Christ Hedges On The Failure of Churches

As a member of the United Church of Canada, my wife receives The United Church Observer, a monthly publication offering an array of interesting pieces and interviews. This month's issue has an interview with renowned journalist and activist Chris Hedges, a man whose deep social convictions and activism I deeply admire and have written about previously.

In the interview, echoing a theme found in his Death of the Liberal Class, Hedges discusses the failure of the so-called 'liberal churches' to confront the deeply entrenched problems we face today such as poverty, climate change, and the abuse of power that seems to define political systems everywhere. I hope you will take a few minutes to read his thoughts and to be reminded that the pursuit of justice requires commitment and action, not just the holding of views that challenge the status quo.

Wherever We Go, Our Presence Is Felt

Well. I'm back from hiatus, but too tired to post anything of my own, so I leave you with this video I just came across. Unfortunately, 'enjoy' is not the correct verb to use in relation to its sobering reminder of our depredations:

On Hiatus

There won't be any new blog posts for the next two weeks as we begin our annual hegira to Cuba, where the climate and the people offer a soothing respite from the Canadian winter. This will be our sixth visit to the island, and each time there we learn another facet of Cuban life, thanks to two friends that we visit, usually for a day, during our holiday.

Since Internet is very restricted there, I will be offline during our stay.

Any online comments to this blog will not be published until I return.

Keep the faith, everyone!

Retribution

...when Exhibit A extends to Exhibits B-C-D, when the allegations start stacking up, then what you’ve got is a pattern and a pathology, not an anomaly.

A career lies in tatters because a man who’s always been able to express himself well enough, extemporaneously, annexed the parlance and patter of others in published dispatches.

Here’s a word for it: Dumb.

Perhaps these words by Rosie DiManno, found in today's Star, are a fitting epitaph for Chirs Spence, the former Director of the TDSB, who yesterday resigned in abject disgrace over his theft of other people's words and idea.

But the story isn't quite over. According to another Star article, there is now strong evidence that this was a habit he was addicted to; his plagiarism has now been discovered in a number of speeches and articles, and even in his PHD dissertation.

I will offer no sermon here, but his is perhaps an object lesson of the dangerous temptations of hubris and arrogance to which many of those responsible for the public good succumb

I have no sympathy for Spence or the many others who abuse their positions and systematically betray all of us.

Why Chris Spence Must Be Fired

It is hardly an insight to observe that ours is a world that bears witness to institutional and organizational failures on a massive scale. Those bodies that should be there to promote and protect the public good have proven far more adept at promoting and protecting their own interests instead. Be they church, government, police, education or charitable institutions, each have a long and well-publicized record of failing crucial tests of their integrity.

I fear that the Toronto District School Board can soon be added to that unenviable gallery of infamy.

Last night, the TDSB deferred to a later date a discussion to decide Director Chris Spence's fate, at the same time as Chair Chris Bolton made the following declaration:

“We want to assure everyone and the public we take the situation very seriously and we want to address it in a timely fashion”.

A fine-sounding statement, but any dithering on the board's part can serve no constructive purpose. To be perfectly clear, Spence's transgression was not a 'mistake' or a result of 'sloppiness' or 'carelessness'. It was a deliberate attempt to deceive his employers, The Toronto Star, and the public at large. And, as pointed out yesterday by the National Post's Chris Selley, the offending article's content, as brief as it was, seems mainly to have been a cut-and-paste exercise culled from multiple sources, and much more extensive than suggested by yesterday's Star apology.

These facts raise troubling questions not only about the Director's character, judgement and integrity, but also his intellectual capacities. Platitudes, especially those derived from other sources, can never be a substitute for substance.

Finally, there is a very disturbing report in today's National Post alleging that Spence may in fact be a serial plagiarist. According to reporters Megan O'Toole and Chris Selley,

...the National Post has found several instances in which Mr. Spence seems to have taken information from other articles without crediting them. In December, the Star published an op-ed under Mr. Spence’s byline about the tragic mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. It included an anecdote — ostensibly about how Mr. Spence explained the horrific violence to his son Jacob — that closely resembles one described by another writer, Aisha Sultan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Was anyone killed?” the boy asks. In Ms. Sultan’s work, he is 7. In Mr. Spence’s, his age has been changed to 10.

“Yes, some people were killed,” read the two columns, Mr. Spence’s published days after Ms. Sultan’s. “It’s very sad. But your school is safe. And I will do anything and everything to make sure you and your sister are always safe at school.” Huge swaths of the remaining narrative appear to have been copied from a grab bag of sources: the Post-Dispatch, the Sacramento Bee and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Additionally, the Post reports that a

... segment from a July 24 opinion piece published in the Star, pegged to this summer’s Danzig Street shootout, appears to be word-for-word from an online “healthy students plan” originating in Connecticut. An October 2011 entry to his personal blog about the Chinese education system appears strikingly similar to information in The New York Times, Time magazine and other sources.

It can never be pleasant to have a person's employment fate rest in one's hands. Yet that is one of the crucial responsibilities those who vie for public office must accept without reservation. Chris Spence has become an unequivocal liability for the Toronto District School Board, one that threatens to further undermine its reputation and the goals and standards it sets for its students.

Spence must be jettisoned with dispatch if public accountability is to be anything other than an empty and morally bankrupt phrase.

What Happens When The 'Top' Educator Plagiarizes?

Probably nothing, if your name is Chris Spence and you are the Director of Education for the Toronto District School Board.

A shocking story in this morning's Star reveals that the highly-paid functionary plagiarized great gobs of an article he recently 'wrote' for the paper on the importance of extracurricular activities.

The Star, which has removed the offending article from its website, reveals the extent of the plagiarism:

Among the paragraphs in question are two that mirror those in a New York Times opinion piece from 1989: “We are challenged through sport to use our minds in guiding our bodies through the dimensions of time and space on the field of play. Learning the skills of sport provides opportunity to experience success.

“Sport builds self-esteem and encourages teamwork. We learn the importance of goal setting, hard work and the necessity of dealing with disappointment.”

When I was a teacher, discovering plagiarism gave me no pleasure, but it was something for which I exacted a substantial penalty: a zero with no possibility of a make-up assignment, despite students' pleas and justifications for their lapses.

Apparently, the TDSB is much more charitable than I ever was. The Director has explained his journalistic theft this way:

Spence said he used online resources for the article and felt rushed, “but it’s not an excuse, so please don’t take it that way. That’s what happened, and any rush or any pressure was all self-induced.”

The Board is currently negotiating an extension to Spence's contract, and Board Chair Chris Bolton responded to his Director's admission of guilt this way:

“I think Chris has been quite candid about the mistake and is very concerned that everyone understand that he sees this as an honest mistake, but something that needs to be corrected,” said Bolton.

“As in all learning situations, we see this as a learning experience and we support him totally in his bid to make it right.”

Given the myriad problems currently facing the TDSB, some might suggest that a stronger response is in order.

Finger-Pointing 2.0

Well, there can be little doubt that both The Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education have fully embraced the digital age. Finger-pointing abounds on both sides.

In the ongoing saga that I think could best be described as a clash between Jimmy Hazel's union muscle (and please remember that I am a steadfast supporter of unions until they start misbehaving), TDSB ineptitude, and suspicious provincial politics, Board Chair Chris Bolton has penned an angry missive to Education Minister Laurel Broten, whose ham-fisted application of Bill 115 has mandated a continuation of the sweetheart deal that Jimmy Hazel's Maintenance and Construction Skilled Trades Council enjoys with the board, this despite earlier demands by the province that they send in some advisers to help the board get its finances in order.

Bolton says the province “turned the tables” on the board and has now tied its hands. Now, it can’t even do something simple — such as eliminate overlapping shift changes — which could lower maintenance costs and allow the board to rid itself of about 200 vehicles.

“Those alone would save $3 million,” Bolton said in an interview with the Star.

A disquieting earlier report by The Star raised the possibility of a suspect, perhaps even corrupt, relationship between Hazel's group and the McGuinty government. The paper revealed that council members campaigned on behalf of the Liberals, contributed, along with other unions working for the board, over $675,000 to the party's coffers, and, apparently as a reward for their fealty, received gift certificates from the Liberals worth over $253,000.

And yet the TDSB hardly emerges as blameless in this imbroglio. In what can perhaps be interpreted as a testament to organizational inertia at the very least, the board has done almost nothing since a 2006 review by Blackstone Partners, which

submitted a 113-page report to the TDSB in January 2007 detailing a litany of issues: high costs of repairs, lots of workers and spotty results, and managerial “silos” that made it hard for principals to figure out whom to approach to get a job done.

At the time this information was brought to public scrutiny by The Star, TDSB Director Chris Spence rather lamely asserted that some progress has been made, and the report is “working its way through the committee structure” at the board.

Taking over five years to work through a report? Indefensible by any standard, I would think.

So blame for these fiscal improprieties has to be shared among the board, the trades council, and the McGuinty government. What interests me most about this tawdry saga is that it is most likely a mere microcosm of corruption, cosy political relationships, and general institutional ineptitude, all intractable shortcomings not easily remediated. Yet I rest a little easier each night knowing that a paper with journalistic integrity, The Toronto Star, is on the job and willing to go where most mainstream media are not to be found.