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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1981-06-24, Page 2Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association, Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association and The Audit Bureau of Circulation. Subscription rates: Canada $12 a year (in advance) outside Canada $25 a year (in advance) Single copies - 30 cents each Authorized as second class mail by Canada Post Office. Registration Number 0562. 519-887-6641 Box 50, Wessels, Ontario NOG 1H0 4,,,,RFFR244„ NFfr A R ERS ASS 1872 OBrussels Post BR iI. SE4S Established 1872 • Serving Brussels and the surrounding community Published at BRUSSELS, ONTARIO every Wednesday morning by McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Andrew Y. McLean, Publisher Evelyn. Kennedy, Editor Y.' ilk 'it , Pit '74i . t`: "' '7, itP7 •71 ,4 4FISIre . I' • WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1981 Let's keep it up! If you have walked down the main street of Brussels lately, you've probably noticed some very definite improvements.. Businesses have been flking up, painting up and generally lending themselves to the idea of the pretty village that Brussels is supposed to be. It's a good idea to make these improvements now with Morris Township's 125th birthday coming up and since all the major celebrations are to be held in Brussels. Let those merchants who haven't made any improvements to their store sit up and take notice of those who have and consider what they might be doing to their own building to make it look more attractive. After the Morris Township celebrations are over, Brussels should keep up with the neat appearance, thereby deservedly earning the reputation of the prettiest village in Ontario. To the editor: Book sale organizer says thanks On Saturday, June 6 the Blyth Centre for this year. Authors Penny Kemp and James the Arts sponsored their annual used book Reaney gave readings of some of their sale at Memorial Hall in Blyth. This year, material in the art gallery on the afternoon of the response of the citizens of Huron County the sale, and a display of early children's made this fund-raising event which provides book illustrations was loaned to us for this revenue for the operating account of the occa sion by The Gallery, Stratford. Blyth Summer Festival a total success. A new dimension was added to this event A bake sale and luncheon counter also Please turn to page 3 - t*IOVU1,4$*1 ,k .,,..01101••• 10.1$4***1. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Strike season Summer; the time when the flowers, bikinis and the mosquitos come out...and of course strikers. Qur annual postal strike may start next week unless God, Trudeau or san ity intervene and since the last possibility seems to be out we can only hope for one of the first two to come to our rescue The baseball players are already out on strike. It didn't matter much to those of us who could only watch on CB C television anyway because NABET, the union of technicians at C.B.C. had sabbotaged most of the ball games so far this spring before they finally walked out completely a month or so ago. All of us have our lives badly disrupted by these endless strikes. For several years when I was in the newspaper business we had to annually figure out how to get newspapers to people when there was a postal strike. Now in the theatre business I have to worry about how to sell thousands of tickets to people without being able to use the mails. Some people unfortunately are in even worse position: their very mental health is threatened by withdrawal symp- toms from baseball addiction. Rather than the disruption, the headaches and ulcers that strikes cause, the thing that bugs me most is the self-righteousness of unionists and their political allies. Now I have no doubt of the need for unions. I can read by history books as well as anybody and I know that bare ly a half century ago some men were becoming millionaires, establish- ing family fortunes,, by exploiting other people. People were forced to work long hours, often even had their lives endangered by horrid safety conditions because making the job safer would cut into the bosses profits. I know that when workers tried to do so mething about it they were told the boss could always find a dozen more people who were willing to work under those conditions. I know that when they tried to form unions the bosses often hired security guards to beat them up. I also know that there are still employers with a streak of that kind of thing in them today. The movie Norma Rae showed just how tough the battle still is in some corners of the U.S. where exploitive employers have moved so they can relive the "good old— days". But, just b ecause things were t ough in the past, and just because there are still a few uncivilized employers left does not mean that the unions are always on the side of right0truth and motherhood as they and their supporters would have us believe. The unionists have listened so long to their own rhetoric and history that they seem to believe that in any conflict they are on the side of justice and the employer is one of Lucifer's, lieutenants, Pardon me if I show my redneck, conserv- ative background when I find it hard to feel too much sense of grievance on behalf of professional baseball players who earn an everage $100,000 a year for six months work, I'm sorry if Urn not right thinking enough that I can feel the employer is some inhuman clod because he won't give a $1.70 raise to the poor, impoverished postal workers who have a starting salary of only $9.30 an hour. I am even wrong-headed enough to think that the unions are in the wrong sometimes. Take the case of the hit play Maggie and Pierre which played in our area earlier this spring. The opportunity camed for the play to move into the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, one of the largest theatres in the city so one that is normally held only for American touring shows naturally. The stay was to be for only five performances. The stage hands union insisted that since the original set was built by non-union people the set had to be rebuilt from scratch. An offer was made to pay the stage hands for the time they would have spenc building the set but keep the old set to at least save the cost of materials but the u'.uon wouldn't go along with that. The result was an expenditure of $11,000 for five performances of the show. Or take NABET, the CBC's union. NABET isn't fighting over money in its fight with CBC. It is instead fighting over the right to decide programming at CBC. The network, you see, wants to buy more programming from independent producers across Canada. It's a plan that makes sense,(that in itself in a miracle coming from CBC) too much sense for the union, Independent programming producers would spread out the production of programs, help cut down on the massive bureaucracy 'at CBC, reduce the pressure on CBC studios and facilities and the need to build expensive new studios.. It would also however, mean that the Union which operates only at CBC would not have jurisdiction over programming produced outside the corporation. That of course is impossible. I mean surely we can see that the poor, downtrodden workers must have justice. Let's not forget about excellence Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley In thirty plus years as an editor, a parent, and a teacher, I hav,,'. been inundated (though not quite drowned) by several waves of self-styled "reform" of our educational system, especially that of Ontario. Each wave has washed away some of the basic values in our system and left behind a heap of detritus, from which teachers and Students eventually emerge, gasping for a breath of clean air. Most of the "massive" reforms in our system are borrowed from the U.S., after thirty or forty years of testing there have proven them dubious, if not worthless. We have borrowed from the pragmatist, John Dewey, an American, who had some good ideas, but tried to put them into. mass production, an endearing but not necessary noble trait of our cousins below the border. We have tried the ridiculous, "See, Jane vomit," sort of thing which completely ignores the child's demand for heroes and Witches and shining maidens, and things that go bump in the night. We have tried "teaching the whole child", a' process in which the teacher becomes father/mother, uncle/aunt, grand- father/grandma, psychiatrist, buddy, con- fidant, and football to kick around, while the kid does what he/she damn -well -pleases, And we Wonder about teacher "binli-out," We have tried a system in which the children choose froth a sort of Pandora's box what subjects they Would like to take, and giving them to a credit for each subject to which they are "exposed", whether or not they have learned anything in it. That was a bit of a disaster. Kids, like adults, chose the things that were '`fun", that were "easy", that didn't have exanS. that allowed them to express their indivi- duality."' New courses were introduced with the rapidity of rabbits breeding. A' kid who was confident that he would be a great brain surgeon took everything from basket- weaving to bird watching because.they were fun. And suddenly, at about the age of seventeen, he/she discovered that it was necessary to know some science, mathem, rnaticS. Latin, History and English to become a brain surgeon (or a novelist, or a playwriter, or an engineer, etc.). There are very few jobs open in basket- weaving and bird-watching or World Relig- ions or another couple of dozen I could name, but won't for fear of being beaten to death by a tizzy of teachers the day this column appears. The universities, those sacrosanct institu- tions, where the truth shall make you free, went along with the Great Deception, They lowered their standards, in a desperate scramble for live bodies. They Competed for students With all the grace of merchants in an Armenian bazaar. Another swing of the pendulum. Parents discovered that their kids knew something about a lot of things, but not much about anything. They got than. The universities, a little red in the lade, suddenly and virtuously announced that many high school graduates were illiterate, which was a lot of crap. They - were the people who decided that a second language was not necessary They were ' the people who accepted studnets with a mark of 50-in, English, which means the kid actually failed, but his teacher gave him a credit. Nobody, in the new system, really fa L led. If they mastered just less than half the ork, got a 48 per cent, they were raised to 50. If they flunked every subject they took; they were transferred to another "level," where they could succeed, and even excell. -:. The latest of these politieially-inspired, slovenly-researched reforms in Ontario is called SERF', and it Sounds just like, and is just like NERD. Reading its contents carefully, one comes to the conclusion that if Serp is accepted, the result will be a great leveller. Out of one side of "its mouth it suggests that education be compressed. by abandoning of Grade 13, and out of the other side, that education be expanded by adding a lot of new things to the curriculum. Flow can you compress something and expand it at the same' tithe? Only a commission on edUcation could even suggest Such a thing. There will be lots of money for "Special - Education" in the new plan. There'will be less money for excellence. Special Education is educational jargon for teaching stu.„pid kids. Bright kids are looked down upon as an "elite" group, and they should be put in their place. . The universities would enjoy seeing Grade 13 • disappear. • That would mean they'd have a warm body for four'years, at a cost to the student of about $000 a year, instead of three. I'' ar!L not an old fogey', I am not a reactionary. I believe in change. Anything thafdaeS notchange becomes static or dies. Ideas that refuse to change become des- sicated. I am not against spending lets of money to teach stupid kids, or emotionally distiarbed kids. But I atn squarely against any move toward squelehing the brightest and best of our youth, and sending off to university people who are in that extremely Vulnerable stage - of half-adolescent, half-adult, and turfing them into clases of 206 or 300, where they are no more than a cypher on the books of a so-called hall of learning, And I have the proof right before me, in the form of several brilliant essays by Grade 13 students, better than anything I ever wrote, who have had a chance to come to terms with themselves and with life, in a small class, with a teacher who knows, likes, and encourages them, rather than a remote figure at a podium. Write a letter to.. the editor!