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The Citizen, 1991-01-30, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1991. PAGE 5. Arthur Black ‘Fairness’ has gone crazy I imagine when it comes to the next prayer book they won’t write He, meaning Him with a capital "h”. God will be written in the lower case to banish any lurking sense of inferiority his worshippers might feel. Alan Bennett, The Old Country. You had a good Christmas, yes? Me too. So did pretty well everyone 1 know. But then 1 don’t have friends living in Monterey, California. For Montereyans. Christmas 1990 was a little grittier than most, thanks to a lawsuit launched by the Ameircan Civil Liberties Union. Purpose of the lawsuit: to get Jesus off the lawn. The Monterey City Fathers had erected a Nativity Scene in front of City Hall. ACLU claimed the Christmas panor­ ama amounted to state endorsement of religion and as such, must be removed from public property. The Union doesn’t just sic its lawyers on Christians. It also goes after Jews who have the temerity to be religious in public. A large Menorah, the ceremonial Jewish Letter to the young BY RAYMOND CANON Those students in my classes at either Fanshawe or Western whose vision ex­ tends beyond the city limits always seem to be fascinated by the characteristics of their peers in other countries. Now' and again, when there is time left at the end of a lecture or when I feel that they have had enough Economics for one day, we get off on this topic during which I slip in a few observations for them to consider. Just to extend my audience a bit, I am going to direct my comments this week at those who have yet to complete two decades on this planet. One of the most frequent questions is how much of a generation gap exists in other countries. My reply is that it exists everywhere and takes pretty well the same course. A good friend of mine in Switzer­ land has a lovely daughter who feels that both her parents are hopelessly out of date while they feel she has no respect for their standards. Does this sound familiar? You can imagine w'hat it is like for immigrants who leave one set of standards for another and w hose children are likely to pick up the Canadian ones more quickly than the parents. You have to realize that all of us are products of the decade into which we were born. My life and my beliefs have been conditioned dramatically by the depression and world war which 1 experienced before I was 20. Young people have much more freedom now than they did then and that influences you as much as the war and depression did me. There is one thing to keep in mind which 1 pointed out to the Swiss girl mentioned above. While you have had no experience whatsoever in being a parent, your parents have all been teenagers. If you set up a worthwhile dialogue with your parents, they can understand your stresses better than you think. Don’t expect them to see things the same way as you do but make allowances for this difference. I am also asked if students work harder or are smarter elsewhere than in Canada. In spite of some experts' commentson the matter, I don’t think so. There is no doubt that the Japanese school system is harder candelabra, stands in a municipal park in Beverley Hills. ACLU is suing to have it removed immediately. Idiocy is everywhere. Recently in Cin­ cinnati a federal judge ruled that a Menorah could be erected beside a Christmas Tree in the Town Square. This in turn brought members of the Ku Klux Klan out from under the rocks. The Klownsmen demanded the right to burn a cross in the square. Nervous city fathers went into a huddle, then announced that the KKK could appear in the square providing they didn't wear their trademark hoods or ignite their cross. The KKK threatened to sue local Santas for wearing beards (I!) and the whole sorry scenario degenerated into a fist-shaking rock-throw­ ing brawl in the town square, just three days before Christmas. Needless to say, all involved parties had God on their side. Believe it or not, this nonsense has percolated all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. A couple of years ago the American Civil Liberties Union launched a similar lawsuit over a nativity scene Christmas display in Rhode Island. The Supreme Court ruled that it was okay to show the baby Jesus in a cradle in public -- as long as he was surrounded by one Santa Claus, two snowmen and three reindeer. I’m surprised they didn’t insist on an American Express Gold Card too. Insane or not, the Plastic Reindeer Rule than the one in Canada, i.e. there is much more pressure put on the students but there is nothing that shows me that Japanese are smarter. I came across a news item recently which informed me that the youngest student ever to major in mathematics in Gt. Britain’s universities was a Bangladeshi who happens to come from one of the poorest countries in the world. One thing that you have to keep in mind is that students everywhere tend to underestimate their abilities. As I tell my students, each one in my classes is capable of doing one thing better than any other person in the class, including myself. Give yourself credit, therefore, for being more intelligent than you think you are and give your mind a chance to expand. A lot of questions revolve around crime rates, marital breakdown and the like. The sad fact is that young people getting married these days run a considerable risk of seeing their marriage break up. In the U.S.A, there is a 50 per cent chance that it will, but the numbers in other industrializ­ ed countries are not that much higher. The TV, radio never so welcome as now THE EDITOR, 1 have seldom had much respect for the T.V. or radio. I deplore the violence and the sexual overtones that come through our screen. When the radio is on I find it disrupts the silence in my home that 1 so much enjoy. My husband faithfully turns on the radio every morning at 7 a.m. to catch the news. I hate that thing ruining my silence, ‘can’t I drink my coffee in silence?’ Then came August of 1990. Some country called Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Why were the Canadians getting so upset? Now it was time to pick up a newspaper. Everyone had different ideas as to what was happening, some even pointed to war. As the months went on, 1 had a renewed interest in my T.V. and radio. I even found myself telling the children to be quiet while 1 listened intently to the 7 o’clock news in is now the informal yardstick which all American civic officials apply to any public displays on municipal property at Christ­ mas time - which means that future generations of Americans will probably grow up believing that the birth in the manger was attended by Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman, not to mention Sneezy, Grumpy and Pinnochio. The Supreme Court doesn’t even call it Christmas anymore. It refers to it as "the winter holiday season”. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. Christmas has already been thoroughly bastardized by the whir of cash registers and the carney barking of retail hucksters urging us to buy more and ever more. You'd think there’d be room in some tiny, un-consumerized corner for a simple, non-commercial manger scene or an unpre­ tentious Menorah - such as Jews have been lighting at Chanukah for more than 2,000 years. 1 havent’ heard of any legal moves to adopt the Plastic Reindeer Rule on this side of the border, but no doubt it’s coming. Canadians have always been eager suckers for sleazier, less palatable U.S. imports. I think I’ll start my Christmas shopping early this year. I’m looking for a figurine to grace next year’s "winter holiday” display in the lobby of ACLU headquarters. A plastic Mickey Mouse. Americans are also most prone to crime, violent or otherwise. There is an interest­ ing thing to keep in mind. Many of these negative aspects of our western society go hand in hand with the breakdown of the family. If you have a supportive and an understanding family, be thankful for that is one of the best things going for you, regardless of the country in which you live. When I lived in Vienna and was working with Hungarian refugees, I attended a few lectures by the famous psychotherapist, Viktor Frankel. Dr. Frankel was one of the few survivors of the Nazi death camps and his writings subsequent to that have become world famous. One thing that he said which is worth passing on to you is that everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. In spite of what your peers do in other countries, in spite of their likes and dislikes, and of all your rights, real or imaginary, the onus is still on you to choose what path you want to follow. the morning. Then came January 15, the deadline. The only thing that linked me to Iraq, Kuwait and our Canadian soldiers, was our T.V. and radio. At one point in the day I had the radio on in the kitchen and the T.V. on in the living room. My attitude has changed so much! I am now greatful for these tools that sit in our house giving us a better knowledge of what is happening in the Middle East. Twice a day, and sometimes more, I listen to what is being said about the war. I can’t believe here I sit watching the most violent event of our time. But, if that’s what it takes for me to better understand, and realize that Canada is at war, then I will continue to watch and listen. Now the T.V. and the radio are a welcome piece of furniture in our home, no longer despised and hated. MRS. LYNN SMITH RR 3, BLYTH Letter from the editor Kids have so much to learn BY KEITH ROULSTON As I sat with my 10-year-old watching a television show the other night I realized just how much there is for people to learn before they can make intelligent decisions in this world. We were watching a movie involving the civil rights movement in the southern U.S. in the late 1950s and 1960s. In it the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks to keep them from enrolling in white schools, murdered civil rights workers who tried to register voters, and blew up a church filled with black women and children. Those of my generation, who lived through those turbu­ lent times, have those scenes burned into our memories and it helps us understand so much of what happens in black-white relations in the U.S. today. For a child born long after it was all over, however, those days are history, as ancient and unreal as World War 1 or the signing of the British North America Act. On top of all the history people of my generation learned there is all the wealth of happenings that have come along in the baby-boom years: the murder of John F. Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the constitutional debates in Canada, Trudeaumania, the Middle East Crisis of 1956 and so much more. If we are to have a democracy in which people have the power to make decisions about the future of their country we need people who are well informed. Just how hard it is to be well informed is evident to all caring people these days in the midst of the war against Iraq. For one thing, we’re not getting the facts with news stories being controlled by the military of the various combatants. Then there’s the fact that we just don’t know the history of the Gulf region, the rivalries, the history of colonial rule, the intricacies of religion. All these things are important to the under­ standing of what makes things happen the way they do in the turbulent Gulf region. We can understand more about the Middle East tensions, for instance, if we realize the lasting effects of the Holocaust. European Jews, seeking their own home­ land after the horrors of World War I, pushed into Palestine following World War II and pushed the Palestinians out of their homeland. Determined never to suffer again as they had in Europe, they became ever on guard against anything they saw as a threat to their new homeland, often afraid to give an inch to their Arab neighbours who vowed to drive them out. To know what they must know to be good citizens, our young people must learn these things. Yet in today’s school system a student only needs one credit (one year’s study) in history in order to graduate and go on to university. If you came through the school system of my day, for instance, you’d be appalled at how little today’s OAC (the equivalent of Grade 13) student knows about the history of his or her own country. But the problem goes further. What history students do get often seems to be readying them for the kind of history courses they will get if they go on to study history in university, not the kind of history that will help them understand the world around them. History is made a dull, academic slug instead of the exciting clue into what makes the world tick. People glued to their television sets watching the war night after night these days are watching exciting history but 40 years from now historians will have reduced it to deadly dull hard work. History can be exciting from the tales of the fur traders who paddled through the North American wilderness to the struggle of Chinese labourers to build the CPR but too often it isn’t by the time it makes it to history books and history classes. Right in our own backyard, for instance, we have the fabulous tales of our pioneers who suffered long trips at sea in sailing ships then fought their way into forests so dense there was permanent twilight on the forest floor. With nothing but axe and ox these Continued on page 21