Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Are you on the Conservatives Enemies' list?

The other day I received an unidentified letter in the mail warning in big bold letters (exactly as written) “Are you on the Conservatives Enemies’ list?” I opened it eagerly to find that it was from the NDP telling me, among other things, of a data base operated by the Conservatives.  I was heartened to learn that I am likely not alone on that data base.  But I was also bothered by the bad grammar.  The envelope should have read: “Are you on the Conservatives’ Enemies list?”  Apparently the federal NDP, while no longer socialist, still has problems with its possessives. 

Monday, December 9, 2013

This closure was 'nuts'

Did you know that British Columbia has its own controversy over “values”?  In Quebec the PQ government intends to discriminate against religious minorities – in particular Muslims. In B.C. the Liberal government of Premier Christy Clark, and Premier Gordon Campbell before her, along with previous governments, has consistently discriminated against the mentally ill, or at best ‘tolerated’ them, even when they were bused into this province free, thanks to Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta.  Now, the Lower Mainland has a full-blown mental-health crisis on its hands.  If the mentally ill were again being served by Riverview Hospital, then quite likely the violence on the city streets of Vancouver would not be increasing. And maybe, since the start of the year, St. Paul’s Hospital, in the heart of Vancouver, would not be seeing nearly a 50%-increase in the number of “dual diagnosis” individuals – people with severe mental health illnesses and addiction problems.

Completely downsizing Riverview Hospital and then closing it was a mistake, born of arrogance and misguided judgement – skewed by Hollywood’s “cuckoo’s nest” mentality and by Ronald Reagan’s neo-conservatism.  Christy Clark’s veto of the BCUM proposal to reopen Riverview was simply a brazen exercise in political power, with smiles, fresh off her enhanced mandate.  Given the nature of her party line, she also is probably still inclined to see mental illness entirely as an “individual” problem that has nothing at all to do with “society”.   This is why “society” is obliged to owe the mentally ill nothing, neither a hospital – nor the dignity of employment.

When governments eliminate hospitals they do not eliminate illnesses.  Downsizing is supposed to be “cost-effective,” but it is also a denial of state responsibility.  The severely mentally ill often have any number of concurrent disorders beyond the skills of Community Living workers.  Having the resources of a centralized and specialized hospital offers peace of mind to those who have little or no peace of mind, and it boils down to a matter of fairness to the underrepresented, which is a good for society.  In other words, it’s nuts not to have Riverview Hospital, but then again we already know provincial political leaders to be cuckoo. 

Sink the Semester System

Did your mother not tell you “everything in moderation, nothing to extreme”?  That old adage derives from the ancient Greeks, among them Aristotle, who emphasized balance and a sense of proportion.  Today, with the semester system of high school education under the Coquitlam District School Board, that old adage is thrown out the window.  Ancient Greek wisdom has been replaced by North American “workaholic” types and Asian “obsessive” models, and we think that we are doing our kids a favour, by making them “tougher”.

Coquitlam high school classes resemble educational silos, where course curriculum is designed to over-the-top standards.  This can be especially daunting for kids who actually care about what they are being taught.  The guilty party is not any teacher, or school, but the School Board, which (following the industrial model) wants to “compress” time and learning – and presumably costs.
    
The never-ending “factory work” is not healthy.  We try to do the best for our kids yet there is no time to live. There has to be a period in a student’s day when homework is finished, and when free play begins. Students need to feel like they can successfully complete their assignments to achieve this sense of balance.  And the more we endure excess in our schools, the less critical might we be of extremes in our public politics, but that is another story.

Keep in mind, as well, that most Coquitlam District high schools are at best pretentious, because they do not offer year-round courses in mathematics, preventing students from building consistency in a vital foundational skill.  Looking closely, for example at after-school programmes, the overall net effect is that the offspring of immigrants are destined to become superior doctors, lawyers and engineers, because many immigrant parents – not the School Board - are the ones who recognize the problem-solving significance of mathematics in the first place.  Go figure.


And as for the over-programmed semesters (here I borrow from Karl Marx) - Parents in District 43: unite!