What Canada's Conservatives can teach America's Republicans

The Republicans in the US could learn a thing or two from Canada’s Stephan Harper’s Conservatives. Early on in the emergence of Canada’s new Conservative Party from the wreckage of the Progressive Conservative and Reform Parties, the leadership recognized that if they were going to win elections they’d have to drop divisive policies and shut their most extremist members up. In 2004 they voted to accept that Canada is a bilingual country (a reality that conservatives had long denied) and not to bring up the subject of abortion and other equally emotional issues, like same sex marriage. They also seem to have recognized that to bring up the subject of capital punishment would only cost them votes despite the fact that a majority of voters appear to support state executions.

This is something they had to do if they expected to ever form a government. That many Canadians suspected that Harper’s Conservatives had a “hidden agenda” and would act to criminalize abortion, bring back capital punishment, ban same-sex marriage, etc. played a large part in their managing to achieve only minority status in two federal elections. However, the few extremists in the party who did make headlines were very quickly and effectively shut down. It was only after voters had relaxed enough to realize that it was highly unlikely that Harper would allow such divisive issues to come to the fore that he was given a majority mandate (the fact that the federal Liberal party had self-destructed also helped).

In other words, the American Republican Party needs to work to rid itself of the image that it is a party of wing nuts. It is gratifying to see that the senate candidates who expressed views that are repugnant to any thinking person (legitimate rape—whatever the H that is—can’t cause pregnancy and rape is part of God’s plan) were defeated. But, there are a lot of members remaining in the Republican Party who can’t seem to grasp basic science and reason. Instead of denying the reality of global climate change, for example, and dismissing scientists with pejorative comments, they could present their plan for dealing with the issues. Instead of focusing on whether the current president is an American citizen or a secret Muslim, they could tell voters how they would deal with the issues in other than vague and meaningless slogans. They should distance themselves from radio commentators who characterize female university students who want access to birth control as “sluts.”

Harper’s Conservatives appear to have realized that all citizens have a vote and need to be convinced to support them in elections. To that end, government ministers have made an effort to reach out to minorities. They speak at ethnic community centres, eat dim sum, and work with ethnic community leaders. Compare that to the dismissive and condescending attitude many Republicans appear to have towards minority groups, especially those of recent immigrants. There were some interesting comments made on Fox news about how the white middle class male is becoming a minority in the USA. Instead of lamenting that fact, political parties who ignore it are hitching themselves to a dwindling block of voters.

While I oppose many Conservative policies I still feel that communication is possible and that I can debate the issues with them. I have no idea how I could ever hold any sort of conversation with someone who seems to think that God is going to unleash Armageddon unless I vote the way they think I ought to—and someone who suggests that anyone who holds views that differ from theirs are not “true” Americans—or that the world outside America’s borders is filled with envious and resentful enemies seeking the destruction and subversion of their country. I think a lot of Americans would be stunned to learn that most of the world’s population has absolutely no desire to become American citizens and harbours no feelings one way or the other towards the United States except to wish that they’d stop meddling in the affairs of other countries.

In any case...Canada’s Conservative Party has one huge advantage over their American counterparts: Canada has no television network devoted to 24 hour coverage of lies, misinformation, disinformation, and the promotion of nut-case viewpoints. Yes, I'm saying that FOX News Network is the American Republican Party’s single largest handicap. FOX helps spread the image that the Republican Party is completely divorced from reality. For example, it does not matter what President Obama does: FOX will characterize it in the most negative light it can, even if some Republicans have earlier supported the same policies and actions as the president, and, even if they have to lie to support their opinions. They would gain some credulity if they could occasionally give credit where it is due instead of digging so hard to convince their viewers that the opposite of what the “lame stream media” reported had occurred. It is FOX news that is creating the illusion that America is a deeply divided country.

Frankly, I don’t think that America is divided at all—at least not in the way the pundits would have us believe. I suspect that Americans, like most humans on this planet, are more concerned with loving their families and friends, gaining in self-respect, contributing to their societies, and just getting along than they are with the opinions of the political classes and their minions and apologists. Any political party that can’t “get” that is doomed to failure.

And that’s my two cents on the election this week.

I'm no teacher's pet.

As a teacher, and then a parent with children going through our school system, I was often appalled by the level of education of teachers I met and worked with. We encountered teachers who sent home notes with basic spelling and grammar errors; teachers who taught our children about American Thanksgiving traditions but had never heard of Canadian ones; teachers who could not spell Shakespeare or were obsessed with what colour dividers our son used in his notebook; a science teacher who insisted that a computer had a hard disk drive because he “could tell by the size of the case;” an ethics teacher who told his class that homosexuals were condemned to hell;  English teachers who could not name a single Canadian author; a history teacher who had not heard of  the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions of 1837; a teacher who told me that ect was French for etc. When questioned about these basic elements of their jobs we encountered defensiveness and a dismissive attitude suggested that they were the experts and we were mere parents who couldn't possibly have the expertise to question them.

We have been taught to “respect” teachers as authorities on their subject areas and, to a fair extent, that is a valid position. However, this does not take into account the reality of our educational world. Despite what we would like to believe, it is possible to work as a teacher in our schools with no training or certification. True, that is most often an exceptional case when someone with the necessary qualifications cannot be located—such as an auto shop teacher with a university degree and teacher certification—but, as recently as 1973 I was hired as a regular full-time teacher of general subjects even though I had not received any training as a teacher, nor did I have any qualification other than a bachelor’s degree. Later in the 1970’s and early ‘80’s (after I had become fully trained and certified) I worked with teachers hired on a similar basis.

Historically there were no special requirements for assuming the role of a teacher other than a willingness to spend one’s days with children and to conform to the political and social expectations of the community. In other words, teachers were often young women, teenagers themselves, passing time in the neither world between completing their schooling and marriage. It was not uncommon for someone with a grade eight education to teach grade seven, for example. “Finishing schools,” which developed to educate young women in the ways of marriage and etiquette, became, for many, the de facto teacher-training schools. Teaching, until very recently, was geared towards creating obedient future citizens with the rudimentary skills needed to support their communities.  

Today a university degree and being certified by the state does not ensure that a teacher is competent nor does it mean that anyone without those qualifications cannot be a good teacher. First of all, what kind of degrees do most teachers possess? Generally speaking, unless we are talking of a very specialized subject area, a teacher will hold a general arts bachelor’s degree. What this means is that they have taken an introductory-level course in literature, general science, a second language, a social science course (sociology or psychology), and a “philosophy” course—which these days could mean anything from studying Aristotle to living in a commune for a term. After that, they've taken an additional 10 or so courses to broaden their study of one or more of those general subject areas, but with a smattering of other subjects thrown in. After graduation if they want to become teachers they can take a one-year diploma course on general education topics like education law, classroom management, using media in the classroom, etc.  The other route, generally speaking, is to pursue a bachelor’s degree in education. This degree is virtually identical to a general BA, except that the student takes a few more education-related courses.

Have you spotted the flaw in the system yet? Nowhere, in any of a teacher’s training, is he or she required to study anything in depth. A student can receive a degree without taking anything other than a single entry-level literature course and be fully qualified to teach secondary school English literature. The situation is even more marked when you consider that this person can now teach history in our schools—without ever taking a history course themselves past the high school level. In fact, many of the history and geography teachers I encountered over the years had no training at all in those subject areas and their level of knowledge was about on par with the average senior primary school student—in other words, a mixture of myth and parroted material with no understanding or questioning of the basic assumptions of what they had been presented with by teachers with no special knowledge or training themselves.

Here is a little quiz for secondary level teachers. Any teacher comfortable with his subject area should be able to breeze through such questions without having to stop to stammer. If they are evasive, vague, or dismissive in their attitude, then you might want to look a little more closely at what, exactly, they are presenting to your children each day in the classroom.

Ask your child’s history teacher to name a well-known Canadian historian. After all, if the teacher is not familiar with historians, then where is he or she getting their course material and background understanding from? I would be happy if one of my children’s teachers could name just one from the following list; ecstatic if they could name three or more.

Here are some examples of well-known Canadian historians: Jack Granatstein, Donald Creighton, Jean Provencher, Lionel-Adolphe Groulx, William Lewis Morton, George Ramsay Cook, Pierre Berton, Helmut Kallmann, Peter C Newman.

I would expect a secondary school geography teacher to be able to describe where and what is notable about the following places in Canada: Burgess Shale, Taiga Shield, Qu'Appelle Valley, Ivvavik National Park. They should also be able to name and locate at least ten significant Canadian rivers and I would also expect them to be able to name the capital cities of all Canadian provinces and territories (as my children could by the time they were five years old) as well as be able to distinguish between St. John and St. John’s. 

A teacher of secondary school English literature should be familiar with the works of many of Canada’s authors and poets. Canada is, after all, world-renown for its writers and poetry and I would expect all of the names of the following novelists and poets to be, at a minimum, instantly recognizable to a specialist in literature in a Canadian school.

Novelists: Margaret Atwood, Morley Callaghan, Robertson Davies, William Gibson, Anne Hébert, Margaret Laurence, Gabrielle Roy, Stephen Leacock, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Hugh MacLennan, Yann Martel, W.O. Mitchell, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, Carol Shields. Poets: Milton Acorn,  F. R. O. Scott, George Bowering,  Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, Dennis Lee, Dorothy Livesay, Susan Musgrave, Alden Nowlan, P.K. Page, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster.

Math teachers should have no trouble describing the meanings of the following types of numbers: natural, integers, rational, real, and complex. I expect the teacher to be able to give me an example of several prime numbers and an example of a Fibonacci sequence. I would also expect that the teacher could, without aid of calculator or having to think very hard, tell me the binary and hexadecimal representations of the decimal number 10 (ans: binary: 1010; hexadecimal: a.)

If you think any of these questions are “too difficult” for your teacher, then I would not want that teacher in my child’s classroom. Nothing, in any of the above, is anything that someone with a passing interest in the subject should have any difficulty with—and I want my teachers to have a bit more than a passing interest.

Etc.

I've been assisting with the editing of numerous research studies lately. In scientific research papers the “references” sections lists studies that the author referenced when writing his paper. Each publication has its standard format, but, some elements are common. For example, it is general policy that words in the title and author’s names be spelled correctly. It is a good idea to supply accurate information about what publication and in what issue and page range the referenced article originally appeared. The formats spell out the order of the elements presented in a reference, how they are punctuated, and how many author names should be listed. That last is important. Some research papers could have fifteen or twenty authors. Sometimes the first six authors are listed in a reference, sometimes only the first three, but, in any case, when the list of authors has been truncated, the expression et al. is added to the list.

One would assume that anyone familiar with any kind of research paper, medical or otherwise, would be familiar with the expression et al. and know what it means. After all, it appears in any list of publications and articles. Apparently, though, it is not always the case that a paper’s author knows what he is doing when he encounters it. I have seen it written as eta,  e.t.a.l.,  e tal,  et la,  and other very odd-looking variants. Of course, Latin is not taught as part of the general curriculum any more, so I can understand anyone younger than I am not being aware of the original Latin expression that is abbreviated here. Et alia is a neuter plural expression meaning “and all the remainder (of those people).” Or, in plain English: “and the rest of those guys.” Knowing that, the abbreviation immediately makes sense and should stick in one’s memory like glue.

 Another common Latin abbreviation frequently seen (perhaps too frequently) is etc. It is a lazy man’s way of ending a list when he has run out of examples. The complete original Latin is et cetera meaning (similar to et alia) “and all the other similar items.” Again, knowing that the abbreviation is taken from the first three letters of the expression should help make it unforgettable. However, when I was teaching English I frequently encountered this odd variant: ect. It didn't seem to matter how often I corrected it in student essays; it was ubiquitous. One day I remarked on this to a fellow teacher who explained to me that ect was the French form of etc. I don’t recall what I said, but it most likely was something very rude about ignoramuses being allowed to teach in our school system. Since when does the Latin language change depending on the native language of the speaker? French Latin, English Latin, Russia Latin? Come on; let’s get real here. And, as for abbreviations, one letter does not arbitrarily jump from one location in the series to another.

While I am on the subject, please take note that the et in the expressions in not pronounced the same way as it is in French—with a silent t. The t in Latin is very much pronounced. In fact, the e is not pronounced the same in both languages either. In Latin, it is a short e while in French it is more like a long a sound. Be that as it may, I grow weary of Caesar electing to speak in French when uttering the three words: et tu, Brute from his final speech. He more likely would have used his native language of Latin with a short initial e and both T’s distinctly articulated.

No, I do no think we should go back to mandatory Latin instruction in our schools. But, I would like to see better-educated teachers who are familiar with the structures, reasoning, and history behind our language in classrooms. The teacher who tried to tell me that Latin is a different language to French speakers than it is to English speakers was not an isolated example of the appalling and outrageous ignorance that I have encountered in my more than 60 years of interaction with the public school system (as a student, teacher, and parent). And, this ignorance was not limited to our language: it permeates all school subject material. The myths being presented to students as though they were facts are enough to make anyone despair that we have actually made any progress in knowledge and understanding since the middle ages.