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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1994-08-10, Page 5\ z Arthur Black Compensations of a long commute We're a broad-minded people. We can accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him. Art Buchwald Buchwald speaks the truth. The phenomenon that separates us from a couple of thousand centuries of forbears is not television, medical insurance or unlimited access to Tilley hats. It's those buckets of chrome and plastic that sit in our driveways. Our cars. Without cars, most of us couid not live or work or shop where we do. Canadians don't like to live cheek by jowl, stacked on top of one another the way they do in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mexico City. We're wide-open- spaces folks. We like room to stretch and breathe a little. That means mobility. And in Canada that means the automobile. It also means commuting. Canadians routinely travel distances to work that would cause a European to question our sanity. According to a recent Statistics Canada study, nine out of 10 workers travel a International Scene Change in American education Americans are even more unhappy about the state of their education system than is the case in Canada. Like Canada, the system has been decentralized and the federal government can do little except express encouragement for change. However, such encouragement was forthcoming in the recent State of the Union address by President Bill Clinton when he gave his approval for what are known as "charter schools." To those unfamiliar with the expression, this is nothing more than allowing someone other than school boards to set up and run public schools. This can be done in one of two ways; either starting a school from scratch or converting an existing public school to a charter one. Nor does it seem to matter too much who does the changing; it can be a group of parents, teachers, a university or even a profit-seeking enterprise. President Clinton can give all the encouragement he wants, but the onus for permitting such schools rests with the slate. Not surprisingly, opposition to such a move comes strongly from either the teachers' unions or existing school boards. It does, however, seem to have caught on with politicians. Minnesota was the first stale to make a move in 1991 with California following shortly afterwards. To date there have been eight states carrying out the necessary legislation with a few more on the horizon. In most of the eight states there have been some limitations on the number of such schools; California allows 100, 10 times as many as is permitted in Minnesota. By the way of contrast Michigan has set no limits whatsoever. significant distance to get to their jobs "and most of them get there by car". The commuting adventure varies according to where you live. Vancouverites spend the most time at it, an average of an hour a day getting to and from their jobs. Toronto's right behind at 59 minutes, followed by Montreal at 54 and Winnipeg at 51. You want to live in a Canadian city but not waste nearly an hour a day on the road? Move to Halifax. Your average Haligonia makes the round trip in 38 minutes. But 38 minutes or 54 minutes or an hour - any way you clock it, that's a heckuva lot of time to waste, sucking up exhaust fumes and drumming your finger on the steering wheel. Just think of the millions of man-hours squandered in rush hour traffic jams every working day. Think of the waste of gas. Think of the air pollution. Think of the boredom. It doesn't have to be that way. Take my situation. I live 115 kilometers from my office in the city. Getting from here to there and back again eats up five hours of my working day. Most people think I'm nuts but I've been doing it for eight years now and I rather like it. I use three different means of travel for variety: I drive, I take the bus, and I walk. First, I drive from my house to the bus station. This takes 25 minutes and allows me ByRaymond Canon f Since this is a concept of the 1990s, few charter schools have actually been started. In California, about one-fifth of the allotment are underway while Colorado has but two. Of the two, one has got off to a flying and successful start; the other, as yet, cannot claim the same success. But these are not the only changes. In Hartford, Connecticut, the school board has called for bids from private companies to manage its whole school system. The board has noted that, while its taxpayers cough up well about the state average for education expenditures and teachers' salaries, the drop­ out rate of students is one of the highest in the state. Small wonder that increasing public complaints have resulted in the board taking such drastic action. Hartford, however, is not alone in making such changes. The state of Massachusetts has hired a private company to run three of the charter schools to which I referred at the beginning of the article. A M inneapolis based company, Educational Alternatives Inc., has recently obtained a contract from the Baltimore, Maryland board to run 12 public schools in that city and it is worth noting some of the details of the contract. In return for public funding of $5,900 per pupil ($8,200 Canadian) the company has agreed to clean up the buildings and increase student achievement. It has promised not to try to get control over teacher appointments or salaries. This is in contrast to other organizations, but EAI feels it can live with this. Il has managed to cut down on overheads by replacing teachers' assistants with cheaper college educated interns, privatizing the janitorial services, untangling bureaucracy and improving building maintenance. The city thought enough of the privately run system to extend its contract for an additional three years, and has given EAI to pass through beautiful rolling countryside. I regularly see deer, red tailed hawks, and the occasional lumbering porcupine. Once I saw a wolf. At the bus station, I park my car, grab a newspaper and a coffee and settle back to let my Gray Coach driver deal with traffic snarls, black ice, construction slow-downs and sundry four-wheeled maniacs that lurk on the highways and byways. An hour and a half later I arrive at the bus terminal. From there I trudge the city streets for 30 minutes until I'm at the portcullis of Fortress CBC, where I work. At night the routine is reversed. Why do I like it? I get to read the paper and sip my coffee and do the crossword puzzle. I get to have a snooze if I feel like it. Mostly I don't get ulcers and/or heart seizures from having to deal first hand with traffic, the way I would if I were foolish enough to drive the whole distance. About this time next year my commute will become even more umm...elaborate. I plan to move to an island off the coast of Vancouver, where I'll be working. My commute then will involve a bike ride, a walk, a bus ride and a ferry crossing. An even longer commute no doubt. But there are compensations. Any commute that allows you to see bald eagles and killer whales can hardly be long enough. high marks for cleaning up the school buildings and streamlining supplies. The teachers union claimed that the student scores, however, fell in 1993. The head of EAI explains this by saying that the company's educational system was not yet in place in that year and that this year's scores will show an improvement. He points out that in the company run school in Miami Beach, Florida, the most recent scores showed gains in every area. Needless to say, Baltimore teachers and parents are waiting anxiously for the latest results. Enough people are impressed with the idea to warrant additional expansion and not only in states which have embraced the charter school concept. However, the proverbial proof of the pudding will ultimately depend on how well the new system works. As it stands now, many school boards and parents alike feel they have nothing to lose by trying. Show-off driving not appreciated Continued from page 4 driveway, then proceeds to "put the pedal to the metal", have gravel fly all over, docs not have a lot of brains. Or maybe it’s just plain no respect for others. There were many children playing around the benches and in my opinion it was not safe for them to be there. In closing, drivers it would be ideal if you did not drink while driving, for the safely of mine and other people's children and your displays of uncontrolled, show-off driving are not appreciated. Bev Lecomte. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1994. PAGE 5. The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Varied experiences good for kids This was not going to be a working holiday. One of the rules I make for myself when on vacation is that I will not read a newspaper or for that matter even spend much time listening to the news on the radio. This time, however, I must admit to a little bit of sliding. My husband, you see, doesn't have the same rule, so a newspaper was always near by. But overall, any infor­ mation I garnered this past week was on my children. Essentially, it was fun getting to know them again, though, honestly, not everything I learned was pleasing. Gratification for our kids, my husband and I soon learned, must be instant; it is not good enough to know they will get a ride to the movies, it has to be now. It is almost like they are afraid it will be taken from them or forgotten about if they don't seize the moment. Expectations for the pursuit of pleasure were high. The simple things in life just don't cut it anymore. It surprised me, too, that entertaining themselves wasn't always easy, especially for the boys. Without video games and television they just seemed lost. These things we had learned in a few short hours, when boredom erupted into quarreling. With a whole week ahead the challenge of keeping them entertained was looking a little daunting. Over the raging screams I picked out my husband’s weary declaration, "This isn't going to work." We humans are nothing if not adaptable and the situation did improve gradually. Then a newspaper column headline about idle youngsters caught my eye and I found myself breaking my rule to read it. Essentially what the columnist suggested was that kids today don’t know how to make constructive use of their time and their talents are directed to a minimal number of trivial things (which made mine normal, lessening the guilt somewhat). To help our children become successful adults parents need to pique their children's interests in varied things, then encourage those interests. Lemonade stands are the first home of budding entrepreneurs, while a young hand in the kitchen may be inspired to culinary pursuits. Reading the article, I glanced over to the kitchen table where my daughter and her friend were painting designs on T-shirts with their podge swans shoved to the side waiting for work to begin on them. From the window I could see my son honing his pitching skills while his friend utilized his talent as catcher. I surmised then that all was not lost. I began regarding this time together, with neither television nor telephone, as an opportunity to uncover some of my children's likes and talents. Though some of the pastimes wouldn't lead to an ideal career choice, I found them both to be worthy adversaries in a card game; it was a learning experience. As I relaxed I worried less about how certain tasks were completed and found the youngsters to be more than capable of doing them. And now that we're home I hope I can continue finding new experiences for them to work on and new jobs for them to experience.