When Education is Bought and Sold
Turning classrooms into commodities risks reshaping more than just budgets; it’s redefining democracy
Hi everyone! I’m fortunate to have friends across our fabulous country who are brilliant writers and journalists, such as Tara Klager, writer, rare sheep farmer and keen observer of Alberta. After reading a recent mini-essay she wrote on her FB page about the role public schools play in shaping and upholding Canadian democracy, I asked Tara to expand on it for Side Walks. Originally from Ontario, Tara and I became friends while she was living in New Brunswick, and she now raises fibre sheep and alpacas on a small corner of Rocky View County, Alberta, hard against the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains.
There’s an assumption in Alberta politics that competition automatically improves everything it touches.
“Let the market decide!” is a rallying cry that’s reaching far past the usual economic arenas and into the public sector. We’re seeing it encroach into sectors like health care and education, two of the latest fields to be reframed as industries in need of market correction and greater private investment. Now, embroiled in a teacher’s strike, Albertans are being forced to consider – or perhaps reconsider – just how much they’re willing to part with.
When Premier Danielle Smith’s government raised private-school grants by more than 10 per cent while increasing public-school funding by less than half that rate, it was more than a budgeting decision. It was a signal: education is being treated as a consumer good rather than a shared civic investment. At the current pace, per-student funding for private schools will reach parity with the public system within a few years here in Alberta. Combine that public subsidy with tuition, and per-student spending in private schools will soon be double what’s available to public-school children.
The rapid escalation in private school funding was also a shot across the bow – Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) is looking to offload education, increasingly turning its operations over to structures, organizations and systems that function largely behind closed doors.
But that’s not the whole story.
Alberta has funded private education since the 1970s. Charter schools - independently operated but still public schools - first appeared in the mid-90s. Successive governments, all self-described fiscal conservatives but for one brief blip, have argued that some degree of choice and competition strengthens the system.
But at what cost?
We Learn How to Be Citizens in School
The one incontrovertible truth that no one wants to talk about is that the loss of a robust and well-supported public education system undermines our democratic institutions. Values that were once described in national terms – I am Canadian –become fractured as every community develops its own way of understanding the world.
The more we transfer public dollars into private hands, the more we beggar the umbrella system, the only educational option in the province that doesn’t have the luxury of charging tuition or turning away students.
It comes as no surprise that when parents have the option of exercising choice, they do. And often their choice hinges around a worldview, a philosophy or a community that looks quite astonishingly like a comfort zone.
Public schools are the only forum that forces children to spend time day after day with other students who come from backgrounds very different from their own.
It’s in this bubbling little petri dish that the ability to live life together grows.
They encounter and adapt to varying moral frameworks, refine communication skills, grapple with community mores and values and learn to use all those lovely little intangibles that make living with other people possible.
New immigrants, Indigenous people, socio-economic backgrounds, multi-generational households, varying abilities and learning styles, a range of life experiences, appearance, culture and more all become part of the shared lived experience of children in public schools.
They navigate these things because they must; they learn how to live and work together because schools provide the training ground and teachers provide the leadership.
After years spent growing up and around a range of backgrounds, stories and possibilities, every single child coming out of the public system has at least brushed up against the overlap in the communal Venn diagram of what we mean when we say society.
There is some ground that is common, whatever their own personal life experience may be. Our shared public institutions are strengthened and reinforced because we all understand how to function when we must do things together. We learned it in school.
All this is eroded when public dollars are transferred into private hands.
Empathy, Curiosity and Moral Reasoning is Education’s ROI
In Alberta, we have already seen what happens when essential services are parceled out to private contractors in health care and infrastructure: transparency erodes, accountability weakens, and corruption finds the cracks.
Proponents of “school choice” often claim that market pressures produce better outcomes – that parents, as paying consumers, will demand excellence and weed out mediocrity.
But schools aren’t businesses, and children aren’t customers. A teacher can’t be reduced to a service provider any more than a student can be treated as a client.
What’s truly at stake is the shift from commitment to transaction. When education is sold as a product, we start believing its worth can be tallied. We measure outcomes, rank teachers, and calculate “return on investment.” But the most vital parts of education – empathy, curiosity, moral reasoning – resist metrics.
Look at it this way - if we applied this consumer logic to parenting, it instantly falls apart.
Imagine if your mother sent you an invoice for the cooking, cleaning, childcare, and chauffeuring she once provided. You could price every service – and still miss the love, patience, and quiet discipline that made those acts meaningful.
Those intangibles are what make a parent’s care priceless and far more essential for a secure start in life than clean socks.
The same is true of teachers, aides, librarians, custodians, and the host of people who make schools far more than a marketplace and education much more than a commodity. Their value lies not only in instruction but in presence – in showing up every day for children who may have no one else consistently doing so.
You can’t put a price on that, and if we tried, we couldn’t afford it.
Education works best when rooted in commitment, not competition, when it’s part of a diverse community and not a homogenous slice of social pie.
The public system isn’t perfect, but it remains the one place built to serve every child, not just the ones whose parents can pay for choice.
To those who would divorce the value from the service, I would remind them, “You get what you pay for.”
Side Walks is fully funded by readers and organizations that support our mission to produce Canadian news and cultural commentary. If you’re enjoying this story, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, $8/month or $80/year. You can also sign up for a free subscription. All subscriptions deliver Side Walks directly to your email inbox, and you can also read along on the Substack app.
If you enjoyed this column, please share the love with others who you think would enjoy the conversation we’re having on Side Walks. We’re building a community interested in finding common ground around complex issues by focusing on local repercussions and opportunities caused by national and global issues. Cheers!
Stroll Over to Side Walks For More Stories
Ideas
Province on Fire: Northumberland County, home to New Brunswick’s forestry sector, is fighting back the flames
Street Smarts: Small talk and the flavours of the neighbourhood
Place-based Development Story Series: East Coast Ambition Starts at Home
Convincing Homegrown Investors to Buy Local: Atlantic Canada’s Sandpiper Ventures and Mexico City show what happens when local capital backs local innovation – sustainable wealth with global reach
Trade Talks; Capital Walks: Canadian businesses have access to global markets, but infrastructure and policy certainty are needed to seal the deal, says Aaron Fowler, Canada’s chief trade negotiator for international trade.
Culture
Affirmation Across the Generations: ‘Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery’ by Canadian filmmaker Ally Pankiw is a rallying call for change, inspired by Sarah McLachlan and her successful all-women music festival.
Review: Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband): TIFF’s 2025 Best Canadian Feature award-winner from acclaimed Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk returns with a film about promises, love and northern spirits.
Side Walks Home Page
Catch up on all our stories at www.sidewalksmedia.ca.
 | A guest post by
|