By chronically underfunding the college system, successive Ontario governments have put into place a mechanism that favours the elites of our province.
This dialectic of master and slave is as old as humanity itself and must be actively fought against for the sake of justice, dignity and fairness. Education, which means to lead out of ignorance, has become mere training that only served the profit and greed-driven purposes of the industrial corporate complex while reducing persons to mere things and drones who can be manipulated, repressed and controlled.
The foundation of the system is students and the faculty who teach them. Administrators should be in place to serve the process of education and not engage in behaviour that only creates a poisoned work environment. In fact, since 2003 there has been a 77% increase in administrators while the hiring of full-time professors has fallen to 1%.
Without education, independent thinking, academic freedom and fairness, society is nothing more than a zombified, mindless machine in service to those who manipulate its movements.
This current strike, if it is to have any meaning beyond the already orchestrated movement it has become if faculty are legislated back to work, must fight for a total transformation of the Ontario college system. We owe this to our students. We owe this to all of our colleagues who have been mistreated and abused.
Ontario colleges, which have now become degree-granting institutions, are places of higher-skilled learning. The statistics show that they have become places where administrators use taxpayer and tuition funds to fuel their own overpriced salaries.
Dr. Mark Zlomislic
Conestoga College
Ethics and humanities professor, Barrie