JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Our new culture of compulsive communication”

I like the expression even though it is highly inaccurate.

Tweeting is not our culture.

It represents the habit of a portion of our population, and I’m not sure that it qualifies even as a “culture” for them.

Likely they represent the same portion that has always had a compulsive problem with communication.

Young folks used to talk for hours on land-line phones, generally about nothing of any import.

The expression “verbal diarrhea” is quite old: I remember it in a university psychology course in the early 1960s.

Sadly, too many of our columnists and radio hosts suffer with a form of the same complaint: they write about trivia and passing fads and elevate them into the substance of “culture.”

Apart from Ms. Gagnon and, of course, Margaret Wente, much of our new Radio One CBC is of just this nature.
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“My younger colleagues used Wikipedia as a source for everything, were unwilling to spend time reading the texts or accessing the libraries, and I spent hours editing our written projects. The ability to write a concise, grammatically correct sentence (let alone a paragraph) seemed to be beyond the other contributors…”

I recognize the problem the writer describes, but it, in fact, has little or nothing to do with technology.

The truth is that technology is, in general, not yet in our schools, at least in any meaningful way.

We are badly behind by world standards.

It is simply amazing how many teachers do not know how to use a computer or know about good data sources on the Internet.

The problem you describe has several actual causes.

First, social promotion now sees people quickly rising to the levels of incompetence in schools.

High school grades have become a poor indicator of ability or performance.

Second, our colleges and universities are taking in students who simply should not even be in those institutions.

The institutions do this for purely monetary purposes, as when Ontario’s schools of education graduate 12,000 each year and only 7,000 get jobs (I even doubt that number).

Teachers at all levels are frequently lazy and indifferent. That’s the main explanation for “group work” despite all the blather about team work.

They only have to mark a third or quarter of the number of projects.

What you find often in assigned groups is one or two who work conscientiously and the others “ride their coat tails.”

So far as the ability to write, no demands are made by many teachers in Ontario.

The so-called literacy test is a pathetic little game, and the game allows teachers to avoid being tougher in classes about writing skills, as they once were.

Many teachers’ ability even to explain to students principles of research – such as confirming a source with another source – are often non-existent, as you see with Wikipedia (a good source but one that requires other source confirmation).

Many of our current teachers are themselves the products of this poor system, and they enter the system only to further degrade it.

It’s a sad situation, and we are wasting huge costs to no advance of education.

Your comment also confuses – as does the columnist’s piece – what really is technology.

Yes, Tweeting involves the use of a technology, but then so does answering the telephone or the doorbell.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Canadian Senate reform is indeed for the most part a dumb idea.

Consider the inescapable facts.

If you create a fully elected Senate, which is fairly representative, all you are doing is creating a second parliament.

Already, many of our people can’t be bothered to vote for the first parliament. This would double election expenses, at least, and would achieve nothing worth doing.

If you create a fully elected Senate – which by design is not representative – you are copying the proven disaster of the American system in which one senator from Alaska represents about 300,000 people and one senator from California represents about 17,000,000.

Many anti-democratic implications flow from that set-up. For example, the undemocratically-constituted American Senate effectively controls the direction of major policies for the country with its veto of any legislation and its required approval of all treaties and presidential appointments.

That’s hardly democracy. And hardly reform.

I do think that when an otherwise intelligent man like Harper advocates reform he has an agenda beyond better democracy, and it is surely this last, anti-democratic intention that motivates him.

The empty slogan goes something like all parts of the country, even small ones, need representation, but underneath is the reality that some regions are to be more equal than other regions.

There’s no escaping that outcome.

Another reform, the one which I would support over either of the above, is abolition of the Senate. After all, the Senate is conceived along the lines of the British House of Lords at a time when being a Lord really meant something.

Perhaps the best course is just to keep the Senate as constituted. Our Senate Committees have done some wonderful work at times in scrutinizing policies and institutions, and it really does not hurt to have an appointment which can be given to distinguished individuals.

After all, a Lord in Britain doesn’t mean too much anymore, other than you’ve had notable economic or celebrity success, yet the House of Lords is not being abolished.

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“If the Senate is too full of political hacks and party bagmen, then perhaps the solution is to stop appointing political hacks and party bagmen.

“As usual, Harper has been both a vocal critic and one of the worst offenders.”

Perfect.

Politicians like Harper deliberately evade their genuine responsibility, which is , making good appointments.

They then turn around and say we must change things to avoid the abuse we, the politicians, are inflicting on the institution.

And we must change them in an undemocratic direction.

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“If Canadians think that the Senate has a function to perform on behalf of Canadians, then let Canadians decide rather than our politicians”

Yes, but you forget how easily referendums are manipulated.

Just as with political polls, you can get the answer you want by the wording of the question you ask.

Referendums often represent the failure of our elected politicians to do the job for which they were elected.

We have a House of Commons for a reason, and that reason is to represent us in such decisions.

When they don’t do their job, it is the same thing as making poor appointments.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

One does not like to read such clear statements of prejudice as those quoted for Goddard, but this article completely misses important perspective.

In the arts and creative fields, extreme temperaments and eccentric views are perhaps more common than not.

Richard Wagner, the great composer, was an extreme bigot, but we still honor his music.

American poet Ezra Pound was also an extreme bigot, and his poetry is still read.

Winston Churchill in the course of his long career said some truly hateful things about other groups.

Martin Luther, translator of the Bible and religious revolutionary, wrote things as vicious as anyone in history, but his name is honored in countless churches.

Abraham Lincoln – yes, the great liberator – had a low opinion of blacks.

And just so Thomas Jefferson, author of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.

What are we to say of great figures like Sergei Eisenstein or Dmitri Shostakovitch who worked dutifully under Stalin, murderer of millions?

We even make heroes of some figures whose hatreds we’ve forgotten: one such was Sir Thomas More, a man who actually fiercely enjoyed burning alive those who did not agree with his views.

The list is almost endless.

Goddard was a great director. I do not see how honoring the body of his work says anything about his prejudiced views.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY LYSIANE GAGNON IN THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

The only cases of Iggymania ever reliably reported were discovered in Ignatieff’s immediate family.

Even there, Iggymania apparently is a somewhat insipid contagion, known to have caused one or two relatives to experience a brief sniffle when exposed to one of his speeches.

However, some researchers have come forward with the theory that even these sniffles are not Iggymania but Iggyphobia.