While teachers, principals and administrators gather in Yellowknife for workshops to ponder the future of education, we hope they take time to identify problems with the present system.

There are major concerns, mainly to do with discipline, standards and most importantly, the accurate and consistent flow of information to parents.

When these problems are raised by parents and education advocates, the teaching profession immediately closes ranks, condemns the critics, then ultimately blames large classroom numbers, teacher burnout and understaffing.

With 16 weeks a year available to teachers for stress-relieving time off and professional development, there is nothing left of classroom time to carve off to further relieve staff distress. Of the approximately 1,000 hours of class time, too much already goes to "special" days and fun functions that cannot qualify as academic training. Too many hours of classroom time not spent on specific subjects is not tracked, but it could be if the will was there.

Children from families that don't fit the two-parent, nine-to-five, ideal family mould need more hours of focused and disciplined teaching than the education system presently offers.

These students are too easily lost in the shuffle from teacher to teacher and grade to grade as bad habits developed in elementary years bear bitter fruit in middle and senior years.

More staff would boost actual classroom time. In the present political climate, such a demand will fall on deaf ears unless a clear case is made by education administrators. To do that they must take a hard look at how much time is spent teaching now and how much more is required to catch the significant numbers of students at risk. Parents will support anything that gives children a better education -- and parents influence politicians.

While educators give themselves high marks for their educational effort above the call of duty, staying on the present course will render excellent results an impossible dream.

Where there's smoke, there's gas. And that's why the fire department is concerned. Ice buildup inside oil-furnace chimneys can collapse the liner, kicking potentially fatal carbon monoxide back down the chimney.

This is a clear case of a little prevention being worth a lot of cure. We join the fire department in encouraging Yellowknifers to maintain their chimneys properly.

Carbon monoxide poisoning shouldn't be a risk for Northerners. A little well-placed maintenance goes a long way in preventing unnecessary disasters.

It's an irony that efforts to do good work in a time of government cutbacks and economic malaise can do harm instead.

We don't have a casino in the NWT but gambling is without question big business here anyway. In Inuvik alone, with a mere 3,000 people or so, the bingo games paid out $1.8-million last year. Just paid out in prizes, remember -- they took in much more.

The need to raise money is much more pronounced these days, thanks mostly to government cutbacks. Organizations simply cannot raise the kind of money gambling provides by having bake sales, but it does put them in the position of doing some harm in order to do a greater good.

One organization in town, the Next To New store, isn't buying the argument and although it badly needs $5,000 to heat its used-clothing outlet, isn't interested in taking money raised from bingo or lotteries. Like social services or anyone else who has to mop up the fallout of gambling, they have decided the harm outweighs the benefit and would rather stand in the cold on principle than take money spent by a lot of people who can afford it the least. Rather than seeing lottery money as a windfall, they view it as someone else's grocery money.

They're not the only ones to make such a stand -- in the South, organizations as diverse as anti-poverty groups and women's shelters have taken such stands and many others are having agonizing debates about whether it is the right thing to do -- but they may be the only ones in town to have done so.

Practically everyone acknowledges that gambling is a huge social problem in the North, second only to drink, and the people who should not do so at all do it the most. For all the people out for an evening of socializing, there are people spending the welfare check or the paycheque in hopes of a big win that will lift them out of the poverty crushing them. The games hold out a cruel hope that you can see in the faces of people spending $50 or $100 on the weekend lottery tickets.

The problem is, the games are rigged against the player. Always. That's why there's so much gambling money available to community groups, because someone else has lost it. It's why the casinos in Las Vegas are much grander than anything you can hope to live in, even if you have a good night.

An organization out to do good should not have to make such a choice, of course, but it's a telling indicator of the times we live in when the choices are either take gambling money or literally stand out in the cold.

I owe Lubor J. Zink a great debt. In many ways, he changed my life, as did other columnists I started to read while growing up.

But, don't get the impression that I liked either Zink -- a crusty cold-warrior who wrote in one of my home town papers many years ago -- or anything he stood for.

In fact, I despised the man's views and a right-wing view of the world that I just could not (and I hope I never) relate to.

But I read him each time his column was published. And, though opposed to what I believed, I found that his thoughts stimulated my own.

On other days, I began to read Dalton K. Camp's view of the world. Being a young Liberal at that time, I also grew angry when reading the old Tory's views. I think, upon reflection, that what bothered me most was the fact that the old you-know-what was often right.

And in recent years, he's become one of my column-writing heroes. In 1995, I even did a column for the opinion page of Camp's home town paper in New Brunswick that carried the headline: "Dalton Camp for prime minister."

I always cherish the phone call I received from him as a result.

"Mr. Milnes," he told this excited rookie, "though I enjoyed your column, I wanted to give you some advice from a man who has been writing columns for a long time."

Little me could hardly breath as I awaited the sage words from my hero.

"You must beware what you write in a column because sometimes people believe you and I'm not running for prime minister."

Then he laughed and put up with as many questions as I could squeeze in before he had to go.

So, just what does all this have to do with the Deh Cho xxxDrum you might ask? Afterall, I doubt I could afford Camp's fees and I suspect that Zink has moved on to that great Republican country club in the sky anyway.

I guess the topic has been on my mind this week because of a controversial letter that someone wanted to publish on this page last week.

Had it been published, I knew that a lot of the flack might have been directed my way, even though I didn't write it.

After consultation with people I respect and my boss, I realized that it wasn't my place to be worried about that sort of reaction in the first place. And, I knew that all along.

This page doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the readers and they have the right to be heard -- even if people don't like what is said.

In the end, the person decided the grief they might receive for publishing their views wouldn't have been worth it and asked that the letter be withdrawn. It was.

Despite this, the whole issue of what not, and what to publish and who has what rights to say what in what forum, has been on my mind.

I go back to Zink and Camp: though I often disagreed with their views, I'm glad I had the chance to read them.