Looking back

By Chris Bocking

70 years ago

The Canada Year Book for 1938 gives us wage statistics on different classes of labour. If we take $933 as representative of a year’s pay for unskilled labour, and apply it, we find that about 6,000 men teachers, or 42% of those tabulated, do not rate unskilled labour wages for a year’s work. It is sad, but true, that the colossal industry of educating Canada’s 2,200,000 school children claims only 27 per thousand of the young men who go through Canadian universities; for the remaining 973, we may well believe that the rewards of an educational career are too uncertain and too meagre.

– May 1940, The BC Teacher 

50 years ago

There is no problem with the seriously inefficient; the only real problem is with the border-line case, the teacher who “gets by” but just barely so. This teacher, too, will recognize himself. The symptoms are plain; he keeps the class under reasonable control but he is fighting off trouble all the time; he is always on the defensive with the pupils, never relaxed; he finds no real enjoyment in his work; by 3:30 he is depressed—not just some days but every day. He remains in the profession, not because he takes any pleasure in his work or considers he has any genuine aptitude for it, but because it is the only kind of work he knows, and he cannot face up to the prospect of preparing himself for some other occupation.

– May/June 1960, The BC Teacher 

30 years ago

Here are several suggestions to help you cope with stress. The first is that you must recognize the symptoms of burnout. You must face those symptoms squarely, without relying on food, drink, drugs, or withdrawal as a way of coping with the stress. You must realize that you are not responsible for many of the factors that cause stress, but rather for how you respond to the crisis. The burnout syndrome is not a response of the weak or unable. Education has made tremendous strides over the past generation, but if it is to survive, the teacher can no longer be considered expendable.

– May/June 1980, The BC Teacher 

10 years ago

The other side defines education as a product to be bought, sold, and traded on the “free” market. Schools are reduced to job preparation sites and students are seen primarily as future workers and consumers. With global public spending on education estimated at $2 trillion a year, corporations are eyeing public schools as a vast, untapped market. Indeed, thousands of would-be profiteers are converging on Vancouver for the World Education Market, a trade show for those seeking to profit from the “education industry.”– May/June 2000, Teacher newsmagazine

Compiled by Chris Bocking, Keating Elementary School, Saanich