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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-06-25, Page 2WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1980 Serving BrUssels and the surrounding conimunity. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited' Evelyn'Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association, Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Yea. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 2S cents:each. 410M,Pmpik., Nitiotioei` ugo:r and By Bill Smiley. The: -$Chool. Let's say thanks Events, in the community are booming. When summer hits Brussels, it seems like there's an organization out there every weekend, sponsoring an event. Brussels is even busy during the week with, events like church suppers. Just during this past week alone', there was a church supper, a. variety concert, an antique car show and flea market and Decoration Day services. It's good that a small place like Brussels has many o.rganizations to sponsor events for the enjoyment of the community. Probably the organizations are rarely thanked for the efforts they have put into those events. It's up to the community in general to show its appreciation to the people who sponsor activities for everyone. Often people send letters to the editor of the weekly paper indicating how much they enjoyed a certain event in the community. Rarely does the Brussels Post receive such letters, with the exception, maybe, of those. who attended the Centennial in .1972. The Post would enjoy printing such letters and no doubt, the letters would be appreciated by the organizations involved. To the editor: • Teacher appreciated. . The school my children go to, is losing a teacher, that I feel has contributed a lot of talent and hard work, not only to the school but also to the community. He has given of himself to help make concerts etc. for the school and also the home and school he has put hours of his own time into these things to make them more entertaining. He is also a teacher who can keep order in his classroom without losing self control. But this teacher is leaving and I feel he should be let know how much we appreciate what he has done for our children the school the home and school and also the parents. I am now led to believe that the home and school has been told not to do anything special for him, as it would not be fair to other teachers who have and will be sometimes leaving the school. ' But I feel, and am sure that others do too, that if a person puts a lot more into a job than is called fothe should be let know it was appreciated. And cutting into the grade eight's graduation night was not the time to show appreciation. This night is for them not the Teachers Myself I feel Principals and also Teachers should not be allowed to stay for too many years in one school, of course this is my opinion. How many parents agree with me? Signed a concerned parent and-taxpayer I'd like to be able to say that the end of year for a teacher is, fraught with sadness, as - the delicate flowers you have nurtured 'during the year (and most of whom have turned to weeds,) leave you. Not so., Rather is it a lifting of several stones from a man who is being "pressed" to confess. The pressing was an old-fashion: ed method in which ever-heavier stones were placed on a man's chest until he said "uncle", or "Yeah, !said God didn't exist," or, "Yup, I know where the jewels are." Not so. On the last day of school a teacher walks out of the shoe factory, which most schools resemble, and is beholden to no , man. Except his wife, kids, dog, car, boat, bank manager, garden. But it's better than being beholden to a lot of gobbling young turkeys whose chief aim in life is to destroy your emotional equilibrium, and a gaggle of administrators whose chief aims in life are discipline, attendance, dress, drugs, and the entire mid-Victorian world that is crumbling around them. Things have changed quite a bit in the twenty years I've been teaching. In my first year, my home form gave me a present at Christmas and another at the end of the year. This went on for some time. They may have: thought I was a dull old tool, but we parted with mutual respect and good wishes for a happy summer. There was always a gift: one year a bottle of wine and three golf balls, another year a table lighter that didn't work; another year"a-pen and pencil set with thermometer that still works. By golly, in those first years, there was a little sadness. Joe had turned from a gorilla into a decent lad, hiding his better instincts behind a mop of hair. Bridget had turned from a four-eyed eager beaver into a bra-less sex symbol. I wished them well, unreserved- ly. Nowadays, if my home form gave me a present on the last day, the first thing I would do would be to send it to the local bomb squad. If they cleared it, I would open it with tweezers and a mask, wondering which it contained: dog or cat excrement. Ah, shoot, that's not true either. They might put an ice-pick in my tires, set a thumbtack on my chair when I wasn't looking, write the odd obscenity in their textbooks, two words, with my last name the second one, but they wouldn't really do anything obnoxious. Just because I thumped Barney three times this year with my arthritic right fist doesn't . mean that we both believe in corporal punishment. We're buddies, and I'm going to keep an eye on my cat this summer in case it's strangled. And little Michelle doesn't really hate my guts, even though she deliberately stabbed herself in the wrist with a pen on the last day of school, came up to my desk,. •looked me straight in the eye, sprinkled blood all over my desk and pants, and asked, "Are you sure I have to write the final exam?" I'm kidding, of course: ThuSe kids in my home form look on -me as a father. .Not exactly as a father confessor, mind you, or a kindly old father. More the type of father whom you put the boots to when he comes home drunk and falls at your,eager feet. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they give . me a present on our last day. Perhaps a cane; possibly a hearing aid. Presented by Robin, an angelic-looking little blonde who kicks Steve, just ahead of her, right behind the knee-caps in the middle of the 'national anthem, and makes him fall forward;kicking backward. The' more I think of them the more nostalgic 'I get for 'the year we've spent together. At least, I am spent. They're not They haven't invested anything, so there's nothing to spend. On second thought, 'I'm not a father figure to them. I'm 'a grandfather figure. In the last few weeks of school, before it was decided who would be recommended, and who would have to write the final, I noticed a definite increase in'solicitude and kindness. If I dropped my book from senile, hands, they would pick it up, and instead of throwing it out the window, would hand it to . me gravely. And they became nicer to each other, probably out of consideration for my increasing sensibility. Instead of tripping the girls as they, went to their seats, the huge boys would pick them up and carry them. Instead of throwing a pen like a dart when someone wanted to borrow one, they would take off their boot, put the pen in it, and throw the boot, so the pen wouldn't be lost in the .souffle. And speaking of scuffles, there have been very few of late. Oh, the other day, there was a little one, when Tami, five-feet-minus, grabbed Todd, six-feet-plus, and shoved him- out the window, second-storey: No harm done. He was able to grasp the sill, and when she stomped on his fingers, managed to land on his feet, some distance below, in the middle of a spruce tree. - Maybe it's all been worth it. They haven't learned much, but I have, and that's what education is all about. Three years from now, I'll meet them somewhere, on the street, in a pub, in jail. The boys will have lost their 14 year old ebullience and the girls will be pregnant, and we'll smile and love each other. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston There's no free lunch. It , was an expres- sion to warn us that we couldn't expect to get something for nothing and was overused back in the days when people thought government could solve all our problems. It's a phrase that can apply to so many areas of life though. For everything there is a price, though the price is often not in monetary terms. Every time we try to improve our lives we also lose something. We have for the last century set ourselves on a course to give us less work, more security and greater comfort and more freedom. We have achieved it all, and yet we are not happy. We have replaced the old worries with new ones. Look at the results of some of the battles. We have gained comfort and leisure times through industry. We have all kinds of gadgets to make our lives easier, to mechanize our tasks at work and at home and leave us more time for the things we enjoy. But say that leisure time would be filled with fishing and take a look at the cost of the leisure-producing industry. One after another the lakes filled with fish that proved a northern mecca are dying, the result of acid rain, mercury poisoning or some other by-product of industry. We love the freedom the automobile gives es to take of to those northern resorts any time we want, or zip down to the city for some shopping. But we pay a price for that freedom. Every year thousands die in the province because of the car. If the death toll was as high from some disease, we would be in a panic and have all the powers of medical research at work on a cure, but with the 'automobile we accept the cost. As if the deaths weren't enough we also put up with pollution of our air and the growing amount of our precious soil used up by highways and parking lots and other necessary accouter- ments to the automobile society. Some people want to live in the city because they can't stand to do without all the services the city provides: good shopping, excellent social and Cultural life. But they pay the cost in quality of life another way: polluted air, overcrowding, high-cost hous- ing. Some of us prefer the country way of life but pay for it with a lack 'of variety in job opportunities, and poorer choice in shopping or entertainment possibilities. But those are all quite evident tradeoffs. We have many other, less visible costs. We have tried for hundreds of years to put more justice into our society but that too has had its cost. For many years workers • were exploited by industrial bosses whose main concern was making the best profit possible. Working conditions were often dangerous because the owner of the business cared more about profit than the lives of the workers. Wages were low. Hours were long. Life was miserable. The answer came when the workers began to work together, to form unions so the boss couldn't play them off one against another. The unions fought bloody battles against the companies for their right to a better life. Often governments took the part of the boss and police got invo":41 battling the strikers. Today those battles seem to have been centuries ago, not decades. A great deal of justice has been won and all people, whether members of unions or not, have benefitted. But not without cost. Today it isn't just the bosses who are hurt when a union decides it has to strike to win what it considers justice for its members. Postal strikes, airline strikes, railway strikes, even police and firemen's strikes, they all affect every person in society. We are all held up to ransom to get justice for 'the workers. But what about justice to us? We wallow in red tape today and curse the men who made the laws that caused the red tape. But we often forget that for just about every law on the books ther was a demand for that law made by ordinary citizens. On one hand we hear people angry because the government• doesn't move foot enough to right some wrong in society but on theother hand we hear the same people screaming about big government, bureaucracy and red tape. The red tape is the cost we pay for the legislation we wanted to protect us from this or that threat. We wanted protection from unemployment, and bought it with bureau- cracy. We wanted security from unforeseen medical problems and, bought it with high taxes and big government. We wanted protection from unscrupulous manufacturers who made cheap merchandise, often dan- gerous to our health and a drain on our pocketbooks; we paid for it in an increasing amount of red tape in the making of things and thus greater costs to all in order to eliminate the cheaters. We want freedom from being robbed, murdered or raped in the streets. We must pay for that freedom by loss of certain freedoms to the state through its, police. We want instead greater individual freedom? Then we must be prepared to sacrifice , some of the personal safety we are given by police and security forces. For' everything there is a price. Life is a scale that is always balanced. If we want something more in one side of the scale we must put something in the other as I balance. We should remember it the next time we want sonsething. •