Surrey Continuing Education cuts classes
Surrey author and writing instructor, Ed Griffin, shared writing expertise and inspiration with hundreds of B.C. writers for 20 years. He reads cutting Surrey Continuing Education courses (such as his successful Writers’ Diploma Course) as the final chapter in providing local quality, affordable, adult education to residents.
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Updated: June 04, 2009 10:53 PM
Editor:
The Surrey School administration announced this week that they were closing general interest courses in Continuing Education. This means no more guitar classes, no more firefighters teaching CPR, no more Punjabi cooking classes for adults, no more creative writing classes, no more photography and no more Spanish conversation.
No more classes for adults. Yet the schools belong to all of us, don’t they? No matter what our age.
The school district will claim that enrollment was declining and they are right. Very deliberately over the last years, the district has cut staff, advertising and availability for these courses.
There used to be a principal, a secretary and an aide at each of the Continuing Education sites. The job of the principal was to develop courses and promote them.
Over the last years one principal only was assigned to do this job for the whole district.
Continuing Education in Surrey didn’t die. School District #36 killed it.
The job of the School Board, it seems to me, is to promote lifelong learning. Grade 12 is not the end – education goes on into middle age and even beyond.
Our school board has failed us. Our school buildings will now sit idle at night and Surrey can return to its image as a suburb of carlots, crime, and a school board that doesn’t believe in lifelong learning.
Ed Griffin
Surrey
Note: Ed Griffin is the founder of the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. SiWC is ranked in the top three North American conferences for emerging and established writers.
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