On China, the Confucius Institute, and Coquitlam School District politics

As Chinese authorities continue to expel more and more missionaries – and repress the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong – School District 43 continues to recruit more students from China, who prefer the Coquitlam area because of the School District’s dubious partnership with the Confucius Institute, which receives its mandate from authoritarian Beijing.[1]

 

Given chronic underfunding in the B.C. public school system, our school districts have come to depend on these overseas students, which means that SD43 is becoming financially addicted to its affiliation with the Confucius Institute – and its role in the English-Mandarin bilingual classes.

It is a partnership with no foreseeable end.  But is it also problematic for a few School Board Trustees?

The Tri-City News reported in December of last year: “During 2012/’13, the Chinese government paid for the SD43 board chair Melissa Hyndes and trustees Holly Butterfield (Anmore/Belcarra) and Keith Watkins (Port Moody) to visit the country as part of the district’s international education outreach. The trip cost about $9000 [each] but no provincial funds were spent on travel expenses.”

Our school trustees are supposed to be Canadian public officials.  Yet three of them were given “all-expense paid” trips to China courtesy of its government, all while SD43 holds a partnership with the Confucius Institute which also contributes to the cost of Mandarin instruction at the Walton elementary school in Coquitlam.

 

Can the China trips be perceived as a form of conflict of interest?  Certainly it is a problem of “accepting extra benefits”.  In the B.C. Legislature “A member must not accept a fee, gift or personal benefit” so why should public School Trustees be the exception?  And how much do trips to China shape SD43’s relationship with the Confucius Institute?  Or affect Mandarin instruction in our public schools?

And what about funding priorities and the truly massive budget cuts? Do the trips not look excessive in light of every Middle School student in SD43 now forced to go the year without a cafeteria?

Furthermore, children in the Mandarin classes are being taught by hand-picked teachers from China who probably do not know about human rights, or Tiananmen Square (erased from public memory), and who do not know the democratic free vote, assuming they appreciate the concept.

So it appears the Canadian state, assisted by a few public school trustees at SD43, is contributing to the moral disarmament of our society as China becomes a single-party superpower.

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[1] An abbreviated form of this letter was published by the Tri-City News on Friday October 3, 2014. The Tri-City News serves Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra –  British Columbia.