Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 12, 1987, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press january 1987 Page 7 focus vital issues face schools Glenn free press by Derwin Davies special to the free press education minister Jerry Storie has managed to offend the major interests of the provincial educational world by his pre Christmas this offered a special fund in return for a wage the fund would be available for projects determined jointly by trustees and teachers in the teachers Are the presidents of local associations meeting in december were unanimous in rejecting the minis ters interference in the bargaining asked the Manitoba teachers society should teachers subsidize the provincial Treasury trustees Are also they they Point elected to represent their communities in making decisions about their schools teachers have no part in such the sad thing of that implicit in the proposal made by the Are some important issues which will probably not be data Analysed it is certainly True that collective agreements by a matter Between the trustees and the employees in each but this is by no Means the whole the fact is for Many years when the Economy was More or less and education was held in higher esteem than is apparent the its orchestrated its bargaining the staff officers of the society compiled and Analysed the data through a network of negotiations chairpersons from the Divi they were Able to set the framework and largely determine the outcome of negotiations from year to the teachers society has agonized for a number of years Over such issues As provincial bargain ing and the right to what it has not done is face the inherent problems of the salary Structure it has succeeded in As a a teacher in one classroom could be or at least almost three times As much As a teacher in the next room for doing substantially the same the trustees association has taken a Leaf out of the teachers Book and done for trustees what the its has traditionally done for the their Central office staff prepare the analysis and statistics and the tactics which Are used in bargain ing with the the result is that the bargaining process has in become a provincial with both teach ers and trustees wanting to keep it that Way because they have a vested interest in maintaining the pres ent the teachers feel they do better financially under this apparent de centralized and the trustees know in their hearts that if they do not have the role of they have precious Little reason for continuing to thus we in spite of what both sides i Facto provincial the of claim a sacred As elected represent to determine How the schools in their Community shall they claim to be the guardians of the interests of Chil As opposed to teachers who Only act in in Rural the present farm crisis has led to very de pressed incomes for there is the feeling that the Community should not have to pay toward higher teacher salaries As part of already excessive educational there May Well be a Case for saying that teachers Are Well enough paid and a freeze for one year would do them no but if we live in a society which assigns an important role to Market Competition and economic then surely teachers must be allowed to get As much As they can through the negotiating process which is in the fact that other sectors of the Economy Are suffering is not the teachers but an inevitable product of the free inter play of economic should teachers in Rural areas be less Well paid traders in commodity futures who Are More directly linked to the agricultural situation if Farmers Are primarily in which Means they Are profit Moti Why should teachers be less concerned with their own situation and More concerned with the Community issues of the distribution of wealth and of an incomes policy Are inherent in the minister of educations they Are topics which need urgent consideration since it is fairly obvious that the so called free Economy does not work for the common but Only for those who can profit by there is a Case to be made for a step step seeking to adjust incomes group by but this runs the danger of avoid ing the Issue and leaving those who profit most out of the should be involved in debating the issues and confronting the realities of our eco nomic problem and the equitable distribution of wealth in the question is not so much can we afford to pay teachers More this it is much More critically can in All accept inordinately High rewards for some members of our society and at the same time tolerate extremes of deprivation and suffering for Many others guard right the part of the ministers proposal which the trustees found unacceptable has to do with the pro Cess by which a project to attract special funding is it the minister be by joint agreement of trustees and teachers in a the trustees proclaim that they Are elected to make Deci Sions on behalf of the and they jealously guard this without too much concern with the Quality or the effect of the Deci Jerry Storie proposes a salary freeze for there is critical need to improve decision making within it is astonishing that we expect such an autocratic and no demo cratic institution As a school to prepare our Young people for the responsibilities of citizenship in a that our democratic system is in difficulties is quite evident just look at How few people cast votes for their this is a Good the pressure to change the traditional Structure of decision making to bring about the democratization of if this was the minis ters it is a bold at education is a very to heavy a great amount of and studying goes on by individuals and both in school divisions and the department of but very Little of it affects teach ers and what actually goes on in the in spite of some recent school division initiatives in the Field of teacher Eval is of Little interest to those in the people whose actual teaching experience is limit or even seem to have More influence in the present structures than the classroom so the million to be made available for special projects would probably work in the super Structure of without any contamination with actual students or schools Are not responding to the needs of today society what is they Are being blamed for not reproducing adults nostalgic View of what they like to think society used to be in the the minister of education injected some horrifying thoughts into this complacent i do not know whether the implications which i see worthy of consideration were part of his intention or but they i worthy of raising for we could even make a virtue of the financial constraints by seeking innovative ways of accomplishing More appropriate goals in in Stead of doing what we usually do throw Money at our prob As one who has spent 35 years in As a teacher and an and i find it sad that so much is in Effort and but probably not As much As is wasted in our How Many Farmers have expensive equipment sitting around most of the year like the barely used school books in the storerooms we have All allowed ourselves to be conned into being a consumer do not blame the schools and the teachers for but do enlist their support if people want to change our Way of life to something More sane and sensitive to everyone needs and to the real problems facing our society and the Derwin Dpi its is a chinese peasants grow disenchanted by Jim Mann the los Angeles times peking in a development with important political implications for the Long running love affair Between the nations 800 million peasants and the Reform minded re Gime of Deng Xiaoping is Cooling for the last two chinese leaders have been caught up in a fundamental reevaluation of their policies in the particularly their Reliance on family farm and have been voicing increasing concern Over a second straight disappointing Grain at the same government officials and communist party news papers have been criticizing peas ants for persisting in some decidedly a revolutionary while achieving historical re we have also observed certain undesirable trends in the country vice Premier wan i told a special conference on Rural policies Here in some of them Are rather for Feudal mercenary extravagant weddings and gambling and economic even certain evil practices that once were stamped have the authorities acknowledge that the growth in peasant income has and that increases will continue to be lower for the next few the thrust of their recent Public statements is that agriculture is at a turning Point and that the regime realizes it can no longer rely on the policy of transferring land to the Over the last seven Deng and his aides have broken up the Rural communes established under the late Mao Tseung and have adopted what has by compari son with the Mao a Handoff policy toward the peas ants have been allowed to cultivate their own family plots and to keep at least part of what they this policy of tolerance toward the peasants produced an unprecedented spurt in farm production and peasant from 1980 through Grain production shot the 1984 Grain Harvest of 407 million tonnes was the largest by any nation in the history of the i chivas successes of the Early 1980s attracted world but the harvests of the last two years have not come up to the 1984 and now a consensus seems to have been reached among the leaders that the Handoff approach has reached the Point of diminishing new policies chinese agricultural specialists and economists Are arguing that new Rural policies Are needed to increase Grain communist party offi contend that peas ants Are not spending their new income wisely and have failed to develop a proper socialist spiritual the question is raised of whether or not Prosperity Means civilize Peoples the communist party said after the problem of enough food and clothing is Rural lifestyle Reform be put Agenda no one is advocating a return to the maoist policies of collect Viza the consensus among chinese leaders seems to be that Grain out put should be increased through More intensive farming and advanced agricultural there is talk at High of trying to persuade peasant House holds to work together and to com Bine their Small family the peasants should be made to understand this when one household finds it possible to fulfil a it should unite with other do head of the communist party secretariats Rural policy re search said in an article that appeared recently in the party mag Azine red do called on local authorities to prevent the further carving up of support crucial any turnabout in Rural policies has profound political importance in where 80 per cent of the people live in the support from the peasants has been crucial to Deng and his aides As they seek to push the party to accept such reforms As a Market oriented Economy and a stripped Down role for the he who Heads the party Secre was asked two years ago about the possibility of unrest in the army As a result of Denis economic and he replied most of our army men Are of peasant it is these mens families who first have benefited from the relaxed Rural policies the Richer the peasants the More the livelihood of army mens families will the changes in the Countryside Date Back to the record Harvest of it was Large enough so that in some areas peasants had difficulty Selling surplus and they had no place to store Early in the regime responded by adopting new reforms that abolished Many of the stat set procurement quotas for Grain at the same lifted Price controls for other farm prod including fruit and vegetal the result was that Many peasants stopped growing Grain and devoted land to More profitable the 1985 Grain Harvest plummeted to about 379 million and the 1986 crop is estimated at 390 million tonnes a figure that chinese leaders acknowledge is this years 1986 Grain output is higher than last years but is still lower than vice Premier Tian said a year China officially blamed the reduced Harvest on two factors a series of natural disasters and a decline of about four per cent in the acreage devoted to Grain last officials began to acknowledge another one that Western agricultural experts had been discussing for several years China has not been devoting enough Money to agricultural the difficulties of the last two years have caused Western analysts to reexamine the common Assumption that the reforms fostered by Deng in the Countryside have been an unqualified a couple of years people tended to the economic Bat Les won in the now lets move on to the said one Western Diplomat specializing in but they have some very serious slow growth in agriculture is going to be the Norm in China for a Long Council faces dilemma Over request from festival there is every reason to sympathize with members of Winnipeg City Council con As they by Hie request from the festival do Voyageur to write off the the festival owes Winnipeg if the councillors turn Down the they could be accused of bigotry Ami since they did exactly the same favor fur the Winnipeg jets a couple of years if they agree to write off the they had better have some Quick and reasonable explanation available for the representatives of the ukrainian cultural and educational Cut which got a loan from the City and then paid it the least the City members could have expected from the 1 Estival do Voyageur was better timing within a few every Homeowner in Winnipeg is going to receive a notice of his new property assess and the when compared to the undervalued assessments that have been the basis of City taxes for More than a May cause More than a few cases of Apo with due respect to finance chairman Guy although the new assessment will make it possible for the City Council to produce the same amount of Revenue from a much Mill there As Savoie knows mum a danger in Low Mill Low Mill ivies become some thing of a standing to spend Happy Council to Edge them up to a position of greater when higher assess Nervis Are combined with climbing Mill the Jolt in real Money that taxpayers must produce can produce shockwave of High Al though there should be no relationship be tween rising assessments Ana rising Mill in practice a High Whick Fred Cleversey in turn produces a Low Mill always seems to in elected a desire to get the Mill rate Back where it and to do Good works with the resulting All of which has Little to do with whether the City Council will forgive that loan to the festival do or whether it will simply continue As in the and year by the necessity for the festival to begin repaying that has been what has the which received the Money in 1981 was supposed to begin making annual payments of a year in each year the festival pleaded poverty using the thinking that seems to pervade rooms where elected officials each year the City agreed to postpone the reasoning that the interested needed to carry the loan was an appropriate donation by the taxpayers of Winnipeg to the animal Winter this because of its past the festival could not go to the City and say it did not have the Money to make a it has suggested that the City simply forget about making the loan wipe the debt off the books and leave the festival to use the Money it has to expand itself and become More this course has some rather obvious draw backs not mentioned by representatives of the festival do suppose the Festi Val spends its Money making itself More attractive and goes into the red in the what would Stop the festival from going Back to the City for another a of to get it Back into operation the Short answer is nothing at As Long As the loan the representatives of the festival must be too embarrassed to ask for any Money other than the interest needed to keep the loan As soon As the loan is wiped the door will be open for the festival to arrive at City Cap in for a new depending on the mood of the City get Money that sometime in the be wiped off the books anyone who suggests that this cannot happen needs Only to look Back on the experience of the Winnipeg to keep the jets in the City Council a few years ago advanced of the Money it had collected in taxes to the owners of the the owners changed but the under the same name stayed in somehow the cites ability to require a repayment of its loan not too Long ago there were hints that the again to remain in might need More who was among the first to be asked the Winnipeg City during the past two years the festival do Voyageur has made profits of if it had made two of the payments it promised to make in those two it should still have and the City debt would have been reduced by the payments were not and the debt remains at where it always has to the big Money thinkers on City is Small to the Homeowner who pays and in it represents 150 years in which the taxes from his property will not help pay for his police and fire even the interest on the about a represents All of the taxes collected from 15 Given a and consider ing that the festival has turned a profit for two these homeowners might prefer to have their Money go into something that will provide a More direct Benefit to the festival is not Likely to get its loan forgiven this the outcry that has Arisen from the request will surely persuade the Council not to wipe that debt off the More the Council will agree to Post Pone the first payment for yet another that creates a double Standard Between the festival and the ukrainian cultural but double standards Are nothing new where the City Council is doonesbury Riith All its to Herb on si1 i Capitol Hill As a v y m2 v1 by Garry Trudeau but thanks to and the the puzzle15 now the real is starting join us All this week As we share that picture us from now until and Tacto wives As we Pike scam Puzzle first piece Cut save i ;