‘Do as I say, not as I do’ students being told

TUESDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — A lot of adults — including teachers, principals and parents — probably aren’t feeling terribly supportive of a plan by students to walk out of school on Wednesday to protest the stalemate in teachers’ bargaining.

The idea is to draw attention to those caught in the middle of the dispute — the students. Organizers say they aren’t taking any side but that of the students who are losing valuable class time because of the job action that began last week and continues this week.

Wednesday is the only day this week that teachers won’t be staging rotating strikes, so students are asking each other to show up at school but walk out at 9 a.m. and set up picket lines.

Adults who are urging the students to scrap the idea are doing the responsible thing. Condoning such action is hard to do. And for students who complain about lost class time to then turn around and, in effect, shut down school for another day doesn’t seem logical.

But what’s logical about what teachers and government bargainers are doing? They’re the ones who are causing the disruption to the kids’ education. To then tell students it isn’t appropriate to purposely miss a day of school seems a bit of a contradiction.

It’s a little bit of “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Will one more missed day in this long-running dispute make a significant dent in the students’ education? Maybe. It certainly won’t do it any good. But maybe it will shake the BCTF and the government out of their bargaining torpor and move them closer to settling this thing.