Re: Teacher Trudeau a great choice (Will Lewis, October 27 Citizen).
Thanks so much for submitting such an insightful letter. It is indeed refreshing to have a prime minister who defines himself as a teacher.
Justin Trudeau comes from a family of financial privilege and as such could have chosen to pursue any profession. That he chose to teach, to devote his life to giving to others, speaks to his character.
For far too long teachers and Canada's public education system in general have been treated with disdain by our political leaders.
The words written by young flier Bert Stiles during the Second World War in his memoir Serenade to the Big Bird still ring true.
Stiles wrote: "Schools should be the cleanest, prettiest, best-built, most carefully planned and put-together buildings of a society. Schools should be built better and kept up better than banks, because there is a whole lot more wealth in them. But the buildings don't matter as much as the teachers in them.
"Powell was the best teacher I ever had... Powell quit because it wasn't worth it. He couldn't live on the money he was getting. When a civilization pays professors $1,800 a year, and pimps and jockeys and swoon-singers triple and 50 times the dough, then something is likely to go wrong in that civilization, sooner or later...
"Lost education is harder to catch up than shortages in .50-caliber armor piercing, or bombers or knitting needles. But a shortage of men with wisdom, to run the world, has always been the most acute shortage on the books...
"If there was only some way to have the most respected men in the world stand up once a month and tell all the people that they are just people, and there is such a hell of a lot to do and learn, that thinking you are wise is just about the quickest way to prevent anything good being done and the easiest way of all to kill off any hope and desire for change."
Bert was killed in action before the war ended, but his book is still popular today. Perhaps Justin read it, and it helped him in his decision to teach.
In B.C. we've had a long history of underfunding our public school system.
As proof, 126 of the 194 school buildings waiting for work to proceed under the seismic mitigation program in B.C. are currently rated by the Ministry of Education are being at "high risk" of major structural failure in the event of an earthquake - in spite of a seismic upgrading program instituted in 2004.
The targeted date for completion of the upgrading was recently pushed back to the year 2030.
Regarding that announced postponement, newspaper columnist Bill Tieleman wrote in March 2015, "...there's a special place in hell for politicians who don't protect our children. Let's not find out exactly where that is the hard way."
Teachers, too, in B.C. have been under fire for decades.
Contracts guaranteeing moderate class sizes and composition have been stripped, and salaries have declined to nearly the lowest in Canada.
Just like everything else, we cannot expect to get more than we are willing to pay for. Is this the best we can do for our children, our most precious resource?
I hope Will Lewis is right.
I hope Canadian voters have begun electing the kind of people who, like teachers, have it in their "very nature, their destiny, and their desire to teach, to share and nurture the growth of others. They listen, validate, inspire individual excellence and instill cooperation and teamwork."
Perhaps Justin Trudeau will work to inspire across Canada and in B.C., the status of and respect for children, the schools our children attend, and for the people who dedicate their lives to working in these schools. Maybe then our education system will catch up on creating people with wisdom, to run Canada and the world.
Ron Manning
Prince George
