Modelling Students

Parents do their best - or they should - to teach their children by example the moral and ethical values that will equip them to be decent, independent, responsible and caring human beings when they are ready to go out into the world and fend for themselves.  This is the very basic of parental responsibilities, second only to the need to provide emotional warmth and stability to a child's early life experience, enfolding that child in an atmosphere of caring support, and providing the child with the necessities of practical survival: food, shelter, health care.

The society in which most people in the developed world live, also sees an institutional obligation to provide growing children with a supportive educational experience.  To teach that child responsibility to self through self-discipline and a self-motivated love of learning.  Morals and ethics are also broadly outlined in support of the general social compact.  And to teachers in the elementary and secondary school systems is given the task of shepherding and guiding students toward fairly fixed goals encompassing those values.

The Province of Ontario has seen fit to expect of all graduating high school students to fulfill an added obligation beyond and above achieving good grades representing a fundamental understanding and capability in literacy, numeracy, geography, history, health and hygiene; even inter-personal relations, supplementing and surpassing what young people inherit in their exposure in the home-learning situation, to prepare them for life within the greater society.

The expectation that committing to and performing forty hours of community involvement activities, otherwise known as volunteerism, is thought to have great beneficial effects, teaching responsibility to others, compassion, recognition of one's place in society, broadening the outlook of a young person by understanding that we all of us contribute to the success of a society.  So forty hours of community volunteerism is the anticipated minimum that each graduating high school student is expected to serve.

Their teachers do have a demanding, difficult job.  Their profession requires patience, commitment, the ability to communicate well, and to enthuse young minds in searching for answers to questions assigned them and questions they themselves pose to themselves through life experience and fortune.  The ability to solve those questions will have a great impact throughout their lives.  The financial recompense in salary is modest initially, averaging $40,000 annually, but over a ten-year period rising to $90.000; a considerable wage.

Because the Province of Ontario has acquired a staggering debt and a very difficult state of fiscal deficit, the robust union/government wage agreements of the past ten years with their perquisites relating to holiday time, health and retirement benefits have succumbed to the reality that under the current economic situation a lapse in salary increases and benefits can be expected.  Teachers have responded to this reality through their unions by 'working to rule', withholding all 'extras' normally expected of those in the teaching profession; extracurricular activities.

These add-ons are not extravagances, but they do represent an important part of the elementary and high school experience, from assisting students who require additional help, to taking part in after-hours school programs, from drama and music to sports activities.  Teachers' petulance went a step too far when the Ottawa Carleton Elementary Teachers' Federation filed a grievance.  Teachers were putting in time over and above what their contracts called for: 300 minutes stipulated in their collective agreement for the teaching day.

Some schools had initiated an "early bell", a signal to students that they were permitted to enter school premises to go to their lockers in preparation for beginning their school day.  That, claimed the union, forced teachers to be on duty anywhere from five to ten minutes longer each day.  An arbitrator agreed with the union, and found for the teachers being compensated for 'overtime'.  But a court has now overturned that decision and found no merit in the grievance.

"Given the evidence that after an 'early bell' some affected teachers simply continued drinking coffee in the staff room or locked themselves in their classroom while students lined up in the hall, it is unreasonable, if not irrational, to conclude that those teachers are entitled to compensatory time or money based on differential treatment", the court found, sending the case back to a new, perhaps more sensible arbitrator.