The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Gordon Thomas

"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush."
—Doug Larson, American newspaper columnist



Spring is an occasion to rejoice and celebrate renewal. With the promise of winter’s demise (especially after a seemingly endless prairie winter!) come the sunlight and warmth of days that are growing longer and stronger. For many people, the spring equinox is an opportunity to recalibrate their life, discover fresh ways to do things or find their equilibrium at a time of year when day and night are in sync—each lasting 12 hours.

And just as people seek alternatives and solutions, so, too, does this issue of the ATA Magazine.

"There is an alternative," declares Ricardo Acuña, executive director of the Parkland Institute. The magazine’s Parkland Page is a regular feature and evidence of the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s commitment to publish well-researched alternatives to public policy in Alberta. In his article, Acuña offers readers sensible options to the provincial government’s predilection to cut budgets and lop public services whenever times are tough.

David Flower’s book review of Rich Vivone’s Ralph Could Have Been a Superstar: Tales of the Klein Era dovetails with present-day Alberta’s budget cuts and stubborn refusal to raise taxes. Looking back at Ralph Klein’s tenure, Vivone believes that Klein’s legacy leaves much to be desired. Without a doubt, Vivone’s book describes what not to do.

Articles by Stephen Lewis, and Hugh Mackenzie and Richard Shillington, first appeared in Our Schools/Our Selves, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Like Alberta’s Parkland Institute, CCPA is an independent, non-partisan research institute that addresses social, economic, and environmental and justice issues. Both organizations are recognized for their analysis and solutions. CCPA states: "We work on solutions—solutions that show Canadians’ best values are not only possible, they’re practical."

Mackenzie and Shillington discuss the benefit to society of a well-funded public service. Mackenzie, a researcher with CCPA, and Shillington, an economist, argue that "the tax and service debate in Canada in the past 15 years has been almost completely one-sided and has created a political atmosphere in which tax cuts have become the default answer to virtually every political question." The authors suggest that Canadians would be better off without tax cuts because "for the vast majority of Canada’s population, public services are, to put it bluntly, the best deal they are ever going to get."

The last article I’d like to highlight is by Stephen Lewis, former UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, deputy director of UNICEF and Canada’s ambassador to the UN. His article, based on an address to the World Environmental Education Congress, held in Montreal, May 2009, discusses the perils and challenges of climate change and calls on educators to tackle a subject that "lies at the heart of survival of this planet."

He has faith in teachers—after all, they are tapped directly into Canada’s youth. So it makes sense to him to suggest that teachers create global "citizens with acute environmental sensibilities, with a profound and honest understanding of the issues at stake."

Lewis’s article is not uplifting. In fact, it’s downright gloomy. But his unfailing faith in teachers is heartening and hopeful. "[Environmental educators] can conceivably turn around an apocalypse ... it will come through environmental education, it will come through your collective, skilful, principled, uncompromising, leadership. ... You are extraordinarily privileged to be an environmental educator."

Yes, alternatives do exist, and teachers are the source for many of them.