able to look outside the province.

(Steeves’ link leads to a general page; I will try to pin-point the story. If anyone else does, please drop a line … )

 

Disappointing

is the only word I could think of that doesn’t have four letters. I am listening to the press conference from Fredericton. The mandatory intensive French programme is still in place, and early immersion will be less effective as it will only start in grade three. As far as I can tell that is the only bone thrown to the critics: the retention of some form of early(-ish) immersion. The rest of the original Lamrock plan remains, and the Minister is still trotting out much of the same disinformation: that poor and aboriginal children are clustered in core, without acknowledging that EFI is frequently not offered in the rural areas where those children often live (a situation that will continue with the new gr. 3 entry point as the Minister explicitly said that there are no plans to expand early immersion to rural schools); that students in K-2 need to develop language skills in their mother tongue; that intermediate French is bilingualism. Still fixated on testing, teacher “accountability” and “rewards”. There is to be a new “Ministerial Advisory Group” and more “stakeholder” meetings. Nothing about increased FSL resources. In a nutshell, lots of rhetoric but the result is a mishmash that will make few happy, neither the entrenched anti-EFI people in the DoE and elsewhere, nor those who blame immersion for streaming, nor those who want children to have the opportunity to develop advanced language skills. And significantly, our system in N.B. will still remain out of step with K-12 education in the rest of the country, making moving to and from the province difficult.

Lots of rhetoric, LOTS of self-congratulation, but no mention of the primary causes of the woes in N.B. education: our lowest per-capita spending, per student, in the country, followed closely by a centrally controlled, un-democratic DoE.

Unintentionally hilarious moments: both Graham and Lamrock repeatedly congratulating themselves on overseeing a province-wide debate on education.

So yes, disappointing. Very disappointing.

[Cross-posted from La maison.]

 

Every morning

I check canadaeast.com for news and opinions, and this morning was no different. Except that it was. Rather than the expected array of stories about the “win-win” Irving plan for the long wharf and anxious letters about the scary pro-union views of our new mayor, there were instead a series of feel-good stories about, um, “being in this place.” Well, far be it from me to rain on anyone’s New Brunswick day parade — the weather itself is doing a good job of that — so I thought I might eschew the usual critical tone of much of what I write here and leave a dissection of what the T-J thinks a paper should do or the irony of criticizing other jurisdictions for their environmental practices aside for at least one post.

So what is left?

How about why we are fighting so hard for the integrity of higher education in this province?

Much too long for a blog post; that would turn into an essay, or even a book or two. But perhaps an initial swat at making a partial list, which can be added to in the comments.

Why we are fighting:

• Because under neoliberal capitalism, universities are among the very few places where there is still anything approaching freedom of speech, however muzzled it may be.
• Because New Brunswick, given its size, resource-based economy and patterns of ownership, is in particular need of such places.
• Because in a small, so-called “have-not” province, educational opportunities — real educational opportunities — are particularly important.
• Because there need to be spaces outside the cash-nexus, the marketplace, in order for a culture to be viable.
• Because with our small campuses we really do have an opportunity to provide “student-focused education.”
• Because our students deserve more than to be treated as cogs in the machine.
• Because we think our students should be allowed to choose their own paths.
• Because we take the long view.
• Because though many of us working in the universities come from away, this is our home now and we want to stay here.
• Because if someone reading this disagrees with any of it, that’s cool, but isn’t it good that we can have the conversation?

 

Student-centred education

 

Recruitment poster

 

Yesterday

the T-J published an interesting letter from Jean-Guy Richard about the issue of early French immersion, and some of what he wrote resonates for the government’s mishandling of the PSE issue:

Re: your editorial “Access for all” (July 22). The Telegraph-Journal is confusing management with structure.

Access for all and the other problems identified in your editorial are all management problems. Eliminating EFI is a structural change. Management problems require management solutions. Structural changes cannot correct management deficiencies. Bad or incompetent managers are always suggesting structural changes to escape responsibility for their mismanagement.

Some years ago, senior staff at the education department convinced the government of the day to scrap school boards and concentrate all the power in the hands of the senior bureaucracy. Now that their mismanagement has given us the lowest test scores in Canada, they are trying to blame the structure.

The problem is not structure but bad management. A successful system is one in which parents and teachers have their say in formulating programs and systems as was done in Ontario. A top-down system as we have in N.B. has to fail. The Telegraph-Journal would be more helpful to the finding of solutions if it recognize the difference between structure and management and offered solutions that matched the problems.

The parallels are eerie, no?

 

Be … in this place