Education in thi i i
Binder attack this province is
vat before Social Credit had
aa t its motley army of free
es into power in Victoria,
wee souls on school boards in
Aes Coquitlam, Langley and
aa where had already begun a
ee , to return to
frill tional’’ education, to cut the

S and get back to basics.
ae near-hysteric fervor, often
ee from their unseen ultra-
aa allies, they launched an of-
= ive against the Family Life
ne bussing supporters to
nae: all over the Lower
pact and stridently accusing
S oe and administrators of
EES rooss, pyopograpby into the
ceerrey’s Family Life program
B not a le by the onslaught but

hte efore the same zealous
ac. had found new am-
vit lon — test results showing
ane Students’ performance in
= ae skills had declined — and
ee intensifying their campaign

pice eae standards and free
Schools, e€ values to the public
aS Provincial budget gave the

nomic edge to the attack and

| Movineial share of education hit
| min nes: the troops were
not ive for a full frontal assault,
Edin y on progressive reforms in
: ation but on the education
ystem itself.
ay one ever saw official repre-
atives of the Canadian League
ai ights, the Christian Crusade or
A on Ret ultra-right organization
at € platform at the meetings
ie organized to combat the
he. Life program. But their
chan was felt. as familiar
} Gee; crackled over the plat-
Stej Microphones.,and. copies’ of
bc iubacher’s book, The Child
i edigene a sensational anti-sex
aes lon tract distributed by the
en lan League of Rights —
Joyed remarkably strong sales
ral Same time as a number of
Happ Tned Parents Organizations
fared on the scene ready to do

battle on the issue.

. The

Tia... Pattern was already
amiliar in the United States:

ie Parents Organizations
" anoth € established and copies of
ae or book — Dr. Gordon
. €s Is the School House the
} eect Place to Teach Raw Sex?
Suld be circulated to provide
OMe in the battle against
a boards, teachers and in-
Were An parents. If the names
| this ferent in the campaign in
: me cymes the intent was the

i be fact that the Family Life
ee was a flexible one,
&ned in consultation with

Itiale ;
; a M each school district, and
( dra et aw parent the right to with-
I conse IS or her child, was of no
eee to the oppositionists;
I emot;, Was an irrational and
‘it oo campaign — and behind
Dose Sa more fundamental pur-

tere is any logic at all to their
ee ae it goes something like
trait; Oung people today question

= Onal values and ideas, assert
a ss more forcefully before
ambit, ders and seem to lack the
Dreyj lous, competitive spirit of
re, OUS generations. Thus, the

Te :
§ peoning goes, the education
only ed has subverted them and if
to Ucation can be brought back
stiggeChing basic skills and in-
futur & traditional values, the
Seen, of free enterprise can be
has ae In its most rigid form, this
Moy vlidified as the value school
Vement.
HViey Ponents of this traditionalist
J eoiog; found __ considerable
Jc) fecal support among the
(Ts ibutors to a British.series of
ments, the latest of which was

se
Ven as the news of cutbacks in the ©

ha
rents, teachers. and health of- °

‘Education is un

published last year and is now
being examined by at least one
school board in this province as a
possible blueprint for similar
changes here.

Entitled Black Paper, 1975, and
including among its contributors
such well-known names as
Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch, it
comprises a critique of the com-
prehensive school system which,
although long established in North
America, has only been in use in
Britain for some 15 years. _

It is the sentiments voiced,
however, and not any parallel
experience which has prompted
traditionalists here to use the
document to give intellectual
substance to their own campaign to
attack progressive education,
return traditional Christian values
to the classroom and make the
educational system more
economically serve the needs of a
beleaguered capitalist system.

The Black Paper outlines 10
basic points as the foundation of its
position but it is the second point
which is most revealing:

“Tf the non-competitive ethos of
progressive education is allowed to
dominate our schools, we shall
produce a generation unable to
maintain our standards of living
when opposed by fierce rivalry
from overseas competitors.”

The simplistic and often con-
fused logic of the statement is
typical of much of the document
but the economic and social
motivations of the contributors are
unmistakeable. Essentially their
aim is twofold.

First, they want to reduce the
cost to the government of
education so that much of the
public money presently being
spent on education can be freed to
provide subsidies, to private in-
dustry. In that their opinions .are
fully shared by the Social Credit
government in this province.

Second, they want to restore
higher education to its old position
where it was largely a preserve for
the wealthy, since working class
students were ‘“‘streamed out” and
forced into low-paying jobs by their
lack of schooling and by the very
structure of the educational
system.

A closer study of the document
bears this out. If it is possible, for
example to reduce the number of
teachers, a saving can be made in
teachers’ salaries. Thus the efforts
of teachers over a period of many
years to reduce the pupil/teacher
ratio and thus provide more In-
dividual attention are called into
question:

“Reducing the pupil/teacher
ratio has brought little or no ad-

der re |

track’

KINDERGARTEN PUPILS .. . their educational future in jeopardy.

discipline from parents and
teachers with clear standards. Too
much freedom for children breeds
selfishness, vandalism and per-
sonal happiness.”

It is this statement, perhaps
more than any other, which has
captured the hearts of the
proponents of the value school

-movement in this province. And

what they lack in credentials, they
make up for with a fundamentalist
zeal with which they pursue their
mission to impose their own ver-
sion of Judeo-Christian values.

Roughly translated these values
mean unquestioning obedience to
authority, assertion of: traditional
virtues and a return to rote lear-
ning.

The value school concept is much
more than just a return to
traditional education suggested by
some teachers and trustees who
saw that as an answer to a decline
in language skills; behind it are
representatives of various fun-
damentalist sects and right-wing

By Sean Griffin

vantage. There are numerous
pieces of research pointing to the
fact that, given a reasonable
maximum, the size of the class is
unimportant. . . se ;

Those ‘‘numerous pieces of
research’’ are, of course, absent
from the document.

Throughout the Black Paper,
contributors argue in favor of a
selective school system because
“education is the inculcation of a
sense of scale” and the present
system of comprehensive schools
fails because such schools ‘‘offer
academic fare to children not
capable of handling it.”” The bias is
obvious. tigi

But if readers are’not willing to
accept the intellectual arguments
advanced by the contributors,
there is always the opening
statement to remind them again
that man was born in sin and only
by obedience to a greater authority
can he find grace.

“Children are not naturally
good. They need firm, tactful

trustees who have successfully
preyed on some parents’ fears that
the school system was somehow
responsible for the fact that their
children weren’t quite as obedient
as they should be and questioned
conventional morality.

Predictably, the first value
schools: cropped up in long-
established Social Credit territory.
But the movement is growing,
nurtured by the B.C. Value Schools
Association anda number of school
boards.

The Richmond board is the latest
to hear an application for a school
from the Association, and the
Vancouver School Board recently
announced that it would be
establishing a value-structured
school in the district, although the
location was to be kept secret for a
time because of possible opposition
from teachers and local residents.

Protest has already erupted in
Surrey when a bare majority of
trustees — the same ones who had
suecesstully defeated the Family

Life program decided to
establish a value school at Georges
Vanier Elementary School.

The. Surrey board’s wings were
clipped a little when the Human
Rights Commission intervened to
prevent the words ‘‘Judeo-
Christian’? being used in ad-
vertising for the school although
the protest has not stopped there.

Parents inthearea served by the
school are considering a lawsuit
against the school board in an
effort to stop the establishment of
the value school but neither the
trustees nor the’ newly-elected
executive members of the B.C.
Value Schools Association are
deterred in the least.

Only last weekend, the
Association held its founding
convention and Dave Griffin,
newly-elected president of the
group and an administrator with
the evangelical Canadian Sunday
School Mission, led a workshop on
how to establish value schools in
other areas. .

Griffin also outlined the precepts
for such value schools, em-
phasizing that they must be based
on Judeo-Christian standards in
order to counter ‘“‘the continuing
deterioration of national standards
of morality.”

The staff, he said, would be
chosen on the basis of adherence to
the school’s standards.

So far, despite widespread
controversy over value schools, the
government has remained silent
even though a fundamental
principle of public education is
being violated. Call them what
they will, value school advocates
cannot evade the fact that what

ithey are establishing are fun-.

damentalist Christian schools.

Their proliferation would result
in fragmentation throughout the
public school system and would
undermine the long-established
tradition of non-sectarian public
education, financed by public
monies and available to all.

But the silence from Victoria is
revealing. Social Credit candidates
held out the possibility of financial
aid to independent schools during
the election campaign, realizing all
the while that some of their most

partisan supporters — including
many sitting trustees — were
already organizing what was
essentially a reworked version of
the independent Christian school.

For the Socreds, however, the
stakes are bigger yet — and that
takes us back to some of the
policies outlined in the Black
Paper. The value school movement
is only the outer extreme of a
pronounced right swing that is
taking place in education.

Already the chairman of the
Coquitlam School Board, E. M.
Coles, has called for district-wide
examinations based on his reading
of the Black Paper.

The provincial department of
education’ has begun provincial
assessment programs of language
skills which will be administered in
grades four, eight and twelve — a
project which sounds an echo of
testing programs suggested by
Black Paper contributors.

The pattern is discernible. If
education can be made more
selective, if academic standards
can be made more rigid and en-
forced more stringently, it will be
the children of working class
families and those from poorer
areas who will suffer first.

In fact, that process has already
begun since reductions in the
provincial share of education force
boards either to increase the basic
levy or cut back on programs.
Given the already staggering cost
of property taxes and the political
views of many trustees, the latter
option will be the most likely’
considered with the result that
‘special programs for disad-
'vantaged children will be dropped
and the pupil/teacher ratio in all -
classrooms will be forced up as
thousands of teachers are laid off.

At the same time, financial aid to
students at post-secondary in-
stitutions — a program which
ensured some measure of equality
of accessibility — has been

drastically cut - back.

Education in this province is
under attack. Without a battle
from parents, from teachers and
from students, generations to come
will pay the price.

FIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 16, 1976—Page 3