The truth is that, while both sides have their reasons in the dispute, nobody is winning in this standoff. The strikes continue to disrupt parents, teachers and students. Parents often can’t find childcare or are unable to afford childcare, so they don’t go to work and lose income. Teachers lose income and have their work disrupted. Students miss classes and some are even at risk of missing exams. Nobody wins in this dispute.

The truth is that the dispute is between two centralized organizations — the Provincial Government and the Union. The Provincial Government doesn’t want to spend more money on education. The Union wants more money for teachers and students to be better supported. With neither side wanting to listen to the other, the conflict becomes stagnated and everyone else suffers. This is the nature of the competitive paradigm we live in. We have two sides who refuse to listen to each others’ needs and work together to find a solution. It is a childish attitude that reflects poorly on the adults involved and teaches the wrong lesson to our children. And because both sides of the system are centralized, they are often limited on what they can do without giving up their power. At the end of the day, that is the key. It is the fact that neither side wants to give up their power that prevents them from reaching an agreement.

This is where a collaborative system could shine. Instead of having both sides threatening each other with lower pay or “job actions”, they could reach an agreement by considering each other’s needs that are not being addressed, and finding a solution that would address everyone’s needs. Not only that, but parents, teachers and students could have their needs listened to and their ideas considered, which is completely unheard of in the current competitive paradigm. This destructive paradigm tends to completely ignore the needs of those who they claim to represent. Both the government and the Union are not mindful of all stakeholders’ needs. To be fair, the Union tried to represent the workers, but the Union attempts to solve the problem of centralization of power with more centralization of power, much like Russia tried to institute communism by centralizing power through the State — and we all know where that lead them to.

Therefore, it becomes crucial that we shift our way of thinking from a hierarchic competitive paradigm where a few people have all the power and supposedly represent everyone else to a flat collaborative paradigm where everyone represent themselves, communicate their needs and find a solution that works for everyone. With a collaborative paradigm, in the end, nobody loses and we find an ideal solution that works for everyone.

Nelson Guedes is a Systems Savant, Interaction Analyst, Interaction Designer and Philosopher from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has a very diverse background that includes a wide range of subjects from Philosophy to Economics and his ultimate goal is to reconcile Human Systems with Natural Systems. He is currently working on his book, The Code: A Simple Theory of Everything and The Open Earth Project, a system to facilitate and co-ordinate global collaboration.