The teachers' public relations strategy tells the story of the NWT's education system.

During past contract negotiations, the Northwest Territories Teachers Association trotted out facts and figures to dramatically illustrate the financial plight of their members. They wanted public sympathy.

The public listened but burdened with their own bills, generally let the two sides battle it out.

This time, the financial arguments persist but the NWTTA is giving equal attention to dramatizing the abysmal state of their classrooms. They have to do no more than let teachers tell their story to get the point across.

This is a strategy of desperation. Professionals, even if disgruntled with their paycheque, usually put the best face on the service they are delivering. In this case, no amount of window dressing can hide the fact the Northern education system is failing badly.

The number of students graduating each year remains by far the lowest in the country; the drop-out rate, the highest.

While the government has successfully brought Grade 12 to the communities through grade extensions, it has created situations where 20 to 25 students are in three different grades with one teacher. It doesn't work even if the politics get an A+.

Then there is the issue of special needs which translated means a high proportion of Northern students, for various reasons, do not match the expectations of southern-based curriculum.

That means we need teachers with special skills, not only for learning disabilities but to meet the formidable challenge of helping adapt Dene cultural values to the foreign cultural demands of the non-aboriginal curriculum.

More Dene teachers would help but that won't happen until there are more Dene graduates.

We must pay our teachers substantially more than the rest of Canada because we need them to be more specialized. Paying for mediocrity will only prolong present problems.

While the teachers' work-to-rule tactic may be seen as hurting the system, the fact is the system is hurting terribly any way. We hope that along with addressing teacher's salaries, the NWTTA keeps hammering away at what's really wrong with the system.

Improving their work environment will have the parallel effect of improving education for our children.

Christmas is over, the year rolled into the new millennium without any big problems and winter weather has set in with its expected vigor.

In other words, everything is as it should be. The stress, if there was any, of pending millennial confusion has passed.

Leaving the debate about whether there was ever any reason to worry aside, the lesson we have learned from the experience is that our lives are increasingly ruled by things that we simply don't understand. And despite the fact we don't know what the heck is going on, life seems to roll along anyway. It's a humbling experience.

While we remain grateful to all those technically adept people who ensured that nothing went wrong, there lingers some doubt as to if there really was a problem.

The Y2K problem recalls the appearance of the comet Kohoutek back in the mid-80s. People paid small fortunes to book passages on cruise shipes to get an unobstructed view, pessimists called for impending doom, astronomers rubbed their hands with glee at the thought of a meteor close at hand and souvenir sellers and travel agents made a small fortune.

And what happened? Nothing. The meteor was less than spectacular and barely visible from most of the planet, Armageddon failed to ignite and everybody got up the next morning and carried on.

Jan. 1 dawned (or not, depending on far North you live) and life was more or less the same as the day before. Y2K came and went. All the little things that really matter still mattered. Life goes on.