Not just about training kids to serve corporate model
I read about a Fraser Institute report on our schools saying, in essence, that many of our teachers are no good and a lot of our kids aren’t much better. By the metrics of the Fraser Institute if you’re not ready to supply the needs of business, then what are you ready for? Creative, kind, nurturing, thoughtful, concerned, aware and relational people just don’t apply to their needs, don’t fit in the corporate model developed by the Institute in service of its employers.
I think they’ve gone a long way down a failed path. One resulting in a broken world. Our environment heat domed and atmospheric rivered, oceans polluted with plastic and acidifying past the ability of shellfish and plankton to cope and the earth heaving up water contaminated in the pursuit of hydrocarbons. In the ‘every man for himself’ philosophy of the Fraser Institute and their masters thousands are homeless with more to come as our governments wring their hands, helpless in the face of wealth’s right to, well, wealth.
It’s no wonder people are frustrated and angry. No wonder we protest and propose other solutions, other ways to meet the needs of our children, our environment, our hungry, destitute and downtrodden. It’s interesting to note how our governments respond.
If you’re the Fraser Institute or its masters or its supporters your criticisms are responded to with apologies and promises. School districts are ordered to train children up for the ‘jobs of the future’. Environmental protection agencies are stripped of regulations and staff. Scientists are dismissed, Universities are defunded, anything that gets in the way of the privatization of the common wealth is derided, destroyed and disrupted.
Protesters who stand for the last of the Ancient Forests are beaten, brutalized and illegally detained with our court systems applauding the militarization of our police. Protestors who stand against the pollution of land, air and water as Indigenous defenders of creation are assaulted, illegally arrested and derided as ‘enemies of the economy’. Laws are passed in defence, not of the right to protest or propose, but of the further privatization of the public good.
If, on the other hand, you’re swept up in protests, pickets, blockades and assaults in the name of the right to go to work for the corporate sector, the right to do what one pleases, as one pleases, in pursuit of one’s path to wealth then laws collapse. Enforcement dissipates, governments are sympathetic. Police are pals, perhaps seeing themselves in flags waved, sticks wielded, horns honked, words shouted.
The Fraser Institute articulates and lobbies for a world much like the one we see, only more so. Where everyone has the ‘right’ to do anything without responsibility for anything. A world where every man is an island, every home is a castle under assault and every piece of creation is a prize to be looted by the strongest or most well capitalized among us.
I’m really, really happy to hear that some of our schools, some of our teachers and some of our kids aren’t meeting their test. I hope, personally, for thousands and thousands more. I believe it’s the only way we’ll survive. Together.
Thanks for the space.
Keith Simmonds
Duncan