Education suffering under the UCP government
By Lethbridge Herald on May 28, 2025.
Editor,
An open letter to Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides:
Stop the starvation of public education, censorship of books and curriculum circumcision, Minister Nicolaides:
Unless you write it yourself, there will be no history book proudly recording your term as Minister of Education for the Alberta UCP.
You have not stood up for equal-access education for all our children. Instead, you consider participating in cult-like book censorship and corrupting Alberta’s children with biased curriculums.
If the UCP government were mindful of providing a quality education for all of our children, they would not be siphoning money from public education for the benefit of charter and private schools. No other province is intent on defunding mainstream education for schools that can cherry-pick their students.
This same greedy game is happening with healthcare. There is no other government in Canada so fixated on starving public systems for the benefit of private entities. You are selling off Alberta and selling out Albertans. There is nothing to be proud of in all this, dear Minister. No wonder teachers have had it with this government.
Your destruction and slow erosion of this important public system should have parents yelling in the streets (if they weren’t so tired from just trying to make rent and groceries, they would be). Worst government ever!
Donna Stevenson
Lethbridge
11-10
You’re suffering alright. A ten year grid teacher tops out at 97+k with generous benefits. Looks like in general, the current system is afraid of a little competition.
How long have you been teaching, Buckwheat?
Why don’t you arrange to volunteer in a classroom or maybe shadow a teacher for a week?
Having a son in-law who was a teacher and got out of it, I spent a considerable amount of time volunteering in his classrooms and had a hard time controlling my anger. The stupidity I saw from students made my blood boil.
They did whatever they wanted to and the teachers could do nothing about it. The parents were not willing to support the teachers in any way.
One grade three teacher told me he was also thinking about quitting. Apparently the grade two students he would inherit the next year were well known for kicking teachers in the shines and spitting in their faces. That certainty wasn’t the case when there were straps in the classrooms and teachers were allowed to use them, was it?
Now we are talking. Who instituted every kid gets a medal
I expect to be flamed for this, but I never taught when corporal punishment was used and I’m very happy for that. In my experience, and many of my former colleagues would agree, many issues stem from under funding and limited resources, such as classroom assistants who serve special-needs students, who are under paid and provided in insufficient numbers.
Key take home point: Alberta’s per student funding is the lowest in Canada. Remarkable given our median household income is the highest in Canada, among the provinces.
As far as parents are concerned, sure I had some empty shirts and some difficult ones, but the majority were excellent partners.
All that said, blanket statements seldom capture the complexity of the real world.
well said!
Actually, my dad, who is 95, this year, remembers waiting for the teacher to leave the one room school he went to, and they would burn the strap in the wood burning stove. They used to give the strap.
Been there done that.
Which did you do? Shadow a teacher or serve as a classroom volunteer? I’m curious.
To be clear, by classroom volunteering I mean in the classroom, where the rubber hits the road, for the full day.
Typical. You pick up on one line and spout off the usual nasty rhetoric. Perhaps commenting on the main intent of the letter – but that would mean reading , understanding the gist of the content and making informed decisions.
hmm, only certain jobs should pay a decent wage, and teaching is not one of them, right? the ucp will put in you charge of who qualifies for a decent wage. and i bet you will revert to the approach that any job that serves the well being of people and public interest, especially those jobs that help the neediest, and especially those fields that most employ non-males, are to be compensated the least fair.
meanwhile, the clowns and thieves and dunderheads and do-nothings and the most self serving, such as our elected puppets – and the unelected bureaucrats and oligarchs, who actually call the shots but are nicely removed from actual public accountability – should get compensation several to a very many times the average income. go get ’em!
crushed it!
Perhaps BC would be better for you to live since nothing appears to make you happy in Alberta!
Staffing shortages are in all sectors and are across North America! Educate yourself on the issues!
And I do not want my 8 year old grand-son looking a two people engaged in sexual acts whether they are gay or not! They have enough to deal with in our society where parents seem to think it is okay for a 12 year old to think he is a fox or a rabbit, not a human being! Are you one those parents?
What are the teachers answers to all the issues? Lets strike, because the taxpayers in Alberta are rich, with money overflowing their bank accounts! That is their answer! Just like the other PIGS AT THE TROUGH, Canada Post, who again believe taxpayers have an endless amount of cash to blow, so lets him them again, while killing small businesses who are trying to survive after the last strike!
No sympathy for you! BC is more your lifestyle and is calling you!
My goodness, even on this platform I have seldom seen a more gratuitous use of the exclamation mark. As I used to advise my students, and perhaps you might take a moment to reflect on this, expressing one’s feelings/thoughts with words is always a better choice than punctuation.