The is no such thing as a "best university". There is not even such thing as a test to determine the quality of a university. The MacLean's survey of Canadian universities is a crock, a sales trick run by magazine editors who know nothing about education. In fact, the interference of MacLean's has actually done serious damage to any hope of improving Canadian universities.
The editorial in Saturday's Nov. 13 issue of The Moncton Times and Transcript congratulates Mount Allison for its MacLean's ranking of being the best undergraduate school in Canada. Of course. The editors of both MacLean's and The Moncton Times have a long record of solemn pronouncements on things they know nothing about.
Is a good university one that has good teachers? If that's the case, all universities in Canada are the same because almost all professors have the same training in education. That is, they have none at all. I spent nine years of training in history in universities. I was never required to take a single course in university teaching. Nor was there one available if I had wished to take it. No university teacher from my freshman year to PhD ever told me a word about teaching. (I realize now that none had a word about teaching to tell me, anyway.)
I taught for forty years at four universities in Canada, two in The Netherlands, and one in Hong Kong. All the discussion I ever heard about the purpose and methods of teaching in university could be summed up in a couple of trivial paragraphs.
A university's teachers get awards for teaching? Big deal. First, there is no test for quality of teaching. There's not even general agreement about what quality of teaching means. And the awards, almost all of them, mean nothing. I was nominated for one, but backed out when I realized it was simply an advertising gimmick for a company that hadn't the faintest idea what teaching was about.
In short, there is no best or worst university in Canada for teaching. They're all bad.
Nor are there remarkable differences in discipline training among professors in the various universities. Most have PhDs from pretty much the same range of universities So far as knowing enough of the subject matter to teach it, all are pretty much identical. There are some differences. McGill has the most arrogant professors I have ever met. Queen's has the stodgiest. Too bad MacLean's didn't measure that category.
Research? Almost all professors are research oriented because that's the only part of university they understand. But there's no way to measure the quality of their research. The result is a rush to publish -anything, then count them all up to see who is champ. That's why libraries groan under the weight of scholarly journals that few people will ever read. Your tax dollars at work.
Do good researchers make good teachers? There's not the slightest evidence they do. The worst teacher I ever had in university was a man whose manner actually encouraged a hatred for the subject. He was also the most distinguished Canadian historian of his time. The most arrogant, most destested by students, and most publicly belittling of them in my teaching experience was one of the universty's outstanding researchers, and has been much honoured in the academic world. But MacLean's thinks research (measured by weight, I guess) is a key factor in defining a "best university".
Small classes make a "best" university? Sorry. A small class taught by an inept teacher is still a stinker. I have been a student in classes of as few as five that were a complete waste of time. To sat that small classes are better simply because they're small is like saying it's better to have a heart operation from a person with no training than to be one of two being operated on by an expert surgeon.
Meanwhile, MacLean's does damage. The universities are all in a rush to score well in rankings that are scientficially childish - and they're too gutless to go public, too scared to say this is all nonsense. As a result, they are pricing themselves out of reach for the sake of mounds of research. And they are paying almost no attention, as usual, to the quality of their teaching. The result? I looked over my undergraduate record recently. I was amazed at how I had not only forgotten almost all I crammed into my head to pass, but had forgotten even what the courses were about.
The universities need basic rethinking of what they're all about. Instead, we're getting marketing games and magazine editors who don't know what they're talking about being praised by newspaper editors who don't know what they're taking about.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick is going through the early stages in the biggest change in education in centuries. Have you heard anything about it from the professors of education? I haven't. In fact, what has always been the most striking feature of all the unveristies of New Brunswick (and most other places) is their failure to have any intellectual impact on the society around them. I think we're supposed to just clap hands and pay taxes for them because that's the way they like it.
Hint for Mount A. Do you have a New Brunswick history course that explains the historical connection between big business and government in this province? One that might shed some light on why we're in financial trouble? And might explain why there's something farcical about a business summit to find a solution?
You could teach the course, then offer speakers for the many communities surrounding Sackville - you know, ordinary people - some of whom might be interested to learn what they can never learn from The Moncton Times and Tribune. You could actually bring your knowledge to the service of everybody who pays taxes,and wake the province out of its passivity.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Lest We Forgot
Just in time for rememberance day, prime minister Harper announced that Canadian troops would stay in Afghanistan (in a "non-combat" role - wink, wink - there is no non-combat role in Afghanistan) until at least 2014. In effect, that means forever. Then he added the customary phrase of the day that we remember those Canadian who died to preserve our freedom.
Actually, the first people of this land who died trying to save their freedom were the native peoples who fell to French invaders. Then both the French and the natives lost to British invaders.
But 1776 and 1815, the people then living in Canada won two in a row - beating Americans who invaded to take our freedom.
The next war we fought (skipping lightly over the crushing of the western native peoples and Metis) was against the Boer farmers in South Africa. But I don't think they were threatening to invade us or take away our freedom. Similarly, it's hardly likely the Germans had the will or capacity to invade us in 1914. We were fighting a British war. That's why the Americans stayed out of it for so long. We were ini only because we didn't have the freedom to stay out. Britain declared war for us.
Even in the Second World War, it was way beyond the ability of Germans, Italians or Japanese to invade us and take away our freedom. That's why it took a Pearl Harbour to draw the Americans into the war.
Historically, then, the only countries that have ever invaded us, or even threatened to, were Britain and the US. Strangely, I didn't hear a word of appreciation of people this country who died in those invasions.
Oh, we did get one bonus out of it all. After World War One, we got the right to decide for ourselves, through people and parliament, who and when and where and if we would go to war. Harper has taken us back to the bad old colonial days of ignoring parliament and people.
He has decided to extend the war. Did he ask you first?
On a closely related subject, he promised ALL support for Israel in case of some conflict. That's a promise to got to war for Israel. Well,okay. But isn't that the sort of thing parliament is supposed to decide? And isn't that right one of the things we supposedly remember and are grateful for on November 11?
Actually, the first people of this land who died trying to save their freedom were the native peoples who fell to French invaders. Then both the French and the natives lost to British invaders.
But 1776 and 1815, the people then living in Canada won two in a row - beating Americans who invaded to take our freedom.
The next war we fought (skipping lightly over the crushing of the western native peoples and Metis) was against the Boer farmers in South Africa. But I don't think they were threatening to invade us or take away our freedom. Similarly, it's hardly likely the Germans had the will or capacity to invade us in 1914. We were fighting a British war. That's why the Americans stayed out of it for so long. We were ini only because we didn't have the freedom to stay out. Britain declared war for us.
Even in the Second World War, it was way beyond the ability of Germans, Italians or Japanese to invade us and take away our freedom. That's why it took a Pearl Harbour to draw the Americans into the war.
Historically, then, the only countries that have ever invaded us, or even threatened to, were Britain and the US. Strangely, I didn't hear a word of appreciation of people this country who died in those invasions.
Oh, we did get one bonus out of it all. After World War One, we got the right to decide for ourselves, through people and parliament, who and when and where and if we would go to war. Harper has taken us back to the bad old colonial days of ignoring parliament and people.
He has decided to extend the war. Did he ask you first?
On a closely related subject, he promised ALL support for Israel in case of some conflict. That's a promise to got to war for Israel. Well,okay. But isn't that the sort of thing parliament is supposed to decide? And isn't that right one of the things we supposedly remember and are grateful for on November 11?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Remembrance Day. Nov. 11, 2010
Today, Moncton observed the time and the day Geramny surrendered in 1918 - the 11th hour of the eleventh day of the 11th month. The arena was filled to its 4000 seat capacity with another thousand of so veterans, soldiers, cadets, boy scouts, girl guides and brownies standing rigidly at ease for the full hour.
Our soldiers had given their lives for Canadian freedom, we were told, in two world wars, Korea, and Afghanistan. That message was reinforced by by the several clergymen (Christians only) who implied that God looks on all this with pride. The crowd in attendance was obviously moved. Perhaps that was because there was so much that wasn't mentioned.
The millions of civilians who died were not mentioned. But all four of those wars have been notable more for the deaths of innocent civilians, babies to elderly, than of soldiers. That's the nature of modern war.
It also skipped some wars - the French invasion, the British invasion, the two American invasion, the Sudan war, and the Boer war. Maybe that's because the only Canadians who died in two of them were doing it were batuve peoples trying to protect their freedom. As for the two American invasions in which thousands of Canadians did die to protect their freedom - well - they couldn't have mentioned that without feeling awkward about the American flag being up with the leaders in the parade.
In fact, the freedom of the people who live in Canada has been threatened only in four wars -the French invasion, the British invasion, and the two American invasions. There was never a danger of a Boer, German, French or Japanese invasion of North America. (That's why Roosevelt had to wait for Pearl Harbour before he could get support for a war.)
Nor did most of our soldiers join up to defend freedom. I knew many of them - my father, my uncle, the older boys in my father's scout troop, neighbours, the 16 year old who left school when we were in grade four and often came to play with me because he was retarded. He stole his brother's draft papers (He was a very big kid), and joined the Black Watch. Six months later, he was lying face down in the mud of Germany just over the Dutch border, sobbing in terror. Then he jumped up, screaming, and a machine gun cut him in half."Hell," said our neighbour who joined with him, "He was only a kid. Sixteen. "Funny thing. When he jumped up, he was screaming for his mother."
Check the statistics for the two world wars. There was a depression on in both cases. Men joined up to feed their families. Kids joined up for adventure, and jobs. Once the war factories opened up,voluntary enlistment plummetted, and we had to go to the draft.
But the ceremony ignored all that. In the end, it remembered by glorifying deaths that should have been grieved, and by mythologizing the whole business of war. And the church was there to stir it well with God's blessing.
I watched my son, an army cadet, march by behind the Canadian, American, and British flags to the beat of a drum. This wasn't about remembering the tragedies of the past. It was about preparing us to look to glory in the tragedies yet to come..
Our soldiers had given their lives for Canadian freedom, we were told, in two world wars, Korea, and Afghanistan. That message was reinforced by by the several clergymen (Christians only) who implied that God looks on all this with pride. The crowd in attendance was obviously moved. Perhaps that was because there was so much that wasn't mentioned.
The millions of civilians who died were not mentioned. But all four of those wars have been notable more for the deaths of innocent civilians, babies to elderly, than of soldiers. That's the nature of modern war.
It also skipped some wars - the French invasion, the British invasion, the two American invasion, the Sudan war, and the Boer war. Maybe that's because the only Canadians who died in two of them were doing it were batuve peoples trying to protect their freedom. As for the two American invasions in which thousands of Canadians did die to protect their freedom - well - they couldn't have mentioned that without feeling awkward about the American flag being up with the leaders in the parade.
In fact, the freedom of the people who live in Canada has been threatened only in four wars -the French invasion, the British invasion, and the two American invasions. There was never a danger of a Boer, German, French or Japanese invasion of North America. (That's why Roosevelt had to wait for Pearl Harbour before he could get support for a war.)
Nor did most of our soldiers join up to defend freedom. I knew many of them - my father, my uncle, the older boys in my father's scout troop, neighbours, the 16 year old who left school when we were in grade four and often came to play with me because he was retarded. He stole his brother's draft papers (He was a very big kid), and joined the Black Watch. Six months later, he was lying face down in the mud of Germany just over the Dutch border, sobbing in terror. Then he jumped up, screaming, and a machine gun cut him in half."Hell," said our neighbour who joined with him, "He was only a kid. Sixteen. "Funny thing. When he jumped up, he was screaming for his mother."
Check the statistics for the two world wars. There was a depression on in both cases. Men joined up to feed their families. Kids joined up for adventure, and jobs. Once the war factories opened up,voluntary enlistment plummetted, and we had to go to the draft.
But the ceremony ignored all that. In the end, it remembered by glorifying deaths that should have been grieved, and by mythologizing the whole business of war. And the church was there to stir it well with God's blessing.
I watched my son, an army cadet, march by behind the Canadian, American, and British flags to the beat of a drum. This wasn't about remembering the tragedies of the past. It was about preparing us to look to glory in the tragedies yet to come..
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
This amazing age
We are living through an amazing age - and nobody seems to give a damn.
1. The Obama White House is now fighting a court battle to preserve a power assumed by the president - to order the assassination of anybody, including American citizens, with no charge, no trial, no nothing. Just a matter of giving an order. The test case involves a moslem - so it's quite possible Obama will get away with this. And that is pretty well the end of any democracy that was left in the US constitution. Indeed, I have never heard of any democracy allowing such arbitrary powers to a leader. This has more commonly been the style of Hitler and Stalin and Mao.
Haven't noticed it in the news? No. that's because they're too busy following the big story of how the Mt. A. football team is doing.
2. The Supreme court has also decided that a corporation is a person - with all the rights of a person. Therefore, corporations can now give parties as much as they like - just like real people. Well, perhaps it's not that important. Corporations in Canada and the US have been buying governments and taking over government for years in both countries.In fact, corporations get bailed out. Persons don't.
Despite the wording of the constitution, it was never true in the US that all people were created equal. Even as those words were written, the US economy was based on slave labour. And his has depended on cheap labour ever since.
3. Corporations have also bought most of the education system in the US, and are buying it up in Canada, too. The broad aim is to train students only to work for the corporations - be on time, follow orders, don't think. To that end, the Humanities programmes in the universities are dead meat. Corporations need thinking only at the executive level. That level will be filled by the children of the rich who are able to afford the cost of private schools. The rest will get education run by private investors for private profit to turn out cheap and obedient labour for when the rich kids take over from their daddies and mommies.
The results are already showing in the US as its educational rating compared to public schools around the world continues to drop from an already miserable eighteenth to twenty-fifth. But you won't find that in the news, either. (To be fair, most journalists don't even understand what's happening. So it's easy to churn out the propaganda their owners want.)
It's an amazing age. We're moving on from democracy to a social structure in which property has more rights than people, and some people, very few, have a lot more rights than all the rest of us. We're moving from the age of freedom based on law, to rule based on the power of a leader to assassinate at whim.
How long will it hold together? Not very. The US, no matter who gets elected, is already committed to eternal war. And Canada will follow it. Neither country can economically or socially take the strain of that. Corporate greed, news media propaganda, and public indifference is about to take us where Rome took its people. Enjoy the games while they last.
1. The Obama White House is now fighting a court battle to preserve a power assumed by the president - to order the assassination of anybody, including American citizens, with no charge, no trial, no nothing. Just a matter of giving an order. The test case involves a moslem - so it's quite possible Obama will get away with this. And that is pretty well the end of any democracy that was left in the US constitution. Indeed, I have never heard of any democracy allowing such arbitrary powers to a leader. This has more commonly been the style of Hitler and Stalin and Mao.
Haven't noticed it in the news? No. that's because they're too busy following the big story of how the Mt. A. football team is doing.
2. The Supreme court has also decided that a corporation is a person - with all the rights of a person. Therefore, corporations can now give parties as much as they like - just like real people. Well, perhaps it's not that important. Corporations in Canada and the US have been buying governments and taking over government for years in both countries.In fact, corporations get bailed out. Persons don't.
Despite the wording of the constitution, it was never true in the US that all people were created equal. Even as those words were written, the US economy was based on slave labour. And his has depended on cheap labour ever since.
3. Corporations have also bought most of the education system in the US, and are buying it up in Canada, too. The broad aim is to train students only to work for the corporations - be on time, follow orders, don't think. To that end, the Humanities programmes in the universities are dead meat. Corporations need thinking only at the executive level. That level will be filled by the children of the rich who are able to afford the cost of private schools. The rest will get education run by private investors for private profit to turn out cheap and obedient labour for when the rich kids take over from their daddies and mommies.
The results are already showing in the US as its educational rating compared to public schools around the world continues to drop from an already miserable eighteenth to twenty-fifth. But you won't find that in the news, either. (To be fair, most journalists don't even understand what's happening. So it's easy to churn out the propaganda their owners want.)
It's an amazing age. We're moving on from democracy to a social structure in which property has more rights than people, and some people, very few, have a lot more rights than all the rest of us. We're moving from the age of freedom based on law, to rule based on the power of a leader to assassinate at whim.
How long will it hold together? Not very. The US, no matter who gets elected, is already committed to eternal war. And Canada will follow it. Neither country can economically or socially take the strain of that. Corporate greed, news media propaganda, and public indifference is about to take us where Rome took its people. Enjoy the games while they last.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The Real Story Comes Out
Diane Ravitch is a distinguished scholar, and such an avid conservative that she gladly joined Bush's Whitehouse to work on what is variously called accountability in schools - or standardized testing - or ranking of schools - or privatization of schools in general. She gave support to newspapers like the Moncton T and T that denigrated public schools and their teachers. She is a prime designed of George Bush's No Child Left Behind programme, the one that elevated the idea that schools should be tested by standardized tests, and teachers and schools judged on the basis of them.
The Economist is probably the most highly respected of conservative news commentary magazines in the world. In June of 2010, it published an interview with Diane Revitch.
She says she's sorry she got involved. It doesn't work. The tests are invalid to compare either teachers or schools. Competition doesn't work in education. The American government and the "think tanks" are faking data to show improvement where, in fact, performance is going down. There is no improvement. The success rate is man made - by simply lowering the required standard each year.
This very conservative woman who was a leader in standardized testing and rating of schools now says what just about every educational researcher has said for sixty years. It doesn't work. It just puts public money into private pockets.
Will we see this story in The Moncton Times? If that paper had any integrity we would. So it's a sure thing we won't see it in The Moncton Times. I shall also send a copy to the Minister of Education. What will he do? See my comment for The Moncton Times. I have also send it to the New Brunswick home and school association. Will they do anything? Not bloody likely.
New Brunswick has an amazingly submissive population. They'd rather their children's education be ruined rather than stand up like free people and protest about AIMS and its greedy plans to make the rich even richer at the price of our children.
The Economist is probably the most highly respected of conservative news commentary magazines in the world. In June of 2010, it published an interview with Diane Revitch.
She says she's sorry she got involved. It doesn't work. The tests are invalid to compare either teachers or schools. Competition doesn't work in education. The American government and the "think tanks" are faking data to show improvement where, in fact, performance is going down. There is no improvement. The success rate is man made - by simply lowering the required standard each year.
This very conservative woman who was a leader in standardized testing and rating of schools now says what just about every educational researcher has said for sixty years. It doesn't work. It just puts public money into private pockets.
Will we see this story in The Moncton Times? If that paper had any integrity we would. So it's a sure thing we won't see it in The Moncton Times. I shall also send a copy to the Minister of Education. What will he do? See my comment for The Moncton Times. I have also send it to the New Brunswick home and school association. Will they do anything? Not bloody likely.
New Brunswick has an amazingly submissive population. They'd rather their children's education be ruined rather than stand up like free people and protest about AIMS and its greedy plans to make the rich even richer at the price of our children.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Moncton Pravda
The newspaper Pravda was the official propaganda sheet of the Soviet Union. Long ago, I read translations of it, and felt sorry for those millions who relied on it to tell the truth. (I think Pravda is the Russian word for "truth".) Reading it, I could at least understand how people living under a dictator could think it was the finest form of govenment ever designed. The newspaper, after all, was and is still a major source of information about the world and our place in it. It told them they were in paradise. So they believed it.
Alas! I learned in many years of writing and broadcasting for news media that one can never tell the whole truth on any news medium. Most newspapers in North America are part Pravda. The Moncton Times, thanks to its advertising and it's boosterism disguised as "news", is not completely Pravda. But it comes close.
I learned tonight that it had a report of my talk to the DEC of district two. But not a word of it appeared in the paper. They were too busy blaming the DEC and the school superintendent for closing a dangerous school; and they're still at it.
(They can certainly be excused from quoting from my talk. After all, it's by now obvious that they are so petty they will not list my current events group meeting at the library in the Weekly Events edition. That's okay. The Times decision makers are ethical as well as intellectual midgets. But they also had my 35 pages of evidence showing that the public school ranking system is invalid; and showing that the US public schools which have been using the standardized tests and rankings for thirty years were eighteenth in the UN ratings of public schools - with Canada in fourth place. Since then, the US has dropped to twenty-fifth in the world.)
The Times has been playing a propaganda game from the start. It has never raised any criticism at all about AIMS. It has never even hinted at the existence of a large body of evidence that shows that AIMS is a propaganda agency for big business. New Brunswick is making the biggest change in education in several hundred years. The Times has yet to even recognize the nature of the change. Both reporting and editorial writing on education has been ignorant and biased.
Now it is stepping up the game of blame, this time hitting at the DEC and the superintendent, and blaming them for years of neglect of education by New Brunswick's governments, years of underfunding, years of interference in school to profit private business. I might be inclined to blame all New Brunswickers. Well, I do blame them all, at least a bit.
You tolerate a press that keeps you in ignorance, and that pumps out ignorance and bias in support of the same corporate powers that are the owners of both the governing party and the opposition.
The fundamental requirement of democracy is that people must have access to information. They cannot vote intelligently in an election unless they know at least the fundamentals of what is going on. New Brunswickers don't have the foggiest understanding of the essential issues that face this province. That's why we just had an election with neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives exhibiting any sense of political philosophy, and without any platform that went beyond trivial buzzwords.
New Brunswick is not a democracy. Voting means nothing without basic information on which to base your voting choices. New Brunswick is not a democracy. New Brunswick is a corporate dictatorship as much as the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship. The Times and Transcript is our corporate Pravda.
Alas! I learned in many years of writing and broadcasting for news media that one can never tell the whole truth on any news medium. Most newspapers in North America are part Pravda. The Moncton Times, thanks to its advertising and it's boosterism disguised as "news", is not completely Pravda. But it comes close.
I learned tonight that it had a report of my talk to the DEC of district two. But not a word of it appeared in the paper. They were too busy blaming the DEC and the school superintendent for closing a dangerous school; and they're still at it.
(They can certainly be excused from quoting from my talk. After all, it's by now obvious that they are so petty they will not list my current events group meeting at the library in the Weekly Events edition. That's okay. The Times decision makers are ethical as well as intellectual midgets. But they also had my 35 pages of evidence showing that the public school ranking system is invalid; and showing that the US public schools which have been using the standardized tests and rankings for thirty years were eighteenth in the UN ratings of public schools - with Canada in fourth place. Since then, the US has dropped to twenty-fifth in the world.)
The Times has been playing a propaganda game from the start. It has never raised any criticism at all about AIMS. It has never even hinted at the existence of a large body of evidence that shows that AIMS is a propaganda agency for big business. New Brunswick is making the biggest change in education in several hundred years. The Times has yet to even recognize the nature of the change. Both reporting and editorial writing on education has been ignorant and biased.
Now it is stepping up the game of blame, this time hitting at the DEC and the superintendent, and blaming them for years of neglect of education by New Brunswick's governments, years of underfunding, years of interference in school to profit private business. I might be inclined to blame all New Brunswickers. Well, I do blame them all, at least a bit.
You tolerate a press that keeps you in ignorance, and that pumps out ignorance and bias in support of the same corporate powers that are the owners of both the governing party and the opposition.
The fundamental requirement of democracy is that people must have access to information. They cannot vote intelligently in an election unless they know at least the fundamentals of what is going on. New Brunswickers don't have the foggiest understanding of the essential issues that face this province. That's why we just had an election with neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives exhibiting any sense of political philosophy, and without any platform that went beyond trivial buzzwords.
New Brunswick is not a democracy. Voting means nothing without basic information on which to base your voting choices. New Brunswick is not a democracy. New Brunswick is a corporate dictatorship as much as the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship. The Times and Transcript is our corporate Pravda.
Friday, November 5, 2010
How To Lie Without ACTUALLY Lying
I've been away, and have now been catching up on my daily thrill of writing about the The Moncton TandT. It was about October 20 that a real gem appeared.
In protest against the closing of Moncton High (it was structurally dangerous) and the general shifting of elementary and high school students which followed, there was a well advertised rally of affected and angry parents who blamed the local schools administration and the DEC (an elected body representing parents) for the problem. Evidently, the assignment editor at the TandT decided this was the big story of the day because Tand T reporters took bushels of notes of angry protest and denunciation aimed at DEC and the superintendent of schools.
Actually, those education people had nothing to do with it. The reality is that New Brunswick schools have been so starved for funds to provide even basic education that students now have to be billed even for office paper. Almost all schools have obvious signs of serious neglect of maintenance. That's not the DEC or the Superintendent. That's the government and the minister of education. It's also the corporations who fund both the Liberals and Conservatives, and who make it clear they want taxes kept down, and to hell with the safety of children.
However, an assignment editor with bills to pay has to remember that the newspaper ownership smiles on any news that puts the public schools into a bad light. So reporters were assigned to the protest. The next day, the story was front page with another, almost full page, inside. The bulk of it was interviews with angry parents blaming the DEC and the Superintendent. That's the sort of coverage for a really big story - like another geriatric rock group coming to Moncton or, perhaps, the beginning of World War Three. (If they happened on the same day, World War Three would probably get only a brief mention under the daily list of celebrity birthdays.)
In fact, it wasn't a big story at all. The total number of angry parents was 20. Count them. Twenty. That's something less than one percent of all the parents affected by the changes. Ninety-nine percent didn't care enough to show up.
The Times story, being "honest", mentioned there were only twenty. But that didn't matter. The final message of the story could only be that DEC and the superintendent were in trouble for neglect -and that public schools were inefficient. The unwritten message was "we need more privatization."
Lying without ACTUALLY lying is unethical. But it's common in almost all North American newspapers - and more than a few overseas.
As it happened, I presented a report at the DEC meeting that same night. There was a reporter at the back of the room, and another, right in front of me, who was a senior writer for the Tand T. I issued a copy of a government survey to parents. This survey has a response of 99%. (Compare that to the protest rally.) It showed almost 90% parent approval of New Brunswick schools. I also presented evidence that the UN ranks the Canadian public schools with those of the top four countries of the world. The UN now places US education in tewnty-fifth spot, under Slovenia. (But the US system is the one The Times and, presumably, its ownership wants us to copy.)
Despite the presence of two reporters at least, not a word of what I said appeared - or ever will appear - in The Times. Watch them for more news about how terrible our schools are, and how much better it would be if we followed the wise leaders of the puppet clowns at Atlantic Insitute for Market Studies.
In protest against the closing of Moncton High (it was structurally dangerous) and the general shifting of elementary and high school students which followed, there was a well advertised rally of affected and angry parents who blamed the local schools administration and the DEC (an elected body representing parents) for the problem. Evidently, the assignment editor at the TandT decided this was the big story of the day because Tand T reporters took bushels of notes of angry protest and denunciation aimed at DEC and the superintendent of schools.
Actually, those education people had nothing to do with it. The reality is that New Brunswick schools have been so starved for funds to provide even basic education that students now have to be billed even for office paper. Almost all schools have obvious signs of serious neglect of maintenance. That's not the DEC or the Superintendent. That's the government and the minister of education. It's also the corporations who fund both the Liberals and Conservatives, and who make it clear they want taxes kept down, and to hell with the safety of children.
However, an assignment editor with bills to pay has to remember that the newspaper ownership smiles on any news that puts the public schools into a bad light. So reporters were assigned to the protest. The next day, the story was front page with another, almost full page, inside. The bulk of it was interviews with angry parents blaming the DEC and the Superintendent. That's the sort of coverage for a really big story - like another geriatric rock group coming to Moncton or, perhaps, the beginning of World War Three. (If they happened on the same day, World War Three would probably get only a brief mention under the daily list of celebrity birthdays.)
In fact, it wasn't a big story at all. The total number of angry parents was 20. Count them. Twenty. That's something less than one percent of all the parents affected by the changes. Ninety-nine percent didn't care enough to show up.
The Times story, being "honest", mentioned there were only twenty. But that didn't matter. The final message of the story could only be that DEC and the superintendent were in trouble for neglect -and that public schools were inefficient. The unwritten message was "we need more privatization."
Lying without ACTUALLY lying is unethical. But it's common in almost all North American newspapers - and more than a few overseas.
As it happened, I presented a report at the DEC meeting that same night. There was a reporter at the back of the room, and another, right in front of me, who was a senior writer for the Tand T. I issued a copy of a government survey to parents. This survey has a response of 99%. (Compare that to the protest rally.) It showed almost 90% parent approval of New Brunswick schools. I also presented evidence that the UN ranks the Canadian public schools with those of the top four countries of the world. The UN now places US education in tewnty-fifth spot, under Slovenia. (But the US system is the one The Times and, presumably, its ownership wants us to copy.)
Despite the presence of two reporters at least, not a word of what I said appeared - or ever will appear - in The Times. Watch them for more news about how terrible our schools are, and how much better it would be if we followed the wise leaders of the puppet clowns at Atlantic Insitute for Market Studies.
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