The Alberta Teachers’ Association

My story begins this past summer in sweltering Bangkok, Thailand, where, as part of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation contingent, I attended the Eighth World Congress of Education International, an organization of more than 400 education unions from 172 countries worldwide with a membership of over 32 million. The World Congress takes place every four years, and this year’s congress in Thailand brought together some 1,500 delegates over the course of a week to debate and vote on proposals to improve education.

The defining contrasts of the World Congress were evident immediately. In an early breakout session focused on teachers’ health, a discussion group comprised of delegates from six continents started listing sources of stress in teachers’ lives: lack of job security, deprofessionalization, privatization, economic and funding uncertainty, relationships among peers, classroom pressures relating to class size and complexity, poor management, oh, and Ebola.

The delegate from the Fédération des Travailleurs de la Science, des Sports, de l’Enseignement, de l’Information et de la Culture in Congo explained to us that not only were the Ebola and measles outbreaks in that country emptying schools, but that people were suspicious of hospitals and refusing to seek out potentially life-saving treatment. Just as he concluded, the delegate from the Kenya National Union of Teachers added Al-Shabaab to the growing list of stressors.

“They come and kill us,” he said, referring to a Somalia-based radical Islamist group that has attacked teachers and schools in the northern part of Kenya.

As the congress proceeded, we heard about teachers and union leaders, journalists and advocates being subject to terrorism and state-sponsored harassment including arbitrary arrest and detention. We heard about private international firms deliberately undermining public education to offer highly profitable but entirely inadequate schooling to students whose parents are desperate that their children be educated and able to purse a better life. We heard about Indigenous peoples struggling to maintain their language and culture. We heard about the challenge of teaching refugee children who had been displaced by war, economic crises and, increasingly, by the effects of climate change. We heard from a Nobel laureate about efforts to end child slavery in India and around the world, and from a Philippine journalist how social media was being exploited to promote hatred in the service of a despotic regime.

One might think from this description that the congress was perhaps the most depressing, albeit air-conditioned, event that one could possibly imagine. Yet the opposite was true. The theme of the congress was “Teachers and Their Unions Leading the Way,” and throughout the event, we heard how teachers individually and collectively were working to improve their own lives and the lives of their students in circumstances that would be very familiar to Alberta teachers, but also in the face of challenges we can only begin to imagine. The stories were inspiring, even more so the determination and underlying optimism of the teachers telling them.

Leaving Bangkok, I had planned a five-day layover on my way home from the World Congress to relax and spend a bit of time away from my work. Hong Kong seemed to be just the place.

I had booked this trip home months ago, long before mass demonstrations had begun in the city. Even as my visit approached, the weekly demonstrations were announced in advance, well-organized and orderly, with both protesters and the authorities exercising considerable restraint. That changed the day I arrived when a group of thugs crossed the border from Shenzhen and viciously attacked protesters at a railway station while the police remained curiously absent. After that, all the rules were off.

It was in this context that several days later, my daughter and I found ourselves walking with several thousand young people down the center of Des Voeux Road on Hong Kong Island. We were headed to our hotel after a day of sightseeing; they were headed to the Chinese government’s Liaison Office and the Western Police Station in Sai Ying Pun.

The young people were very orderly and stoically prepared for confrontation. Dressed in black, they wore hardhats, masks and goggles and began covering their exposed skin with plastic wrap to protect against the blistering effects of the CS gas that the police had employed previously. Concerned for our safety, they provided us advice about how we could use a nearby metro station as a refuge and how we could move toward our hotel while avoiding the police who, they said, were targeting westerners for arrest in an effort to prove that their protests were foreign inspired. Following the demonstrators’ advice, we made our way by a circuitous route to our hotel on Queen Street, only to discover that this was where the police had drawn up their line.

We had the luxury of retreating into our hotel minutes before the confrontation. From our room 15 floors up, we witnessed the police charge the demonstrators, firing “tear smoke” grenades and arresting, with considerable force, demonstrators at the front of the line. The crowd, armed only with umbrellas, made a disciplined retreat back down the road and out of sight. That evening and in the following days, similar scenes played out in several other locations throughout the island and Kowloon. Not even a Signal 8 typhoon that lashed the city could shut down the protests.

I don’t pretend to understand all the complexities of the situation in Hong Kong, but as I bore witness to the courage and determination of the young people protesting to protect the unique status of their city and its citizens, I left wondering on what issues and in what circumstances I would be willing to take such a stand.

While we are unlikely to be called upon to take action in the same way as many of our international colleagues or the protestors of Hong Kong, we can take inspiration from their example as we face our own challenges. I expect that in the years ahead we will not be facing tear gas — ours will be a much gentler path­— but still one that will require solidarity and dedication.

For an old social studies teacher, my summer trip turned out to be something of a busman’s holiday. I returned deeply moved by what I heard and what I saw and am recommitted to advancing the cause of public education, labour and human rights in our privileged home province.

On Education and Democracy: 25 Lessons from the Teaching Profession, a short book released at the congress, captures some of the themes that emerged from the World Congress of Education International. It is available free online at bit.ly/education_and_democracy.