The Educator – April 2016

In this last issue before the new term, we have a smaller, but important, selection of articles. The officers of 109 and 110 collectively report their response to a recent meeting with President Peter Devlin in Kind Words and Potemkin Villages. I provide my report on the last General Membership Meeting and a motion for changes to bargaining in 2017: Doing Things Differently. Kay Wigle tells us about her experience as an activist and the importance of being a union steward. We include here a copy of Darryl Bedford’s open letter to Justin Trudeau. Kathleen Dindoff continues her trenchant examination of the college’s student evaluation system. Matt Farrell provides a provocative opinion piece about students as customers : A College Should Be Run Like a Business—A Real One.

It has always been the position of the union (and my own) that students are not customers, and if we have any ‘customers’ in education, it is all citizens of Ontario. But Matt’s piece provides us with a valuable challenge to clarify our thinking about this important issue. We would like to know what our readers think. Do you feel that students are our customers? If not, who are our customers (if anyone)? What would constitute ‘customer satisfaction’ in the colleges? What would it look like?

You can download a PDF version of the April 2016 Educator here.