Feb 042015
 

Dalhousie student and Solidarity Halifax member John Hutton addressed the crowd during the February 4th Student Day of Action. Here is a transcript and video of his speech.

Hello everyone thanks for being here! I’m John Hutton, I’m a 5th-year student in international development studies and economics and I’ve gotta say, what a beautiful sight! It’s great to see so many students here today. Who can look at actions like this and say students are apathetic? We know that’s a myth, and our presence here shows that we’re not going to be stereotyped and ignored any longer.

Youth apathy isn’t the only myth out there. We’re told many untrue things about our society, about our education. We’re told things to try and keep up quiet, complacent,accepting of our fate. The reality is that another world is possible. We don’t have to be the first generation in a century to be worse off than our parents. We don’t have to obediently take on huge debts to earn degrees we may or may not want to maybe, if we’re lucky, get a decent-paying job that we may or may not like, but of course getting worse pay, benefits and pensions than the generation got for the same job. I want to use my time here to cast some light, and give a glimpse of the better world that we can make possible so easily, if we want it.

We’re here today to call for reduced tuition fees, because student debt is bankrupting a generation. Students collectively owe the federal government $15 billion dollars, and that’s not even counting provincial or private student loans. We’re here today to call for converting student loans into needs-based grants -like Newfoundland just did last year- because education should be accessible to all regardless of their ability to pay. We’re here today to call for increased core funding for universities, because we see the negative effects of growing class sizes, crumbling buildings, replacing tenure-track professors with contract teachers, cuts to our libraries, classes, and we’ve even lost whole departments like Italian. We’ve had enough of paying more for less.

When we make the relatively modest demand that government agree that an educated, skilled society is a good thing, we’re told that we’re naive, idealistic, and impractical. They tell us that in these tough economic times that we just can’t afford it.

But that’s simply not true, and to be frank, they’ve given us no reason to believe that they’re remotely responsible with money or the economy. Lets put this in perspective. All budgets are about PRIORITIES. If education is not a priority, what is a priority? Well, lets consider some things our government is using our tax dollars on: 5 Canadian banks got a $114 billion bailout in 2009; Harper’s made $8.7 billion in corporate tax cuts since 2006; Canada gives $2.8 billion in handouts to the tar sands every year, which boggles the mind given how much profit they make… but tax dollars also finance $3.2 billion in oil exploration abroad! $114 for the banks, $8.7 billion for the CEOs, $6 billion for profitable oil companies… well, it’d cost $7.8 billion to make education in Canada free to the PHD level! The provincial government next week is holding consultations on tax reform in Nova Scotia. They’re proposing a $72 million tax break for the top income bracket and for corporations.That money we can apparently afford to get rid of is enough to convert 100% of Nova Scotia student loans into grants AND reduce tuition fees by 24 percent. Don’t ever let them tell you that you need to pay high fees. We deserve better than to pay for their warped priorities.

Indeed, in opposition, even Premier Stephen McNeil said that “education isn’t a line item in a budget, it’s our future.” Fine words. In opposition, Education Minister Kelly Regan said “Why is it okay to be on the side of students in opposition but ignore them in government?” Then the Liberals came to power, and they cut the $50 million graduate retention rebate, excluded students from memorandum of understanding negotiations, raised tuition fees, and want to spend the next four years cutting away. Since there’s clearly plenty of money in government I have some alternatives to suggest.

Last spring in Newfoundland, they converted 100% of student loans to needs-based grants. Newfoundland has the lowest fees in the country because they’ve frozen tuition fees since 1999. As a result, Nova Scotia student enrolment went up by over 1097%!! Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done. Education for all is not only possible, but we know it works well. Over 25 countries already have free education,and it’s time Canada joins that list.

They say that we shouldn’t worry about student debt, because if we just work hard enough and don’t pick the wrong degree, we’ll get a good job with good pay, and the debt has a good return on investment. Sure. It’ll have an even better return on investment if we pay less! And frankly, many 17 year-olds have no idea what they want to do, and you can improve their benefits from education if they can experiment in different programs instead of dropping out due to the cost! As a student rep on the Dal board of governors, I’ve been asked to sit on a bunch of committees studying why so many first year arts and International students dropout. Umm, how about the $6000-per-year price tag? Hey look, I just saved Dal a few hundred thousand in consulting fees!

They say that students are apathetic. When we prove them wrong on days like today, they say that action doesn’t work. Quebec premier Jean Charest will never say that, of course. Students brought down his majority government when he tried to raise fees by 75%! And last year in Scotland, a place with the same so-called apathetic youth as here, over 85% of young people voted in a referendum. Why? Because people vote when voting makes a difference. We will not be told that we’re to blame because they don’t care about young people. It’s entirely on them to be relevant. It’s entirely on them to do better. It’s on them stop selling us ridiculous partisan rhetoric and actually make young people and education a priority.

Education matters. It’s a wonderful, transformative thing that improves our quality of life and society, improves our chances of success and yes-it’s also great for the economy. We know that education is worth fighting for, and we know that affordable, accessible education is possible. What the politicians offer isn’t the way things need to be. Through collective and persistent actions, students have the power to change things too. I believe in student power, and I know that we can win this fight. Today isn’t the first or last day of the struggle, but we’re going to send a very clear message to Stephen McNeil today.

I’m so proud of you all for being here. Lets go down to the government’s house. We’re going to be loud, we’re going to be clear, and we are united. We are the student movement, we demand free education for all, and we will never give up!

 

Note: Statements by Solidarity Halifax members do not necessarily reflect positions held by the organization.

Feb 032015
 

Divest Dal organizer James Hutt is taking to the streets for the Feb 4 Student Day of Action and explains why. James is also a member of Solidarity Halifax.

Tomorrow, on February 4th, thousands of students from across the province are taking to the streets to demand equality and the right to education for all.

Join us!

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11:30am Wednesday, in front of the Killam Library

https://www.facebook.com/events/1536148159999968/?ref=70

 

Divest Dal will be there. As youth and students, climate change threatens our future. Our generation has inherited a crisis we didn’t create. Those most responsible won’t be around to suffer the worst of its impacts. This is just one of the many injustices of climate change.

Even among our generation, the effects of climate change are unequally distributed. Poorer countries face the first and worst impacts of the climate crisis. Countries like Tuvalu are sinking from rising sea levels; the Philippines has been ravaged by near yearly typhoons; and Kenya has suffered increased droughts. Not only have these countries done the least to cause climate change, they also have the least resources and ability to adapt to it. Centuries of colonization and the siphoning of resources to rich countries have perpetuated poverty.

The climate crisis is inherently unequal. That’s why we need to advocate and agitate for solutions based on justice. To stop catastrophic climate change we need sustainable change for all, not just those who can afford it.

Student issues are environmental issues:

Like climate change, students have inherited an educational crisis. University has never been more expensive or more inaccessible. Here in Nova Scotia, students face the 3rd highest tuition fees, despite ours being the 2nd poorest province. This has deterred many from post-secondary education, excluding them from the surest means to good jobs and livable wages. Others are forced to work multiple jobs while in school, limiting their involvement in community or activist groups, like Divest Dal. Others still choose degrees that promise financial security and the ability to pay off debt rather than programmes that are often less lucrative, such as social or environmental sciences. These fields shouldn’t only be open to the wealthy.

Today few students get through university unscathed. Students, on average, graduate $37,000 in debt. Struggling with such a debt sentence, few have time for activism and many turn to jobs they disagree with, just to get by.

All of these factors and more limit the ability of people from low income backgrounds to engage in the environmental movement. These factors have reduced climate activism to an occupation for the privileged.

Divest Dalhousie is a campus based campaign. While anyone can join, our group is made up exclusively of university students and alumni. Our members have all been privileged enough to attend university. This is understandable, but it is not inevitable.

As privileged climate activists we have a responsibility to challenge inequality and the barriers that prevent others from acting for climate solutions.

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Education is a right:

Decades of public funding cuts has led universities to turn to corporate donors more and more. The same corporations that are exacerbating climate change have bought influence over our academic institutions.The fight for public education is the fight against oil companies running our schools.

The same ideology that hinders lowering greenhouse gas emissions prevents the lowering of tuition fees. We have the solutions to both crises. We lack only the political will. Last year the federal and provincial governments gave $34 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies – the richest corporations on the planet. If those subsidies were invested in post secondary education it would be enough to make all universities and colleges free, and still have $26.2 billion left over.

Here in Nova Scotia, the government is proposing a $72 million tax cut for the richest people in the province. Yet, that $72 million could eliminate all student loans, turning them into grants, and still reduce tuition by 24%. These are choices by governments that haven’t prioritized sustainability or equality.

Tomorrow, we’re taking the streets to change that. We’re joining thousands of others to to demand social and environmental justice – because they are one and the same. Tomorrow we’re standing up and speaking out to create a movement accessible to all. Because, as the largest climate action in history taught us last fall, to change everything, we need everyone.

See you tomorrow!

James Hutt,
on behalf of Divest Dalhouise

 

Note: Articles published by Solidarity Halifax members do not necessarily reflect positions held by the organization.

Feb 022015
 

Solidarity Halifax member Ben Sichel joins Paul Bennet on CBC Radio One’s Maritime Connection to discuss student achievement and education reform. Ben Sichel is a high school teacher in Dartmouth and an education blogger. Paul Bennet is the lead consultant at School House Consulting and a professor of education at Saint Mary’s University.

>Listen to the program here

 

Note: Statements by Solidarity Halifax members do not necessarily reflect positions held by the organization.

Feb 012015
 

Solidarity Halifax member Ben Sichel argues the province’s plan to revamp education ignores the biggest problem: poverty. Originally published at The Chronicle Herald. Ben is a teacher in Dartmouth and author of the P-12 education section for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Alternative Provincial Budget.

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Dartmouth teacher Ben Sichel argues that Education Minister Karen Casey’s plan to revamp schooling ignores the biggest problem: high rates of childhood poverty, resulting in poor nutrition, stressed families and children, and poorer health, including mental health. (Fotolia)

Beyond some of the more headline-grabbing elements of Karen Casey’s action plan for overhauling Nova Scotia’s education system, the plan’s title frames its priorities quite clearly.

“The 3 R’s: Renew, Refocus, Rebuild” is, according to the education minister, a nod to the classic three R’s of schooling: reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic. Several of the plan’s most clearly laid-out plans are those that involve increased attention to literacy and math, such as the promises to increase focus on these two subject areas in early grades, and increase the number of math credits required in high school.

The minister, and the media, had expressed alarm recently at Nova Scotian students’ relatively low scores on standardized reading and math tests.

What has been missing, however, is any serious analysis of why test scores have dropped.

Increasing the number of hours spent on these two subject areas might seem like a common-sense approach. But it fails to address what is known to be the most important factor affecting test scores: poverty.

A recent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report noted that one in six children in Nova Scotia, including a staggering one in three in Cape Breton and one in four in Kentville and New Glasgow, live in poverty.

Data from previous tests here and elsewhere consistently show that these children score the lowest on standardized assessments, a fact which should surprise no one. The multiple stressors associated with life in poverty — poor nutrition, less access to quality health care, anxiety caused by economic insecurity — all affect one’s ability to learn.

(As education author Alfie Kohn famously says, standardized tests “offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered.”)

Teachers in high-poverty schools often do great things in enormously difficult conditions, yet are still shamed for their students’ test scores. We should acknowledge that improving these students’ success goes beyond changes to the school system and involves concrete, systemic solutions for addressing poverty and inequality, like higher minimum wages and income assistance payments.

The idea of “back-to-basics” education has a simple, nostalgic appeal. But we should be careful when looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses of academic rigour. We tend to forget that in our grandparents’ times, many more people left the school system well before graduation, whereas today all students are expected to finish high school.

If we say “the old ways focused on the basics worked just fine,” we need to ask ourselves: worked for whom?

Schools today are expected to have a rich, varied curriculum (such as those for which some parents send their children to elite private schools). Increasing schools’ focus on math and literacy while increasing program options, as the action plan suggests it will do, will be a tricky balance.

Even trickier is the proposition that the numerous new initiatives in the action plan are apparently intended to be implemented without any additional funding. For example, Casey’s plan will cap Grade 10 and 11 math at 24 students. If no new teachers are hired, however, it follows that classes in other subjects will swell in size. Since classes of 35 students and above are already increasingly common in high schools across the province, this is a matter of concern.

Casey’s action plan contains some promising initiatives that could improve student health, well-being and cultural competency, among other things. But without requisite funding, these too will stall. It would be a shame if items not considered academic “basics” end up falling by the wayside while resources are piled into the (traditional) three R’s.

The health and success of our education system should not be reduced to media sound bites based on standardized test scores. These “learning snapshots” have gained far too much influence over education policy. If we’re serious about improving our education system, we need to ensure our solutions are truly comprehensive.

 

Note: Articles published by Solidarity Halifax members do not necessarily reflect positions held by the organization.