As The Year Closes Out

As 2021 comes to a close, if you are still looking for a worthy cause to contribute to and get a tax receipt from, I have a suggestion. But first, allow me to provide a bit of context.

As a teacher for 30 years, my deepest respect went to those who stove the hardest to improve themselves. They might not have been the best writers or the most apt students, but their willingness to work hard meant that I would always be there if and when they sought extra help. That offer of help was extended, of course, to all students, but I always told them they had to ask for it; my forcing them to come to see me would have been a waste both of my time and theirs. 

In that spirit, and also in the spirit of ongoing reconciliation efforts, I would like to heartily endorse a non-profit called Inspire.

Indspire is a national Indigenous registered charity that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for the long term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada.

Our vision is to enrich Canada through Indigenous education and by inspiring achievement. In partnership with Indigenous, private and public sector stakeholders, Indspire educates, connects and invests in First Nations, Inuit and Métis people so they will achieve their highest potential.

I have helped support the organization for awhile now, and its mission to help those seeking higher education resonates with me, as I sure it does with many others.  

If you decide to contribute, you can do so with confidence. Here is what Charity Intelligence Canada has to say about Indspire:

The charity reports that 90% of students who were supported by Indspire’s BBF program graduated from post-secondary. 

According to a 2020 Indspire report on the BBF program, nearly 60% of grant recipients hold a bachelor’s degree or above and more than 17% hold a non-university certificate or diploma. Of BBF recipients who are no longer in school, 89% are employed. 

While Ci highlights these key results, they may not be a complete representation of Indspire’s results and impact.

Charity Intelligence has rated Indspire as High impact based on its demonstrated impact per dollar spent.

Education may not be a universal panacea, but it is the best tool for success that we have. And in a world in which many of us feel increasing helpless, overwhelmed by forces beyond our control, it is gratifying to know that there are still things we can do that have an impact. 

 

Americans Behaving Badly

While the title would seem to be redundant, the following story demonstrates especially well how crazy our neighbours to the south are:

A Los Angeles woman is facing a federal assault charge after she allegedly punched and spit on a man aboard a recent Delta Air Lines flight following a mask dispute.

Patricia Cornwall was detained Thursday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after passengers told authorities that she had caused a disturbance on Flight 2790 from Tampa.

Cornwall was returning from the restroom when she saw a flight attendant conducting beverage service and blocking the aisle, according to the complaint. After Cornwall asked the flight attendant to help her find her seat, the flight attendant requested that she find an available seat until the conclusion of the beverage service, the complaint says.

 “What am I? Rosa Parks?” said Cornwall, who is White, according to the complaint.

Upon hearing the comment, the complaint says, the male passenger sitting in seat 37C told Cornwall “it was an inappropriate comment and that she ‘isn’t Black … this isn’t Alabama and this isn’t a bus.’ ” He then called her a catchall term popularized in recent years to describe an entitled, demanding White woman who polices other people’s behavior.

“Sit down, Karen,” he said to Cornwall, according to the complaint.

It was then, as they say, that chaos ensued: 

It would appear that flying the friendly skies in the U.S. is becoming an increasingly rare experience.

 

And Now, A Word From Tech Support

I do believe this says it all.
 

When Worlds Collide And Converge

 

While reading the early part of a recent column by Rosie DiManno, as a Canadian I couldn't help but feel a measure of smugness, but that sentiment quickly evaporated the further I got into her piece.

At a school board meeting last month in what I choose to call Bumf--k, Virginia, elected officials dropped all pretence of rational debate by outright calling for the immolation of books they deemed offensive because of sexual explicitness.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” declared one councilman. A marginally less combustible colleague chimed in about wanting to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

While both books, Call Me by Your Name and 33 Snowfish, are critically acclaimed, their respective themes of gay kids and exploited homeless teenagers were just too much for the officials. 

"Standard American reaction," I thought to myself. Next, however, DiManno turned her sights on Canada:.

Some titles in particular have drawn recurring wrath. To wit: “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Three years ago, the Peel District School Board issued a fiat declaring the literary classic by Harper Lee could only be taught “if instruction occurs through a critical, anti-oppression lens.” That followed a recommendation from a pedagogue, Poleen Grewal, associate director of instructional and equity support services.

That, in itself, is not alarming. I can't think of anyone, myself included, who would teach that novel in a historical or cultural vacuum. Indeed, I used to include a recording of Strange Fruit, as well as talk about the history of racism in the U.S. when exploring the novel.

But then things turned uncomfortable.

The Toronto school board got its knickers in a knot last month, rejecting an autobiography by renowned criminal defence lawyer Marie Henein for a book club event, essentially because she (successfully) defended Jian Ghomeshi in his sexual assault trial.

Hamilton’s public school board announced in November that it would be launching a review of all the books in its libraries — and those entering its collection — as part of an equity and learning strategy, blah-blah-blah. Because that’s all the rage now, part and parcel of a societal reckoning with our collective racist history, to hear tell. The upshot could be not just removing contentious books from the curriculum but from libraries, denying students access to books in which they might have an interest. Which surely is counterintuitive to promoting reading and independent critical inquiry.

Just down the road from Hamilton, a similar process is underway, vowing to cull books that don’t meet modern standards — “harmful to either staff or students” — by the Waterloo Region District School Board.

“As our consciousness around equity, on oppression work and anti-racist work has grown, we recognize some of the texts and collections that we have are not appropriate at this point,” Graham Shantz, the board’s co-ordinating superintendent of human resources and equity services, told trustees, as reported by the Waterloo Region Record.

From all of this, DiManno draws a lacerating and, in my view, accurate conclusion.

Where is all this equity lens forensic auditing of books leading? Answer: to an unholy alliance between the left and the right.

There’s nothing more intrinsically virtuous about censorship, whether it’s coming from reactionaries in a lather about sexual content — gender panic and trans rights the cri du jour — or activists on the progressive end of the ideology spectrum sifting for any hint of historical oppression and white or straight privilege.

The banning/burning of books has occurred in many eras, most notoriously that of Nazi Germany. The contemporary zeal for eliminating books that challenge or discomfit the reader has the same genesis and the same result: the narrowing of thought and capacity for critical thinking, no matter its official justification.

Perhaps Ray Bradbury captured this misguided messianic fervour best in his classic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451: "It was a pleasure to burn."

 

 

 

If This Is A Recruiting Video

 ... Lorne from Bellville needs a major rewrite.

Johnny “Austin” Fondue

@EatsFood2

Freedom Fighter Lorne from Belleville gets some rapid antigen tests and is confused by the box… #belleville #antivaxxers

Truth

As I continue to fulminate about the benighted in our midst, this seems like an appropriate thought for a Wednesday morning.

Simply Monstrous

As parents, almost all of us want the best for our kids and would do anything to protect them from harm. In the following news report, you will meet a Canadian family divided over Covid-19 shots. That in itself is not news, but when you learn of the medical circumstances of the 11-year-old in the family, I think you might feel as I do that the father's refusal to get the shot is simply unnatural and monstrous. 

Please start at the 17 minute mark.

The Best Of Covid Karma

No words needed from me here.

                                      

                                 

And my personal favourite:

Utterly Toothless

Given the damning report by the auditor general that the Public Heath Agency of Canada did a profoundly incompetent job of tracking travellers assigned to quarantine hotels earlier this year, it is perhaps not surprising to learn about another abject failure by the same agency: meting out punishment for fake vaccine certificates presented at border crossings.

Border officials in both Canada and the U.S. are catching people they suspect of trying to cheat vaccine rules to cross the border by the hundreds — but far fewer are seeing fines.

Although hundreds of allegedly fake and misused vaccine cards and COVID-19 tests have been reported by Canada border officials, the Public Health Agency of Canada has only issued 17 fines related to these reports so far.

Given the public health stakes, the border transgressions are egregious and criminal. And they include presenting fake Covid-19 test results:

A number of cases are being investigated by PHAC, which issued seven fines for suspected falsified or fraudulent COVID-19 test results between Jan. 6 to Nov. 12, that agency said. PHAC said it also issued two fines for suspected falsified or fraudulent proof of vaccination credentials between July 6 and Nov. 12.

Because they have right of entry, Canadians who enter with fake COVID-19-related records are still allowed into the country, but border officials then pass on their information to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which has ability to investigate and issue fines. Non-Canadians could be denied entry.

Because documents are easy to fake, enforcement and deterrence are sorely needed.

Shabnam Preet Kaur, a forensic document examiner with Toronto-based Docufraud Canada, said technology can easily allow people to create a falsified document.

"You just have to download these softwares, for example, Photoshop, and you can just do all the editing as per your convenience," she said.

"Whatever you need to change in a document, you can do it in less than five minutes."

Kaur said it is not difficult to manipulate PDF vaccine certificates.

"I would suggest [the] QR code method is really safer as compared to the PDF of certificates," she said. 

For Ontarians, there is one bright spot in this imbroglio. According to unnamed sources, on Friday the provincial government will announce that the vaccine certificate  currently in use will make way for a QR code as the only acceptable proof.

Perhaps the Public Health Agency of Canada can learn from this example. Their practices, as illustrated above, are essentially toothless. At the very least, it is time they acquired a good set of dentures (or perhaps another body part), in order to protect the public they are mandated to serve.

 

 

Chain Of Fools

As I have said before, people who read this blog will know I have zero patience for the idiot brigades known as anti-vaxxers. Convinced of the 'righteousness' of their cause, these pseudo-martyrs insist on spreading their 'gospel' in the most confrontational ways possible, causing all manner of disruption, discomfort and despair to working people not in the grip of their insane monomania. 

The following took place in an Ottawa Dollarama:

The woman who was recently handcuffed at a children’s vaccine clinic in Whitby and sleeping in a restaurant in Peterborough, looked like she started some of the issues at the Dollarama in Ottawa tonight.

H/t @EatsFood2

Here's what happened when the police arrived:

Message to anti-vaxxers: Please keep your insane preoccupations at home; if you must share your 'wisdom', please do it in chat groups where you can be with your own kind, leaving the rest of us to carry on the best we can during difficult times.

And if all else fails, you might want to work on your choreography. 

What Went Wrong?

I have been thinking a great deal about the recent shootings at Oxford High School in Michigan that saw four students killed and seven injured, including one teacher. Despite very troubling behaviour, which included an in-class online search for ammunition via his phone, and some very disturbing drawings, 15-year-old Nathan Crumbley was allegedly able to go on a spree of death and mayhem with no difficulty.

What went wrong?

Based on my own years in the classroom, I have a theory. The first thing we have to understand is that there is a chasm between what institutions of education claim to be and what they really are. Cut through all the proclamations of progressivity and inclusiveness, and you will find for the most part they are conservative bastions. And why they are that way has little to do with the teachers, who, for the most part, teach with real heart and the best of intentions. Their nemesis resides within the school and within the board/division: administrators.

The thing to understand about them is that, because so many of them aspire to even greater supervisory heights, they are risk-averse. Anything that might reflect badly on them, like upset, complaining parents, can impede their upward trajectory. I will draw upon but one of many personal experiences to illustrate this before I get back to the Michigan shooting.

Many years ago, I had a student enter my Grade 11 English class three weeks into the semester. The story was that she had been bullied in one of her other classes, and so her entire schedule was revamped. When I asked one of the vice-principals why this girl was being further victimized rather than sanctioning the bullies, she told me that they didn't know who the bullies were.

My spider-sense tingling, I went to see the head of guidance to ask her to look into this. About a day later, she confirmed what I had suspected: the identities of the bullies were in fact known. Why, then, was the victim further punished? The most logical conclusion I could draw was that punishing the bullies would have raised the ire of their parents. Serving a relatively affluent community, our school's parents were not loathe to lodge complaints to superintendents, and even the director, if things didn't go their way. Hence, the path of least resistance was followed by upending the victim's schedule. (The victim and her mother had recently moved to the area from France, and were likely not yet enculturated into the prevailing ethos).

There are additional illustrations I could give here, but in the interest of conciseness, I have provided just the one. Which brings us back to Nathan Crumbley and his parents. Despite the above-described disturbing behaviour, when they were all called into the office, his backpack was not searched and the parents refused the school's desire to send him home, i.e., suspend him. Now, unless things are radically different in American schools, there is no way someone can refuse to be suspended.

Clearly, the school administration didn't press the issue, and again, as in my personal example, I suspect they chose the path of least resistance in the face of defiant parents who are now, thankfully, facing four charges each of involuntary manslaughter.

This should never have happened, but that it did neither shocks nor surprises me. When administrators fail to do their jobs, when they put their career advancement above the safety and well-being of the students and parents they are supposed to serve, something is indeed rotten in the state of education.

Let Those With Eyes See

This was posted by a FB friend. Its purpose, I hope, is self-evident.

copied from another group I thought it was hilarious

I refuse to put on winter tires because:

This is my car, my choice, my freedom.

The effectiveness of winter tires isn't proven, unless it's from studies conducted by the manufacturers (you're surprised).

My neighbor Fernande was in an accident after putting her winter tires on.

Some are already at their 3rd game of tires, this proves their inefficiency.

We don't know what they are made of.

Tire giants scare us with winter just to get rich.

Btw, it was the tire giants who invented snow and spread it at night when you sleep.

If I have tires the government can follow me in the snow.

Educate yourself, open your eyes, stop being a sheep!

This year winter tires I say no!

Disabled Man With A Knife Tries To Enter A Walmart

 The following occurred in Tucson. It contains graphic content.

H/t Michael Mc

Just one of a multitude of reasons to boycott travel to the U.S.

UPDATED: To The Willfully Benighted

 

Ah, if only the willfully stupid among us could be ridiculed and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, those errant souls persist in trying to shove their ignorance down the throats of others.

Last weekend anti-vaccine demonstrators gathered outside a clinic in North Bay called One Kids Place and tried to intimidate a mother taking her 7-year-old son to get his first shot.

Abby Blaszczyk says she had to endure a torrent of abuse as she escorted her son Nolan, who had just become eligible for a COVID vaccine.

“They told me I … was murdering my son, I was committing genocide, stuff like that,” she told CBC News. “And then, just misinformation about the vaccine itself.”

Like the infection they are, the anti-vaxxers insist on spreading their benightedness.

...  in Windsor last week anti-vaxxers picketed another clinic that was offering vaccines to kids between 5 and 11. They carried signs with slogans like, “It’s not a vaccine. It’s a bioweapon.”

Some may wonder why I have such an obvious and deep antipathy towards these people. Part of the reason, of course is that, as a teacher for 30 years, my career revolved around critical thinking. To see that abandoned so wholeheartedly by some is disheartening. But my larger contempt is for the motivation of these people, their insistence that they are right, and the damage they seek to do to their fellow citizens by their obdurate refusal to think of society as a whole and get vaccinated to afford the best protection possible for all.

Parse it any way you want, but their egocentric selfishness more than merits society's widespread condemnation. 

UPDATE: Just in time for the season of giving, Pastor Kent Christmas shares the gift of his 'thoughts':