Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[RandyHolt]

Originally Posted by Point Blank

Well we aren’t talking about immigrants. We’re talking about refugees who didn’t have to choice in being displaced. Immigrants who come are generally quite proficient in English and have much more supportive networks than a family of child soldiers from Northern Iraq.

But we are talking about immigrants that are lacking English language skills. I totally understand that refugees will have limited opportunity to learn English before arrival and will need special help which we probably aren't providing nearly enough of.

But per the quote below, if 28 of 32 kids are still learning the language by grade 5, then the parents aren't doing enough to give their kids a chance. I see it in my kids school as well that all they do is speak their native language at home, so the kid's English skills improve very slowly and they're way behind in school. This is a bigger problem that needs to be solved.

Originally Posted by flamingreen

Of the 32 kids in my Grade 5 class last year, 28 were considered English language learners (now that had varying degrees too, several spoke no/minimal English). Ironically, math is probably the one subject where that is less of an issue (unless we are talking word problems), as they all can understand the numbers.

But where do those kids go? Several kids came to Canada, and two weeks later were in my classroom. Unless the answer is - no school for you - into the classroom they go.

[MBates]

Originally Posted by Parallex

I find it genuinely distressing how easily Premiers are electing to use the notwithstanding clause these days. For decades it was was almost taboo to use it (outside of Quebec and even then mostly just for language laws) but now it seems like Premiers will use it on just 'whatever'.

Equally distressing is how much of a free pass they get from the press when using it is tantamount to an admission that they are knowingly violating the rights of citizens.

The only real reason it would be taboo is because it is an overt decision to violate constitutionally protected rights and freedoms...and that might matter to voters who could punish a government at the ballot box the next time around.

The free pass to be concerned about is not the press...it is the voters themselves.

Overuse of the notwithstanding clause (which is a subjective viewpoint because in technical terms you cannot overuse something that was invented to be used as an elected government sees fit) is only able to be curtailed through political means via majority rule. There are no legal proceedings with independent decision makers to go to on this issue...only elections to win.

Which seems problematic as we run at break-neck speed into an era where large groups of unsophisticated voters who do not seem to appreciate or care about the consequences of what they vote for have become activated by misleading propaganda and are all too willing to support the tyranny of the majority (even to their own detriment).

Like it or not, I believe we are coming to a point where as individuals who make up a society, we are all going to have to decide if we have the courage to actually stand up for ourselves and others - even if it takes significant personal risk to do so.

Saying things from the protection of anonymity online will not suffice. That is not a shot at anyone here...but it is a call to action. If you do not fill the marketplace of ideas with the ones you want to win the day by personally committing to them and speaking out to seek to persuade those you know to agree with you, well then, you allow the carnival barkers to get what they want while you privately call them names and lament; how could it be possible we are now living in such an unjust Idiocracy?!

It is time to get politically active if you do not like where your society is at or where it is going, because the people who are currently driving the bus are fully committed and spreading their ideas as broadly and loudly as possible.

For example, if it is not important enough to you to put your time, money and personal reputation on the line to oppose Alberta separation...or a renewed mandate for the UCP at the next election, or the indiscriminate use of the notwithstanding clause, or whatever it is...then you are accepting any (or all) of those things you do not want may well be exactly what you get.

Because those who do want those things are currently going all-in and fully reveling in the knowledge of how easy everyone else's apathy is making it for them.

[Point Blank]

Originally Posted by RandyHolt

But we are talking about immigrants that are lacking English language skills. I totally understand that refugees will have limited opportunity to learn English before arrival and will need special help which we probably aren't providing nearly enough of.

But per the quote below, if 28 of 32 kids are still learning the language by grade 5, then the parents aren't doing enough to give their kids a chance. I see it in my kids school as well that all they do is speak their native language at home, so the kid's English skills improve very slowly and they're way behind in school. This is a bigger problem that needs to be solved.

That’s super typical in the NE. Unless you have a way to make the NE more attractive for Canadian born English speakers to move into, that’s kind of how it is. Regarding the 28/32, those numbers need to be taken into context

There’s 2 kinds of ELL tags, ones for Canadian born ELL’s and non-Canadian born ELL’s. The split is about half and half. Most of the Canadian born ELL’s are indistinguishable in their oral and listening language skills from non-ELL’s, but may show a bit of a lag in reading and writing if their parents don’t have native English proficiency.

The non-Canadian born ELL’s are a mixed bag with some just having arrived and are learning English.

It typically takes 7 years to become fully proficient in English. During this time, we actually recommend that the parents DO NOT speak English at home, because research shows that it’s not beneficial- mostly because they aren’t good models of English proficiency anyway. We encourage parents to speak their native language at home because possessing a strong foundational language supports English language development. They learn about difference in syntactical and grammatical elements in speech by traversing between two languages.

They’ll learn most of their English at school. They’ll speak with friends in English and be immersed rather than in an environment where parents are cobbling together makeshift English lessons. If a child has been in schools since kinder and still has significant English language gaps by the time they’re in grade 5, they’ll get flagged by their teacher for possible learning disabilities or another code and they’ll get put into a waitlist. The waitlist is very long and schools oftentime have to triage which student to give this opportunity to, which is not usually the quiet ELL kid…especially not in a NE school where there’s high complexities from immigrant and non-immigrant families alike. So families have to pay out of pocket for psycho-ed assessments instead, which is a major barrier for many immigrant families.

I guess all this to say is I don’t think it falls squarely on the parents. They’re all trying their best; sometimes parents really want to help but they end up making it worse for the kid because they aren’t teachers. The most I tell parents to do is to buy English books for them to read for fun in elementary, which I’ve always seen them enthusiastically do because they care about their child. Some parents can do better for sure, but that’s not any different compared with non-immigrant families. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to waitlist kids in the public system for a psycho-ed assessments.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Well they literally work nine months per year. Go look up expectations for a full-time job. Teachers get months more time off than that.

How is that demeaning, anyway? It's just the truth. Ask any teacher. They'll tell you they only get paid for 10 months of the year. That's because they don't work two months at all (we'll call the third month they don't work an earned vacation to which paying them is absolutely fair).

So yeah, I don't get your objection. It's not even a controversial statement. How can basic facts be interpreted as demeaning?

Extra 20 hours a week on average throughout the year? That's what you're saying? Instructional hours per week are 25.5 (950 hours per year / 185 instructional days = ~5.1 hours per day). Teachers already have 14.5 hours to mark and prep if we're assuming they work an 8-hour day during the nine months/year they work. And you're trying to tell me they need 34.5 hours per week (your 20 hours per week + 14.5 hours they already have)?

Horse. Manure.

Now, are there problems for teachers that need addressing? Yes. Their wages should move consistent with private sector wage movement in the timeframe from their last contract until now.

They should not be expected to hold the hands of kids not capable of keeping up as that is detrimental to the majority of kids. I understand how that hurts the class, creates more work and makes the classroom a more scattered environment. It's also not fair to the kids who have difficulty managing with their peers (it would be awful to sit in a class all day everyday feeling a step behind). And it's not fair to the other kids if the teacher is constantly catering to a child ill-equipped to be in that particular class.

Another problem one of my teacher friends has identified as being a big issue that I haven't seen brought up here is ESL kids in his class. Likely very dependent on the school/community in which you teach and I have no clue how you address this one, but I don't understand how you can expect a grade four teacher (as an example) to teach seven kids English while they're simultaneously trying to teach 23 kids math (and also the seven ESLs math). I imagine that is a really touchy one to bring up as it can be spun into racism really fast, but the way my friend talks about it is out of absolute concern for his entire class it affects...he's the least racist guy ever...doesn't even have flareups in traffic.

I don't like how we're pretending each teacher is inventing lesson plans for each course. That's such gaslighting. There are lesson plans and curriculums and ready-made materials galore. They can also re-use much (and sometimes all) of their previous lesson plans from year to year. They don't have to re-invent the wheel every day, so I think when you say things like that it turns would-be supporters into eye rollers that stop giving a hoot.

I've never gone wrong deferring to Malcolm on this stuff. He articulates teacher issues without gaslighting, exaggerating or embellishing. I don't think you do as good a job, tbh.

O+G gets comparable days off to teachers.

6 weeks vacation plus the extra days at Christmas plus extra Fridays on statsor Fridays off during the summer and I’m at 8 weeks off a year plus at least one fully paid conference somewhere. The Gap between teachers and other O+G professionals isn’t that large in terms of vacation and is in terms of Salary.

With your count of 9 months you are counting conference days as days off and looking at student schedules not teacher schedules.

Your schtick of teachers have it great you dont need to pay them more does not make sense given what has happened to the available substitute pools. They are drying up rapidly. So it no longer appears we are paying enough or have good enough working conditions to maintain the required influx of teachers. That means the job needs higher pay or better conditions regardless of our personal opinions.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Parallex

I find it genuinely distressing how easily Premiers are electing to use the notwithstanding clause these days. For decades it was was almost taboo to use it (outside of Quebec and even then mostly just for language laws) but now it seems like Premiers will use it on just 'whatever'.

Equally distressing is how much of a free pass they get from the press when using it is tantamount to an admission that they are knowingly violating the rights of citizens.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that not only is the majority of our local media (National Post, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, Airdrie Echo, Cochrane Times, and 40 more Alberta publications) is owned by Postmedia.

Postmedia is not just conservative, it is American and Republican owned. At this point in time Albertans should be viewing all of these "newspapers" as hostile foriegn propaganda. They will gloss over everything that the UCP is doing and help them with their agenda.

Convince your friends and family to get off of these rags (Boycott America) and start supporting local news coverage that will actually report on corruption and scandal.

[CFO]

Anyone else feel the younger generations are getting dumber?

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by CFO

Anyone else feel the younger generations are getting dumber?

I actually think the older generations are getting dumber

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by CFO

Anyone else feel the younger generations are getting dumber?

Makes sense. DS came right out and said she wants more "conservative" schooling. The best way to do that is to get rid of critical thinking and try to just educate kids into sheeple.

From the Tyee: The Right-Wing Plan to Take Over Alberta Education

Here is some fun history to consider as a lot of it rings true to what we are seeing today:

The connection between this conservative traditionalism and education privatization is manifested in Alberta’s system of “school choice,” which is uniquely robust in the Canadian context.

In Alberta, the provincial government provides equal operational funding to privately operated charter schools as it does to public, separate and francophone schools, subsidizes upwards of 70 per cent of tuition for private schools, and provides stipends for home-schooling.

In her report, Ganshorn details how this system came about as a result of agitation from conservative parental rights groups in the 1960s, mainly Dutch immigrants who didn’t want to send their children to the public or separate school systems, so they established their own private religious schools that adhered to the Dutch Reformed branch of Protestantism.

This led to the establishment of lobbying groups, such as the Christian Action Foundation, which pushed the government to fund private schools in the name of “parental rights in education.”

In 1967, under the Social Credit premiership of Ernest Manning, a devout Christian, Alberta’s government began subsidizing private education.

But it wasn’t until the heyday of neoliberalism in the 1990s that education came to be viewed as a commodity, with public funding of private education regarded as a way of introducing consumer choice to education, leading to the establishment of Alberta’s first charter schools under Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein.

Implementing the logic of market competition to education through charter schools eventually created an environment in which it wasn’t enough for private education boosters to coexist with the public system; the public system had to be delegitimized.

Cultural conservatives gradually crafted a narrative of fear that the public education system is undermining traditional values by exposing the children of God-fearing parents to pornography and grooming them to become gay or transgender.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by CFO

Anyone else feel the younger generations are getting dumber?

No. They seem to be getting a lot kinder though.

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by CFO

Anyone else feel the younger generations are getting dumber?

Saying that out loud means you're getting old.

[FacePaint]

Originally Posted by btimbit

I actually think the older generations are getting dumber

The Why Not Both gif is appropriate here.

[CFO]

Originally Posted by BigThief

Saying that out loud means you're getting old.

Which I am - early 40s

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by CFO

Which I am - early 40s

Early 40s isn't old.

Old starts at retirement age.

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by CFO

Which I am - early 40s

Me too, but I'm self aware enough to realize "rabble rabble young people today" is tired old nonsense.

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by GGG

O+G gets comparable days off to teachers.

6 weeks vacation plus the extra days at Christmas plus extra Fridays on statsor Fridays off during the summer and I’m at 8 weeks off a year plus at least one fully paid conference somewhere. The Gap between teachers and other O+G professionals isn’t that large in terms of vacation and is in terms of Salary.

With your count of 9 months you are counting conference days as days off and looking at student schedules not teacher schedules.

Your schtick of teachers have it great you dont need to pay them more does not make sense given what has happened to the available substitute pools. They are drying up rapidly. So it no longer appears we are paying enough or have good enough working conditions to maintain the required influx of teachers. That means the job needs higher pay or better conditions regardless of our personal opinions.

I work in O & G and don’t have anywhere near that kind of time off…

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by GGG

O+G gets comparable days off to teachers.

6 weeks vacation plus the extra days at Christmas plus extra Fridays on statsor Fridays off during the summer and I’m at 8 weeks off a year plus at least one fully paid conference somewhere. The Gap between teachers and other O+G professionals isn’t that large in terms of vacation and is in terms of Salary.

With your count of 9 months you are counting conference days as days off and looking at student schedules not teacher schedules.

Your schtick of teachers have it great you dont need to pay them more does not make sense given what has happened to the available substitute pools. They are drying up rapidly. So it no longer appears we are paying enough or have good enough working conditions to maintain the required influx of teachers. That means the job needs higher pay or better conditions regardless of our personal opinions.

I worked oil and gas for a long time, and at a firm where I got 2 fridays off per month. As an early career professional I worked almost exactly the same number of days as my wife who was a teacher. But that was only because I bought two extra weeks of vacation using all my flex dollars (her benefits were great so we declined mine) and she taught summer school every year.

[indes]

So did the ATA just capitulate on class sizes and wages? Is that what I'm reading everywhere that they're only left to negotiate a top 1.5% increase or something?

[Winnie]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Four hours at home after an 8-hour day is such a crock of sht. That obvious baloney does not help their case at all and absolutely turns people like me off when they actually are starting with support.

I know so many teachers, dude. My family is half teachers as is my friend group.

Not one works four hours a day after the school day.

Also, it pretends professionals aren't expected to work beyond eight hours in a day. Every private and/or public company I've worked for, my friends work for and my wife has worked for expect way more than 8 hours per day. It's just the way our society is set up. All salaried employees are expected to work beyond a normal 9-5 in this day and age. Teachers aren't unique there, so it honestly just pisses people off when they try to play that card as though they're more put out than everyone else: they have it easier. They work way fewer hours per year than literally everyone else who has a full-time job.

The government will be putting out propaganda against teachers. The teachers union is also going to be putting out propaganda. Both messages will need to be viewed critically.

Speaking from experience on both sides of the fence, you are out to lunch. Teachers "work fewer hours per year than literally everyone else who has a full-time job"? Yeesh.

[Looch City]

This is like one of Sliver's biggest triggers haha. Teachers.

If only half of what he said was true for all teachers, then we wouldn't even be in this mess!

[Amethyst]

Originally Posted by Winnie

Speaking from experience on both sides of the fence, you are out to lunch. Teachers "work fewer hours per year than literally everyone else who has a full-time job"? Yeesh.

Yeah, Sliver used to say he knew how much teachers worked because he "job shadowed" them when he was a child in school. I guess that argument wasn't convincing because now suddenly, all his friends are teachers who barely work and laugh about how good they have it. I find it hard to believe that a bunch of people are great friends with someone who constantly denigrates their profession.

Summers off are nice (it's more like 6 weeks than 3 months), but if you go into teaching for that reason, you're going to hate your life. And if you're a newer teacher, or teaching something new, or the government revamps the curriculum for "reasons," you will spend a lot of that time getting ready for the year.