John Snobelen was the perfect minister of education in the Mike Harris government. A high school drop out who has trouble keeping three facts in order, who has never had to worry about logical thought because he doesn't think, and a guy who basically believes, as did the rest of his ilk, that rules apply to everyone but him. That last trait left him free to go off horseback riding and ranching in in the western US while he was being paid $100,000 a year to sit as a legislator at Queen's Park.
Did he give back salary? Sorry, how silly of us. That applies only to people on welfare and immigrants, not to white men belonging to the Tory Party like Snobelen. He gets to double dip - they get to have their welfare payments taken away for life. Did he look after his constituents? Hell no - you must be confusing him with school trustees.
Snobelen had one clear instruction from his boss, that other well known scholar, Mike Harris - kick the crap out of education and educators. Why both men despised everything to do with education is open for speculation. And yes, you're probably bang on with that but we'll leave it to the shrinks to sort out.
Suffice to say Snobelen was a willing shit kicker. He got caught within days of becoming minister for his unequivocal orders to the senior managers of the ministry of education - "create a crisis" they were told, in order to justify the changes Snobelen was going to impose.
Fast forward 10 years. The Toronto Sun, which sanctimoniously calls down fire and brimstone on the heads of politicians who spend money on bunny costumes for Easter, have hired this perpetrator of fraud on the public purse, this twit who takes money for not doing what he was supposed to do, to write a column for the Sun. What possible light they think Snobelen could cast on anything defies all reason. He prances around any topic that enters his mind, such as it is, and why not? When you have nothing of value to say you can say it about anything and the result is the same.
Yesterday, he let loose again on trustees and amalgamation. He now acknowledges the Harris government was wrong to proceed with amalgamation and instead should have "nuked" trustees. Such wit. Such insight.
The price of ignorance and stupidity as wielded by the Harris government and its devotees like Snobelen, has been huge.
But there's a real human danger here to Harris and Snobelen, one that should terrify them.
If they ever fall prey to alzheimers, how will we know? Doing a differential diagnosis on these two will be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, what they don't know has never hurt these two, only all of the rest of us. So what difference does it make if they succumb to alzheimers? At least there would be a reason for their colossal ignorance and callous disregard for others.
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Snobelen complains about quasi-elected trustees and supports his deputy education minister. From what I know, the elected trustees were elected using the same voting system that got Snobelen elected. I don't ever recall any deputy minister being elected by the citizens of Ontario.
He seems sympathetic to families with children with special needs. He wants to give them funding so they can go shop around for the best education for their children. How nice until those families realize that the funding may not be enough to meet the needs of their children. Who will pay the difference? The families.
There seems to be a trend by right-wingers to give funding credits directly to families so they can provide the best educational choice for their children. That seems good. One family can send their children to a black-focussed school while another can use their funding credits to subsidize their children's tuition at Upper Canada College. Choice is good for all children. Isn't it?
I am not against choice in education. I do think that families should be able to determine what is best for their children. I could favour funding credits per child so that families can choose which school their child should attend on the following conditions: All students living within a defined geographical area would be eligible to attend a particular school. No human rights discrimination by schools based on the usual gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and so on. No school would be allowed to charge an added tuition or service fee. Upper Canada College would not be eligible to receive funding because it would charge tuition above the funding credits available to families.
We currently have some choices in education. We have general schooling, French Immersion programs, Aboriginal programs, schools that focus on gay and lesbian students. There is talk about introducing black focused schools in Toronto. We could have schools for athletics and arts as long as the students learn the Ontario curriculum. We could have Mandarin or Spanish Immersion schools also. These specialized programs could be offered by the current school boards or through specialized school authorities.
John Snobelen proposal to get rid of the school boards and centralize decision making would hurt the economies of scales. The Toronto District School Board is already too big to serve the needs of its students. How would one big school super ministry serving all of Ontario be any better?
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