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

With a special event commemorating Ted Byfield’s life just three weeks away, it’s timely to consider his impact on the province. Many people immediately recognize the key role he played in the creation and rise of the Reform Party of Canada and the change it brought to national politics. But fewer probably understand his important influence on Alberta’s education policy.In particular, Ted Byfield was the greatest media voice defending parental rights and educational choice during the lifetime of Alberta Report magazine.Alberta experienced considerable controversy over private education from the late 1970s through to the late 1980s. There were major policy changes, court cases, and political activities associated with educational choice. In covering these events, Byfield used his magazine to strongly advocate for parental rights and choice.Some of the controversies were much more high profile than others. 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. This led to him being fired in December 1982. Keegstra was a public school teacher, but the public education establishment tried to redirect the negative attention of this incident towards private schools.Thus, in June 1983 the Minister of Education created a Committee on Tolerance and Understanding, chaired by former MLA Ron Ghitter, to investigate and suggest ways to promote greater tolerance in Alberta’s school system.In May 1984 the Committee released a discussion paper on private schools. It was critical of the very existence of private schools in Alberta, even suggesting that they may constitute a threat to tolerance and democracy. It essentially called for an end to private education in Alberta. 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.In his May 21, 1984 Alberta Report column, Byfield commented on this paper as follows: “When Mr. Ghitter’s committee resumes its search for intolerance and bigotry in Alberta, we suggest they be furnished with a new item of evidence. They might examine their own report. As a specimen of what they’re looking for, it’s a dandy.”That is, the committee’s overt antipathy to private schools demonstrated its own lack of “tolerance” and “understanding.”In December the committee released its final report. The section of the report that dealt with private schools was less extreme than the earlier discussion paper. But the committee remained hostile to private education and the report called for much stricter government controls on private schools.Byfield’s criticism of the final report was rightly severe. He wrote that, “if the committee’s proposals for independent education were enacted, they would represent the most oppressive educational legislation ever introduced in English-speaking Canada. . . . We have the proposal — unparalleled in the English-speaking world — that the idea of an independent school, unsubsidized and largely uncontrolled by government, be forbidden by law in Alberta. We have, in sum, propositions of totalitarian implication.”Likely for the reasons articulated by Byfield, the government was wise enough to ignore the Ghitter report’s recommendations for harsh restrictions on private education.Besides many other education-related controversies of the mid-1980s, the Alberta government was also in the process of writing a new School Act. It was introduced as Bill 27 in May 1988.Byfield supported this bill. His May 30, 1988 Alberta Report column noted that Bill 27 “is plainly oriented toward parental control, as against state control, of what a child learns. . . . [T]he bill sets out unequivocally the parental right to decide: ‘Parents have a right and responsibility to make decisions respecting the education of their children.’ This is something public educators have long been at pains to prevent. What your child does or does not learn, as far as the ‘professionals’ are concerned, is a matter for professionals, not parents to determine. The Alberta act specifically repudiates this view.”It’s clear Byfield’s support for the new School Act was important because his name was mentioned a number of times in the legislative debates over Bill 27.On June 8, 1988, when Calgary Liberal MLA Sheldon Chumir was making the point to Education Minister Nancy Betkowski that the proposed School Act would encourage the creation of new private schools — which she disputed — Chumir said, “Well, Ted Byfield thinks they’re encouraged.”Five days later, when he was arguing that the new School Act was a boon to private schools, Chumir noted that “Mr. Byfield, who is a great and untiring advocate of private religious schools, has expressed ecstasy with respect to the changes in the Act.”On June 17, NDP leader Ray Martin, who claimed that the new Act posed a threat to public education, said this in support of his view: “Now, the minister has her ally Mr. Ted Byfield who thinks this is a great thing because it’s the end of public education and the start of private education.”On June 28, Chumir once again invoked the name of Byfield to justify an interpretation of a particular part of the new Act. He went on to say, referring to Byfield, that “while we disagree very, very strongly with respect to the direction schooling should take, let there be no mistake that he’s a very perceptive observer of what is going on in the world of education.”Byfield was repeatedly cited in the Legislature because he was recognized as having considerable influence on this issue.The point is that Ted Byfield was a vitally important advocate for educational choice in Alberta during a crucial period in the province’s history. Because of this, it’s probably safe to say that Alberta parents have more freedom in educational matters today due to his efforts.

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

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