Both the B.C. Greens and B.C. Conservatives say children are being left behind by the current public school system but are disagreeing on what changes are needed.
The Greens have introduced an education platform that promises more laptops in schools and increased mental health supports for students.
“The province has not stepped up to be the supportive partner that they should be,” B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau told reporters at a news conference in Victoria.
“We’ve seen the NDP meet the conditions of the Supreme Court decision around classroom size and composition, but they have failed to address the longstanding deficit in operational funding in education.”
Furstenau, a former teacher in Victoria and Shawnigan Lake, said she’s well aware of the pressures that educators face in their work.
Technological change is happening at a rapid pace and the school system needs support to navigate the changes, she said, citing artificial intelligence as one example.
“My kids came home on a winter holiday in 2022 and by the time they went back to their classrooms less than a month later, ChatGPT had entered the classroom.”
The Greens would establish a digital literacy secretariat and ensure that every middle school and high school student receives a laptop for school work, she said.
Putting laptops in the hands of every student from Grade 6 to 12 is expected to cost $110.5 million annually, including software and cybersecurity costs.
The Greens would institute an universal school food program, as well as double the funds for mental health support staff in schools, Furstenau said.
The party estimates that their proposed food program would cost $400 million annually and the additional mental health supports would cost another $85 million.
The B.C. Conservatives, on the other hand, are promising to remove “political bias and ideology” from the B.C. school curriculum.
“Schools must be places of learning — not tools for activism and indoctrination,” the Conservatives state in their party platform published online.
Conservative Leader John Rustad expanded on those views in a podcast interview.
Speaking to Jordan Peterson, the former University of Toronto professor-turned-social media personality, Rustad promised a “full review” of the educational curriculum for neutrality.
“Our education system in British Columbia today is teaching kids what to think. It’s not teaching kids how to think,” said Rustad, who was an elected school trustee in the Prince George School District prior to becoming an MLA in 2005. “We need to do a full review of all the material that’s being made available for teachers.”
He took particular umbrage at a book that he said was being used to teach Grade 4 math. “The math is correct — two plus two equals four. But the language being used is all about environmentalism, it’s all social justice-oriented,” he said.
Rustad suggested to Peterson that students should instead learn about compound interest, debt and “how money actually works.”
School should be a place to nurture informed thinkers who can ask fact-based questions and look at information with a critical eye, he said.
The B.C. NDP have yet to release a detailed education platform ahead of the Oct. 19 election.
