Category Archives: Statements

Why Canadian cell phone bills are outrageous

18 Friday Nov 2011

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A surprising amount of unrelated parties come together to saddle Canadians with the most expensive cellphone rates in the world. Jesse Brown wrote about it in a convincing piece in December’s Toronto Life (regrettably not available online yet). I love when my complaining is vindicated, not that it’s worth it.

Personally, my wireless bill is relatively small (though still a rip off) since I don’t even have a “smart” phone. Yes, my phone is portable, but it’s a moron. It doesn’t get internet.  I don’t have a full keyboard (it takes four presses to type “s”). I rarely talk because my day minutes are stingy (and so am I). I’m eager to end every conversations because a 1:01 conversation is 2 minutes, universal rounding be damned. I have no BBM, Email, or even ICQ. For accessing the system my phone requires I pay a fee, double-dipping in broad daylight: it’s like buying a hamburger then paying separately again for accessing it.  My cell phone plan is basically incoming calls (but don’t roam!) and cumbersome retrograde text messaging, but it costs me over $55 a month. Your phone is better so you pay a lot more than me, but in Canada all us hosers are getting hosed.

I’ll walk you through the article now.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development claims our roaming fees are the highest in the world.  According to another report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Canadians have the highest monthly wireless charges in the world. Worrying: American banks have never been wrong.  Even “academic sources” say our text messaging undergoes a mark up as high as 4,900%.  Have you ever heard anyone say 4,900%? This goes beyond an acceptable amount of exploitation. In another time and place we’d all be sweeping their chimneys for nickels.

The evil trifecta–Robbers, Bull, Telus (couldn’t think of an evil name for Telus, I welcome suggestions)–has 95% of the market. New carriers like Mobilicity and Wind have to buy a license from Ottawa for billions, incurring debt before they even spend a dime on marketing or infrastructure.  That’s why smaller companies like Fido get eaten up like dog food. Brown claims so called experts on the subject (lawyers, academics, consultants) are either employed by the three-headed monster or are somehow financially connected. Except one glorious man.

Hudson Janisch is a U of T professor emeritus of telecommunications law. His research was “instrumental” in writing the country’s telecommunications act. Even better, he’s 73 and semi-retired, so he’s got no vested interested in lying.  Janisch explains that banks are unwilling to lend money to new companies since their success will cut into that of the big three, who already make more money than any other providers in the world. Banks have no reason to finance new Canadian companies and our government hasn’t let foreign companies offer competition. “Canada is horribly out of step.”

Why is it so expensive? There’s no finite number of text messages that’s depleted every time someone sends a text. No mining company drills into the earth to extract minutes.  Once the infrastructure is up, costs flatten. Companies opt for the maximum gouge because they can. Shocking.

And expensive bills may not be the worst problem.  Our country is supposedly at risk of becoming “a communications backwater,” as only 75% of Canadians have a wireless plan. That seemed high to me, but apparently it’s the lowest of any comparable country, and what’s “comparable” might be surprising.  Internationally, there’s wonderful collaboration taking place between phone companies and forward thinking governments from all those burgeoning telecommunication hot spots in Africa and the Middle East. That’s why the guys who filmed Ghaddafi’s death have a better phone than me.

In the 80s, Ottawa enacted a policy designed to keep foreigners off our radios, and now we’re held captive to this severely outdated policy, which wasn’t designed with current technology in mind.  “It was a policy grandfathered in from traditional telephone regulations.” Normally, or at least ideally, stupid policies are corrected. The NHL made helmets mandatory since they realised not forcing NHL players to wear helmets was ridiculous and outdated.  When it comes to phone bills, Canadians have no choice but to be Craig Mactavish (the last NHL player to not wear a helmet…retired helmetless in 1997).

Also, and this comes out of left field, ACTRA, the actors’ union, is lobbying Ottawa to keep the foreign ownership restriction in place. Where have all the sagacious actors gone? ACTRA declined an interview with Toronto Life (they were all out adopting third-world children) but Brown points to the unions’ website which indicates they believe that if the wireless industry is opened up to foreign investors, we will “lose control of our culture” because “you can’t separate telecommunications and broadcasting.”  Their argument: if people watch TV on their smart phones, which are provided by foreigners, then foreigners control what we watch, and they can’t be trusted to create content that will employ our actors.  But smart phones aren’t seriously going to replace TVs.  Could the actors position be stupid and self-serving? Brown reminds us that Rogers and Bell produce/broadcast a large percentage of Canadian shows, and the union is probably just sucking up.

Our politicians are doing nothing. This problem won’t fix itself, as no company voluntarily decides to forego profit. Pitching a tent in a park is for problems that only affect 99%, but at 100%, this is major.  And it’s cold out.

Expect a strongly worded letter to come in this space. And unlike the civil writing here, the strongly worded letter to come won’t be based on research or facts, just my violent, unswerving hatred for these wireless robber barons.  Let us complain loudly…it’s about all we can do.

Taking the “remember” out of remembrance day

11 Friday Nov 2011

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This week, the National Post reported there’s a high school in Ottawa that is forbidding veterans who come to speak to classrooms on remembrance day from bringing any military replica guns with them, something they have done for nineteen years.  Making history “come alive,” as cheesy as it sounds, is hard enough for a teacher, and I can think of no better way than having someone who was there tell stories, gun in hand. If I held the veteran’s rifle and tried to imagine the trenches, I’d feel sheer terror, surely the point of it all. But this year the school changed its policy. “No tanks or guns.”  “There are many students from the school who come from war-torn countries, and when they saw the replica gun, it did upset them.” The article doesn’t say if the committee, made up of school staff, actually received a direct complaint from a student or whether they changed the policy on their own initiative. A history teacher from the school resigned in response–a principled move, if somewhat dramatic.

This story is in line with the times, being as hyper-sensitive as possible to those perceived most vulnerable, though I would bet most schools would strongly criticize this policy. Here, the modern urge to “accommodate” is stronger than the urge to teach history. This is a problem. There are times in my writing where I fear I’m saying something painfully obvious, but this story forces my hand: the teaching of history needs to be the first priority in a history class.

If a student from a “war-torn country” is actually traumatized upon seeing either a replica gun or a real gun that’s disabled, they can leave the class. It’s not exactly the same as seeing the Luftwaffe hover the skies in formation or hearing a nearby bomb explode, but students are only kids and they can be fragile, especially if they have actually escaped war themselves. We need to remember war as vividly as possible to try and ensure it never happens again, but they may need to forget war to go on living a normal life. Fair enough. But this should be done only on a case-by-case basis in the event there’s an actual student with such a severely traumatizing past.

Before anyone is excused, consider that Canadian citizens sacrificed a lot more than a moment’s discomfort, and do still today. This is what the gun in class brings home: it is a gun that could have put a hole in the head of a mother’s child. It should be uncomfortable for everyone. If we forget this, what are we remembering? Over 45,000 Canadians died in WWII alone. Is there another symbol besides the gun that can be brought into class to evoke the horror of war? Short of a replica of “little boy,” no.  Maybe the ubiquitous poppy should be replaced by a gun.

A gun in class does anything but glorify war. What kind of student is urged towards violence after seeing a weapon and hearing all the horror stories first hand from a soldier?  Remembering can’t be a hollow moment of silence, but a meaningful reflection of what people actually did. It should cause revulsion, fear, and wonder that it actually happened. If it’s comfortable, it’s inadequate. It should be horrifying. How can it not be?

Perhaps this symbol of death is even more poignant for being in a classroom, the very last place a gun should ever be. War would be the most fundamentally absurd thing imaginable, if only it could be imagined. I literally can’t imagine hiding behind trenches and shooting at strangers with the understanding that killing them increases my own chance of survival. It’s too absurd.  Seeing and actually holding a realistic gun, gently touching that cold trigger with a curled finger, would bring those points home better than any text book, or even a first hand story told by a brave old man in a uniform.

Lest we forget.

Universities actually threaten freedom of speech

03 Thursday Nov 2011

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I subscribe to the National Post because they publish a handful of writers I admire, namely George Jonas, an excellent writer and thinker of admirable historical sensibility who writes candidly.  He grew up in Hungary under communism, and of all writers I know sceptical of left-wing ideology, I feel he’s got the most cause.  It’s not just an idea for him, though it’s that too. Policies that make a light go off in my head must stir his stomach.

I provide this background because his article yesterday, “Deliver us from the universities,” is guilty of generalizing a bit, and while I’d actually agree with him if I had to make a bet, I’m holding out for more evidence. Essentially: universities were and are the chief threat to freedom of speech.

Jonas cites a study being conducted by civil rights lawyer John Carpay, who created an index that promises to “evaluate the state of free speech at Canadian Universities.” The findings come out in November, but Carpay demonstrated them last week in an apparently convincing sneak peek organized by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce.  I’m curious and sceptical about the methodology, but my personal experience inclines me towards agreeing with the conclusion.

First Jonas reminds us that in origin, Universities were religious, not liberal. They believed they had to educate students to learn the truths they already possessed.  In the 20th century, “universities incubated both fascism and communism, along with their many sub-versions (pub intended).” In one sentence, Jonas provides some history, a great use of “incubated,” and doesn’t succumb to that brutal reflex where people claim they don’t mean to write the puns they mean to write. “As for the 21st century, with jihadism infesting campuses all over the world, we’re off to a rocky start.”  He denounces Hamas apologists, dubbing them “terrorist chic.” Wicked stuff.

Aside: academics are disproportionately left wing because they have theoretical jobs, and in theory everything works, even communism. Doubting the theoretical on grounds it’s only theoretical undermines the foundation of their life’s work, and so essentially, it undermines their life.  Perhaps the chief virtue in a good intellectual is to resist the impulse to merge the theoretical and the practical, and be always able to separate and distinguish the two.

Back to Jonas’ idea: I read a fantastic book on Orwell a few weeks ago describing all the left-wing hostility aimed at Orwell during the 40s, despite Orwell’s ardent allegiance of the left.  “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”  In spite of Orwell’s devotion to the left, he admirably refused to stop criticizing where he saw problems.  This was before the extent of Stalin’s crimes, the Gulags, were widely known and the left-wing intelligentsia frequently apologized and praised him.  To do so was modish.  Nobody wanted to publish Animal Farm because, spoiler alert!, in the end the animal’s revolution fails.  Orwell wanted socialism to work, but he couldn’t suppress his doubt no matter how much it irritated his comrades.  His allegiance was wholly to the truth, and for this he was ostracised. Jonas understands this dilemna: if Orwell had trouble criticising the Left, what can us mortals do and say?

My goal isn’t to denounce left-wing ideology, just the practice of silencing the other side’s argument on grounds that the verdict is already in. Though most universities have a dominant left-wing ideology in place, I’d be equally opposed to a right-wing one. I hate thinking that succumbs to grotesque oversimplification that obliterates nuance. Indeed, universities have a mandate to instil critical thinking abilities in their students to overcome this unforgivable weakness in mind.  But academic environments are rife with suspicion and hatred for people who think differently.  The chief fault is the inability to believe your ideological opponent is honest and intelligent.

But this difference in thought doesn’t even have to be highly charged political opinion.  In all kinds of classes I’ve heard friends lament that they feel uncomfortable diverging from their professor’s opinion in print for fear he’ll disapprove, and they’ll be graded accordingly.  But a different interpretation of poetry or literature doesn’t arouse the indignation and hostility that political disagreement does.  In all situations, students must not be made to feel uncomfortable voicing and writing their unfettered opinion, supported of course by convincing textual evidence. It’s precisely here, in classrooms, where Jonas’ charge resonates most with me.  Most faculty, and especially students, are smart enough to know they ought to voice in favour of freedom of speech, but insufficiently principled to commit to it in full. Rather, they’re principles are devoted solely to their cause, and there are none left over for the cause of free speech.

Example, a professor with an overt bias (voiced in politically correct terms so as not to get fired) would likely go mostly unchallenged by students who either: want to avoid a scene; don’t want to jeopardize their grade; don’t have the confidence to speak up, don’t want to be class nerd; don’t have a clue what the professor is even talking about; feel total indifference.  Maybe they’re simply hung over.  They’re understandable reasons, and at various moments I have succumbed and overcame all these things myself.  How many professors really say and believe: “my class is only useful if I’m challenged at every step of the way because the only valuable opinions are those which have survived the heaviest scrutiny?”  Even the polite Canadian tendency towards non-confrontation is incompatible with a robust academic environment where ideas become important only after they’ve survived harsh, weighty scrutiny.

I’m eternally grateful to Dalhousie, which I realised was a freakin’ Xanadu after spending a year in that putrid swamp OISE.  I left Dal with my innocence intact under the naive belief that academics want to get at the truth. They’re smart, passionate intellectuals.  Yes, but they’re all too frequently under the false belief that their views embody everything that’s good or desirable, and they tolerate no other view.  I’d like to see the results from this Campus Freedom Index and learn how the study was conducted.

If you’ve managed to sit through all this, bless your heart. Next writings will be light hearted: the “curmudgeon’s fall-fashion style guide” or perhaps, “the Kardashian divorce: I knew she was a skank.”

Movie trailers are now their own industry…don’t fall for the hype!

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

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November’s issue of Maclean’s contains an article “Trailers are out of control,” by Brian D. Johnson, that depicts accurately how in order to generate more buzz, a new industry has been set up where Hollywood trailers are accompanied with its own review.  Interesting, sad, but hardly surprising. Regrettably, the article is not available online yet.

The Hollywood Reporter criticized the trailer for The Avengers in a serious, substantial review.  The trailer! The movie doesn’t come out until next May.  The Avengers isn’t just a predictable action movie starring one hero, but five: Ironman, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Samuel L. Jackson (who even if he’s playing himself might be the most bad ass).  The trailer is very unnecessary.  Do they fight for social justice? If five superheroes are needed the world must be in great peril. Expect senseless violence and action.  But unlike the epic trailer for the Transformers sequel, this reviewer bemoans the Avenger’s trailer’s failure to convey “epic drama and conflict as well as great emotional moments.” Sounds like he’s talking about Antigone.  A review of a two minute trailer is absolutely insane. Please, let us either ignore or denounce this aspect of the new hype machine.

The article claims that since trailers are accessed in smart phones and twitter, Google searches went up 50% in the last year.  Itunes has a dedicated category for movie trailers now.  That trailers contain spoilers or are severely misleading is old news, but it is funny that a Michigan woman announced she’s suing the distributor for Drive claiming “there wasn’t enough driving,” and she was misled by “the pulse-pounding preview that made it look like Fast & Furious.”  Is she making a principled stand against an industry that intentionally deceives its customers in order to sell, or is she an idiot? If her lawsuit is successful, she’ll recoup all of her $12.50, minus legal fees. But sometimes great movies do poorly in box office because of bad or misleading commercials. William Goldman said this happened to the Princess Bride, which lacked a target demographic. Bummer.

This phenomenon of dangling tantalizing tidbits in order to entice, however disingenuous, is ubiquitous on Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere where there are links to click or things to buy.  We’re beckoned to click by alluring question marks, various lists of “10 hot things” or the like, or promises of salacious gossip.  To be sure, greatness and crap are advertised the same way, but it’s good to be cognizant of the psychology behind how our attention is being captured.  Perhaps the awareness makes you more immune to being suckered.

Anyway, the main thrust of Johnson’s article is made by invoking legendary New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael, who, by the ’80s, believed “marketing was eating cinema alive.” Johnson believes that the hype around trailers is evidence of an industry that’s contributing to its own demise, that the art form suffers. Is this true? Is marketing hampering quality movies, like the wave of American films from the ’70s, from being made today?  Would the Godfather be successful if made today, or could it even get made? Hard to know, but I’d like to think I would have had the good taste and discernment to see the movie without having to suffer a review of its trailer.

Free Speech: All or Nothing…Even Homophobia

28 Friday Oct 2011

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The article’s title is a common refrain, but it’s understood less frequently than it’s spoken.  In Canada, our freedom of speech laws don’t allow for expressing hatred. This is wrong.  Margaret Wente recently wrote an article summarizing the debate pretty clearly, and the comments are overwhelmingly in favour of her conclusion that it shouldn’t be illegal to express vile, odious opinions. Yet in 2005, William Whatcott, an unabashed homophobe, was fined $17,500 by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission after people were offended by his pamphlets. It’s now before the Supreme Court.  Whatcott said homosexuals are “sodomites” who spread filth and disease, who are full of “sin and depravity.”  His views are, surprise surprise, rooted in religion.

“Should we have to put up with being called ‘filth’? It makes me feel like less of a person.” Yup. Sorry anonymous complainant, the cost of freedom of speech is being occasionally offended.  There’s no right to not be offended, and anyway, you shouldn’t let an ignorant moron have any bearing on your personhood. I’m offended everyday but I don’t exploit it for profit.  At least those thinly skinned saints donated the $17,500 to charity, right? Hmm maybe.  How do you put a corresponding dollar value on offence anyway? Homophobes sure are easier to stomach when they’re made to foot the bill. More, please!

Canada doesn’t have a history of revolution, censorship, or any real civil turbulence like France, Russia, or the United States, and I think that’s why our definition of freedom of speech is so immature and privileged. As a country, we don’t know what it’s like to really be censored; we didn’t have the McCarthy era, guillotines or Gulags.  Our free speech ends the moment somebody is offended, hardly rare, and so long as you are a minority or perceived as vulnerable you can effectively enforce your right not to be offended. This right is made up, it doesn’t exist, and yet it wields more power than a right other countries have fought for.

Right now, our speech laws are bound to the current climate of plurality, which sounds terrific, except it its limited and subject to change. The only question that matters is whether undesirable speech is protected: one day it can be illegal to defend the things we value today.  If tolerance and plurality become widely renounced, I’d like to still speak in favour of it without fear.  What’s currently fashionable doesn’t last. Free speech must be guarded with vigilance, and must not be taken for granted, and can’t only mean protecting favourable speech that doesn’t need protection. It sounds more than a bit counter intuitive to go out of our way to protect speech we find repulsive, but if we only make a fuss about free speech when our speech is no longer protected, it’ll be too late.

This issue doesn’t relate to bullying in schools because bullying of any sort is already not condoned.  Whether bullying warrants a harsher protocol within schools is a very reasonable discussion, but that’s not the same as saying the speech itself should be against the law.  Is bullying based on sexual identity worse than bullying in general? Is one a $20,000 fine, the other $10,000? It seems attacking the most vulnerable group would get you the stiffest fine, but then the  group with the cheapest fine would become the most vulnerable. Students, teachers, parents and friends should be conspicuously opposed to any bullying, not just because gay students should feel safe, which of course they should. but because cruelty is always wrong. Apart from inciting violence and yelling “fire” in the crowded theatre, are those against iron-clad free speech  so scared of all the hatred they think Canadians are secretly hiding?  I thought I was cynical.

Tolerating only favourable views is something intolerant people do.  This is a regressive policy that fascist states and authoritarians use to censor and suppress conversation, ideas, and criticism.  We can’t only agree with freedom when we believe it’s suitable.  We can’t complain about Chinese and Iranian censorship and do the same here, or else what we’re really arguing about isn’t  the censorship itself, but what they censor.

So long as our free speech laws are prohibitive, we shouldn’t applaud ourselves for fighting homophobia but should bemoan what a squeamish, paranoid, immature bunch we are for our failure to guarantee free speech, that right that is correctly exalted and considered the benchmark of a free democracy.

Progressive Types Enable Cheating…They Make Me Sick

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Today’s National Post reported another story, this time from Newfoundland and Labrador, about an appalling tolerance for cheating sanctioned by a school board justifying its policy with vague, positive-sounding language. Students caught cheating may have a detention or suspension, but they are not to suffer academically. In other words, a student who cheats can compete for university on equal footing as a student who has studied and actually knows something.

In its justification, buzzwords abound like “alternate appropriate assessment,” a term which fails to communicate what is actually being done because it is only slippery language crackpots use to sound benevolent.  If a policy is actually good, it should be described for what it actually is. Indeed, if I had a great idea the last thing I’d want is to communicate it poorly.  But you don’t get that language here.

The board’s spokeswoman explained, “we are a district that believes in hope and second chances.”  Is she on a parole board? I agree students shouldn’t be summarily executed for plagiarism, but cheaters can still live adult lives after a forfeited assignment or test, and might learn not to cheat again. Forgotten are the honest students who should feel validated for studying and working hard for their grade. They must not be made to feel like suckers.

A test is only reliable if it, you know, tests their knowledge.  That’s why it’s shocking to hear that: “this policy change was designed to separate student’s behaviour from learning ‘to give us a true picture of what the student knows.'” As if cheating is an innocent behaviour students can’t help.  Finding out the “true picture of what student know” is the point of the test and it’s only obscured when students cheat.  That’s why cheating is bad and the onus must be on students not to abuse this trust.  Does this really need to be said? Where are the responsible adults?  A policy on cheating that would be endorsed by the most disinterested, dishonest student must be a bad policy.

It’s not a coincidence that such an inadequate policy is implemented by people who describe it in such empty terms.  The two are related.  No clear thinking person uses this language (unless they’re being consciously dishonest) or fights cheating by enabling it.  The National Post loves these stories, and you can feel the editor’s glee upon getting word of another story like this.  Still, it’s a shame these stories are too readily available and it’s a scary trend.

This policy “against” cheating is hopelessly misguided and we must learn to reflexively perceive and discredit the hollow “language” of its justification for what it is before it poisons our discourse.

In Defence of Don Cherry

13 Thursday Oct 2011

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So much simplistic reductionism has been used to support or malign Don Cherry during his latest brouhaha. Ardent supporters of old-school tough guy hockey are behind opposing trenches against modern day ‘we juuuuust learned about concussions,’ firing generalizations at one another without really addressing Cherry’s actual stance.  To be clear, Cherry blamed three ex-fighters for denouncing fighting, calling them (in classic parlance) “pukes,” “turncoats,” and “hypocrites.”  This was factually wrong of him, because only one of the three actually wanted to ban fighting.  He should have apologized for making a mistake.  The players are considering legal action and have hinted they want his Coach’s Corner segment to end, saying it’s behind the times.  The subtext is, it’s not only this incident but his approach to the game that enables vicious, dangerous hockey, and it’s time for him to go.  But the truth is, despite his reputation is as a supporter of hockey as a primitive blood-sport, hardly anyone has done more to advance safety in the game as Don Cherry.  Paradoxically, this tendency has existed alongside his brazen endorsement of fighting, but only a certain kind of fighting, as we’ll see.

In the mid 90s, Cherry took up many causes to keep NHL players safe that are only now coming into vogue: smaller elbow pads that can’t be used as weapons; starting a campaign designed to end hitting from behind doling out stop sign stickers on the backs of kids helmets, and denouncing it in the NHL; demanding no-touch icing after showing dozens of disturbing hits causing serious injuries as a result of a more-or-less useless aspect of the game.  As a kid, on his TV segment and movies, Cherry taught me how to absorb a body-check and how not to get hit from behind. People condemn the Rock Em Sock Em videos without acknowledging all the safety tips for kids that come afterwards. People are distracted (understandably) by his loud suits, and by the force of his on screen persona, but this doesn’t eliminate all the concern Cherry has shown for player’s safety. And finally, there’s a huge aspect of fighting he denounced that nobody gives him credit for.

There is a brand of fighter, a goon, that sits on the bench until he has to fight–the kind of guy with 3000 penalty minutes, 2 goals.  Cherry has unequivocally denounced this practice, citing his own experience as a bench-warmer as humiliating.  He said the fighters on his team when he coached were four twenty goal scorers.  In other words, fighting should be an organic part of the game, occurring when tensions run high because a code of the game is broken.  It shouldn’t be the routine farce it has become, where no-talent Goliaths schedule fights in advance to remain in the league and make a better salary than they otherwise would in a freak show.  Fighting should happen the way it does in other sports and in life: when people are actually mad.

When it comes to making observations about hockey (not politics, or life in general), nobody is more observant than Don Cherry.  He explains aspects of the sport that totally escape other so-called pundits, normally ex-players finally allowed to show personality.  Cherry enriches the game by making you appreciate little things.  Last week, he showed fighters carefully moving away from a puck before a fight, knowing they were liable to step on it and injure themselves. I watched the same play live but didn’t notice.  I thought the only threat of injury was an opponents fist.  He recently showed Max Pacioretty pushing/taunting Chara after scoring a goal (typical), whereas most people focused on Chara annihilating Pacioretty’s head into a scansion. He condoned the hit as a hockey play, rightly, but but he ripped into the Montreal arena for being dangerous, offered a simple, effective solution, and showed a string of identical hits that went without suspensions. His solution was comprehensive, taking the game and player’s safety into account.  The hit was shown hundreds of times, even on the national news, but nobody else shed light on what could have been one aspect of its real motivation.  Cherry sees a bird’s eye view, the total game, that comes from watching an incalculable amount of hockey (NHL, all junior levels and even below).

Those who make it sound like Cherry is opposed to player’s safety, that he’d deny the oncoming wave of science backing up the dangers of concussions because he’s essentially a caveman, are disingenuous at best, and I suspect most of them haven’t really watched him for years and see him as a one dimensional caricature.  When he gets his facts wrong, he should admit it, and I was surprised his apology was only half-hearted.  But his opinions on hockey still enrich the game as ever, and offer a refreshing, insightful perspective that never conforms to the newest, modish opinions on the game, some of which, his detractors never admit, he predicted years ago.

If he is effectively thrown out of his position over this quarrel,he’ll leave behind a gaping hole and hockey won’t be any safer.

Unqualified Teachers Abound

01 Saturday Oct 2011

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Margaret Wente wrote a commendable opinion piece in the Globe and Mail (“Too Many Teacher’s Can’t Do Math, Let Alone Teach It,” September 29) bemoaning the alarming number of math teachers who are uncomfortable doing math themselves.  She blames the paltry amount of math courses needed to become qualified as a math teacher and the OISE pedagogy (the most influential teacher’s college in the country) that fails to prioritize education in favour of, “social justice and global inequality.” Wente is correct on both points.

Personally, I was shocked when I got accepted to OISE because I didn’t think I had sufficient History courses when I applied. (English was my primary teachable, which I majored in, but I thought I was at least one short for my secondary teachable).  I suspect I was accepted solely on the basis of the equity/racism essay I wrote in my application, as they’re the only school that required one and they’re the only school I got accepted to.  In other words, OISE had the magnanimity to look past my lack of requirements and see only my contrived essay I wrote to satisfy their predictable view of multiculturalism.  That school was a nightmare.  It turns out I shouldn’t have joined a club that would have me as a member.

OISE fails to recognize that setting unqualified teachers upon a country of innocent students is itself a social injustice. Wente describes the frustration of University professors from around the country who report that the math skills of students studying to become math teachers are “generally abysmal.”  This is obviously a crucial problem, but it’s compounded because the teacher training programs you’d expect to be concerned are more concerned with politics than education.  It’s like the police protesting a lawless society by encouraging rioters to find the biggest, most expensive TV to steal.

To be sure, a teacher is a part time social worker; they spend a huge chunk of time with kids who have real issues.  Teaching poor children who don’t eat breakfast, or who are abused by their parents, or bullied is extremely hard work, and there’s no shortages of other issues. But if you are so concerned with politics and society, become a politician.  What’s needed is concrete steps to help educate kids who suffer from inequalities, not constantly railing against them in some abstract way while failing to teach kids to read and write because the teachers don’t know how to themselves.

Every teacher’s college should subscribe to the following statement: “If you don’t know squat about what you teach it doesn’t matter how sympathetic you are to the plight of your students.” Any institution who disagrees with this final statement, in word or in action, has blood on its hands.

the Return of John Galliano

22 Thursday Sep 2011

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The current issue of Maclean’s reports that garish John Galliano, the high-profile anti-Semite and former fashion designer/icon, might be poised for a “resurrection.”  Cue the Rocky music, our hero’s returning.  A Parisian court found him guilty of “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity,”  a verdict that didn’t exactly require enhanced interrogation techniques to arrive at since Galliano was filmed professing his love for Hitler, and plaintiff Geraldine Bloch described separate occasions where Galliano remarked on her “dirty Jewish face.”  Possibly, just possibly, she had remnants of lunch on her Jewish face, but in case you were about to give Galliano the benefit of the doubt consider he called her a “‘dirty whore’ at least a thousand times” in a 45 minute rant.”  Even accounting for exaggeration that’s 22 times a minute, rounding down.  Thankfully for John, Paris has no law forbidding issuing insults based on sexual proclivity.  In any case, the judge let him off light: this incident will appear on his record (should somebody forget) and he only has to pay about an $8000 suspended sentence, meaning he pays nothing unless he offends again in the next five years.  He escaped a $30,000 fine and six month jail time, the maximum punishment for his offence.  The presiding judge noted the “values of respect and tolerance which the defendant generally adheres to,” of course notwithstanding his rapid- fire misogyny and drunken Jew bashing.

To be sure, I don’t agree that there ought to be a law forbidding saying what he said, as odious as it is.  It was obviously a detestable opinion, but it was not a call to violence. Of course the court of public opinion screwed him way harder by effectively dropping him from his high profile jobs, so the verdict in real court was irrelevant.  Whether the law should exist or not is a fair but separate question, but it does exist and he was undeniably very guilty.

Too often celebrities are expected to be good people, and when they publicly screw up the public is disappointed they weren’t better role models for the kids and pathetic adults who should know better.  People should be admired for their talents, but talented people shouldn’t be expected to be particularly virtuous.  Their talent has nothing to do with their morals.  I don’t like Wagner’s music, but unlike Woody Allen it doesn’t give me the urge to conquer Poland.  There’s a separation for me.  Likewise, I still enjoy listening to Thriller, and freely admit I hear the music and mute the sounds of protesting children.  So as disturbing as Galliano’s comments were, as long as he can put together a dress I can’t really blame Kate Moss for wearing his at her wedding.  Though the standing ovation Galliano garnered after Moss’s father thanked him seems excessively polite for my taste.

As of now, Galliano’s lawyer said his client’s mood is “serene, relieved and pleased this is all behind him.”  But some people have longer memories. Unfortunately the article failed to drudge up his most vile comments.  For the next five years, Galliano will make sure there’s no video camera around before he tells a woman, “I love Hitler and people like you would be dead.  Your mothers, your fathers would all be fucking gassed.”

Militant Left-Wingers Overburdening Young Children

16 Friday Sep 2011

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When I was six, nothing was more important to me than pizza, the Blue Jays, and X-men.  By certain contemporary standards, I was a selfish boy guilty of neglecting the plight of the marginalized.  The National Post reported Wednesday that a father was angered when he saw the calendar of his six year old son’s day planner.  December 17 was marked International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, Feb. 6 was International Day of Zero Tolerance against Genital Mutilation, and what would an equitable, inclusive day planner for infants be without a call for Palestinian solidarity?  The Toronto District School Board issues the planners at a cost of $10 each.  Today, the TDSB is dedicated to extinguishing the ever present danger of childhood innocence.

A spokeswoman for the TDSB, Shari Schwartz-Maltz, explains that the board uses several suppliers to make the planners, plus some planners have specific pages unique for individual schools, making it hard to know how many schools received this exact planner.  Couldn’t there be other planners running amok?  Infants elsewhere might be readying for “9/11 conspiracy day,” or something similarly inclusive and equitable, but I suspect there are no “days of significance” honouring Milton Friedman or Maynard Keynes, those heroes of capitalism.

In one breath, a professor of education at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) named Kathleen Gallagher clearly identifies the problem, then defends it nonetheless: “…no educator wants to overburden a young child with difficulty that he or she is unequipped for, but at the same time I have to say with equal vehemence that sometimes these prompts provide an opportunity, however difficult, for parents and children to have important conversations.  And when it’s instituted in a calendar, it’s more likely that a child might ask their parents because walking around in the world, a child is going to encounter those ideas.”

The first part is lifted from Curb Your Enthusiasm when you say one thing before immediately negating it by saying “at the same time.” It’s less funny here.  To be a nitpicker, you can’t argue both something and its opposite “with equal vehemence”…it’s clear what she vehemently believes.  What’s really illustrative is her belief that six year old children require shielding from older kids on the playground who will inevitably talk about genital mutilation.  She confuses her hyper-political OISE world of urgent causes for the world surrounding a six year old child.  Kids only talk about genitals if they’re hit by a projectile, and that’s normally good for a laugh.

And Palestinian solidarity for six year olds?  Outrageous.  This supposes a highly partisan cause is universal, and even if it presented the issue in balanced terms, which of course it doesn’t, to discuss and learn about such a polarizing, complicated topic with kids so young is scandalously inappropriate.  Perhaps the TDSB and OISE’s Gallagher expect parents to compare and contrast Theodore Herzl and Edward Said for their six year olds?  This is standard issue from the school who awarded Jenny Peto a master’s degree for producing a rambling annotated autobiography.  This is no accident, it’s propaganda.  In another time and place, these children would be given machine guns and orders.  Having an “important discussion” like this with a six year old is designed to go horribly wrong.  Mommy, why do Jews love killing Arabs so much?  Like Dicaprio in Inception, they’re planting a very controversial idea in somebody’s unguarded mind.  Under the guise of enlightenment, militant lefties are brazenly and perniciously seeking to convert defenceless infants to their vile ranks.  This isn’t a noble but “difficult conversation,” it’s child abuse. And I’m not in the least surprised.

Reckless, radical progressives make pilgrimages to OISE en masse because, even though OISE dabbles in education, the “school” is merely a front for its true purpose as an activist haven.  During my year at OISE, I had a conversation with one of these humourless, disgruntled boors wherein he reduced Fifth Business, an internationally acclaimed novel about the way history is viewed, magic, and Jungian psychology, to a novel written by a dead white Christian man (I doubt it occurred to him that eventually he too would be a dead white Christian man). Immune to complexity, it never occurs to this species of philistine they can be mistaken, so they’re convinced they have a patent on morality.  In the same class, “Actively Educating for Social & Economic Justice,” a kindergarten teacher-to-be volunteered that he was perfectly willing to reveal his political beliefs to the infants in his class.  Politics in Kindergarten.  Nobody in the room batted an eyelash. There’s a scene in Lord of the Rings where the evil Saruman watches his demonic beasts being formed from the nether regions of hell to wage war on the innocent. Such is OISE forming their teachers.

The National Post points out that OISE and the TDSB are not alone.  The McGuinty government got heat last year for trying to introduce changes to the health education’s curriculum that would teach grade threes about homosexuality and grade sixes about masturbation—the latter a subject which, unlike say math or English, many students are autodidacts.  Jan Wong in October’s Toronto Life reports on the growing number of Toronto public schools (more than 200 of nearly 600) have gardens where kids learn to grow vegetables while one in five can’t pass the grade ten literacy test administered by the provincially funded Education Quality and Accountability Office. (As of publishing, sadly this interesting article wasn’t available online).  At this rate, believing school should have at least something to do with education will be seen as radical.

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