“The Revolt of the Elites” in British Columbia

The fact that another School District 43 trip to China is planned for 2019 can be explained by Christopher Lash’s best-selling book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, a work which anticipated the rise of populism in America over 20 years ago.[1]  The “elites” in the Tri-Cities[2] are the professional managers at SD43 whose loyalties are international rather than local, and where the language of money speaks more loudly than our democracy, to whom our school trustees are beholden.

So trips to China “strengthen the district’s international education program”[3] and allegedly create “world citizens” – but of whom – our Chinese guests who pay fees of $15,000 per year, or the Canadian students who learn that money talks in our public school system?

And the more SD43 deepens its ties with China the more it compromises Canadian multiculturalism: just look to the network of forced indoctrination behind razor wire of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region.[4]  Estimates are that about one million Uyghurs are being re-purposed as model Communist citizens, which some call cultural genocide, and that’s about the Muslim population in Canada.

So if SD43 again goes free to China, what does that say to our Tri-City’s Muslim population?

The elites at SD43 can offer all the buzzwords it wants to explain why $62,725 for a 6-trustee trip to China was reimbursed by Hanban, the cultural arm of the Chinese government, but clearly it has abandoned (as Lash would put it) the ‘obligations of citizenship’, both local and Canadian.

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[1] See especially Ch. 2 “The Revolt of the Elites” in Christopher Lash, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), pp. 25-49.

[2] The Tri-Cities are Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.

[3] See “More Cash for SD43 trustees” Tri-City News (Friday, Nov. 23, 2018), p. A3.

[4] See “Inside China’s campaign against the Urghurs,” The Globe and Mail (Monday Nov. 5 2018), Front Page.