Erosion of Teacher Dignity in Canada

Alan, here are a few quick thoughts.  The blather about leadership assumes professional autonomy in the classroom.  More and more teachers are widgets in an imposed top-down system.  This is especially true for online paper graders like me.  The course is canned; you simply grade the results.
It is similar to the old major professor who had a lot of TA's (teaching assistants).  The TA's graded the paper.  The professor "canned" the content. 

Moreover, the emergence of "Big Data" in which headquarters uses databases to measure your "competence" is going to further degrade teachers.  A friend of mine was head of science at York University, Toronto.  York has 66,000 students; his science department had 10,000.  The System was turning to the TA model, adjunct paper graders, and he saw the erosion of professional autonomy, dignity, "leadership." 

FYI  - I am tired of the American obsession with Leadership, leadership, leadership, leadership.  This is the mantra of fascism, of course.  I favor each person managing himself, herself, also called Chaotics, self-organizing systems.  Anyway, I know I am hopelessly outdated.  So I need to accept "as is," Taoist phrase there, how things are.  Let the systems destroy themselves. 

My friiend in Toronto fought the System.  The result was a fatal stroke last December, which killed him at age 67,  The year before I begged him to retire at age 67 from trying to assert traditional guild craftsmanship against the challenge of the Big Data machines emerging out there.  He could have retired at, yes, $110,000/year.  He is dead now for he believed in a hopeless cause.  I do not intend to make the same mistake.  We plan to visit his widow within the next two weeks.  Paul