2:38 a.m. - 2004-03-14
Contracts
My youngest and my Dad are very much alike in some ways. Very slow and deliberate when it comes to making up their minds about something - thoughtful. Try to get them to alter their chosen course of action and bull-headed becomes human. However, when that process is completed they want the decision implemented immediately, if not yesterday. My Dad has even been known to snap his fingers at me. It's lucky I love him, anyone else would be minus a few of those digits. Well not really, but they would get a taste of major passive resistance.
Tonight that was really obvious when my youngest decided he wanted to spend some of his babysitting money to bid on a Playstation (I think) game on E-bay. The price was reasonable at the time I checked, so I left him to watch the progress of the bidding over the next few hours. Got a lot of housework done, then decided I might as well do my belly-dance exercises. I use both tapes now, so it works out to about a 45 minute routine. Mid-way through my son came rushing out of the computer room and demanded I come and look at the computer RIGHT NOW, since he had won the bidding. Nope - when I exercise one of my hard and fast rules is that I continue until I'm done, nothing interrupts me. Well, was I in the doghouse - how could I not care about him? Well actually I do a great deal, I love my son, but I also don't think the world will end if he has to wait a few more minutes for me, especially when I'd been waiting for him for several hours. Right? Oh well.
I'm feeling a little sheepish about the snide remarks I made about editors about two posts ago. There are good editors too, of course. Sometimes there are publishers that make it impossible for them to do their jobs properly. For example, for many years we had a really great local paper - balanced reporting and usually pretty objective. Then the publication was sold a couple of times. Each time, the editorial policies became more unbalanced and there was a creeping of that policy into the hard news reporting that became blatant. In the past couple of weeks that seems to have turned around and I have been pleasantly surprised by the change in tone. Some of the debate that used to occur is beginning to open up too. There was, for a time, some really vicious character assassination against people in the community who didn't conform with the paper's editorial slant or values,while others in leadership positions, who were favoured by the paper, were able to commit the most egregious, destructive actions and see them explained away on their behalf by said paper.
During the times when it was really awful, I called one of the editors to protest the coverage and editorialization on education issues. About ten years ago and to this date, there was an unrelenting attack on teachers' competence and students' abilities, even as 30% of funding for schools was removed by the provincial government. They even stopped funding kindergarten (Early Childhood Services)saying it wasn't useful. Three years later they reversed that, when it became very evident how important it was. Anyway the editor asked me to write an opinion piece for him, which he then placed on the same page as four other guest columns about the issue. I found out about a year later that he had been demoted, at least partly because of that decision. I still don't understand what in that article was so terrible that such action was taken, because it had all come from first hand observation over nearly two decades. So, dear diary, I'm going to post it here and maybe you can figure it out.
"POP QUIZ"
1) If the Herald had arrived at your home this morning in Canada's other official language and you were required by law to complete a written test - in French - would that test reflect your level of competence, intelligence and understanding?
2) If you suddenly became one of Calgary's growing numbers of working poor with only enough income to cover food, shelter, utilities, health and transit costs, what would you NOT pay in order to pay school fees, supplies and field trip costs? What would your response be to a school fund-raising drive to buy computers, or even books? Given this bitterly cold winter [daily high was -30 unabated for four months] and no clothing budget would you : a) Cut some of the necessities listed above; b) Keep your child home on cold days since you couldn't clothe them adequately or drive them since a vehicle is not a line item in your budget; c) Appeal to Social Services.
Before you answer the last question, consider this: This spring Calgary Social Services held focus groups trying to determine why so many families had their gas and utilities cut off this winter and what might ease the crisis.
Alberta Family and Social Services (provincial body) approached church groups in Calgary to see if they would take on the responsibility of paying the arrears on utility bills for such families since that was not within their mandate.
A Mom with school aged children was deeemed unable to care for her children. Relatives in the same community very much wanted to take those children and were assessed by Social Services to be good caregivers.
However, because their income fell $100 or $200 a month short, policy dictated that the children be removed from their home, school, and community and placed in a foster home of significantly higher costs.(about $5000 per month as a matter of fact).
Food banks and housing agencies are unable to meet the needs of families already in their care. Five thousand families needed crisis housing in Calgary last year and that number is expected to increase by 20 per cent. Twelve hundred people, including children, are homeless night by night [ that number has increased tenfold in the intervening time]
Okay, now go ahead and choose one option for your child. A teacher indicates that your child would greatly benefit from tutoring/enrichment program. What do you cut out of your budget - food or health care - to cover it?
You walk to the grocery store, preschoolers in tow, then carry the groceries home, spend a couple of hours in the laundromat and a couple of hours on transit travelling to and from work. Your child's school really needs parent volunteers. What do you do? Your child is to submit homework on computer disk - how do you manage that?
3) Refugees from Bosnia, Rwanda, the former Soviet Union and many other war-torn countries have arrived in Calgary. Vietnamese and Ethiopian families, held for years in forced camps on Indonesia, the Sudan, and Hong Kong have also arrived. All have witnessed or experienced long term brutality and destruction and many of the children have missed long stretches of schooling. Some have never been in school. They come with nothing.
How much energy do you think these parents and children have to invest in schooling? Remember to throw in language and cultural barriers, as well as poverty, just for good measure.
Families with these barriers to inclusion tend to cluster in communities with affordable housing in order to increase their chances of economic survival. They also gain comfort, emotional support and understanding of their day-to-day struggles from others also trying to cope with the same issues. Communities with these families in their midst try very hard through their volunteer organizations to help. But throw in challenges that cross all socio-economic and cultural boundaries like mental and physical disabilities, chronic health problems and family violence in the general population and the demands often overwhelm the much smaller volunteer components of the community.
It is not, therefore, surprising to see the schools ranked in the lower half of the provincial testing scale are all located in the communities where the most challenged families live. This "objective measure" (provincial treasurer Jim Dinning's words) is equally an accurate measure of how well or poorly our society responds to the needs of our most vulnerable children.
The question now becomes this: If these provincial incdicators are actually such inaccurate measures of teaching competence given all the other variables, then how can a parent or taxpayer evaluate a given school or, even more importantly, work to improve the quality of public education, the foundation of Canada's social contract?"
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