BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter from Innisfil resident Gordon H. Crawford is in response to a story titled 'Teachers' union gets behind Barrie-area candidates who support OSSTF's education plan,' published May 10.
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It seems the world has rather gone crazy.
We have a situation in Ontario in which we seem to be losing nursing professionals due to burnout and lack of support. Hospitals are due to be built yet candidates are suggesting they are going to add hundreds of new doctors and add many new nursing staff.
The OSSTF has suggested that now is the time that candidates need to listen to the new plans of this union. Highways are being suggested in areas that have shown impact on our environment to simply satisfy the greed of developers as well as the suggestion of more teachers are to be added, last heard maybe something in the neighbourhood of 80,000 so class sizes can be kept hard capped at 20 students.
In my opinion, our nurse shortage has occurred mainly due to our provincial government’s unwillingness to listen to our nursing professionals. The government, which in my estimation has offered them a s--t sandwich by on one hand, calling them heroes, yet on the other hand ignoring the plight of their current situation.
In light of this, does anyone really believe we will get an influx of nursing professionals who work under current conditions?
Do any of you our there have any clue how these plans to build new roadways through precious farmland and wetlands will impact on their future? Things like groundwater flow, drainage, etc. If you consider many of the areas impacted by flooding, many of these sites were once marshes or wetlands.
And then the teachers. I suppose I should mention that my school years began in the 1950s — and yes, my classroom did have many more than 28 students. The greater majority of us were able to graduate, could read, write, understand and had a grasp of mathematics competently enough to manage our homes, manage and create businesses and be an asset to our society.
The suggestion now is by capping at 20 our students will benefit. Really?
Canada was once highly rated for academic skills, but where are we now? According to latest figures that are available, our education system seems to provide us with an entire generation of illiterate souls, and not just in grammar. As a business owner, it is absolutely scary what obstacles we face trying to hire young folks. The last one that I hired couldn’t even clean up a side yard properly and yet demanded top payment.
I agree that our education system is sorely lacking. However, does more money guarantee better results? Please offer some examples. The compensation our educators receive is virtually already bankrupting our province and the end result is less than adequate. Moreover, in their eagerness to grab more, our educators are leaving huge holes in areas like our health care that need to be filled.
Any of us who have run businesses know that you can’t keep doing the same thing over an expect different results. If you do… your business will not survive. When is the last time our educators offered new ideas that actually worked? In my opinion, it is time the Ministry of Education “took back” the system.
We have all heard of the lack of transparency of the process of educating, waste at the levels of school administration at board level as well as lack of direction.
A perfect example of our educators' lack of vision arose during the pandemic. Boards were waiting for the province to offer solutions. Do you suggest that these folks, many earning more than $200,000 annually, could not put their heads together, work with the province and provide options? Isn’t that why they were hired?
I’m not suggesting Ontario spends less on education. I am suggesting that it is time to consider where our dollars go and what results they bring. Perhaps a forensic audit. I think it’s about time, don’t you?
Gordon H. Crawford
Innisfil
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