The Editor,
The way teachers interact with students in B.C. may never be the same again. My mom was a teacher, and I'm a child of the '60s. If you're my age, you know the level of commitment and dedication teachers had.
My mother worried over her students as if they were her own. She often took responsibility when parents wouldn't or couldn't.
Giving of her own time, sometimes just holding a child's hand at the end of the lane waiting for a parent who had to work overtime, she'd explain, "Oh, I had lot's to do anyway."
This sort of dedication by teachers at the time was a reasonable expectation. Very few other professions consider this sort of giving of one's self reasonable.
Although those days are long gone, the government and people of B.C. up until this point still got a great deal from teachers. By passing back to work legislation, the government is taking away from students and parents, the best deal they ever had. The school yard will be a very different place after this dispute is mandated.
We've all seen it in labour disputes in the past. Both sides sift through the less important issues and claim the high ground wherever they can. The rhetoric gets louder as the deadline to end negotiations looms. Both sides start drawing lines in the sand. A lock out or strike seems inevitable, and then, when all seems lost, a deal is stuck.
When that process isn't allowed to happen and one side is shoved in the corner, they feel they have everything to lose and that is exactly what the government has done to teachers.
In the end, the heavy hand of the government will prevail, all be it battered and bruised. Teachers will have a new perspective of what's reasonable to give of oneself, and students will be just that much further away from what was reasonable.
Stephen E. Murphy Richmond
