HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-07-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2005. PAGE 5.
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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