Every day there are children who go to school in dread of what will happen when they cross paths with their bully. Though this is nothing new, and though we all have stories of things we’ve seen or experienced, we shouldn’t lazily brush it aside by claiming that is merely a part of growing up. Just as adults have the right to be safe in their workplace environment, so too do children at school; it should, therefore, be effectively addressed. Reprimands should be firm, and recourse should be clear. While the issue of bullying is indeed taken more seriously than before, I fear that our efforts are somewhat too focused on the victim-predator dynamic; I fear that they are unintentionally weakening the development of the self-confidence and strength of character that comes as a result of asserting one’s self.
Category / Current Discourse
The Long and Twisting Path to Brexit
Romance and Courtship
Winston Churchill, in the years immediately following World War II, out of office but still hugely influential, sometimes then sounded like the herald of a ‘United States of Europe’, at least of its non-Communist components. But when he returned to power in the early 1950s, he never entered into any practical negotiations with the original six-member European Economic Community, and his successor, Anthony Eden, showed no enthusiasm for doing so.
However, when I was living in London in 1960-61, it looked as if Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Government was going to take the U. K. into the EEC. I was in favour, i nfluenced by persuasive arguments I was reading in the literate political monthly, Encounter. I was unimpressed by the opposing populist views (‘Empire Free Trade!’)regularly thundered by Max Beaverbrook and his minions in the Daily Express, which had over four million readers in those days. I was also little moved by hostile fulminations I heard from radical orators in Hyde Park.
As a mathematics student at Queen’s, I had not been very interested in politics of any kind, but Britain rapidly drew me in. I began, like many of my generation, with an illusory enthusiasm for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which I imagined as having far greater importance than the European economic question. I was unconvinced of the necessity of nuclear weapons for Britain or Canada, and I attended numerous CND rallies, listening attentively to Bertrand Russell. But I soon acquired doubts. ‘Unilateralism’ looked to me too much like a dangerous unreciprocated favour to the Soviets, and the more I read about atomic weapons, the more I understood the grim logic of maintaining them. In any case, the CND Trafalgar Square crowds were having little impact on the House of Commons. Like the Conservatives, the Hugh Gaitskell-led Labour opposition supported strategic deterrence, more divided about joining the EEC.
Terrorism’s Disturbing Appeal
The natural desire to find purpose and satisfaction in a cause that is greater than ourselves is indeed a powerful force. As we search for the meaning of life we also search for something that is worthy of our complete devotion. When rooted in goodness and truth, this quest can take one down a path of love, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion; such a path leads to freedom. When rooted in evil and deception, it can take one down a path of hate, vengeance, violence, and destruction; such a path leads to oppression, and it can make terrorism an appealing thing.
Rethinking progressive education again
“That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories. Some say that our schools by themselves are powerless to change the cycle of poverty and illiteracy. I do not agree. They can break the cycle, but only if they themselves break fundamentally with some of the theories and practices that education professors and school administrators have followed over the past fifty years.” E.D. Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy (1988)
In the late 1980’s E.D. Hirsch Jr’s poignant observations about the general decline of “cultural literacy” became part of an ongoing debate about the quality, methods and purposes of schools. Hirsch’s controversial book on the subject underscored the fact that generations of contending educational reformers have either looked backward to sounder practices from “the good old days” or forward to what many believed to be liberation from the “dead hand of tradition.”
Most of us who have spent time in the education business, have to acknowledge that so-called “new discoveries” by “best practitioners” in education have beaten back the defenders of form and content in the traditional classroom. For some time, almost every purveyor of one form of “social justice” after another have found willing allies among progressive school teachers. Today, the fragmented curriculum, referred to by Hirsch in the nineteen eighties, remains a collection of disconnected subjects and technocratic skill sets. Unfortunately, people tend to applaud a familiar tune and a persistent culture of approval among unquestioning stakeholders has been supporting educational practices whose value has long since passed. If Canadians are to have any chance of reestablishing schools as serious centers of teaching and learning parents and citizens must first endeavor to understand how schools came to be the way they are.
Conservative ideas still marginalized
More than ever it appears that Canadians out of step with our progressive-liberal establishment continue to be reminded that conservatism, in almost any form, is at best inappropriate and at worst an affliction.
In fact, those who voted for Stephen Harper in the last election are generally left to conclude that: for the foreseeable future they can expect to be marginalized by our established opinion-makers.
Sure, conservatives can find support for their convictions in The Rebel Media, The Prince Arthur Herald or the occasional opinion piece in the National Post; but with the collapse of Sun TV, almost all of Canada’s most accessible broadcasting and press outlets are, once again, in the hands of their opponents. In the mid-nineteen sixties, the late, Lionel Trilling described the Left as our “adversary culture.” In 2016 it’s the other way around.
Last Days of a Sorcerer’s Apprentice
As a sceptical 1950s student hangover, I was still around university campuses and undergraduate life during the upheavals of 1965-75, but saw them very differently from most students around me. I was most interested in surprising ideas and developments that did not fit the instant mythology being created. A major cause of these surprises was that, when university departments, flush with cash in those days, sought to raise their prestige by inviting a ‘Distinguished Visiting Professor’ from afar to join them for a year or two, they sometimes got different distinctions from the ones they expected.
On Legalizing Marijuana: An open letter to the PM
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
A little over a decade ago a wandering federal government stuck its finger to the wind to see what would carry them back to power in the next election. It openly dithered with the idea of decriminalizing marijuana only to make a half-hearted attempt that was doomed to fail. As a result of this irresponsible attempt to gain popular favour, police officers commonly encountered confused young people who believed that decriminalization was all but a done deal. Unfortunately, many of them now have criminal records. Considering, therefore, the still-present legal implications of its use, and considering the ever-present health implications of its abuse, I ask, sir, that your government tread carefully so as not to make light of what is a serious issue.
Temperament or Ideology: Clinton Rossiter & William F. Buckley
Sixty years ago, a Professor of American Government at Cornell University published a book called Conservatism in America; The Thankless Persuasion. Later editions of the book dropped the subtitle but Clinton Rossiter, a distinguished scholar who wrote many good books on political ideas and constitutional government; was himself to suffer a sad and thankless life.
In 1969, when armed black student radicals seized the Student Union building, Cornell faced one of the most notorious crises of the 1960s. Rossiter tried to act as a moderating intermediary between his faculty colleagues and the young black radicals. He gained lasting enmity from some of his colleagues. Allan Bloom declared he would never speak to him again. His three young sons, all ardent activist radicals opposing the Vietnam War, had already become alienated from him.
He committed suicide a year later, only 52, although one of his sons much later learned and revealed that his father, still recalled by him with love, had suffered for years from severe depression, uncontrollable rages, and alcoholism, long before hit by the 1960’s combination of campus politics and private family storms.
Live Free or Die: A 2015 Remembrance Day Reflection
What does it mean to die for your country? We often think of it in terms of protecting our beloved countrymen and keeping our homeland safe. We often think of it in terms of protecting our sovereignty, our quality of life and our most highly held values. We thank those who fought and we remember those who died while protecting our cherished freedoms. What an awesome gift!
Sacrificing your life is the ultimate gift. We should carefully listen to the accompanying message when this occurs. For when one makes such a sacrifice for the purpose of salvation, it is indeed the ultimate expression of love and compassion. And when one makes such a sacrifice for the purpose of slaughter and destruction, it is indeed the ultimate expression of anger and hate.
In the Name of Progress
As in all election campaigns, demagoguery is now in full swing. People of all political stripes are attempting to manipulate emotions, fears, and prejudices in an effort to win the high prize of power. The Harper-haters, however, who prefer to demonise the man rather than debate his policies, are a particularly vocal bunch. In the name of progress they spew negative labels in a tone of disgust.
Most of these demagogues proudly wear banners of progress as they proclaim their love for Canada’s ‘progressive tradition’. An in-depth examination, however, reveals that their definition of progress is perverted with regressive ideas, and their love for Canada’s traditional values is skin deep at best.