HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 1978-06-21, Page 4•
Page 4—Lucknow Sentinel, Wednesday, June 21, 1978
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The Lucknow Sentinel
LUCKNOW, ONTARIO
"The Sepoy Town"
On the Huron -Bruce Boundary
Established 1873 - Published Wednesday
Published by Signal -Star Publishing Ltd.
Robert G. Shrier - president and publisher
Sharon J. Dietz - editor
Anthony N. Johnstone - advertising and
general manager
C
A
Subscription rate, $10 per year in advance
Senior Citizens rate, $8.00 per year in advance
U.S.A. and Foreign, $14 per year in advance
Business and Editorial Office Telephone 528-2822
Mailing Address P.O. Box 400, Lucknow NOG 2H0
Second class mail registration number - 0847
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LOOKING BACKWARDS
THROUGH THE SENTINEL. FILES
�� passenger train on the way
75 YEARS AGO from Wingham to Teeswater.
The Hackett's 'congrega-
tion, Ashfield, are to hold a
strawberry festival on Mon-
day evening, June 29. Rev.
J. Philip, B.D. of Kincardine
will deliver a lecture on
Palestine.
50 YEARS AGO
A most shocking case of
self destruction occurred on
the C.P.R. track a few miles,
out of Teeswafer on Thurs-
day of last week, when Fred
Bright, a young Englishman,
threw himself in front of the
25 YEARS AGO
A two day traffic check on
Lucknow Main Street has
revealed amazing figures.
2,700 motor vehicles were
recorded on the first day and
3,800 on the second. Who
wpuld -guess it?
An outbreak of hog cholera
was discovered last week on
the farm of Cliff Hackett in
Ashfield. 48 swine were shot
and buried in a deep trench
on the farm. This is the first
outbreak to be reported in
this vicinity.
The book issue
The three books, which some people find
objectionable for study in Huron County High
Schools, should not be removed from the
book lists.
Of Mice and Men, Catcher in thh`�ek Rye and
The Diviners are books which deal `honestly
with, the human condition. They are, not
pornographic.
Books about human relationships and the
human experience should not be removed
from the schools because they deal honestly
with their subject.
Margaret Laurence; John Steinbeck and J.
D. Salinger do not write pornography. They
are authors who have taken the responsibility
. to be honest about the human condition and
to get close to the shifting, complex reality
that is life.
It is an author's responsibility to be honest
when he writes about human experience.. and
human relationships. To do this effectively,
an author musj use words which reflect the
way people really talk and act. An aufhor
cannot create a character who has lived on
the Yonge Street strip all his adult life, and
yet, make him speak like a distinguished
English gentleman.
An author cannot honestly deal with the
human condition unless he considers all
aspects of the human experience. To aVoid
swearing, sex, . murder, rape and suicide
would be to ignore a very large part of the
human experience.
A book, written by an American author
called "Deliverance", has a scene which
describes the homosexual rape of a man. In
an article which discussed the book, the critic
commented that for the first time he
understood the fear and humiliation that a
woman must feel when she is raped. The
description in_the book allowed the reader to
feel as another human being would feel in a,:
A right to attend
The Lucknow Village Council met on
Wednesday, June 14 instead of the regular
second Tuesday, June 13, because they had
to attend a meeting concerning the Taylor
drain in Ashfield Township on the Tuesday
evening.
A notice did not appear in the local
newspaper informing the citizens of the
village that the meeting was changed to a
different night and the press was not
informed of the change in date.
All Village Council meetings are public
meetings which can be attended by any citiz-
en of the village and are open to the press to
report on all information discussed at the
meeting.
Only when council goes into an in camera
session, can they refuse to allow the public or
the press to observe the proceedings.
The editor of the Sentinel could not attend
the meeting on the Tuesday evening because
of the meeting in Clinton concerning the
removal of books from the school book lists in
our high schools. She phoned the clerk -treas-
urer on Tuesday to say thatshe would not be
attending, but was still trying to have the
meeting covered by someone else. The
clerk -treasurer did not tell her that the
meeting was postponed until the following
night when she could have attended.
When the editor went to look at the
minutes of the meeting, to do stories for this
week's paper, she learned that the meeting,
had been held on the Wednesday night. She
asked the clerk why he had not informed her
of the change in date and he said it Must
have slipped his mind". She asked when the
date change had been'decided and he said he
could not remember.
The editor then phoned the reeve of the
village and asked him about the change in the
date and he said he knew nothing about the
decision to change the date because he had
been at County Council on the Monday and
Tuesday of that week. She asked him why he
did not have a notice published so the public
was made aware of the change and he said he
had nothing to do with the change in the date
of the meeting.. The decision had been made
by thel9ouncillors and he told her to ask them
about it.
The editor spoke with two of the councillors
and one has; in his possession a letter he
received dated June 2 on the Village of
Lucknow letter head and signed by the Town
clerk informing him that the meeting. date of
council for June was changed from June 13 to
June 14.
A decision to change the date had to have
been made before June 2.
The councillors told the editor that they did
not make the decision concerning the change
in dates, they were informed by letter. It
would seem that the reeve and the clerk must
know something about who made the
decision to change the date and when the
decision was made.
Council meetings are public and should be
open to everyone. It is the basis of a
democratic system that the people who elect
the representatives to government be
allowed to ,have at their disposal any or all
information concernin.g the village business.
If the decision was made for the letters to
the councillors to be dated June 2, there was
still an opportunity to advertise the change of
date in the June 7 publication of the Sentinel.
Any citizen who wished to attend would then
have been informed of the change in date. It
also would have served to inform the press.
Council meetings should not be held
without the knowledge of the press or
citizens. These m"eetings are public and the
press and the citizens of this village have a
right to know when they are being held so
that they may attend.
situation. As a result he had abetter
understanding of a woman's experience.
Our children should not be sheltered and
protected from the evil in our society or the
reality of murder, rape,, filthy language,
incest, suicide and sex.
To have the students in our High Schools
Study novels which do not deal with the
human condition, because we want to protect
them from the realities of our society and the
human experience, is to stunt their growth to
maturity and keep them from dealing
effectively with life, when they start out on
their own.
The books would be full of laundered
people who do not swear, never feel anger,
depression, or jealousy and who never have
sexual relationships.
But, this is not life and it does not prepare
the students for the decisions they will have
to make on their own. It presents a fairy tale
image of society and the experience or lire.
For this reason, the English courses in our
High Schools have tour students read books
which present the human condition as it is, in
aii its beauty and ugliness.
The books are presented for the students to
consider and evaluate a variety of responses
to lite and the students are ai iowea to moose
for themselves.
The lifestyle of the characters, their
language or habits are not held up for the
students to emulate, but only, to consider and
evaluate.
Surely, the parents of our county have
more faith in their ability as parents, than to
believe the value system they have taught to
their children will be cast aside because a
child reads a book •in which a character
swears or two people sleep together.
The books on the curriculum that are found
to be objectionable to some parents, are not
mandatory. If a child finds the book too
offensive he can ask the teacher to assign
another book for study.
Some may say that it is too much to expect
of a student to get up in front of his class and
refuse to read a book. But, if his feelings are
that strong about the book, he should be
prepared to stand up,for his conviction. It is a
lesson in life that he will have to learn in a
hurry when he is on his own. And what better.
time to experience it for the first time, than
while he is living at home where he can still
receive the guidance and support of his
parents?
Any High School student can buy a copy of
Playboy or Penthouse and hide it from his
parents. Yet, a parent wants .to tell him he
cannot read a book, written by a highly
respected author who has written exceptional
books, because it deals with life experiences.
You may be able to shelter a child from the
truth of the human experience while he is
living at home, but, he will have to deal with
it when he leaves home. And it is far more
devastating for a child to be ill-prepared for
dealing with the choices he will have to make
concerning drugs, alcohol, sex, loneliness
and depression, than to allow him to learn
about these aspects of life from a book which
describes it, honestly.
If you, as a parent, are concerned about
your child's study of these -books in school, go
to the classroom and listen in while the
students discuss the book with their teacher.
A parent is welcome in the classroom at
anytime.
If parents feel that they have no control
about what is happening in. the schools they
are funding with their tax dollars, they
should be willing to take the time to go to the
schools and learn more about what is
happening there through their own observa-
tion.
It is safe to say that very few of the people
who, object to the books being used in the
classroom have read the books and even
fewer have attendeda class discussion of the
books to learn how and why the books are
used in our schools.
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