Western Standard - September 05, 2024


WAGNER： Ted Byfield was Alberta’s champion of choice in education

Topics
Ted Byfield and educational choice in Alberta
Mentioned
Ted Byfield M. LeSheldon Schumer MLA Ron Gitter Nancy Betkowski Michael Wagner James Kigstra Ray Martin Karklein
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Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

128.71

Word count

1,016

Sentence count

61


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Byfield was a leading advocate for parental rights and educational choice in Alberta in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He championed the creation of a new school act, Bill 27, which allowed for the establishment of private schools in Alberta.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You are listening to the Western Standard Podcast, and this episode features a column by Michael Wagner published on 5 September 2024.
00:00:11.360 Wagner says Ted Byfield was Alberta's champion of choice in education.
00:00:17.280 With a special event commemorating Ted Byfield's life just three weeks away, it's timely to consider his impact on the province.
00:00:26.480 Many people immediately recognized the key role he played in the creation and rise of the Reform Party of Canada and the change it brought to national politics.
00:00:37.440 But fewer probably understand his important influence on Alberta's education policy.
00:00:43.820 In particular, Ted Byfield was the greatest media voice defending parental rights and educational choice during the lifetime of Alberta Reports magazine.
00:00:54.180 Alberta experienced considerable controversy over private education from the late 1970s through to the late 1980s.
00:01:04.520 There were major policy changes, court cases, and political activities associated with educational choice.
00:01:12.160 In covering these events, Byfield used his magazine to strongly advocate for parental rights and choice.
00:01:18.980 Some of the controversies were much more high-profile than others.
00:01:24.060 One of the biggest arose because a public school social studies teacher in Eckville named James Keegstra taught his students about an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world.
00:01:36.540 This led to him being fired in December 1982.
00:01:39.780 Two, Keegstra was a public school teacher, but the public education establishment tried to redirect the negative attention of this incident towards private schools.
00:01:51.040 Since the Karklein rations, thus in June 1983, the Minister of Education created a Committee on Tolerance and Understanding, chaired by former MLA Ron Gitter, to investigate and suggest ways to promote greater tolerance in Alberta's school system.
00:02:09.500 Since May 1984, the committee released a discussion paper on private schools.
00:02:15.480 It was critical of the very existence of private schools in Alberta, even suggesting that they may constitute a threat to tolerance and democracy.
00:02:25.940 It essentially called for an end to private education in Alberta.
00:02:30.920 That was in spite of the fact the entire Keegstra episode occurred within the public school system and had nothing to do with private schools.
00:02:39.840 In his May 21, 1984, Alberta report column, Byfield commented on this paper as follows,
00:02:49.300 When Mr. Gitter's committee resumes its search for intolerance and bigotry in Alberta, we suggest they be furnished with a new item of evidence.
00:02:59.180 They might examine their own report as a specimen of what they're looking for.
00:03:03.820 In December, the committee released its final report.
00:03:18.000 The section of the report that dealt with private schools was less extreme than the earlier discussion paper.
00:03:25.160 But the committee remained hostile to private education and the report called for much stricter government controls on private schools.
00:03:34.820 Byfield's criticism of the final report was rightly severe.
00:03:39.060 He wrote that, if the committee's proposals for independent education were enacted,
00:03:44.400 they would represent the most oppressive educational legislation ever introduced in English-speaking Canada.
00:03:51.840 We have the proposal, unparalleled in the English-speaking world,
00:03:56.920 that the idea of an independent school, unsubsidized and largely uncontrolled by government,
00:04:03.380 be forbidden by law in Alberta.
00:04:05.980 We have, in sum, propositions of totalitarian implication.
00:04:11.360 Likely for the reasons articulated by Byfield,
00:04:14.560 the government was wise enough to ignore the Gitter Report's recommendations for harsh restrictions on private education.
00:04:22.720 He bustwides many other education-related controversies of the mid-1980s.
00:04:28.900 The Alberta government was also in the process of writing a new school act.
00:04:34.180 It was introduced as Bill 27 in May 1988.
00:04:39.040 Byfield supported this bill.
00:04:40.680 His May 30, 1988, Alberta report column noted that Bill 27 is plainly oriented toward parental control,
00:04:49.800 as against state control, of what a child learns.
00:04:54.000 E.G. Peeble sets out unequivocally the parental right to decide.
00:04:58.880 Parents have a right and responsibility to make decisions respecting the education of their children.
00:05:05.480 This is something public educators have long been at pains to prevent.
00:05:11.000 What your child does or does not learn, as far as the professionals are concerned,
00:05:16.060 is a matter for professionals, not parents to determine.
00:05:20.020 The Alberta Act specifically repudiates this view.
00:05:24.220 It's clear Byfield's support for the new school act was important
00:05:28.000 because his name was mentioned a number of times in the legislative debates over Bill 27.
00:05:35.000 On June 8, 1988, when Calgary Liberal M. LeSheldon Schumer
00:05:39.920 was making the point to Education Minister Nancy Betkowski
00:05:44.380 that the proposed school act would encourage the creation of new private schools,
00:05:50.160 which she disputed, Schumer said.
00:05:52.340 Well, Ted Byfield thinks they're encouraged.
00:05:56.100 Five days later, when he was arguing that the new school act was a boon to private schools,
00:06:02.060 Schumer noted that Mr. Byfield, who is a great and untiring advocate of private religious schools,
00:06:09.620 has expressed ecstasy with respect to the changes in the act.
00:06:14.640 Some just on June 17, NDP leader Ray Martin,
00:06:18.840 who claimed that the new act posed a threat to public education,
00:06:23.040 said this in support of his view.
00:06:25.600 Now the minister has her ally Mr. Ted Byfield,
00:06:29.060 who thinks this is a great thing because it's the end of public education
00:06:33.180 and the start of private education.
00:06:35.860 On June 28, Schumer once again invoked the name of Byfield
00:06:40.340 to justify an interpretation of a particular part of the new act.
00:06:44.960 He went on to say, referring to Byfield,
00:06:47.780 that while we disagree very, very strongly with respect to the direction schooling should take,
00:06:54.080 let there be no mistake that he's a very perceptive observer
00:06:57.740 of what is going on in the world of education.
00:07:02.000 See, patient Byfield was repeatedly cited in the legislature
00:07:05.920 because he was recognized as having considerable influence on this issue.
00:07:11.120 The point is that Ted Byfield was a vitally important advocate for educational choice in Alberta
00:07:18.180 during a crucial period in the province's history.
00:07:21.700 Because of this, it's probably safe to say that Alberta parents have more freedom
00:07:26.440 in educational matters today due to his efforts.
00:07:29.620 Thank you for listening.
00:07:34.340 For more, go to westernstandard.news now.
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00:07:40.500 or $99 a year for unlimited access.
00:07:43.220 Thank you for listening.
00:07:44.420 Thank you for listening.
00:07:48.480 And I'll see you next time.
00:07:53.600 Thanks.