Cutting Alberta's spending

The Alberta Government is asking Albertans to go online and share how they would cut the provincial budget. Essentially, they are asking the public for advice on what the government should cut to balance the budget.

I don't have a problem with the government reaching out to the public and asking for input, but let's not pretend that the government has not careful framed their requests in such a way so as to get the answers they want to hear.

Here's what I mean.

Before you can make any changes to the budget, you are asked to select a projection price for Western Canadian Select Oil which is one of the main standards the government bases its revenues on. The pages that follow take you to the different areas the government spends money on such as education, health, energy, environment, culture, human services, infrastructure, etc.

While the government distracts us with the question: "What should be cut?", we aren't focusing on asking other more important questions like: "Why do we continue to stake so much of what matters most on the price of a barrel of oil?" 

Just this month, Premier Alison Redford released a video where she informed Albertans that budget constraints would lead to some very difficult choices. It's telling that inside of her 8 minute video, she said the word "oil" 18 times. 

Should the Alberta Government's primary responsibility be selling oil?

Redford would have us focus on the difficult choices required in selling oil and cutting budgets, but I think we need to focus at least as much time and effort on the difficult choices required in diversifying Alberta's income. 

Alberta has dedicated a considerable amount of time, effort and resources on becoming the world's second largest exporter and fourth largest producer of natural gas while simultaneously helping Canada become the seventh largest producer of oil. 

But now, because the price of oil is lower than projected, the things that matter the most to Albertans like health and education are on the chopping block. 

Noam Chomsky puts it this way:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Who benefits from encouraging Albertans to focus intensely on the incidental details of making budget cuts? While Albertans are busy bickering over how and what to cut, Albertans aren't asking whether we should be cutting at all or how we can create the necessary conditions so we don't need to cut.

Rather than narrowing our attention to just asking "What should we cut?", I'd like us to ask:

What if Alberta placed as much effort in diversifying its sources of revenue as it does selling oil and cutting budgets?

Is grading a 21st century teacher skill?

Here are 21 signs that you are a 21st Century Teacher as outlined by the Simple K-12.

There is a lot of cool technology on this list; much of it exemplifies how a "21st Century Teacher" broadens the definition of success and excellence. I can see a lot of differentiation through podcasting, Skyping, social networking, collaboration on a global scale, virtual field trips and hand held devices.

Countless classrooms have been liberated by these technological advances - and countless other classrooms have yet to be liberated, but may shortly be. Everyday, more and more teachers are discovering a whole new world based on these technologies.

For too long school has placed a premium on written essays and reports. Other forms of communication have always been there, but today's technology makes the creating, collaborating and sharing of video and audio projects even more of a possibility than ever.

This is all very cool.

This list could be seen as a radical shift... a technological revolution... the dawn of a new classroom age...

... yet... what if Alfie Kohn is right and some of this technology "amounts to a 21st-century veneer on old fashioned, teacher-centered instruction"?

Don't get me wrong, I love technology; I utilize it everyday with my students - but I fear that we are still driven to distraction by technology. I fear that we are having a technology debate masquerading as an education debate.

Noam Chomsky put it this way:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Technology is certainly providing a lively debate amongst policy makers, parents, students and teachers. It's a debate that people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are more than happy to facilitate.

Here's what I mean.

Have a look at number five from the 21 signs you are a 21st Century Teacher:

You ask your students to study and create reports on a controversial topic...and you grade their video submissions.

Can you see how the spectrum for debate is limited to the incidentals and implementation and not on whether we should be grading at all? The lively debate is over what we shall grade and how we shall do it, thus the presupposition that grading is something all teachers should and need to do, continues to live a long and healthy life.

I'm not saying we can't talk about technology.

That would be foolish.

But I am saying we need to talk about the pedagogy behind how children construct their own understanding at least as often as wikis, blogs and Twitter.

Alfie Kohn and Noam Chomsky summarize #edchat

I was pleased to moderate #edchat for April 6. Our topic was:

From an educator's point of view, what should be cut from education budgets when times get tough?

I have a problem with the whole idea of cutting education. I also have a problem with even discussing it. The problem is we are making a rather gross assumption that we must accept the inevitability of budget cuts at all. Alfie Kohn would put it this way:

[We have a] cultural aversion to digging out hidden premises, pressing for justification, and opposing practices for which justification is lacking...

Too many of us, including some who work in the field of education, seem to have lost our capacity to be outraged by the outragous; when handed foolish destructive mandates, we respond by asking for guidance on how best to carry them out.

Even when we do regard something as objectionable, that doesn't mean we will object to it. Indeed, we're apt to see the situation as being like the weather - something you just learn to live with. We may not "accept" (that is, believe) everything we're told by public officials and professionals, but in the other sense of that word, we tend to accept (that is, put up with) what they do.

Indeed, there's no shortage of cynicism about authority figures and powerful institutions. But cynicism, unlike vibrant, reasoned skepticism, actually contributes to passivitiy. People who write off all politicians as "a bunch of liars" are unlikely to become politically active, just as those who say you can " prove anything with statistics" are unwilling to distinguish between better and worse research. For that matter, the statement "everything's bad for you these days" can be used to rationalize easting junk food. These are shrugs not positions. Whereas the skeptic thinks and doubts and in so doing affirms a vision of the way things ought to be, the cynic affirms nothing, takes no action, and ends up perpetuating arrangements that make our lives worse. (Those arrangements, in a neat self-fulfilling prophecy, then comfirms the cynical conclusion that no one can make a difference.)...

When we find ourselves unhappy with some practice or policy, we're encouraged to focus on incidental aspects of what's going on, to ask questions about the details of implementation - how something will get done, or by whom, or on what schedule - but not whether it should be done at all. The more we attend to secondary concerns, the more the primary issues - the overarching structures and underlying premises - are strengthened. We're led to avoid the radical questions. I use that adjective in its original sense: Radical comes from the Latin word for root. It's partly because we spend our time worrying about the tendrils that the weed continues to grow. Noam Chomsky put it this way:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Education is a long term investment for the future that should never be cut, regardless of today's economic status. In fact, today's economic crisis should only reinforce how important education truly is. Cutting any investment in education sacrifices long term for short term gains - this is not acceptable.

However, to remain true to Kohn's definition of radical, I want to get radical. No cuts should ever be made to the root of our education system  - the teaching and the learning. However, if we needed to find a place to save money, let's look at the tendrils of our system - standardized testing.

It's time to lance the leeches that take pride in their data-mongering. It's time we expunged the parasites that suck the valuable resources out of teachers, students and parents.

And yet, while teachers talk about photo-copying less, or mailing letters home to only the oldest or only children to save on postage, Deleware is hiring 35 data coaches at a rate of $104,000 ($54/hour) per coach so that they can win Race to the Top money. In other words, we hack away at the tendrils, but the weed continues to grow.

So where do we go from here?

We are lost because we are driven by distractions. The Culture of Public Education has been poisoned. Ironically, teachers are partially to blame because we wait to be told what to do and blindly follow agendas that we don't believe in. Standardized testing and the tougher standards movement has crippled teachers. And until education reform can get these five principles right, we are doomed to waste both financial and human capital.

Finland and Alberta are beacons of hope. Alberta recently eliminated the entire Accountability and Reporting Division while also eliminating the grade 3 Provincial Achievement Test. Ontario has removed the fall report card from elementaries, and we could all learn a lot from the seemingly counter-intuitive paradoxes that make Finland's education system so damn good.

And then there's you. What are you doing to be the change that you wish to see in the world?