spare a thought for my wife & thousands of others marching in the rain today, on picket lines or onto the legislature lawn in support of BC's teachers today--


Where Are Our 'Guardians of Public Interest'?


"What kind of public fails to appreciate the national investment entrusted to the work of our teachers? What kind of public tolerates the kinds of suffering they now endure? It is a failure of the state, not of the teachers. This is nowhere better expressed than in the words of the influential and respected French academic, Pierre Bourdieu, who died a few years ago. Writing of the growing disillusion felt by our public servants, by 'social workers, family counsellors, youth leaders, rank and file magistrates, and also, increasingly, secondary and primary teachers'. Bourdieu went on to point to where the blame lay: 'One of the main reasons for all these people's despair is that that the state has withdrawn, or is withdrawing, from ...sectors of social life for which it was previously responsible ...What is described as a crisis of politics...is really, in reality, despair at the failure of the state to act as the guardian of public interest.' Where today, here and now, are our guardians of public interest? Without them, without their defense of those public servants, like teachers, who labor in the service of the greater good, there can be no public welfare, and there can be no justice either. "