Thursday, June 11, 2015

The Luddites of Education

Throughout my career as a high school teacher, I believed, as I still do, that education is one of the prime tools by which society can be bettered and critical thinking cultivated. And yet there are Luddites among us who would severely circumscribe the use of this all-important mechanism, preferring that we limit access to ideas and thinking that they find personally objectionable. Two stories from my experiences sadly attest to this reality.

Once, many years ago, one of my students had chosen Robertson Davies' Fifth Business for independent reading. Early in the novel, a Baptist minister's wife is struck in the head by a large stone encased in a snowball, an incident that starts a cascade of events with profound effects on the fortunes of the protagonist. During a parent-teacher interview, the mother of a student who had chosen the novel, herself the wife of a Baptist minister, objected bitterly to her daughter reading the novel because of its alleged disrespect toward religion (solely evidenced by the snowball incident), assertively opining that such material had no place in schools. I told her that as a parent, she had the right to object to her daughter reading the book, but that NO ONE had the right to ban others from reading any given book.

A second incident during a telephone conversation with a Muslim parent, many years later, went along exactly the same lines; in this case, the man was objecting to his daughter reading Flowers for Algernon, also chosen by the student for independent reading. He objected to a scene entailing some brief and quite circumspect sexual content, and went on to say such material should not be available to students. Again, I told him exactly what I told the Baptist minister's wife.

So how is this relevant to the world of politics? Here in Ontario, a microcosm of the larger pluralistic Canada within which we all live, there has been much heated contention by a small group of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and those from other conservative religious backgrounds, many of whom are immigrants, over the revamped sex-ed curriculum slated to go into effect in the fall.



In this morning's Star, Martin Regg Cohn observes that the same dynamic is at work that I experienced in the two above incidents, noting that parents already have the right to remove their children from class when material they object to is being taught:
Apparently that’s no longer enough. Now, the protest movement wants to prevent everyone else’s children from hearing the updated Health and Physical Education Curriculum — an update strongly supported by teachers in the public and separate school systems, and broadly supported by parents who want the best for their children.
To be clear, the protesters are not only demanding a right that they already have — an exemption from the curriculum — but are insisting that everyone else hew to their world views of sexuality, pedagogy and ideology. They want to water down a curriculum prepared by experts after years of deliberation and consultation in order to accommodate their own interpretation of sex education in 2015.

In other words, “My child, my choice” translates to: “Your child, no choice.”
Cohn points out that such intractable and intolerant thinking could provoke a backlash against our practice of reasonable accommodation, and it is a risk being made worse by the usual suspects: the political right-wing desperate to curry favour among social conservatives:
At the most recent protest, the darling of the anti-sex-ed movement, MPP and recent PC leadership candidate Monte McNaughton once again took the microphone to proclaim his fidelity to the cause. Significantly, he brought “greetings” from Patrick Brown, the new leader he helped elect at last month’s Tory convention.
Although we reside in the 21st century, it would seem that the thinking of far too many people resides yet in a much earlier time, when ignorance thrived and education was looked upon with suspicion and disdain. It is time we all grew up.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Continuing With A Theme

We are frequently told that Islam is a religion of compassion and love; there are those who find that a risible assertion, given the jihadism embraced by so many terrorists.

Somehow, however, many forms of Christianity get a free pass when it comes to their own acts of terror and promotion of hatred. I offer in evidence two clips of the Pastor Stephen L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. In the first clip, the man of God calls for the death of Barrack Obama. Some might interpret it as a terrorist threat:



Similarly, this god-fearing man tells us that death is the only fate worthy of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner as he offers up this moving prayer for the celebrity transgendered former athlete:
“I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to Hell. Are you serious? Look, I have nothing but hate — when I see a man dressed up as a woman, who has mutilated his body to become a woman, and say ‘Hey, look at me everybody. Look at me kids!’ I mean, the kids in America today — 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10 years old are seeing this freak and having their minds perverted and ruined permanently. Listen to me, I hate him with a perfect hatred. I have no love — NO LOVE — for this Bruce freak. I hope he dies today. I hope he dies and goes to Hell. He’s disgusting, he’s filthy, he’s reprobate. I would pray all these prayers in Psalm 69. I would pray all this in Psalm 69 and 129 toward him.”

“You evil, filthy animal that’s destroying the morals of our country,” Anderson said as his rant continued. “DIE!”



VIEWER CAUTION: I suggest you only watch a small part of the second video, unless you have an unusually high tolerance for lunatic hate speech.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

The Pope Just Doesn't Know His Place

At least. that's what I infer from the blather of Catholic League President Bill Donohue:



No doubt, obeisance to the corporate agenda is what Donahue and his ilk expect from any self-respecting pontiff.

He's Back At It Again

Personal duties are currently cutting into my time for blogging, but I hope the following once more helps to demonstrate reasons for my disdain of the right-wing evangelical mind. He starts off reasonably enough, but by the end, one will likely thank the deity that Pastor Pat is not a hospital chaplain.


Monday, June 8, 2015

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Now Here's An Unsettling Revelation

Apparently molestation runs rampant in the homes of the Christian Right:



Could there be something wrong in their theology?

Connecting The Dots?

Here in Ontario, Premier Kathleen Wynne's decision to sell off 60% of Hydro One, the very profitable public utility that generated a pre-tax income of $803 million in 2013, is causing quite a storm of outrage. Despite her promise to put all profits from the sale toward transportation structure, the fact that the sale will yield a mere $4 billion after taxpayer money pays off Hydro's long-standing debt means the sale makes almost no sense. And, one might ask, why a sale of 60%, a proportion that will put hydro squarely in private sector's control?

Operation Maple has put up an interesting video that comes to some intriguing, although rather conspiratorial, conclusions. But surely such is preferable to the bovine passivity that government counts on when imposing its will on its citizens, isn't it?



Meanwhile, Toronto Star letter-writers do their usual excellent job in the critical-thinking department. Here are but a few examples:

Sell-off will help Ontario, Hydro One, Letter June 2

The government surely disagrees with Keith Summer’s excellent May 2 opinion piece, but Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli’s letter fails to say why. Instead of numerical analysis, all we get is the usual political bafflegab. Boiled down, the minister asks us to trust them. Well, count me out.

Apparently, a valuation of Hydro One has been worked out. I assume this valuation is a report of some kind, with validated numerical analysis. Has it been made public? If not public, has it been made available for scrutiny by reputable independent reviewers? Ontarians deserve this. When there is such a major policy change about the ownership of this vital utility, we all should demand a full revelation of the method and results of the valuation process.

The non-sequiturs in Mr. Chiarelli’s letters confound and astound me. He speaks of a 10 per cent maximum ownership causing shares to be broadly held across Ontario in the same sentence. How does that work? How does any aspect of the sale enable Hydro One to become more innovative, competitive and effective as he claims? It’s just silly to make such claims without any proof or rationale.

This deal is bad policy and Mr. Chiarelli should be admonished for writing such a trivial letter.

Edward Kilner, Mississauga

Minister of Energy Bob Chiarelli repeated the term “much needed infrastructure” four times in his letter to the Star.

Ending his letter he left the impression that selling off 60 per cent of Hydro One “will create more than 110,000 jobs each year and help grow our economy,” without costing the taxpayers any money. But selling off part of Hydro One is not going to create one new job. These jobs for the “much needed infrastructure” are already there and have been sitting on the sidelines for years.

To suggest it will not cost the taxpayers any money reminds of the story of the investor who wanted to open a mink farm. He reasoned since mice multiplied five times faster than mink he could feed the mice to the mink and the mink carcasses to the mice and get the pelts for nothing. It sounded good on paper but as time went on he had to go to the well for more money.

Frank Feeley, Fonthill
After reading Keith M. Summers’ commentary I am more than ever convinced that the Ontario government should retain 100 per cent ownership of Hydro One, with all its healthy profits going into the public coffers rather than private pockets. But if it is in fact impossible for the government to borrow $9 billion at a reasonable rate then it should at least follow Mr. Summers’ advice and focus on raising $9 billion by offering approximately 30 per cent equity in Hydro One, retaining majority ownership and a much healthier percentage of the profits.

Gillian Marwick, Toronto