Last week was the start of the school year.
Students across the province returned to classrooms, filled with anticipation of the year to come. It was a chance to catch up with school friends, say hello to an old teacher, and to find out what lays ahead for the next 10 months.
In 2000, our school system was one of the best in the world if international standards and tests are a measure of performance. Our students scored very well on OECD testing. At one point, our students rated in the top five in the world - right alongside Japan and Finland.
Over the past decade, school has changed. The underlying philosophy behind funding school districts and supporting our education system has shifted.
To put the argument in simple terms, there is a fundamental tension between the need to pay for high quality education and the desire to have lower taxes. Indeed, many people are of the opinion taxpayers without children shouldn't be paying school taxes. Why should they pay for something they don't use?
On top of this is the age old rivalry between the public and the private system - particularly as both get funding from the provincial government albeit at different rates.
So, is public education a public good?
Most of us recognize the need for a good publicly funded education system. Health care and education routinely rank in the top tier of concerns for the voting public.
A good education system provides our children with opportunities and the likelihood of a better life. It is not just about learning to read, write, and do arithmetic although these are fundamentally important.
A good education system also allows our kids to develop social skills, engage in team work, develop leadership capacity, think critically, learn to reflect, learn about history and social studies and science, and so much more.
A good education system helps children become contributing adult members of our society. There are many studies demonstrating the value of education in every aspect of life - from wages to health to social well-being.
However, over the past fifty years, inflationary pressure and a drag on wages mean most families now have two working parents. In the early 1960s, a middle income family required 46 weeks of work to maintain its standard of living. Today, that number is closer to 90 weeks which means you either have one wage earner working two jobs or two wage earners (or you live well below a middle class income).
The unintended consequence of our shift in work/life balance is less engagement on the part of parents in a child's education. Most parents I know spend a lot of time with their kids but it is dedicated to homework instead of learning through play or simple conversation. This has increased our expectations for the school system to do more with less. We expect our school system to be both teacher and loco parentis. It is hard for the system to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic well while working on behavioral issues and social problems.
The education system is set against the same wage drag resulting in an increased pressure to reduce taxes. The mantra is lower taxes equal economic prosperity at both a personal and a provincial level.
The results of the past ten years would argue lower taxes haven't really boosted our economy and have resulted in funding issues in health care, education, social welfare, and any number of areas under provincial jurisdiction.
A good education system needs to be funded to do its job. And in that, as Shakespeare would say, lies the rub. More money means higher taxes but who wants a tax increase? Yet we fundamentally rely on our education system to develop the skills and training necessary for the workplace if not the social skills necessary to become a good citizen.
The argument in favour of private education doesn't really change anything. It just shifts the burden of cost from everyone in the province to those who can afford to pay for their children to go to school. It is still a "school tax", just more direct. Equally fallacious is the notion the provincial government has "lots of money" and can spend more on education. Not without increasing its income and that means higher taxes.
If we value education - if we view education as necessary for our children to have long, healthy, and productive lives - then we are going to need to find a way to fund it.
A good public education system is not cheap.
-- Todd Whitcombe
