HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1978-03-02, Page 4Times-Advocate, March 2, 1978
Serious Situation
The trustees of the Huron County
board of education are more to be
pitied than laughed at, as they are like
sitting ducks in the middle of a penny
arcade shooting gallery.
On the one hand, taxpayers are
screaming as they see their education
taxes climb higher and higher each
year, while there are fewer and fewer
students, and no respite in sight.
On the other hand, the teachers,
who get more and more each year, are
now screaming at the board over class
sizes.
The trustees, however, have lost
control of 75 per cent of the budget
already, because it is locked up in
teacher salary agreements, and now
the teachers want to say how the
system should be run and how big the
classes should be etc.
It will soon be to the point where we
won’t need trustees anymore. After all,
if they won’t be running the system
then why go to all the trouble and ex
pense of electing them every two
years.
The board and the teachers seemed
to have reached the end of the road on
one key issue, and depending which
side one takes to its called job security,
while the others call it a workload.
For over a decade, teachers in On
tario have pretty well called all the
shots. They are among the best paid in
the North American continent, and
their union, the Ontario Secondary
School Teachers Federation (OSSTF)
is so powerful, that no boar^d had dared
to fight them and win in the past.
We cannot deny that most of the
teachers are doing an excellent job in a
very demanding profession, but it has
got to stop somewhere.
With very few exceptions, the
general public are against the,
teachers, and it would seem that the
trustees have public opinion on their
side.
In a predominantly rural area
where a farmer with a $400,000 invest
ment gets $1.89 for a bushel of corn that
cost him $2.25 to grow, a teacher mak
ing, on the average, $23,200 a year ask
ing for more money doesn’t go over too
well.
The teachers say it has nothing to
do with money, but giving them job
security boils down to the same thing,
more money out of the taxpayers
pocket.
The teachers are now making, on
the average, twice as much as those
wage earners who pay their bills, and
the OSSTF demands, given the current
poor economic situation, seem
ludicrous.
The real unfortunate part of the
whole teachers’ strike is the students,
who are the ones who really suffer the
most. If it boils down to a long strike,
then so be it, the rampage must be
stopped, and if Huron must be the sand
bag, then so be it.
It seems ironic that present
market indications say that half of the
graduating students in Huron won’t
even be able to get jobs, let alone have
job security. '
The board must take the stand here
and now, but judging by past ex
periences, the OSSTF won’t back down
from their untenable position, and un
less the board gives in, the strike will
be a long one, and the students will be
the real sacrificial lambs.
Clinton News-Record
. “Think there's any chance fragments from the nuclear satellite will have an adverse
effect on marine and wildlife around here?”
BATT'N AROUND
• a «•-a a
More than youth need help
I
Concern for students
The real loss in the dispute
between the Huron County Board of
Education and the county’s Secondary
School Teachers is not the side who
eventually give in to the demands of
the other, but the innocent who are
cauglit in the middle - the students.
Surprisingly, the students are not
interested in a holiday from school but
rather, feel they are being played with.
Their real concern is they they do not
know what is happening.
The teachers claim that the
students understand the situation but,
the students say the teachers do not
discuss the strike with them.
When the teachers are at school
their attitude is not conducive to lear
ning and the students are restricted in
their use of resource materials because
principals will not allow lab equipment
and library books to be taken home in
case the schools are closed for a loftg
period of time.
Grade thirteen students are con
cerned that the time lost now will mean
that some work will not be covered and
this will show next year when they are
trying to continue their education and
have not covered necessary material.
One student is afraid that if the
teachers are out for a long period of
time the students will have to attend
school next summer. This would in
terfere with his summer job and he
wouldn’t be, able to make enough
money to support himself at university
next year.
Some teachers are giving students
assignments to complete at home and
some are tutoring students in their
homes. While this may help_ several
students, it is not conducive to the
system as a whole.
And, if teachers find it dufficult to
teach effectively because a class is
large, it is certain that teaching in a
living room will be awkward.
Regardless of who is right or
wrong in the dispute, the teachers and
the board say that their first interest is
the quality of education for the
students in the Huron County system,
yet peither side seems to be thinking
of the student who is the big loser if the
teachers are out for any real period of
time.
It’s like arguing parents who play
their children off against each other
and manipulate their children to their
advantage.
Yet, all along, they say their real
concern is for the children.
The dispute cannot help but have
adverse effects in the classroom even
if the teachers are on the job. It is a
serious situation when a county board
of education and its teachers have so
little communication that contract
settlements cannot be reached without
using the students as pawns in a chess
game.Lucknow Sentinel
The two senior levels of government
have outlined plans in the past few
weeks to create thousands of jobs for
the nation’s young people this summer.
Certainly, it is a commendable ef
fort, and in many cases the money
received by the students is the means
by which they will be able to continue
their higher education.
However, the Ontario opposition par
ties are quite correct in being concern
ed that too much emphasis is being
placed on summer employment for
students, while thousands of people
already out in the job' market are un
able to secure work.
Many of them are in a much more
precarious position than students, in
that they have families to support and
greater financial obligations to meet
than students.
They obviously deserve as much con
sideration in the governments’ make
work schemes as students, although it
appears they are presently being
overlooked.
The opposition should continue their
plea to ensure that the governments
look more favorably at those already in
the market for permanent jobs.
jury pay in light of even the much
higher minimum wage in Ontario.
Some of those making presentations
to the government on the issue have
suggested the fee be increased to $40
per day. That appears to be more sensi
ble.
There is another suggestion that
should be considered. When picking
jurors, why not select people from the
ranks of the unemployed? While there
is a fear they may engage in prolonged
jury deliberations to keep their pay
cheques coming, it is an employment
opportunity that is worthy of some con
sideration.
***
There’s a growing movement to have
the daily stipend for jurors increased
in Ontario, and obviously there is con
siderable merit in that suggestion.
No one in today’s workforce is re
quired to work for the meagre daily
wage of $10. except those good citizens
now called upon to fulfill their respon
sibilities to serve as jurors.
Being required to act as a juror often
creates enough inconvenience for most
people and they should expect to be
better rewarded for their efforts.
It is impossible to justify today’s low
* w ★
For many years, people around the
world have looked upon the United
States, and even Canada, as their rich
cousins.
-rHowever, while great industrial
nations may be the envy of the third
world nations, they actually rank well
below some tiny oil-rich sheikdoms
when it comes to average incomes.
The World Bank publication issued
recently shows that the average in
come in the United States — total out
put of goods and services divided by
population — is $7,890. In Canada, the
figure is $7,510.
However, they’re both well below
such countries as Kuwait, the United
Arab Emirates and Qatar. The average
income in those oil-rich spots ranges
from a high of $15,480 in Kuwait to the
$11,400 in Qatar.
The lesson is obvious: start looking
for an oil well in your backyard!
* * *
Organizations throughout this area
— or even some enterprising en
trepreneur — may be well advised to
consider the example of the Grand
Sugar and Spice
Dispensed by Smiley
Something
Feminist struggle
While the United Church is com
mitted to equality for women, “in prac
tice our actions do not come up to our
lip service”, The United Church
Observer says editorially in its current
issue.
The editorial points out that
despite legislation aimed at justice, the
gapf is widening between what Canada’s
3.8 million working women earn, and
what men make for the same job.
Women clerical workers average 64
percent of what men receive, and sales
personnel are paid about 60 percent of a
man’s average salary.
Women’s struggle for equality is as
significant “as the abolition of slavery
was to our ancestors,” The Observer
says, “and will turn the Church upside
down.”
While language “is not a basic
issue in the feminist struggle, The
Observer says, purging language of
offensive phrases may “do for the
feminist movement what the removal
of ‘boy’ and ‘nigger’ did in the blacks’
struggle for dignity.”
Times Established 1873
imes vocate
ft North UmMon Since lift J
Advocate Established 1 881
Editor — Bill Batten
Assistant Editor — Ross Haugh
Advertising Manager — Jim Beckett
Composition Manager — Harry DeVries
Business Manager — Dick Jongkind
Phorte 235-1331
(*CNA
SUBSC....
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Something rather pleasant happened
in Canada recently. Not too many plea
sant things have occurred in this coun-*
try of late, so perhaps we should
observe and enjoy this one.
I’m referring to the general decency
shown by the press and politicians,
neither of them noted for this quality,
in the Francis Fox affair.
In case you’ve already forgotten it,
Mr. Fox, a brilliant young cabinet
minister and Solicitor-General of
Canada, confessed he had committed a
minor peccadillo and resigned from-the
cabinet.
He had forged the name of her hus
band to a paper permitting an abortion
for a married lady with whom he was,
apparently, on more than speaking
terms. He was caught when another
lady wrote the prime minister and
squealed on him.
Mr. Fox, a Rhodes scholar, proved
once again that you can have a lot of
brains and still be a dummy. He not
only committed forgery, he committed
adultery. And he seems never to have
heard of birth control.
That’s all right. There are a good
many dummies among our illustrious
leaders, and always have been. Most of
the others just haven’t been caught.
But what was rather startling about
the whole business was the restraint
practised by Fox’s opponents in
politics, by the press, and by the public
in general. Nobody went for his
jugular, or that of the government,
which is astonishing in these times,
when sympathy, compassion, and
decency seem to be going by the board.
Had it happened in Britain, the
tabloids would have had a field day,
and the poor man would have been
chased out of the cabinet, out of parlia
ment and probably right out of the
country by the sheer weight of the
scavenging that would have taken
place.
by R ichard Charles
Bend firemen in conducting paper
drives.
Newsprint has been gaining in value
• in recent months and collecting
newspapers for recycling has become a
more profitable venture.
Metro Toronto has collected
newspaper in several boroughs for a
number of years and this year expects
to make a profit of about $700,000 from
the venture.
We can recall as a Boy Scout that
paper drives were one of the more ad
vantageous methods of picking up
some extra dollars for the organiza
tion,- and while the bottom fell out of
the market for several years, it has
made a strong recovery and is now
selling in the neighborhood of $80 per
ton. s
There is little doubt but what
residents in most communities would
be willing to store their newspapers for
groups wishing to undertake periodic
collections throughout the year.
* * *
pleasant happened
But no, not here. Political foes ex
pressed sympathy, editorials reminded
us that we all have a skeleton or two in
the closet, and the head of the United
Church wrote Fox a letter hoping that
“there is enough grace and understan
ding in this country that you will not
have to live under a cloud.”
Such forbearance. A generation ago
the man would have been howled out of
office. Not so very long ago, as some
elderly Tories remember a number of
cabinet ministers of that denomination
were smeared rather thickly for ex
changing bon mots with one Gerda
Munsigner, a German lady with a
shady past.
What in the world has come over us?
Why this sudden benevolence toward a
fellow human being? Is it some soft of
midwinter madness that has crept
sneakily into our dour Canadian
Puritanism?
Or is the whole thing a crafty Liberal
plot to snatch headlines and induce
sympathy among the women of the
country? First Margaret bogs off and
leaves that poor, dear man with three
boys to raise. Now Francis, with one
swell foop, reveals that even a cabinet
minister is capable of passion.
If this is the case, what in the world
is Joe Clark going to do to counteract
all this free publicity, before the elec
tion campaign begins? His wife is stay
ing home and behaving herself, and his
own past is impeccably dull.
My suggestion to Joe and the Tories,
for what it’s worth, is that they start
looking around for some really rotten
people as potential cabinet ministers.
What they need in their anxious ranks
are a sex deviate or two, a couple of
guys who served time for armed
robbery, and a few ladies who were
formerly happy hookers. A jam of
tarts, as it were. Toss in a Child
batterer and someone who snatched
underwear off clothes-lines, and they’d
The federal government has had
trouble recently accounting for the
behaviour of some of its Crown cor
porations and agencies. It has also had
trouble counting them.
Last year, it was reported that Cana
dian Crown corporations and agencies
numbered 360. A recount indicated
there were more. Another recount in
dicated that there were still more. The
figure is now said.to be 420.
Ottawa evidently doesn’t really know
how many corporations and agencies it
owns. It it’s true to form, it will soon
create yet another agency to keep
track of them.
run the Liberals right off the front
pages.
It is true that we all have a skeleton
in our closet, something that would be
humiliating were it exposed to the avid
public eye?
Maybe* there are a few lofty souls'
with a clean slate, but I’d be surprised
if there were enough of them to form a
hockey team.
Come on now, gentle reader. Cast
your mind back over your life, and take
a close look into those dark corners you ,
have managed to almost forget.
Have you never picked your nose
when nobody was looking? Have you
never, ever, smelled your own armpits
in similar company? Have you never
helped destroy a reputation by
repeating gossip? Have you never done
a cruel thing or a mean thing in your
life? Have you never got drunk and
made an ass of yourself. Never said a
bad word? Never hawked and spat a
gob when nobody was around? Never
emitted air from an orifice sneakily?
zWell, good on you, as we say in
Australia, if you haven’t. You must be
under six months of age, and eyen in
fants can’t qualify on all counts.
J could probably count on my toes the
people in this country who have not
lied, cheated, stolen, committed
adultery at least in the head,
worshipped the graven image known as
a car, or failed to honor their father
and mother, at some time.
Personally, I have sb many skeletons
in my own closet there’s no room for
more. I had to start shoving them un
der the bed.
If Joe Clark takes my suggestion
With the seriousness with which it is
offered, I’d be glad to help. I know
some really rotten people.
Walls within walls
If your home was really your castle, it would have walls
several feet thick and you wouldn’t need insulation. But, to
save on building materials, space and cost (and because you.
aren’t expecting a besieging army to open fire on you at
any moment), you have thin walls that need another wall of
insulation inside them.
How do you know if there’s enough insulation inside the
wall? One obvious way to tell is if you feel the cold striking
into the house (which means that heat iff leaking out) when
ever you go from the middle of a room toward an outside
wall in winter. However, if you wait until winter to find
that out, you may not be able to retrofit (reinsulate) your
walls before the warm weather returns.
Two things you can check before winter are the kind of
insulation you have in the walls and the way in which the
walls have been constructed. With this information, you (pr
a contractor) can work out the effectiveness of the insula
tion and, if it is not good enough, what method of retro
fitting would work best in your case.
Here’s a rough guide: wall insulation should have an R
value (resistance to heat passing through it) of at least 12,
which equals 4 inches of loose fill insulation or 3 !4 to 4
inches of batt or blanket insulation containing glass fibre or
rock wool. There are, of course, many other types of
materials available.
The five basic ways to retrofit walls are with loose poly
styrene, blow-in insulation, foamed-in-place insulation, wall
renovation, and outside insulation. But, before you take
your pick, read on.
Loose polystyrene insulation can be a do-it-yourself job
and does not cost much, but you can use this method only
if your wall space opens into the attic and goes right down
to the foundation. You can test this with a weight on a
string that’s long enough to go all the way down.
Blown-in insulation means that you get a contractor
with special equipment to blow loose fill into a wood-frame
wall that is hollow, or almost, but has obstructions that
stop you from pouring insulation into it (as above). For
this, an access hole must be drilled into the wall space from
the outside or inside, or from the attic or basement.
Foamed-in-place insulation is also a job for a contractor
who has the proper equipment, and is an option for filling
the space inside a wood-frame wall, and also some masonry
walls. However this approach should only be taken if the
wall has no insulation whatsoever. The foam is urea
formaldehyde and it is injected into the wall space in
semi-liquid form. (Make sure any U.F. foam you buy
meets Canadian Government Specifications Board quality
standards.)
Wall renovation is a good way to, insulate if you are
undertaking major rennovations anyway. With a wood
frame house you can remove the wall board or plaster from-
the inside and fit the insulation (such as batt or blanket)
into the wall space. Another way with either wood-frame or
masonry walls is to build a new wall inside the old one and
insulate it.
Outside insulation is a good method if you happen to be
putting new siding on your home. Polystyrene insulation
can be inserted between the old and the new siding.
55 Years Ago
Early Thursday morning a
severe wind storm passed
over the district and caused
considerably damage.
Several chimneys were
blown down. Thunder and
lightning accompanied the
storm. The Bethany
Methodist Church on the
Thames Road suffered
greatly. The roof was blown
off and the gable end blown
in.
The Young People’s Guild
of Caven Presbyterian
Church visited Trivitt
Memorial Parish Hall on
Friday evening of last week
where they were' treated to
slides and an interesting
address on Windsor Castle
and Tower of London by Rev.
Mr. Trumper. Mr. Kenneth
Stanbury played a violin
selection and a very pleasing
duet was sung by Miss
Weekes^and Miss Hamilton.
Mr. Chas. Shaddock has
taken a position in the
bakeshop of Mr. R. E. Cook
in Hensail.
Most of the snow has
disappeared the past week.
It has gone gradually and all
danger of spring floods
seems over. The roads are
still in bad condition.
30 Years Ago
Mrs. Ida M. Sanders,
London, former resident of
Exeter was elected president
of the London Women’s
Progressive-Conservative
Association.
Mr. Arthur Fraser of town
has been appointed
secretary-treasurer of the
Usborne-Hibbert Mutual
Fire Insurance Co.
Mr, and Mrs. Wm. Baker
of town celebrated their 60th
wedding anniversary On
Sunday.
Mr, Irwin Ford has
recently completed his new
Food Market on Huron
Street and this week an
nounces the opening,
The Lucan Irish dropped a
hard fought semi final round
with Ilderton on Monday
night.
20 Years Ago
Mrs. A. E. Holley of Main
Street United Church ad
dressed the World Day of
Prayer Friday' afternoon.
Lucan Public School on
No. 4 Highway, nearly
across from the Arena, was
destroyed by fire early
Thursday morning.
One of the courses offered
at the night classes during
the past winter was a study
of drama with lectures and
demonstrations given by
members of London Little
Theatre. A play will be
presented at the close of the
classes.
Ken Flear of SHDHS
placed second in WOSSA
public speaking competition
held in Thames Hall UWO on
Saturday.
15 Years Ago
Miss Mary Tapp, a life
long resident of Exeter,
celebrated her 90th birthday
on Saturday at Mrs. L.
Desjardine’s Eventide Rest
Home, Main Street.
Huron PC’s formally
nominated veteran MP
Elston Cardiff to run again in
the April 8 federal election at
a nomination meeting in
Clinton Friday night,
Exeter Public School
“Eager Beavers” square
dancing club entered the
square dancing contest at
the Farm Show London,
Friday night. Three schools
competed and the Exeter
.group was placed third
receiving $15.
Huron’s yield of winter
wheat was the highest in
Ontario in 1961, latest year
for which statistics are
available, county producers
were told at their annual
Meeting Tuesday night in
Clinton.