After a Vancouver Sun article on Tuesday, November 5, 2007 appeared about remarks made by the Dean of Education during the recent PDP convocation, editorial coverage in major Canadian newspapers followed. As a result, the controversial issue of the civil disobedience of a Sooke teacher who refused to administer the DART test to her Grade 3 students has again made news.

Message from Paul Shaker, Dean of Education

Recently there has been national and local press attention to the address I gave at this fall’s ceremony honouring SFU’s future teachers as they were completing their Professional Development Program. So that there might be clarity about my talk, we are providing the text on our website. Although some journalists have shifted the meaning of the speech toward an anti-testing agenda, as you will see from the text and, particularly, the Vancouver Sun article, this was not my purpose. The point I was making through use of testing examples could have been made in various ways. This point was that teachers, having exercised due process, like other professional persons, have an obligation to act on the basis of their professional ethics, even when such behaviour requires non-violent civil disobedience and personal sacrifice by the teacher. The safety and nurturance of students is a sacred trust that assumes the highest priority.

 

Testing, I would again like to emphasize, in itself is neither good nor bad but must be judged in each educational context. Abuses of standardized testing (such as ranking schools through FSA tests) are opposed in British Columbia by all professional stakeholder groups. Abuses, such as school rankings, are, however, still promoted by some media outlets in defiance of the consensus judgment of educators. Three consecutive ministers of education in BC, including the incumbent, have strongly objected to the ranking of schools.

 

We know that when an individual exercises the right to resist written law in response to a higher sense of morality that they assume a serious responsibility. In my understanding of the principles of our democratic social contract and moral tradition, however, I follow the convention that this option is available to us. Our democracy is an amalgamation of many individuals, making choices that matter for good or ill. Professional persons carry such responsibility to a greater extent than others due to their role in society. In and outside professions, we have seen that great issues of peace, human rights, and the environment have been advanced by courageous individuals standing up in this way, often at great cost to themselves.

 

These are not easy matters and I welcome your comment and critique in order to help our understanding as we strive to prepare educators for our complex future.

 

Paul Shaker
pshaker@sfu.ca

Resources