There’s an old saying “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” We know intuitively, and it’s backed up by evidence, that investment in education pays substantial dividends late on.
At one time, teachers, nurses and police officers had roughly comparable salaries. I met a teacher a few nights ago on the doorstep who related a personal account of how far behind teachers’ salaries have fallen. He has taught for 25 years and told me that his aunt retired as a teacher about the same time as he started. When she retired, she began collecting her pension which was 66% of her teaching income. She got monthly pension cheques and over the years (because she was fortunate enough to have an indexed pension), her pension has for the most part kept pace with inflation. Twenty five years later, the teacher told me that his aunt’s net take home pay is more than his, and she gets 12 monthly cheques to his 10! In other words, his salary today is less than 2/3 of a teacher’s salary twenty five years ago.
Unfortunately, the Saskatchewan Party government has been so blinded by its anti-union, anti-public sector ideology, that it has disregarded the impacts of its cuts to education. Cutting teaching assistants is a particularly short-sighted move that threatens the education of everyone in those affected classrooms. Over the years, classroom sizes have grown, and students with special and higher needs have been moved into regular classrooms with ‘normal’ students. Lately, with more immigration to our province, many teachers are also dealing with students for whom English is not their primary language. Teaching assistants help the teachers in those instances. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that providing instruction and maintaining order in a room of 30 kids is a challenge that most adults simply aren’t up to. On top of that, consider that three of those students likely don’t have a grasp of English and at least one child has behavioral challenges or an intellectual disability. One can easily see that taking away the teaching assistant penalizes not just the child with the intellectual disability, for example, but the entire class.
When we invest in education we gain future economic productivity. We also save on costs in the justice system, in health care and in social services. Investing in education is not only a smart economic approach, it’s also the compassionate approach that gives children (and adults) the means to help themselves and better their standard of living. Children have no control of their race, the family they’re born into, and the community they’re raised in. Investing in a person’s education is one of the best ways to give that person the means to clear whatever hurdles life may have placed in his/her path.
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On Fish and Children…
There’s an old saying “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” We know intuitively, and it’s backed up by evidence, that investment in education pays substantial dividends late on.
At one time, teachers, nurses and police officers had roughly comparable salaries. I met a teacher a few nights ago on the doorstep who related a personal account of how far behind teachers’ salaries have fallen. He has taught for 25 years and told me that his aunt retired as a teacher about the same time as he started. When she retired, she began collecting her pension which was 66% of her teaching income. She got monthly pension cheques and over the years (because she was fortunate enough to have an indexed pension), her pension has for the most part kept pace with inflation. Twenty five years later, the teacher told me that his aunt’s net take home pay is more than his, and she gets 12 monthly cheques to his 10! In other words, his salary today is less than 2/3 of a teacher’s salary twenty five years ago.
Unfortunately, the Saskatchewan Party government has been so blinded by its anti-union, anti-public sector ideology, that it has disregarded the impacts of its cuts to education. Cutting teaching assistants is a particularly short-sighted move that threatens the education of everyone in those affected classrooms. Over the years, classroom sizes have grown, and students with special and higher needs have been moved into regular classrooms with ‘normal’ students. Lately, with more immigration to our province, many teachers are also dealing with students for whom English is not their primary language. Teaching assistants help the teachers in those instances. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that providing instruction and maintaining order in a room of 30 kids is a challenge that most adults simply aren’t up to. On top of that, consider that three of those students likely don’t have a grasp of English and at least one child has behavioral challenges or an intellectual disability. One can easily see that taking away the teaching assistant penalizes not just the child with the intellectual disability, for example, but the entire class.
When we invest in education we gain future economic productivity. We also save on costs in the justice system, in health care and in social services. Investing in education is not only a smart economic approach, it’s also the compassionate approach that gives children (and adults) the means to help themselves and better their standard of living. Children have no control of their race, the family they’re born into, and the community they’re raised in. Investing in a person’s education is one of the best ways to give that person the means to clear whatever hurdles life may have placed in his/her path.