BRACE YOURSELVES - THE MAELSTROM IS COMING
How have I managed nine entire months without once needing to cuss out a public figure? Heaven only knows. Fortunately, we've got a provincial election coming up, which means plenty more stupid is about to hit the fan around here.
Let's start with the provincial Lie-beral promise, if elected, to extend teachers' college to two years.
Now, I AM a preservice teaching student, and can tell you that the vast majority of us are already in a minimum of five years' worth of debt. It must be nice for the province to be able to double the program length without spending any more money, but that scenario won't be the same for us.
I would also dearly love to know exactly how many professors who actually teach at teachers' colleges were consulted before this piece of brilliance was developed - I am guessing the number is zero. But hey, we can just pull another year's worth of content out of thin air, right?
Thirdly, let's address the math issues the Liberals are suffering here: they claim that they are going to reduce the number of graduates, as approximately 9000 new teachers are "flooding" the province each year. Well, yes. Throwing down another year of teachers' college will drop the number of graduates this year to zero - but only for this year. After that, we're back to 9000 grads a year who are even deeper in debt and even more desperate for teaching jobs.
This is such a bass-ackwards way of addressing the oversaturation of the teaching profession. Want fewer grads? Admit fewer teaching candidates. Don't try to temporarily stem the flow of output by hurling a one-time monkey wrench at the pipeline.
