Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-07-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2005. PAGE 5. Other Views Kids will be kids - if we let them One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. - Randall Jarrell na Cross of Nanaimo, B.C. would know all about that. Recently, Ana was busted by a city bylaw enforcement officer for illegally operating a business on city property. The officer wrote her up and closed her down. The ‘business’ was a lemonade stand that Ana has been running by the road outside her house since she was seven. Ana is 10 years old. It isn’t the bylaw control office that’s at fault - they get a complaint, they have to act on it. What ticks me off is that Ana Cross has a neighbour so narrow-minded and flint-hearted that he or she detjves satisfaction from siccing the law on a child. For what - being too grown-up for .her age? Could be. Maturity and responsibility are not character traits we encourage in our young ones these days. According to an article in USA Today, many American schools have found a brand-new bogeyman - red ink. School administrators have determined that the trauma of seeing a large, red ‘X’ through a wrong answer on a test paper or examination might prove to be too “stressful, demeaning, even frightening” for the tender psyches of school-age children. Teachers are being urged to go back to their Crayola boxes and opt for “more pleasant” colours such as green, orange or purple. Concern for school kids’ fragile sensibilities extends to the playground. The games of tag and dodge ball have been banned from several American schoolyards on the grounds that Harris gone but not forgotten Mike Harris was Ontario’s most confrontational premier in decades and he is not being allowed to ride gracefully into the sunset. Harris, who retired in 2002, is more in the public eye through being attacked these days than any serving politician. An unflattering picture of him is emerging from a judicial inquiry into the shooting death of a native demonstrator at Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1995 and it could hurt the current Conservatives trying to displace Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty. Harris repeatedly refused requests for an inquiry, but McGuinty ordered one and it is easy to see why. Several dozen natives including women and children occupied the park, an ancient Indian cemetery, arguing it should not be a campground but be returned to them, and Ontario Provincial Police surrounded it and heard gunshots, but none fired at them. In taped phone conversations and testimony, senior police have described discussions they had two days later with Harris and ministers and officials. One responsible for liaison with government on aboriginal affairs said at a meeting at the legislature Harris said “the OPP made mistakes. They should have just gone in. We’ve tried to pacify and pander to these people for too long. It’s now time for swift, affirmative action.” The police representative got the impression Harris believed he had authority to direct the OPP, although elected politicians normally maintain they cannot intervene in police investigations. He pointed out the natives had merely trespassed, not a criminal offence, and if police tried to evict them, violence might erupt Arthur Black they are “too competitive”. The principal of a Santa Monica, California elementary school finds the game of tag particularly repugnant. “In this game,” she says, “there is a ‘victim’ who is designated as ‘It’. This creates a self-esteem issue”. Some educators say that all competitive sports — from soccer and baseball to marbles and musical chairs - should be tossed out in favour of ‘affirmative’ sports like, well, pogo sticking, juggling and, er, that’s about it, really. If the folks at the Tufts Educational Day Care Center in Massachusetts have their way, kids will be pre-conditioned long before they even get to Grade 1. At Tufts, pre-schoolers are required to agree to a contract that reads in part: “I, __________, know how to listen to my teachers. When my teachers talk to me, I will not scream, try to hit, or say ‘You’re not my boss.’ If I do any of these things, I will go to the sensory loft so I can slow down my heart.” Presumably each child will be appointed a lawyer with power of attorney since they won’t yet have learned to read or write. Don’t feei smug, Canucks - things are just as goofy this side of the border. Not long ago the Women Teachers’ Association of North York, Ontario, published a brochure calling for the removal of ‘violent’ Eric Dowd From Queen's Park and police and government would look “dirty.” He suggested waiting and seeking a court injunction to order them out, but said Deb Hutton, a senior aide who spoke as if she represented Harris (and is still so close she issues news releases in his name) insisted the premier “wants them out.” This officer reported to a colleague “we’re dealing with a real redneck government. They’re just in love with guns. They couldn’t give a shit about Indians.” Other senior officers said the situation was “not urgent” and the Conservatives “just want to go kick ass,” but police soon after entered the park and shot dead an unarmed protester and the police liaison officer concluded Harris lost an opportunity to avoid bloodshed when he did not call in a mediator. A major issue is whether Harris directed police into the park and the evidence so far may not be conclusive beyond doubt. Harris’s lawyer has claimed he meant he wanted the protesters out quickly, but through a court injunction. But it has underlined Harris’s hard line toward natives, some of whom, he once said, were building an industry out of making land claims. Most probably will accept police as accurate on facts, because they are experienced in observing. and ‘militaristic’ language in classrooms. The brochure replaces expressions such as “killing two birds with one stone” and “take a stab at it” with milquetoasty bromides like “getting two for the price of one” and “go for it”. Even the lowly computer did not escape North York Newspeak. The brochure urged teachers to instruct their students always to ‘press', not ‘hit’ the computer key. If, like me, you think the Brave New World of educational hypersensitivity is a little bit much, be of good cheer because we’re not alone. Mrs. Sarah Goldberg of New York City is in our corner. Each school day, Mrs. Goldberg sent her son to a rather exclusive elementary school on Manhattan’s West Side. And every day she sent with Jonah a cartoon of a smiling, spouting whale which she drew on the brown paper bag that contained his lunch. (The son’s name was Jonah. Jonah and the whale - geddit?). Each morning, Jonah would put his lunch bag with all the other kids’ lunch bags, and each day at noon the teacher would distribute all the lunches. Because of the whale, Jonah and his friends knew which lunch was Jonah’s and they thought it was very cool. The teacher disagreed. Mrs. Goldberg got a telephone call from her son’s teacher asking her to stop drawing the whale on the lunch bag because it was “unfair” to children with less pictogram-friendly names. The next day, Jonah arrived at school with the usual whale-festooned lunchbag and a note to the teacher. The note read: “The Goldberg family whale policy will continue. Tell the other kids to get over it.” Police were not normally critics of Harris, who was a strong advocate of law and order, and many police associations, although not all their members, supported him in elections. The discussions also fit in with Harris’s style. He was noted particularly for cutting taxes and being confrontational and examples include calling an opponent an “asshole” and cutting an allowance to mothers on welfare saying they might waste it on booze. Human Rights Commissioner Keith Norton is complaining that Harris’s Safe Schools Act, which provides automatic suspensions or expulsions for students committing serious offences, is having the effect of unfairly singling out racial minorities. Norton is no left-wing agitator, but a former Conservative minister appointed by Harris. Liberal Economic Development Minister Joe Cordiano, irritated by Conservative criticism he spent public money to attract a car manufacturing plant, retorted that Harris, who was stingy in such matters, came dangerously close to losing Ontario’s auto industry to the United States and the Liberals saved it. Today’s more moderate Conservatives under leader John Tory are trying to disassoc atc themselves from Harris’s actions that residents resent, but they inherited a lot of baggage and it is still piling up. Final Thought If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. - Dale Carnegie Bonnie Gropp The short of it Enchanting thine ear Thou art thy mother’s glass; and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime. —Shakespeare's Sonnet 3 he man really had a way with words didn’t he? I mean you don’t even really have to understand them to appreciate the beauty. At least, that’s the way I’ve always felt. My first introduction to Shakespeare came at the age of 12, when a friend’s mother took us to see The Merry Wives of Windsor. I have to think at the time if my own mom had had an inkling of what the play was about, with chatter of adultery and illicit love, she might have been more reluctant about my attending. Ignorance however is bliss as we know and in this case the latter turned out to be mine. From Shallow’s, “Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star- chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs. he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.”, I was enthralled. Though admittedly lost. Mother would not need to have been apprehensive that my innocence would be compromised by the lusty events on stage because I could barely decipher what was happening. The only thing I did understand was that the words that had been put together were to me as melodious as a songbird. It was with great pleasure then that I discovered with high school came Shakespeare. In Grade 9, I was introduced to The Merchant of Venice, and dove into the dissection and memory work with the intensity of a true scholar. “The quality of mercy is not strain'd. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and firn that takes;” Now tell me these words poken by Portia aren t prettier than saying that showing a little mercy is good for the one that gives it and for the one who receives it. I know there are many out there not sharing my appreciation. And I admit that while I did attack Shakespeare with gusto in those early school years, my enthusiasm waned as the novelty wore off, helped in part by a particularly inept English teacher in Grade 11. But, also, I came to recognize that there are many wonderful wordsmiths deserving of equal study and consideration as Shakespeare, who do not receive it. Think Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, Pearl Buck, Eugene O’Neill. While William Shakespeare was part of the English curriculum each year of the five-year Xrts and Science program at secondary school, others, including some of those noted, might be selected for study during one particular grade. As I recognized this, my infatuation for Old William lessened and I began to divide my interest. Needless to say, I am not the scholar that as an idealistic youth I had hoped to become. Far from it. One might say that I’m more like a general practitioner of prose - 1 don’t know a lot about anything in particular, just a very little about a lot. But I do know that when 1 find my way back to Shakespeare, whether it’s at the theatre or through a quote in another book such as the one at the beginning of this column, I again find the music in his words. Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear. —Venus and Adonis