21:08 - 01.05.06
la plus ca change la plus sa meme
It began with a curious little item at the bottom of page A2 in the Saturday newspaper. I still can't read the signs, but a lot of synchronous discussions have kept it in the front of my mind since. What does it signal? Does it really say anything. Flash back to when Conrad Black bought out about 60% of print media in Canada and the tenor of the times. There was a rapid and disturbing change in the pages of that newspaper, the worst of which was the presentation of the Black's personal opinions as fact, and also as newsworthy. As the trial for Mr Black reveals, they were neither. I think that that sort of self-adulation in many publications around the late 1990's was the biggest factor in the demise of print and air time news. Many fine investigative journalists left or were driven out of the business at that time and too much of what was reported in those years was just untruth. In democratic countries in many parts of the world once faithful readers - like me - turned to the internet trying to find some sort of factual bases so that we could respond to the world around us with reasoned and fair solutions. Of course, we all came from our own values and that would make our searches for "just the facts" ma'am" doubly difficult. Where once we had had a strong relationship of trust and tolerance with the media of the day, that option suddenly disappeared and it hurt. The other phenomenon that could claim some of it's roots in that evolution of communication was the emerging blogging community. Eye witness reports from sources where, by knowing something of the nature of the person presenting the information, one hoped one could extract the truth, after allowing for whatever bias might be in them. That search for unfiltered and un-"reframed" information forced one to hone one's research and analysis skills on the web as well. How does one set up criteria to judge the reliability of the information presented?
A couple of years into this scenario some journalists saw unionizing as a possible protection for independent reporting. A strike ensued at our local news source. The results were a brutal devolution of the community of journalists here. I believe the wounds are still very deep and may never be reconciled. The person who was heading the newspaper at the time was the subject of that one small item in the news on Saturday. Just a few lines buried where most people wouldn't see them and where even fewer would wonder at their meaning. The comment? That the person in question had finished their relationship with the newspaper as of Friday and subsequently, another individual would take interim responsibility. No more no less. Now historically, whenever someone in that very high profile position left in past decades, whether under great or terrible circumstances, that newspaper would always publish some sort of retrospect and circumspect good-bye to any who had held the helm of the organization for any length of time. This person had been at the paper starting as a reporter for over 14 years. Certainly that merited a lot more than that one inch of typesetting.
Now I did not like this person's editorial stance more often than not. I thought too, that his treatment of his staff was, at times, totally unfair. During that strike, I wrote a letter to the editor that prompted a rapid and very nasty reply from him. Because I had been the volunteer liaison to many of those reporters over the years of those community development projects I developed some friendships or, at least, friendly relationships with a lot of the reporters. The reason I was allowed in was that whatever the questions asked of me,I would spill all the details I knew and believed to be true. I always provided the sources I drew my research from so that they would be well aware of my biases too. For example, being a volunteer for Amnesty International meant there were specific positions I took, with respect to Human Rights, that didn't necessarily correlate with general beliefs and values in our community. I always put that down to lack of knowledge though. How many people knew, for instance, that it was this NGO that was tracking the deployment and purchase of nuclear weapons as the cold war melted away. Do the hawks really want to know where all those stockpiled weapons in the Ukraine went and who fronted the purchases? Ask some of the senior Amnesty and Project Ploughshares volunteers over those few decades. Uh huh. The wisdom of serpents but the innocence of doves. I think that's a biblical quote isn't it? As a result of some extended conversations with some of those journalists, I understood that the purpose of the strike had little to do with money or seniority as it was being portrayed by the owners and had much more to do with the journalistic integrity of the writers.
In addition, an earlier incident where one editor was demoted, in part, because he added an opinion piece I had written as part of the discussion of the direction education policy in this province should go, had really shown me a person who had little interest in free expression of a range of views. If that piece hadn't been placed in that context, or had been presented at a different time, I don't think it would have had that consequence for that one individual. But it was at a time when the political landscape had changed radically in the province and one of the fiercest philosophical debates was over the direction of education curriculum and measurement of results was raging. One of my honorable opponents often cited as his mantra "give me your childrens' minds until they are eight and they will always be mine". He also always used to say that the quote was from Hilter's little cabal, but he also lied a lot. Personal opinion of course. Anyway, one day I called the one editor one afternoon to protest the extreme bias in the reporting of education "statistics and facts" that had been presented in Mr Black's newspaper to support his personal belief about education. That editor said "fine, we are doing a major op-ed print tomorrow. Have your written position in to me by 11 am tomorrow. If I like it, I'll include it." So that night I wrote and rewrote for hours. I was scheduled in to volunteer in one of my son's classes the next morning. The school principal gave me permission to use their fax to get my creation in on time, without missing a beat in the classroom of the day. Next morning my piece - cut in half, I sniffed - appeared in the anchor position of that editorial page. Quite frankly, I didn't know the term or the meaning of that placement. All I really cared about that was there was a balance in the views presented. Not long after, it was announced in that newspaper that the editor in question was being moved to editor of another section. I called and left a voicemail congratulating him. It was a real kick in the gut to find out later that that move had been a demotion - another reporter at the paper told me when I commented on the change. I don't believe that one little opinion piece was all that was involved in that action, but it was the person featured in that one little inch of print this weekend who had done the demoting. Don't like him just for that one thing I'm afraid.
This day and yesterday it seemed that every conversation I had - with my Dad, sister, and number two son - focussed on those issues raised around reporting of quality of life and social justice issues. That one little (edited as it was in that paper) opinion piece I wrote? As follows: 'Objective measure'really tells how we treat vulnerable kids
Pop Quiz
1)If the Herald had arrived at your home this morning printed 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 number 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 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 serviices held focus groups trying to determine why so many families had their gas and utilities cut off this winter (insertion - It was one of the coldest on recent record) and what might ease the crisis.
Alberta and Family Social Services 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 is not within their mandate.
A mom with school aged children was deemed unable to care for her children. Relatives in the same community very much wanted to take those children and were assessed by Socail Services to be good care givers. However, because their family 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 (insertion - about $5000 per month).
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.
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, in the Sudan and Hong Kong have also arrived. All have witnesses 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? Remeber 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 in 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 indicators 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?
That information was all garnered from personal observation and experience over a long period of years as a parent volunteer working on a provincial basis. Has much changed since the other viewpoint took over? Yes those numbers cited have grown and more social breakdown has occurred. Just my opinion of course.
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