Blue Like You

Archive for May, 2007

We human beings have learned a few things over the centuries - One of them is that belonging to a ‘group’ of some kind enhances our chances of survival. And along with that privilege come rules of some kind.

One of those rules, is the code of silence.

In today’s society, there are times when this code or oath of silence is ethical and necessary; for example cabinet members in matters of national security; doctors regarding patient records; banks concerning their clients’ financial records, and so on.

However, there is also the “unwritten” code of silence that exists among other groups and organizations.

This code exits in unions, in gangs, in families and even in school boards.

Thus we see a picture now emerging of a very closed society in schools such as C.W. Jefferys, and the results of an attitude of secrecy and willful blindness that seems to work to circumvent any effort to air dirty laundry in public.

Brave teachers are now stepping forward to tell the truth about a school environment where rules are ignored with little if any repercussion. Indeed, the code of silence is reinforced by rewarding see-no-evil teachers with a lighter workload, and ignoring the complaints of the few that do voice concern.

We hear today that the Board has finally agreed to probe conditions. But this has been requested before:

Doug Jolliffe, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation branch that includes Jefferys, said his organization has received a number of complaints about unsafe conditions within the school. “There is nothing that we’ve heard from Jefferys that we haven’t heard from other schools as well,” Jolliffe said. Jolliffe has twice requested that the Toronto school board sit down with the union to address the concerns of teachers about dangerous conditions inside school hallways and classrooms. He formally requested a joint union-management meeting on April 13. When he received no response, Jolliffe asked again on May 11 to arrange a specific date and time to meet.

“I’m hoping that they will now,” Joliffe said. “One of the reasons why there is a problem in some schools and less of a problem in other schools has to be that sometimes principals run them like their own little fiefdoms.

“And, for some reason, the TDSB won’t bring them into line,” he said

Joan Tintor offers an insightful post juxtaposing the salaries and attitudes of this powerful clique of bureaucrats to whom we entrust our children’s education - and in fact their very lives.

She mentions this quote from a previous Star article (”Jefferys Lawless - Teacher”):

Donna Quan*, safe schools superintendent for Toronto, said Jefferys was an outstanding school and urged concerned teachers to discuss their problems with administration and the school board. “We’ll be glad to meet,” Quan said. “It’s important to have courageous conversations.”

(*$136,616.54 in salary and $5,366.66 in benefits in 2006.)

Reader Tori had remarked at both Joan’s site and mine that if you try to decode that statement, it sounds like they are trying to keep this “in the family” so to speak:

…in other words, don’t leak our dirty laundry to the press, let’s keep it to ourselves. But why should the teachers go to the admin or the board? They’ve tried that, and nothing gets done. Again, this speaks to actions and consequences of the actions. Teachers will stop going to the higher-ups if nothing is done; youth will continue to commit violent behavior in school if nothing is done to stop it.

Well said.

But those are troubling words in themselves - “Courageous” conversations. Why “courageous”?

Why should encouraging teachers to share their concerns and experiences with the administration be deemed “courageous”?

My feeling is that with that very word, Donna Quan has tacitly admitted what we all suspect - That the school board is more interested in safeguarding itself, than the lives of those lambs it is paid to shepherd.

Lorrie Goldstein - Commit to Full Employment for Youth. (I think this is a bit unrealistic, but worth striving for).

Open thread. Comments by trolls will be deleted. I will provide links of interest.

Tuesday Update: Mindelle Jacobs on cleaner places to dump your baby than a toilet. FYI.

Lifesite - Sacrilege isn’t enough for the CBC; they have to lie about it. (H/T SDA)

Wednesday Update - Another brave Jefferys teacher steps forward (Star).

Why don’t we just ban school boards that don’t enforce rules?

Also, Licia Corbella asks, “What if Dad Left Baby in Toilet?”

Well, we already know the answer to that one.

Ontario Bungling Access Requests, Report Says - Globe.

Conservative Leader John Tory said his party has submitted countless requests for government information and documents but has mostly been stonewalled.

The party says a request for information about the continuing aboriginal occupation in Caledonia still hasn’t been fulfilled after about 325 days, while other requests have taken as long as 299 days to be addressed.

Lorrie Goldstein - Youth Crime Law is a Farce.

And still a lively debate going on way back here - Critical Thinking No Longer Required…

Thursday Update: From the Gazette - A woman files a Human Rights complaint against a gay bar for tossing her out because she is female. How ironic.

So, is discrimination the entitlement of gay folks only?

ABC News: Top NASA Official Questions Global Warming!

‘Gentleman’ Dion re: Harper - “…he is able to lie”.

Lorne Gunter’s column in today’s Post, Blame Urban Culture; Not Urban Guns contains many of my thoughts from the last few days regarding the murder of young Jordan Manners; especially the way His Worship (in Gunter’s words) blames Ottawa “for letting law-abiding citizens own handguns.”

…Apparently, the problem couldn’t be the prevalence of father-absent upbringings in the Jane-Finch area of Toronto, or the glorification of gangsta, drug and gun culture that liberals and social democrats such as Mr. Miller have been loathe to denounce out of a politically correct fear of being called racists.

Nor could it be the every-boy-a-good-boy approach to juvenile crime, also favoured by the Millers of the world, that has eliminated nearly all punishment for young offenders in favour of touchy-feely counselling that hardened young criminals — such as those who would shoot down a student in the hallway of a high school–just scoff at.

It couldn’t be the way courts have hamstrung police investigations or lefty city councils have pared back police budgets and reassigned beat patrol officers to traffic safety campaigns and police- minority relations teams.

Nope. If we follow Mayor Miller’s logic, the only reason Jordan Manners is dead is the federal Conservatives’ unwillingness to ban handguns…

Gunter’s whole article is well worth the read. At the end of the column he highlights some interesting facts on gun control, demonstrating that it is dangerously naive of Miller et al to assume that tighter gun control would somehow be a magic bullet:

Since Britain implemented a near-complete ban on civilian handgun ownership a decade ago, handgun possession among criminals has soared by an estimated one million to three million guns, and handgun crime has almost tripled.

Why don’t we start with a focus on handgun bans in schools, and actually have school boards back up the policy with practical measures and consequences?

Then let’s talk about how we can deal with urban ghettos or “Apartheid-lite”, as Lorne Goldstein refers to the problem.

To be sure, there are many issues that contribute to the type of situation found in the Jane-Finch areas of large urban centres in Canada. I don’t believe that there is a simple root cause. But willful blindness is not going to help kids like Jordan Manners.

It seems that when something tragic happens, we humans need to have answers. We ask “why?” and look for someone or something to blame.

Today Lorrie Goldstein ponders the reactions to the recent fatal school shooting of 15-year-old Jordan Manners. Blame runs the gambit from sleazy politicians to wimpy laws and wimpy judges who just send the offenders back out on the street, and kids who see no deterrent to using guns to solve their problems.

Politicians like Dalton McGuinty and David Miller hold up gun “bans” and blocking the gun flow from the U.S. as the panacea, yet kids are quite capable of making their own.

Moira MacDonald seems to be blaming all us whiteys for not caring enough, but I can tell you that seeing the grief of Jordan’s family and friends in news reports just tore my heart out. I am a mother. I can relate. His graduation photo depicts a beautiful, sweet boy. Please don’t tell me I felt worse about Jane Creba’s murder just because she happened to be white and was shopping instead of at an inner-city school.

Jordan’s friend, 14-year-old Clyde Adu has the wisdom lacking in many adults. At the BBQ held yesterday in honour of the slain teen he remarked:

“I’m just sad,” Adu said. “We shouldn’t put anger in our hearts.”

So let’s just feel sad. Then let’s work together on this multi-layered problem.

For the sake of the children.

I am growing weary of Jack Layton’s predictable rhetoric every time a Canadian soldier is killed in Afghanistan.

Following the sad death of Cpl. Matthew McCully, who was killed by a roadside bomb on Friday, Layton used the occasion to say that “he hopes Canadians will ask the government to take a different approach to combat in Afghanistan.”

“Our soldiers will risk their lives, according to what we request them to do. We saw yesterday the profound reality of that commitment,” he said during an interview with the Canadian Press in Toronto.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall any soldiers being forced or conscripted here. For the most part, they are very committed, and believe in the mission. And the Afghans seem to be very grateful for Canadian assistance in trying to rid their country of the Taliban and help establish safety and democracy.

McCully’s sister, Shannon McGrady, said the 25-year-old was a role model who acted a father figure to his younger siblings while growing up in Orangeville, Ont. He was also a soldier who loved his job, she said.

“I thought he was crazy. He loved the army,” McGrady said. “If he was asked to do this all over again, he wouldn’t change it.”

And from his Dad:

“He was a very caring guy who just loved life,” his father, Ron McCully, told CBC Newsworld from his home in Prince George, B.C., on Saturday. “His passion was the army. He lived it. He believed in what he was doing.”

Perhaps Jack Layton’s problem is that the concepts of integrity, commitment and freedom are foreign to him.

We often rail against that which we don’t understand.

Former C.W. Jefferys teacher Sandra Fusco bravely exposes the reality of the inner city high school in today’s Sun (We Are All to Blame):

“…I felt sick to my stomach when one reporter said the murderer “somehow got a gun into the school,” knowing full well he or she needed just to walk through the front doors at any time during the school day and would likely not be approached or questioned by anyone.”

“These are just a few of my experiences. Other incidents include students throwing textbooks and desks at teachers and the time a female teacher was surrounded by a group of male students as they taunted, “Suck my d–k”; the list is endless. Sadly, each of these cases were initially brushed off by certain members of the administration, if acknowledged at all. As each day passed, my sense of normalcy was deteriorating. Does this sound like a safe environment conducive to learning?”

She describes a school environment of complacency and willful blindness to the number of intruders that loiter in the hallways, and parents who don’t seem to have assumed responsibility for instilling proper values.

The Globe carried an editorial yesterday (under subscriber lock) that backed up these observations (To Save Schools from the Thugs):

“…Believe it or not, there are Toronto schools with doors for black students and doors for the non-black, a rule enforced by school thugs. This is a recipe for loss of adult control and community confidence. School authorities need to move faster to take back control from the thugs.”

We are far beyond the point where a few extra security cameras are going to make a difference. Who’s going to watch them, or do anything about it anyway?

I have long been an advocate of teaching children logical consequences. You tell the child that if he or she does “a”, then “b” will happen. Then if the child does “a”, you actually follow through with “b”. It’s not rocket science, but it works. I have two children who grew up to be wonderful, responsible adults.

This is what a child needs - a firm, loving predictable environment. It sounds as if at C.W. Jeffrys, the inmates are running the asylum. There appears to be no control. No wonder the kids are cautious about snitching. Who’s going to protect them? Not the teachers, that’s for sure.

If you continue to let a child get away with murder when they’re young, chances are that someday it just might actually happen.

Is the value of the life of the newborn the next step down the slippery slope? That is what today’s National Post editorial seems to be suggesting. (Born unto Walmart)

The fact that this woman chose a Walmart toilet cubicle as a birthing room is rather symbolic itself - discarding unwanted ’solid waste’ in a store that sells a high volume of low-priced goods in a throw-away society. Gee, I wonder if she picked up some discount toilet paper on the way out.

(Kudos, BTW to the Walmart manager that saved the baby’s life!)

As I was discussing yesterday, George Jonas reminds us of how we tend to overvalue a woman’s right to self-fulfillment at the expense of new life:

Living in an epoch that is selfish as well as matriarchal, of all the styles that we shield from being cramped, we put women’s style first. We invent euphemisms, such as “choice” for killing, and sophomoric dilemmas, such as pretending not to know when life begins, to ensure that nothing hinders Virginia’s quest for Santa Claus. No obstacle must interfere with her goal of self-fulfillment — least of all an issue (as it were) of her healthy sexual appetite. There’s plenty of babies where this one came from, eh, Ginny? And if not, we can always import some from Somalia.

What the writer of the Post editorial seems to be railing about, and with which I agree, is that society is far too compassionate or lenient towards the type of woman who commits this horrible act. Leaving a newborn face down in Walmart toilet is far different from ringing a doorbell and leaving the baby on someone’s front porch.

But here’s the paragraph that bothered me:

We have never subjected them to the same treatment as murderers. But we have never treated the drowning of infants as acceptable, either. One hopes, not so much for the sake of future babies as for ourselves, that this will not change. We have, by and large, learned to reluctantly accept a legal philosophy that endows an infant with the full human package of moral claims and entitlements to protection only at birth, and no sooner. Is the line to be pushed forward still further in the name of compassion for reckless mothers?

Who is “we”? The royal “we”? The editorial board “we”? Or are they suggesting that “we as a society” have learned to accept that an infant is only a person once they leave their mothers’ body?

Because that, I will never accept.

Great column here by George Jonas (H/T Lifesite), where he picks apart some of tired old arguments used by the Pro-choice crowd.

It is a somewhat irreverent and almost humourous perspective, if that were possible with such a contentious issue:

…Some put the question in terms of a woman’s right to control her own body. That would be valid enough in the realm of smoking, diet, liposuction, or sex — but abortion? Abortion means controlling someone else’s body. (As a man, I have no authority to speak on the matter, I know, but I’m not speaking as a man. I’m speaking as an ex-fetus.)…

He also addresses the reality of our declining birthrate:

…We’re all set to march to our extinction in style. We’ve become the only species that diminishes with success: the first in natural history to experience population decline whenever we do well. The wealthier and more secure our post-Darwinian societies become, the more we fail to reproduce…

Enjoy the read. Also please check out SDA’s discussion on “Populating a Baby-Starved Canada”.

Macleans has an interesting article concerning our Baby Deficit as well - Making Moms: Can We Feed the Need To Breed?

Please stop using the tragic murder of a Toronto student to advance your political agenda.

Follow Stockwell Day’s example - Offer sympathy and let the family grieve.

There will be ample time later for meaningless rhetoric, finger-pointing and political posturing.

Thank you.

…when maybe you should have stayed in bed.

Pity this poor Kitchener Police Officer.

CTV gives the sanitized version.

570 News gives the full story.

And the local CTV station says it was a Grade 8 Orientation day! I bet those kids got a bit more excitement than they bargained for!