ACCREDITATION: - Scholastic regimentation from
post WWII period has accelerated to point that Canada won't let an Olympic figure skating medalist teach or coach young Canadians errors and damages of present system. She could earn more in U. S. or other places but she is willing to do this for free if they would let her. How would Einstein or Bucky Fuller become professors in today's structured adherence to accepted models of learning? Canada is held up as a fine example by U.N. committees which evaluate governments throughout this world. Last week support staff went on strike in our schools of Toronto. Here is part of an article by Jim Coyle in Toronto Star. "Tough times teach those who have eyes to see
I spent a few hours in emergency ward other night with my 11-year-old, owing to a cut he acquired as a consequence of prevailing mayhem in a houseful of boys. {Such an easy way of sloughing-off other issues.}
As we waited, he seemed intrigued by what went on around him. How could triage nurse be so cheerful? Why did man with chest pains get rushed right in.? What made woman ahead of us in suture room slit her wrists?
{No answers to come, and no coping skills taught in our media or schools. No awareness of alternatives and soulful causes that would motivate people to help each other.}
He said he was amazed, watching parade of ill and injured, that doctors and nurses could work under pressure they do and make so few mistakes. {He is not interested in exploring reality of how many mistakes are made, and probably hasn't read Ivan Illich's book 'Limits to Medicine'. He doesn't want to hear about lack of family violence questionnaires in schools and hospitals which might prevent a growth in family violence and cycles of attendant violence associated with incest. I have sent him letters and called, to no avail. Is he making a case for 'status quo' at behest of his employer and their political cronies?} A miserable night had turned into something educational. And I was reminded that, given right attitude, little is wasted in life's economy, that difficult moments usually bring lessons.
It was notion I'd been tossing around about disruption in Toronto schools last week and what kids could learn from it. For teaching often occurs when we least expect it, not in lecturing but in living, not in theory but in behavior {So true.}. In fact, person with wisest observations in this respect might have been Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister, who was in Toronto last week to speak to teachers {He teaches in British Columbia and is an ardent and eloquent example for good behavior, to be sure.}.
'How can you teach character?' he said. 'Well, I don't know that you can teach character. I think you need to teach with character. You have to model character, you have to demonstrate character. That's how we learn.'
{This does not obviate need to build a joy of learning or encourage socialization through tolerant consideration of comparative religion. It does not contradict 'co-operative education' programs that research shows should focus on group projects, results and less testing for competency in early life, to be followed by more testing for creative and worthwhile learning and productivity as well as emotional coping skills later. It doesn't mean that what is being done is anything much better than 'glorified baby-sitting' to produce 'followers' who fit needs of industry and society. It doesn't mean that teachers learned how to teach, as Kaoru Yamamoto points our in 'Social Sciences Encyclopedia' put together by Kuipers in 1995.}
In that sense, there were many lessons to be learned during strike. The first of these was courage. And ones who displayed it were strikers themselves, support staff whose walkout eventually closed schools for a week. They're workers in system who earn least, people for whom even a week without pay is painful, who will take years to make up wages lost. Yet, knowing this, they still struck.
{Where is modeling of behavior for kids to emulate? Should they emulate poor downtrodden and uneducated janitors? Should they wonder why parents didn't get together and do work to keep schools clean? Should they have policed their own schools or organized to keep them clean so they could still attend school and learn things that excite them? Where are real ethics to learn character from in these simple strikes for something other than what will make any real changes – they only ask for money!}
