Out of the box
The Fraser Institute Fandango
A few years ago the Fraser Institute invited me, a public high school teacher, to Vancouver. They promised to fly me down to the big city, put me up in a hotel for a night and feed me a scrumptious dinner. The story behind this blind date is an odd one, and even though my “folks” ultimately forbade the rendezvous, I was still flattered by the attentions of such a slick suitor.
The Fraser Institute is BC’s premier conservative think-tank. Its members toil to promote free enterprise, champion business, and—from what I can gather—feed on human souls. They disdain public education, annually releasing ratings of all provincial schools to prove that they’re inferior to private institutions. This is particularly depressing for my school, for it’s consistently ranked in the bottom five high schools.
We’ve learned to deal with this perennial bummer by simply poo-pooing the ratings; we mock the report’s business-model, “bottom-line” methodology, question its motives and call the Institute filthy names. Then we secretly compare our scores with those of nearby high schools.
One year our ratings leaped, and our eyes, drawn out of habit to the bottom of the columns printed in The Province, rose along with our astonishment. There was guarded joy and confused pride in the staff room. Maybe we were employing sound, innovative pedagogy to break through our students’ chronic apathy and shrinking frame of reference. Once roundly dismissed, the report became a source of mild celebration.
Soon following this statistical mash-note came a bolder type of wooing. The Institute wished to lure one of our staff to Vancouver to praise us at a special catered ceremony and seduce us with a generous cheque of five hundred dollars to perhaps purchase a microwave oven for the staff room or a round of commemorative windbreakers. Who would represent our ambivalent staff? I bravely volunteered, confident in my ability to avoid being led astray by the Institute. I would be polite and receptive, but come away with my honour intact. People who know me realized that I was just using the Institute for my own gains: free access to Vancouver’s amenities. Was I leading the Institute on? Perhaps a little, but weren’t we both getting what we wanted?
However, grumblings soon emerged from other teachers. Also, the unions I must belong to were opposed to this unseemly dalliance on principle: how would it look to outsiders to see us playing patty-cake with an organization we took pains to ignore? I never heard the words “prostitute” or “whore” in the staff room, but I felt the looks, the disapproval.
Meanwhile, I fantasized about the magical weekend. What bookstores should I hit first? Would it be too cumbersome to bring bicycle wheels back on the plane? Then there was the grand evening itself. I had nothing to wear; I didn’t think a shirt and tie was going to cut it with the grey-flannel-suit crowd. I vowed to buy a navy jacket before the main event—maybe something with a crest and brass buttons for that yacht-club look.
But before I could make an appointment for a haircut and facial, the rug was pulled out from under me. The grumblings had risen to indignant bleatings, and one fateful morning the staff held a secret vote to prohibit my Vancouver engagement. I was vexed but nevertheless obedient to their wishes. Resentful, I rejected their conciliatory gestures, even passing up the extra éclair reserved for me at the next staff meeting. It would’ve only tasted like ashes in my mouth.
It’s been years since this sordid affair occurred. Months later, I flew to Vancouver on my own. But sometimes when it’s quiet in the evening, and my heart is a lacuna in my chest, I direct my MacBook to the Fraser Institute website. Looking at the tedious content, I sigh and think about what might have been.
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