A Commentary by Doug Draper
The March break for Ontario’s elementary and secondary school students is now over and already we are hearing whining once again from parents and some students over the continued suspension of extra-curricular activities in the province’s schools.
Ontario’s teachers have been withholding their supervision in almost every form of extra-curricular activity, from football and basketball to music, theatre and other clubs, since the start of the school year last September as a way of letting the province’s Liberal government know how upset they are over its suspension of their collective bargaining rights.
Now, whether you support the teachers in their concerns over the erosion of their bargaining rights or not, at least one thing has to be kept firmly in mind. Teachers in Ontario were never – and that means they have never, ever, ever, to this date – been mandated to organize or supervise after-school, extra-curricular activities for parents’ kids as part of the job they are obligated through any legal contract with the province to do.
So if you are one of those parents out there, whining about the loss of extra-curricular activities because you think the school should be there to play nanny to your kids while you pursue your career opportunities into the event hours, to hell with you. Why should the rest of us expect teachers we already pay generous salaries and benefits to perform an after-school activity service for your kids?
To those same parents of today, who expect schools and taxpayers in general to keep their kids amused while they work 14 to 16 hours a day for employers who expect them to sacrifice a quality family life to the company mission, I say tough for them. If they don’t have the guts to tell the company boss that they should not be black-balled for wanting to spend a little bit more time at home with their children, well then why should the rest of us care
Put up a fight for yourself, for God’s sake. Why should you expect high-priced teachers or the rest of us, including many who are not doing all that well in the income department these days, to provide you with publicly subsidized care for your kid, including the “early childhood education” programs the McGuinty government launched in our schools that are little more than day care and make-work programs for teachers who might have been let go because the numbers of kids entering the elementary grades are dwindling.
The early childhood education program or all-day kindergarten program for three and four year olds, to the extent that we have to have it at all, could have been supervised by people trained in early childhood education or early childhood educators, as the lead expert for this program originally advised, but McGuinty and company didn’t seem to mind spending an additional $1-billion plus per year of our tax dollars to give members of the teachers union the job.
So not only are some of these whining parents benefitting from this over-priced early learning/provincially-paid-for day care program, they also yelping about the lack of extra-curricular activities to baby sit their kids well into the late afternoon and evening.
What I would say to them is that there was a time, not so long ago (meaning only about 30 or 40 years ago) when kids didn’t need extracurricular activities to amuse us. Those of us who were kids then could hardly wait to rush out of school to participate in our own games of hockey on ice-covered ponds behind our homes or on the road in front of our homes to play road hockey, or formed basketball, football or baseball teams in our neighbourhoods to play that in a nearby park or in a field we buzzed down with our parents lawn mowers behind our homes.
For those of us who were into music, we formed garage bands. We played other games and, last but not least (and this might amaze the parents of today) we got involved in community groups that were lobbying for environmental protection, more peace instead of war and other causes.
In other words, we didn’t need nannies of the state, in the name of extra-curricular activities supervised by high-priced teachers, to tell us what to do. At one time, young people – at least the ones I grew up with in my neighbourhood – had the imaginatino to run home from school when the bell rang, and find our own activities in the backyards of our homes.
It is rather pathetic, as a final thought, to see all of these parents of today who think that unless their children are involved in activities structured by school teachers or other adults, they are impoverished in some respect.
Maybe if these helicopter parents got out of the way, their children would do more to invent their own meaningful activities and would stop hiding away in behind computers in computers, and might get out for more exercise in ways that also address the obesity problem.
If I had parents like far too many of the people who are in that position today, I might never have enjoyed the opportunity of finding a pond in a field behind our neighbourhood to skate on in the winter or find out about pollywogs and frogs in the summertime, a tree to climb or woods to explore, or a place where we kids in the neighbourhood could turn into a back lot to play baseball.
I’d have all these hyper-neurotic, career-driven, helicopter schmucks hovering over me all the time.
Pity young people who have to put up with these non-adventurous, unimaginative, totally controlled and indoctrinated by the company line, anal people.
(Niagara At Large invites you so share your views on this post. Remember that we only post comments by individuals who are willing to share their first and last names. Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to resident in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
Well said Doug.
However, the fact that these activities were never part of the teacher contract is a failing on the part of the province to negotiate effectively with these unions. In my opinion and many would agree there is a huge disconnect between what a teacher in Canada/Ontario gets/makes and what they offer in return all things considered.
I personally think that if wages for new teachers were reduced by 35% and a stipend provided for those who stayed past 5pm or arrived earlier than 8pm (a fairly typical workday) were introduced you would still see lineups for these jobs. So where are the laws of economics being applied? Lots of resources, low demand, lower salaries! Fewer resources, high demand, higher salaries. Not in union land!
So assuming this is true and if the job isnt that bad, what are the unions needed for other than to justify their own existence through endless ridiculous demands which unfortunately our bend-over politicians without fail cave in to. I digress, I am just sayin because that’s how we got into this situation, because without the unions, the province could just hire people that would be happy to have a great job and every once in a while kick in above and beyond like we all have to from time to time. Alternatively, look what we are stuck with! UNIONIZED MALCONTENTS! I wish we could fire them all and replace them with non-unionized workers who would be happy to have a great paying, rewarding, heavily benefited career. Again, if you put an ad out for a teaching position offering 35% less you would see a line up!! You have to understand I come from a world where the worker does not dictate their work conditions(excluding safety), salaries or whatever. The market does!
As for your comments regarding parents and all the whining, I AGREE. It seems there is no end to what people expect from our government
As a kid I was perfectly happy playing road hockey, tennis, riding my bike all without the costs attached to a $110K per year supervisor! No wonder we are taxed to DEATH!!!
Just sayin………
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Douglas, I agree with you that present day society coddles children and deprives them of elixir of freedom; the learning experience of risk taking, and the joys of self-generated creative play. However, this is a more complicated world than our more innocent times. Technology has seen to that. I would like to offer the following excerpt from an article by Margaret K. Nelson of The Washington Post as a response to your characterization of helicopter moms as using/abusing the system as daycare while they pursue career goals:
:”Helicopter parenting is, to put it mildly, more time-consuming and more emotionally demanding than other parenting styles. And much of its work falls (as the work of parenting always has) on women. Since 1965, the amount of time mothers spend on all child-care activities has risen, even though the majority of mothers are now in the labor force; the increase has been particularly sharp among highly educated mothers.
So it’s not just that today’s professional mothers are holding down what would, in the 1960s, have been two separate jobs — one inside the home, the other outside it. It’s that the first of those jobs is a lot more taxing than it used to be. Mothers who try to live up to the new parenting standards of the professional middle class seem to have few options: They can overwork themselves, or they can leave the workforce.
Although women don’t opt out of employment as often as is sometimes supposed, those who do tend to give two main explanations. The workplace is still not particularly flexible or family-friendly, they say, and parenting has become more intensive and more demanding than ever. But these women may find themselves trying to justify their decision — and approaching child-rearing as a full-time, totally consuming job provides such a justification. At this point, the cycle becomes self-perpetuating: Professional women bring considerable skills to raising children, and because they do it so conscientiously, they may set trends for other parents.
For those helicopter mothers who don’t leave the workplace, personal relationships seem to be the first thing to go. Working a demanding job while paying painstaking attention to one’s children leaves little time for maintaining a marriage. A study by Robin Wilson of the Washington and Lee University School of Law reports that women with MBAs get divorced or separated more often than those who have only a bachelor’s degree, while women with law or medical degrees are more likely to divorce or separate than their male counterparts.
Meanwhile, according to sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie, adults in 2000 spent less time with their spouses than adults did in 1975, as they spent more time at work and more time with their children. The higher divorce rate among women with high-pressure careers could therefore be both a cause and a consequence of intense devotion to one’s children: These mothers may find that the only reliable, and persistent, relationships are those with their kids”.
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Doug Draper, You sir, are man after my own heart. When I went to school we did not have school buses or after school activities. If parents want their kids to excel in hockey or basketball, they should get off their rumps and pitch in. Volunteer.!!!
A response from NAL publisher Doug Draper – I just want to clarify what i was trying to say in my commentary above. For me, it is not so much about parents volunteering their time to oversee kids playing basketball or hockey, although it might be a good idea if parents had more access to school facilities after class to coach a basketball or other sports team, rather than expecting teachers to do it when it is not inside their job description.
What I was mainly responding to in this post is this apparent need many adults have today to structure almost every moment of their children’s day. As I said, there was a time, not so long ago, when a majority of us left the school yard after the bell rang and went back to our neighbourhoods where we made our own fun with sports, music and other activities. We didn’t need schools and teachers playing a nanny role after class.
I might also ask in the context of this discussion, ‘Why do we have to structure almost every moment of a child’s day rather than allow the freedom to use their after school hours in ways that may be far more fulfilling and in keeping with their interests and potential? These poor kids are going to have to put up with enough structure when they get into the workforce. If, as American satirist George Carlin once said, they feel like going out in the backyard and digging a hole with a stick, why can’t they do that without some authority of adulthood constantly hovering over their head?
To me extra-curricular activities is just one more way of imposing more structure on our lives. If John, Paul, George and Ringo had that kind of structure imposed on them when they were kids, we probably never would have had The Beatles.
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A good point Doug. Your inferences relating to creative genious not missed. How does one become creative and capable of thinking out of a box if everything they do is monitored, controlled and mentored? Well said.
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The value of early childhood education has been shown by many studies. Extra-curricular activities are also valuable experiencies. How they should be paid for and who should be responsible for delivering them if it is not to be part of the teachers’ contract is certainly something to consider. Who ever takes up this socially valuable employment paid for by the public purse should be adequately compensated. Its time to establish a national child care policy.
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