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Archives
- September, 2004
Banned Books Week
–
September
29, 2004
This is Banned Books Week, organized annually by a variety of organizations including the American Library Association
(ALA) and the publishing and bookselling industry. It was first held in
1982 to celebrate the freedom to read and features events, displays,
readings and a list of the most banned books throughout history. These
include works ranging from the Bible and Little Red Riding Hood to John
Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The list is posted on their website in
case you’d like to take up the event’s challenge to “elect to read
a banned book”.
Each year, the American Library Association’s Office for
Intellectual Freedom receives hundreds of reports on books and other
materials that were “challenged” (asked to be removed from school or
library shelves.) The ALA estimates the number represents only about a
quarter of the actual challenges. “Most Challenged” titles include
the popular Harry Potter series of fantasy books for children by J.K.
Rowling. The series draws complaints from parents and others who believe
the books promote witchcraft to children. Other titles that have been
censored over the years include To Kill a Mockingbird (which looks
at the impact of prejudice on society), Brave New World (where
babies are conditioned to hate books) and Fahrenheit 451 (where
firemen burn books). Hmmmm.
Banned Books Week emphasizes the freedom to
choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion
might be considered unorthodox or unpopular. It also highlights the
importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular
viewpoints to all who wish to read them. Those two principles form the
foundation of our democracy. Thanks to the organizers of Banned Books
Week for reminding us of the dangers of censorship.
Posted: 2004/09/29
10:42 AM
Finding Nature – September 28, 2004
Every morning I take a long walk before settling in at the computer. We
live at the edge of a large city, right along the waterfront. I could
walk on sidewalks between office towers and beside not-yet-opened
storefronts. And some days I do that, in search of a jolt of urban
energy (and perhaps a latte from one of the numerous cafés). But, more
often than not, I choose to walk a path by the water, which changes from
boardwalk to wharf, to marina edge and grassy garden, then back to
boardwalk. There is something about the water that calms and centers me,
no matter how busy the day ahead promises to be. And I cherish the early
morning smells and sounds as I wind my way through the spectacular
little jewel of a garden that’s just down the street.
This morning, I returned to my tiny office to find
an email from a friend quoting Rachel Carson, the author of Silent
Spring. Carson perfectly captured the benefits of spending time in
nature – even if you find it between the cracks of a city sidewalk:
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of
strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is a symbolic as
well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of
the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something
infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance
that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. The lasting
pleasures of contact with the natural world...are available to anyone
who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and
their amazing life.”
Posted: 2004/09/28 10:30 AM
Bad Backs or Pesticide Poisoning – September
27, 2004
Few things in life, it seems, are ever simple. Here’s a situation where a
well-meaning law designed to protect farm workers may end up hurting
them even more than the practice that is being prohibited. California’s
Occupational Safety and Health Division has taken the unusual
step of passing a regulation that prohibits some 80,000 farmers from
employing people to weed commercial crops by hand, as a way of
preventing debilitating back injuries.
Hand weeding has been the practice on many vegetable farms in
California since 1975, when, prodded by Cesar Chavez and his United Farm
Workers union, the state barred the use of a 12-inch hoe because it,
too, caused back injuries.
Farm groups are complaining
about the new regulation, saying it will make their farms less
productive at a time when they face increased competition from less
regulated states. There are long-handled hoes, of course, but their use
is not always practical, according to farmers. The other tool at their
disposal is pesticide spraying, which isn’t much of a solution, either
for the health of farm workers, consumers or the environment. And I
don’t suppose smaller, less specialized, farms would be considered as
a solution....
Posted: 2004/09/27 12:03 PM
Follow
Up to “No Comment” – September 22, 2004
Families with kids
learning without school have apparently protested the fictitious name
given to emergency preparedness exercises held in a Michigan town
yesterday (See “No Comment”, September 21, below). The editor
of the Muskegon Chronicle reports that the name was chosen by the
county’s chief deputy for emergency preparedness,
a former police commander, and not school officials. And a follow-up
story in today’s paper says that both the county and the school board
have issued an apology.
Posted: 2004/09/22 1:05 PM
Leave
Your Car At Home – September 22, 2004
I’m just back from a walk to the bank and grocery store. This is International Car Free Day, celebrated by over 100 million
people in over 1,500 cities around the world. Supporters include the
European Union, the United Nations and the Government of Canada. Its
origins are in the “In town without my car!” event, organized for
the first time in France in 1998, and established as a European
initiative in 2000. Locally organized street events and forums are
designed to highlight the problems caused by our dependence on the
private automobile, including air pollution, global warming, stress and
safety issues. The rights of pedestrians and cyclists and the need for
more and better public transit are emphasized.
In Canada, the Sierra Club is coordinating
events. For an international perspective, visit the
World Carfree Network’s website. There aren’t a lot of events
scheduled around the U.S.A., oddly enough, but visit
CarFree City USA to see what’s happening there.
Of course, one day with fewer people driving their
cars won’t make much difference in the overall scheme of things. But
change begins with each one of us taking small steps.
Posted: 2004/09/22 1:05 PM
No
Comment – September 21, 2004
If you ever
doubted the mentality of school systems, have a look at this article in
the Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle
newspaper. It describes an exercise that took place today by local
agencies and school boards to test and practice emergency response
plans. The exercise simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group
called Wackos Against Schools and Education who, according to the
article, “believe everyone should be homeschooled”. The premise was
that this group placed a bomb on a school bus and detonated it.
Posted: 2004/09/21 11:20 PM
Who
Are We Testing & Why? – September 20, 2004
Public
school teachers have, as a group, long been opposed to standardized
testing of students. But I’m beginning to wonder about their
motivation. A recent survey released by the Ontario
College of Teachers, looked at how teachers
and the general public feel about student testing. (It claims they are
deeply divided.) A press release announcing the State of the Teaching Profession survey noted that teachers “vehemently oppose” the use of
standardized tests “as a means to evaluate staff or schools or to
decide how money is allocated to schools or school boards”.
Incredibly, the survey results don’t seem to indicate any concern
about whether or not standardized tests are good or bad for kids,
let alone whether or not they are even good tools for evaluating
learning!
I have many objections to testing. For one thing, it presumes to judge the
growth of knowledge by measuring performance on one test in one moment
of time, rather than as a process of growth that occurs over time. The
current broadly-based emphasis on standardized testing means that
teachers are increasingly “teaching to the test”. They spend much of
their time stuffing kids with a curriculum menu of disconnected bits of
information so they can be dutifully spit out again in a way that will
make teachers and school systems look good in the eyes of the
accountability-demanding, tax-paying public. But memorizing facts in
order to be able to regurgitate them isn’t learning; true learning is
interest-driven, highly individualized and difficult to measure. Tests
– especially standardized ones – test test-taking ability. In
addition, they can be poorly written, as well as culturally and
educationally biased, and are usually used to label and slot children,
rather than teachers or educational systems.
In a 1986 Canadian Education Association report entitled
Evaluation for Excellence in Education, the author put it
succinctly: “The modern educational evaluator must recognize that
educational endeavors will be supported by the public only to the extent
that they understand the objectives being pursued and see that the
objectives are actually being attained.” Fair enough. That may be the
political reality for educational administrators. But it has nothing to
do with learning. When will we stop harming our kids with such misguided
bureaucratic practices?
Posted: 2004/09/20 12:56 PM
Shopping
– September 16, 2004
Further to my September 12 blog about magazines dumbing down organics, a
reader pointed out a magazine phenomenon that I find even more
disturbing. I’d noticed ads for new magazines that seemed to focus on
shopping, but hadn’t paid much attention. Then came this reader’s
email, hot on the heals of an article on the subject in the latest
edition of Masthead, a magazine industry trade magazine.
And as I looked around, I realized that shopping magazines are sprouting
up everywhere. Three launched in Canada this summer alone, all based on
a concept that apparently began in Japan a number of years ago. Rather
than insult the magazine genre in which I work, I would rather call
these publications “magalogs”; they are really catalogs disguised in
the shape and format of a magazine. Take a magazine, remove the
editorial, and you have Lucky, Loulou, Wish and Fashion
Shops. (No, I’m not going to link to them...you can google if you
are curious.) Oh, and did I say that people actually pay for these
publications? They’re big
and fat (Loulou’s first issue was 200 pages), full of ads (of course),
pretty and glossy. And popular; according to the Masthead article where one editor was quoted as saying
they are very serious about being superficial, they are circulating
hundreds of thousands of copies.
So
are the young women who are the market for these publications
really that enthusiastic about ostentatious consumption and aesthetics?
Yup. That is exactly what Montreal-base polling firm CROP found last
year. And how about these numbers from Toronto-based Environics Research
Group? Sixty-six percent of females versus 60 percent of males say they “love” to
buy consumer goods. In my research I found something else
interesting...a 2001 British poll that 52 percent of women say they
enjoy shopping more than sex.
There
are lots of theories about the reasons for this frightening infatuation
with consuming, and why it is happening in parallel with a trend toward
simpler living (maybe the former is driving the later, or maybe the
latter is, as I wrote on the 12th, just a passing interest).
But much of the drive to shop must be fuelled by advertisers targeting
increasingly young children. At least that’s what Juliet
Schor says in her new book entitled Born to Buy: The Commercialized
Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner, 2004).
Posted: 2004/09/16 1:45 PM
Dumbing
Down Organics – September 12, 2004
I’ve
just been reading the newly redesigned edition of Organic Style mag,
published by the venerable Rodale Press.
They’ve got a new editor who says her upbringing was an example of bad
organic style. Her parents were apparently into organics, alternative
medicine and other “hippie” (her word) things before it was stylish
(no white sugar, flour or rice, for heaven’s sake). In her attempt to
be – and have her new employer be – seen as cool, all she ends up
doing is highlighting the fact that what was once considered to be
fringe has now become fashion (not to mention coming across as downright
churlish about her family). Eco-chic is the buzz word these days. If
Organic Style’s advertisers are any indication, the eco-chic
organically stylish woman drives a mini-van, works out on a treadmill,
visits South Carolina, is on the South Beach Diet, drinks gourmet
coffee, removes unwanted body hair with wax, and eats Post’s Frosted
Shredded Wheat cereal. Huh?
OK,
so maybe I’m over 50 and my magazine is almost 30, while this editor
looks 20-something and her magazine is barely 3. Or maybe I’m just
curmudgeonly middle-aged and/or jealous that they have more ad revenue
than we do. Or is this a good example of the watering down of all
things “organic”, “natural” and “simple”?
Now,
I’m happy that millions of people are saying a loud “No!” to
genetically-altered food, junk food, pesticides and gas-guzzling SUVs.
I’m thrilled that demand for organic food is growing so fast farmers
have a hard time keeping up. When my husband Rolf and I started Natural
Life magazine in 1976, we joked about how we’d be happy when natural
living (and all its related aspects like natural learning) became such a
common concept that we’d have put ourselves out of business. It hasn’t
happened yet, but one
part of my brain cheers the fact that such words and phrases are now
commonplace...OK, chic. However, such hopeful trends have their dark
side too. While I am all in favor of what author Paul Hawken has called
“natural capitalism”, the pursuit of profit often has the side
effect of dumbing down the concept it is exploiting. So although it may
not be the publisher’s intention, magazines like Organic Style (and
Real Simple to name another) are eroding the
authenticity of the very concepts they are promoting. And they are
insulting their readers at the same time. Watering ideas down in order
to make them palatable to the general population is just as unnecessary
as adding sugar to otherwise healthy prepared foods. Ever tried to buy
soy milk or supposedly “natural” and even “organic” cereal that
doesn’t have added sugar?
However,
the media is not alone in this. As the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has recently pointed out in an
important essay
by organic farmer and author Eliot Coleman, big corporations respond to
the consumers’ concerns about what they are doing to their health and
that of the planet, they buy out the small organic companies, monopolize
retail outlets, and work with government bureaucrats to lower organic
standards. The OCA estimates that everything sold in supermarkets will
be labeled “organic” in 20 years...but that word will be just
another meaningless marketing word by then.
So
what is needed? A large dose of authenticity. Educated, sophisticated
consumers who won’t stand for “organic lite”, who will buy from
local organic farmers rather than supermarkets touting any old imported
product they can slap a greener label on. Consumers who will support
businesses that operate on the principles of Fair Trade and
sustainability. Consumers who are happy to buy second-hand and
small...or not at all. People whose sense of well-being isn’t based on
having the newest, most chic whatevers and for whom living a more
healthy, sustainable lifestyle doesn’t mean just flashing back to the days
of ponchos, peasant blouses and psychedelically painted VWs. Oh, and who
read publications that don’t allow the information they provide to be
compromised by a hell-bent drive for profit without principles.
Posted: 2004/09/12 11:49 AM
Freedom
of Speech – September 11, 2004
In
this past week, I have had two negative reactions against my anti-Bush
editorial (a shortened version of the blog entry from August 1) in Natural
Life’s current issue. As an editor, journalist and sometimes
outspoken commentator for close to 30 years, I’m accustomed to tirades
against what I write. In fact, I delight in all feedback, negative or
otherwise, because it means people are reading my work and, I hope,
thinking about the issues I raise! And I actually expected more than two
negative reactions.
However,
these two letters are bothering me. One is a natural food store owner in
Arizona who refuses to “spread [my] left-wing agenda” and the other
is a writer from Maryland who said if she had known I was going to
“write such a divisive
editor’s column” she would never have submitted her article to me. I
would have thought that a writer and a natural food store owner would,
by virtue of their vocations, want to nurture the dissemination of a
full range of viewpoints. Maybe freedom of speech has become another
casualty of the so-called war against terrorism.
Posted: 2004/09/11 12:25 PM
Learning
to Build – September 10, 2004
Thanks to the reader who pointed me to an
insightful
piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by columnist
Roy MacGregor (perhaps best known as a hockey writer and author of
children’s books). He writes about parents
so desperate to give their pre-school children a leg up that they are
enrolling them in tutoring classes en route to an MBA or equivalent.
However, he notes, many employers are now hiring on the basis of lesser
degrees, and on eagerness and ability to learn. He also notes that what
our economy seems to be demanding is construction workers, engineers, welders,
plumbers, pipefitters and electricians. For sure, the need to repair our crumbling
infrastructure, coupled with the major construction projects fueled by a
booming economy, will make today’s skilled labor shortage the great
labor concern of tomorrow.
So MacGregor calls for a refocusing on the part of
all those well-meaning parents. He writes, “...there is...something to
be said for the unbelievable pleasure of building something that lasts,
that matters, that is appreciated, and that has a starting wage of
nearly $30 an hour at the end of an apprenticeship.” Since the father
of four knows that some of the best learning results from play, he
suggests that parents refocus their attention and money from tutoring to
carpentry sets. I wonder if he realizes how truly revolutionary this
idea is? Thanks, Roy, for adding your voice to those of us who have long
envisioned an education system built on real learning experiences rather
than on race-to-the-top competition and elbows-out performance.
Posted: 2004/09/10 10:31
PM
Talk
and Toss – September 7, 2004
What could be worse than some bozo yelling into his
cellular phone in a restaurant, or letting it ring in the theatre? Some
bozo doing it with a disposable cellular phone, that’s what! Given the
ubiquity of disposable cameras and prepaid phone cards, it was
inevitable that a throwaway cell phone wouldn’t be far behind. (And
apparently a disposable laptop computer is in the works too!)
Southern California phone maker Hop-On Wireless has had a throwaway cell phone on
the market for a couple of years now, available in stores like
Walgreen’s, Target, Kmart and 7-Eleven. Another company, Dieceland
Technologies of Cliffside Park, NJ, has won patents for a
phone made of paper that will cost about $10. And a few weeks ago,
Wireless Age Communications Inc., a Canadian-based retailer of mobile
phones, announced that it is teaming up with American-based Azonic Corp.
to develop and market two disposable cellular phones designed for low-cost, short-term usage. The companies
say they are targeting business people and tourists “in immediate need
of a cell phone”, kind of like satisfying your junk food craving with a Big
Mac, I suppose. Don’t laugh...market analyst Paul Vittner,
who has been tracking the emerging disposable phone market, once wrote a report
entitled “Cheeseburgers, Cellphones
and Fries”.
One disposable phone inventor apparently came up with her patented invention
after being tempted to toss her cell phone out her car window in frustration
over a bad connection. Just in time, she realized that cell phones were too expensive to
lose or throw away. Maybe she could just take anger management classes
instead of adding to the planet’s already unmanageable load of
garbage.
It is estimated that over one billion of the supposedly non-disposable cell
phones are already in use worldwide. Unfortunately, due to fast moving
technology and consumer fickleness, they are used an average of only 18
months before being replaced and moved into the waste stream, along with
the resources and toxic substances that they are made from.
Biodegradable phones anyone?
Posted: 2004/09/07 5:31
PM
Solving
Educator-Defined Problems – September 2, 2004
A
new study released today in Toronto suggests that the way to solve the
problem of kids doing poorly in school is to send them to school
earlier. The
study is called Early Learning and Care in the City and is a joint initiative of the Centre of Early
Childhood Development at George Brown College and the Atkinson
Centre for Society and Child Development at the University of
Toronto’s Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE). In a
press release announcing the study’s publication, OISE’s
Dr. Daniel Keating says, “One quarter of all children entering grade
one have behaviour or learning problems, which is a strong indicator of
continued school difficulty. The research indicates these children have
not received enough preschool program experience or the quality of the
experience was inadequate.”
I can hardly write for sputtering with flabbergasted frustration! Those
so-called behaviour and learning “problems” result from kids not
wanting to be in school, not being interested in what they’re being
taught, and/or not having their personal learning styles addressed (as
the study’s authors, to be fair, recognize). Six-year-olds need less
“program experience”, not more! Behaviour and learning problems
don’t exist when kids are engaged with life and learning, when they
are not forced into situations that don’t nurture their minds, bodies
or souls.
If your intent is to create obedient automatons who are socialized into
performing well on an outmoded, mechanized educational assembly line, or
even kids who make an easy transition to grade school by not disrupting
their classes, then put babies into programs at an ever earlier age. If
your intent is to help children develop into autonomous, creatively
thinking, actively learning adults, then keep them out of school as long
as possible...or, better still, abolish school as we know it and spend
the resulting billions of dollars on developing a learning society that
works for all ages. If we are talking about the very real need for
universal access to high quality daycare for those who want or need it,
then let’s say that, rather than
suggesting that such institutionalization is good for kids and will
solve their later schooling problems. Until educators and legislators
start thinking outside the system box and realize that education and
schooling are not the same thing, our kids will continue to have
educator-defined behaviour and learning problems.
Posted: 2004/09/02 8:11
PM
Symptoms
or Normal Reaction? – September 1, 2004
Here is something new from the tell-us-something-we-didn’t-know
department. Spending time outdoors can help overcome the so-called
“symptoms” of kids labeled with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to new
research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to a report in the
American Journal of Public Health, the study of 452 parents of children with ADHD found that activities in
“green” spaces such as farms, parks and even backyards often seemed
to temporarily have a “calming” effect on children’s
“symptoms”, as opposed to activities performed indoors or in concrete
and steel settings.
Now, there are two issues here. First of all,
while I don’t carry the unfortunate ADHD label, I find that stepping
outside or walking/running in a park helps calm me down and relieve stress.
Secondly, I wonder if it ever occurred to these or other researchers
that perhaps many of these kids don’t actually have a disorder at all.
What if their “symptoms” are actually a normal reaction to
being in concrete and steel settings all day, to the fatigue that comes
from focusing their attention on a boring task while trying to block out
the distractions of a school classroom? What if they merely function
better when they are allowed to run and play in the park, as children are designed to do? What if the label is blaming the victim? As writer Jan Hunt has pointed out in an article in Life Learning, we
don’t blame flowers that fail to bloom...we adjust their growing conditions!
Posted: 2004/09/01 11:20
AM
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