Who teaches our children?

Who, I ask, has the primary responsibility and duty to teach children? My answer is the parents. What's your answer? I'm willing to bet most people would not answer "a private organization with a particular agenda". Well, unfortunately for people in Canada, the latter is the case. This private organization is called a union and the vast majority of teachers, especially public school ones, belong to these.

There was a time when unions were just an economic idea for collective bargaining. It allowed groups of people to come together to get a better deal for themselves, and the theory is there is power in numbers. The workers vs. the owner is better than a single worker vs. management. That's the theory, although I do not agree with it.

Anyway, my point is that used to be the case. No longer. Unions now have official positions on countless issues. For example, they may be pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, they may be pro-gay marriage, they may be officially in favor of teaching children about all kinds of sexual perversion before the age of 10. And parents have no say. Every teacher in every public school MUST adhere to these ideologies, even if they have nothing to do with education. The union can determine who can or cannot be a member. Members dues are often used to fund many of these positions.

The idea for this article came about when I read that BC teachers are now officially opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline. This is the official union position. I have no idea why a teachers union would need to have a position on this in the first place, but that's how it is. They will then use this power to make sure every child is taught that the pipeline is a bad thing and they should be against it.

This does not sound like a free society to me. It sounds like a few people in charge of dictating what children will learn. Math and science typically don't have much debate. It's on these other issues which have legitimate disagreement. There should be freedom in this area. The only way to correct this problem is to allow school choice and end the enormous powerful teachers unions and their influence over children.