COLUMN: Think Again – Bad ideas imposed on teachers

The Waterloo Region District School Board recently announced it would remove garbage bins from classrooms, before suddenly reversing itself.

Strange as it sounds, the school board planned to replace classroom waste bins with single larger bins in common areas outside of classrooms, ostensibly to reduce the amount of waste produced by schools. Apparently, the people behind this idea think garbage magically appears when garbage bins are in classrooms and disappears once you get rid of these bins.

Of course, reality is quite different. Students still must dispose of dirty Kleenex tissues, empty pens, and used candy wrappers. The aborted plan gave students a ready-made excuse for extra hallway trips. To prevent this from happening, teachers would have had to provide makeshift garbage bins of their own.

This is a prime example of administrators trying to impose impractical directives on teachers for the sake of virtue signaling. No doubt Waterloo school board officials wanted to be recognized as environmental leaders. Getting rid of garbage bins in classrooms is an easy and effortless way to look like you’re doing something good for the environment,

Indeed, teachers typically bear the brunt of bad ideas imposed on them from above. As another example, British Columbia K-9 teachers must now issue report cards with confusing descriptors such as “emerging” and “extending” rather than more easily understood letter grades such as A, B, and C.

While the B.C. Ministry of Education claims these new report cards are built on the expertise of classroom teachers, its own surveys found that 77 percent of teachers were unhappy with the grading overhaul. Of course, their feedback was ignored by education bureaucrats, which means B.C. teachers must now implement something most disagree with, and then bear the brunt of parental frustration with the new report cards.

And one can never forget the nonsensical “no-zero” policies once imposed on teachers in every province, which prohibited teachers from giving a mark of zero when students fail to hand in assignments or docking marks for late assignments. The reasoning behind no-zero policies is that zeroes have too negative an impact on student grades.

Fortunately, no-zero policies have become less popular in Canadian schools, particularly after Edmonton physics teacher Lynden Dorval was fired for refusing to comply with his principal’s no-zeroes edict. Not only did the public overwhelmingly support Dorval at the time, but the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld an arbitrator’s ruling that Dorval’s firing was unjust.

But this doesn’t mean no-zero policies have disappeared entirely. Plenty of assessment gurus hired by school boards still push them on gullible administrators and unsuspecting teachers.

Finally, there are the never-ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training sessions—possibly the worst fads ever imposed on Canadian teachers. In an obvious desire to justify their jobs, DEI consultants provide many hours of professional development to hapless teachers who have no choice but to attend.

When teachers push back, as Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto did during a DEI session a couple years ago, they’re subjected to harassment and derision. In this case, the social impact on Bilkszto was so negative he eventually and tragically took his own life.

The Bilkszto case had a chilling effect—teachers should go along with whatever they’re told to do by their employer, even when a directive doesn’t make sense. This is not healthy for any professional, and it certainly doesn’t benefit students.

Classroom teachers across Canada have far too many bad ideas imposed on them. Instead of making teachers implement useless fads, we should just let them teach. That is, after all, why they became teachers in the first place.

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.