The Very Detrimental Caterpiller

The world is full of meanings we aren't aware of. "The world is so full of a number of things / we should all be as happy as kings", wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, but the world of thought and ideas is overwhelming and we learn to focus. Out of our tiny focus, we extract our own treasured, and rigid, belief system. Most people narrow their awareness just to get through the day. Maybe it's a safety instinct. We no longer aim for a capacious or well-furnished mind; public school systems certainly don't. People are told they need to "feel safe" and not be "triggered". Too often, other people's ideas are seen as "bullying". 

Hence a renewed book-banning mania. One Canadian school system decided to remove any children's book written before 2008, as "detrimental" for the "marginalized" -- including classics like Anne Frank's Diary, The Very Hungry Caterpiller, Anne of GG, and the Harry Potter series (of course).  Schools were instructed to specially support the Afro-Caribbean and indigenous students, and if that's the new meaning of "inclusive", then schools have problems with word definition. Maybe they'll throw out the Dictionary as well, as something detrimental -- maybe thinking it's as bad as the Very Detrimental Caterpiller. 

Can You Sue a Robot?

And can robots be censored for hate-speech or other "wrong-speech" written by Artificial Intelligence content creation software? What legal liability will news outlets have, once robots write their columns?

Contentbot service providers ("chatbots") offer prices affordable for students wanting to buy AI-produced essays (the concept of plagiarism is mere nostalgia). This service is also affordable for freelancers who submit a lot of material to magazines. If even only a few online mags per month publish their submissions, they could soon cover the cost of contentbots and start profiting.

Is this seriously where the "knowledge economy" is going (the economy comprising journalism, the arts, entertainment, law, tech, finance, consulting, education, and research)? Then you'll need only feed into your contentbot provider the terms which hip magazine editors use in their Submission Guidelines (terms like "inclusive, indigenous, racialized, marginalized, ablist, trans-supportive, fat-supportive, anti-colonialist" and so on).

Journalists and news reporters thought the rising tide of unemployment was already bad, but newspapers and magazines won't need journalists at all once owner-

editors feed requirements straight to their robot staff, based on polls showing what readers want and what the identity-biases of the moment are.

So never mind cancel culture -- we've got pre-cancel culture. But what happens when a magazine is sued for defamation or for discriminating against someone? Can you sue a robot? (Soon we'll be asking, can a robot sue me?)

And who would defend the news outlet or magazine in court? Will lawyers and judges too be robots that automatically search precedents which lead to the only logically-artificially-intelligent decision?

What if a radio host wants to interview the "source" of a controversial article -- and the source is a robot? (Can robots use four-letter words on the radio, or will another robot bleep them out automatically?)

Clergy are already debating among themselves the morality of using AI-generated sermons (though some people say the fundamentalists already do ...)

Some call these trends "DeepAI". Others call them Final Shallowing -- of the life of the mind.

Best response? Maybe thinkers still able to articulate their own thoughts should have a soapbox in every town square where they can be heard by a public who can see that they're made of actual flesh and blood. But wait ... that's been done! The ancient Greeks called the town square the agora, and the Romans the "porch" (stoa), where the Stoic philosophers spoke to the passing crowd. And in Enlightenment Europe the cafes and salons filled the same role, and people knew how to be good conversationalists. 

So best response? Get offline, and communicate in the flesh -- especially in classrooms.

 

 

Loss of Professional Training Means Loss of Workers -- Does Compelled Thought fill the gap?

Canada is short of qualified workers. Businesses are closing for lack of staff, air transport and local ferry services are in total disarray, and hospital emergency rooms are closing while medical personnel resign in droves. 

It's hardly surprising. What are people trained for today? What do universities teach? Who gets qualified to do real jobs?

A few things we're short of: nurses, lab technicians, doctors, veterinarians, ship pilots, airline pilots, bus drivers, lifeguards, emergency personnel. Even waiters and cashiers.

Take a look at some subjects the universities feel it helpful to offer:

Disability Studies, Gender Studies (e.g. "Power & Difference"), Queer Film, and "Queering the Undead" (that's essential knowledge for a well-prepared work force, eh?) 

Also in Cinema is "Decolonizing the Screen", and in History: "Decolonizing Settler Societies", and "Hockey Nation and Canadian Identity". In Philosophy, "Meta-ethics", and the whole spectrum of Social Justice Studies ...

Graduate programs offered at UBC include: "Antiracism Education", "Indigenous Pathways Through Social and Emotional Learning", "Principles of Applied Sports Analytics", "Meaning and Identity in the Digital Age", "Knowledge Translation and Implementation Sciences", and most curious of all: "Climate Studies and Action Capstones ..." Action Capstones, you ask?? It's education-jargon for something once called doing a Thesis ... except without the research. Quelle surprise.) 

There's even a shortage of tree-planters. (Unfortunately there seems to be no shortage of loggers. Why don't universities teach Climate Studies and Forest Regeneration, instead of "capstones"?)

No wonder no one can drive a bus or fly a plane. Educators are "translating and implementing" the wrong knowledge. 

What work do graduates choose to do? We seem to have a lot of web designers, financial advisors, YouTube makers, podcasters, graphic novelists, singer-songwriters, counsellors, coaches and "influencers". So who gets the actual work done? 

So: Flight Is Cancelled. Ferry Cancelled. Emergency Department Closed. Even swimming pool closed.

Lots of teens used to go in for lifeguard training, but now to take the program they have to sign a contract agreeing to "decolonization and equity" in order to learn to swim (as far as I recall, they always were taught to rescue all drowning persons equally).

Many Admissions Departments of schools and post-secondary institutions are now requiring Declarations of Compelled Thought. No wonder a thinking student is loathe to enroll. So now we get an under-trained populace, and a dangerous shrinkage of essential services. 

CLOSED

PLEASE POSTPONE YOUR EMERGENCY

TO A LATER DATE

Re-discovering the 'Doctrine of Discovery'

An "Indigenous Corporate Training" organization says that the "Doctrine of Discovery" is the basis of Canadian Law. Not true.

First of all: never trust "training" -- too much like molding and grooming. (And brainwashing.) Secondly, the antecedents of the evolution of Law in Canada came way before that Age of Exploration during which Europeans found their way to other continents. Canadian (British-based) law has roots in Celtic and Druidic justice, pre-Anglo-Saxon. Those communities settled disputes in much subtler ways than historians often give them credit for. 

When European explorers discovered that North and South America existed (having previously discovered that the Earth was round, and therefore deciding to sail around it), they found tribes that settled disputes through raids, warfare, and the taking of slaves (a fact which they noted but today's commentators are loathe to acknowledge). 

Who has sovereignty over a landscape? Not humanity, humans living but a moment on a planet billions of years old which has hosted a churning cauldron of billions of other species. But, our fundamental transitoriness notwithstanding, the practical arrangement is that national governments have sovereignty over citizens -- and in a democracy use it in protection of life, liberty and property for all citizens equally.

During the Age of Discovery and the Age of Settlement, democracy too was being discovered, and developed in Europe and North America simultaneously. 

Where do property rights come from? From legal use, i.e. from working the land. Where your labour goes, you have ownership interest. To buy, sell and bequeath your interest, government sets up Land Title Offices. (Settlers didn't find such offices among the tribes they encountered in the "New World", so they proceeded under Old World legalities.) 

When non-Catholic monarchies like the British claimed territory (as in Canada) they made claim against other monarchies, not against aboriginals living there. With the multiplicity of aboriginal groups they made Peace and Friendship Treaties, exhibiting the opposite of dispossession (see the Royal Proclamation of King George III, 1763). 

The organized legal transference of real estate (land) is a foundation of peaceful society. Is that a thing we want to throw away, adopting a Doctrine of Strife instead of a Doctrine of Discovery? 

No. Nor did people want to in Canada's colonial years; in fact the way they (as it turned out, naively) thought they'd include aboriginal people in the mainstream of opportunity was through education -- but we know how that turned out. Education takes more than a generation, and we see now that schooling shouldn't have been left in the hands of punitive clergy with rigid religious agenda of their own. 

Their punitive harshness wreaked misery on generations of white students also ... but that, in contemporary thinking, is overlooked. No doubt in future those students too will stake a claim to compensation. 

There May Be a Shortage of Workers, But Don't Go Short of Humour

Is the current shortage of staff (in retail, wholesale, transport, airports, ferries, health care, construction) linked to a reluctance of upcoming generations to seek employment? A preference of graduates (or drop-outs) to keep living with parents (citing existing rental unaffordability), while dreaming of careers "working online", i.e. never having to step away from the computer screen? 

Does the worker shortage (and shortage of qualifications for positions of responsibility) also result from changes in the education system? What do schools teach, today? They've given up on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, that's obvious. Those are replaced by texting, TikTok and "oral traditions". Arts and Science (literally and originally, meaning "skill and knowledge") have been replaced in the K-12 curriculum by subjects like Safetyism, Competitive Victimhood, Neuro-variance (Curating Your Moods), Gender-rights, Data Violence, and Dysphoria (the state of feeling dissatisfied). 

Students certainly aren't being groomed to be satisfied with customer service work or jobs involving skill, physical labour, or commitment. (On-again off-again gigs are always short-term, for when you want to be off again. This is called work-life balance.)  

Does this sound like a typical aging person's grumpy assessment of the "younger generation", as offered since time immemorial? Yes, indeed. Yet, some things are different now: the technology-driven ones (retreat to life on-line) and ideological ones (creating mediocre education through PC virtue-notions of equity, diversity,  inclusion ... and colonials' exclusion). 

Maybe the healthiest thing is to keep a droll sense of humour -- our best armor against "dysphoria". Some folks choose to be "On the Droll":  

On the Droll | Mad Swirl

Some kids choose to drop out of school.

 

Manufactured History

Since History has become too incendiary to remain a scholarly discipline, it is now to be done by "public consultation" -- a bureaucratic phrase which borders on meaninglessness yet is laden with shadowy signaling.  

So what does the consulted public think about history? Which parts of the public are being consulted? Who are they being consulted by? Whoever it is, history will go on being itself, already having been itself. We can't change it, we can only either know or not know it. (Are schools still doing anything about knowing it?)

The agendum behind "doing history by public consultation" is to change the "narrative". If once deemed exclusive, privileged or unjust, a slice of history must be suppressed or rearranged, the previous chroniclers fired and a new crew taken aboard.

How is History by public consultation done then?                                                         

First you censor inconvenient documents, removing them from Public Archives.   

Then you remove awkward memoirs, history books and historical novels from public libraries.

You knock down statues and take portraits off walls.                               

You turn heritage buildings and historic houses into convention centres for anti-racism training and corrective re-education.                                                     

You change the school curriculum so as to cover indigenous history, "marginalized" and ethnic history, but not European, Anglo-Saxon, Enlightenment, Age of Reason and industrialization history. Students are taught by influencers, identity groups and therapists from the "correct" segments of the population.                                                                                                              Finally, you change the names of towns, parks, and streets so as to create amnesia about the figures they were originally named after, and the accomplishments for which those figures were commemorated.   

(WARNING for traditional scholarly historians: if you advance alternative non-consultative theories of the past you be may charged with Hate Speech.)

Seriously, the most reliable source of knowledge of past eras is well-written memoir (i.e. written by the literate): the "I was there and this is what I saw" genre.

For example: Daniel Defoe's A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain" (1724-6) which meticulously described landscape and analyzed economic resources and social interaction, taking us there -- 18th century England. For example: 

"Dorchester is ... pleasant, agreeable ... the people seemed less divided into factions than in other places, for though not all of one mind, either as to religion or politics, yet did not separate with such animosity as in other places. I saw Church of England clergymen and the Dissenting minister drinking tea together, and conversing with civility and good neighbourhood ..."

Sounds like we today could learn a lot from their example ...

Too bad anyone recording today, and being read a hundred years from now, won't be able to say the same about our communities as Defoe said about Dorchester, riven as we are by identity politics and the desire not only to dispute the present but to re-package the past, fracturing it on the basis of rival "standpoints".

(Regarding the ancient past, as revealed in archaeology and text analysis, here's one example: the scholar Camille Jullian "devoted himself to classical antiquity and Roman Gaul. He reconstructed the history of this period by cross-referencing human geography, philology, numismatics, epigraphy and archaeology" and "strove to apply science and history to the teaching of the arts ... through thorough observation, research and analysis of anonymous archives.)  He lived 1859-1933. Does anyone still bother with those disciplines??

Camille Jullian (1859-1933) | Aux sources de l'Archéologie nationale (culture.fr) 

When schools give up teaching literacy --

What can we do but stutter and stammer

faced with the overthrow of grammar?

The ivory tower, once well-gated,

is stormed by speech un-articulated,

and Stations of the Cross-out by editor's pen

may never be seen on a page again.

To decipher a sentence is an exercise gnostic

when meaning's as cryptic as initials acrostic.

Antonyms and acronyms make poor kin and kith

and prepositions know not when they're at, to or with.

Ironically, "texting" is the graveyard of text,

while literary stylists ask: what will die next?

Government Mandates Education Passport

Now that the school system is to take over daycare as "early education", the word “pre-school” will no longer be appropriate. There is only “school”, which will henceforth begin at birth and be managed by educators in the interests of guaranteeing appropriate attitudes among children.

There will be economic benefits as a result of mothers being freed from motherhood. They will be slotted instead into the employment economy, which studies show might raise the nation’s GDP.

Once parents have enrolled their newborns promptly into all-day child-care, they will receive a Universal School Passport which will allow families to participate in society. This Passport will be essential for travel and access to community programs.

Because some parents may exhibit hesitancy about Schooling-From-Birth, the Passport will be introduced in stages. There have already been some resistant remarks, such as “When are the play-at-home hours? When is the getting-to-know-your-own-family time? And the unstructured non-digital play time? And private day-dreaming-in-your-own bedroom time?”

Childcare experts feel that such attitudes are inappropriate for successful socialization of future citizens. In school, kids find shoal-mates, like fish schooling in a shallow shoal of a bay as they swim and turn as one unit. Any anti-social tendencies toward individual movement will be similarly eliminated from human students, which will ready them for equity and inclusion.

Students will not be graded on specific skills, since measuring skills and knowledge is bullying. We know that Math is racist, and Grammar elitist. In the future workplace, robots will take care of all that.

The newly established Edu-Childcare Authority assures parents that The Economy Needs Your Kids.

“I don’t want to sell my kids to the Economy,” says one mother. A worrisome minority is unaccountably hesitant in this regard.

“How will the taxpayer afford this cradle-to-illiteracy school system anyway?” asks the worrisome minority.

Officials are explaining to them that the kids themselves will be paying off the deficit when they grow up. That’s why a compliant shoaling populace is best, given future circumstances.

Even resistant parents will be proud on the day their child graduates from Pre-School, when they will hear the address from the Early Childhood Education Leader:

"We are thrilled to welcome parents, grand/step-parents and other significant influencers to this celebration. Your five-year-olds have successfully graduated from the national Early Learning Program. They have had a wonderful first five years of life, transitioning seamlessly from the womb to our richly intersectional training environment.

You and your children may not have seen much of each other over the past five years, as they come and go from daycare and you come and go from work, meetings, Zoom calls, fitness regimes, therapy sessions and professional up-gradng. Seeing your kids up here on this stage, about to receive their Childcare Graduation Certificates, you might hardly recognize them. You might be amazed at how big they have grown, how many tattoos they have, how much longer or shorter their hair is, and how their eyes are still that deep colour that Grandma's were!

Maybe you have stayed in touch with your kids through the regular texts they have sent you (we encourage maintaining ties between students and family), so you know how many acronyms and emojis they have learned at Daycare! 

They have learned to fit into a crowd and navigate time. That means they go online a lot, and rarely stray into time-wasting day-dreamy private introspection. Becoming fully absorbed into our inclusive and equitable shared learning environment is key to their social adjustment. They have had opportunities to play with blockchains, enjoy digital inclusivity games, and do anti-bias role playing. 

They have practised performative allyship in non-racialized learning rooms, so you know they're prepared for primary school. It's hard to believe that that used to be the beginning of schooling, back in the unprogressive era of half-day kindergarten. Society has come a long way since children played in back yards and spent time at home for the first five unstructured years of their lives.

You will feel proud at the graduation which takes place today, and there is of course nothing competitive about this Awards Day: every child's the winner! Each child will take their place in the rainbow. So get out your phone camera, and in case some non-custodial parents aren't sure which child is theirs or what their pronouns are, please refer to the display of selfies projected onto the wall, with the name of each child shown (with pronoun preferences) under their head-shots."

 

The Race to Innumeracy

 Some School Boards, acting on the calculations of social-justice-diversity-inclusion, have declared that math is racist. The Ontario Ministry of Education has ruled that two "Mathematics" exist (how do they count them?). There is both "euro-centric mathematical knowledge" and "indigenous mathematical knowledge". (Guess which one is "racist"?)

One, says the School Board, is about indigenous shape categories (as for canoes and baskets), and the other is about mathematical probabilities and prediction of how long jail sentences are for non-white criminals who re-offend.

Probably not many Humanities types understand mathematical probability, but we do think it improbable that 2 + 2 suddenly equals 5. And in a dizzyingly unstable world, we want at least arithmetic to hold steady, 100% of the time (that would be 100 of 100 times, in case you only took math recently). We may not have all been great at high school math in pre-woke times, but we count on the fact that some people were. Who wants a banker or an engineer that can't do math, or a pharmacist who can't measure the quantities of medications you've been prescribed? Who wants an accountant who can't add? For them "reconciliation" is about reconciling numbers on the income and the out-go sides of the balance sheet. Let's hope someone can balance it.

It's not rocket science -- except when it is rocket science -- but ordinary measurement, calculation, and balancing of weights, measures and distances do make the world of commerce, construction and transportation go round.

Regarding Math-Humanities Intersectionalism, there's a parallel downward race to innumeracy and illiteracy illustrated by constant media misuse of the term "decimate", as in "their rights are being decimated" -- apparently meaning devastated, although the word actually means reduced by ten percent. (cf. "decimal" etc. -- get it?) One fears that soon, school Math departments will be more than decimated.

If Math teachers are to be replaced by Social Justice Warriors, what will numbers "mean" in future? As for whether public trust in the statistics which politicians, experts and "influencers" trot out -- don't count on it.

.

Colonies and Canadian Indigenous Groups

Recent Social Studies Essay Topic in BC Schools - Impacts of the
Colonial Era on Indigenous Canadians

Proposition: No positive impacts resulted from the colonial period of Canadian history*, so discontinuation of institutions and services originating in colonial times, and eviction of descendants of European settlers, is advisable. DISCUSS.  

Describe your vision of Canadian life after the following colonialist institutions are banned:

Legislative assemblies, Parliament, elected representation

Courts of Law, trial by jury, equal rights legislation, Legal Aid

Land Title Offices and property acquisition (except through raids and warfare)

Income Assistance/welfare 

ferry service (e.g. BC Ferries)

trains

cars (and everything else involving wheels)

electricity

building maintenance

road maintenance

banks

farms (food henceforth to be gathered, dug, or killed by spear)

wineries, breweries, pubs, orchestras

dentistry, surgery, medical imaging, pharmacies, painkilling pharmaceuticals

schools, universities, professional degrees, science labs

books, publishing, literacy and computers

Supplementary Question: Should governments dictate the Correct Study of History, and the content of school curricula?

* "Mother Fuming" -- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prince-george-school-assignment-colonies-indigenous-1.6176059

New School Year: Granny Goes to Parents' Day

Granny phones the school.

-- Good morning. My name's Iris and my grand-daughter Venetia goes to your school. I wondered what time the Parents' Open House begins?

-- We don't call it “Parents' Open House”, we call it Blended Families and Significant Influencers Day.

-- Oh. Well what time does it start?

-- Our open-ness goes on all day every day, but today's September celebration starts at one o'clock --ish.

-- “Ish”?

-- Too much exactitude is stigmatizing for members of our community with variant time perception.

-- Oh. Well, I'll be there at one o'clock, non-variantly.

*

“Kate, why do you send Venetia to that weird school, Children's House? I've just had the most peculiar phone conversation with them.”

“It's best never to phone them, Mom. It was Venni's choice, all her friends from pre-school were going there. Friends matter, when you're in Grade One.”

“Of course. So I'll meet you at the Open House at one then.”

It wasn't hard to find the place. It was painted in rainbow colours and looked as if it had been broken into -- windows with jagged glass, half boarded up -- but looking again Iris realized these scenes had been painted onto the exterior walls. She learned later that this was “low income neighbourhood design curated by Grafitti Artists”, which was meant to reassure the marginalized. Iris had parked some distance away because the parking lot was blocked by a banner saying NO PARKING ("GLOBAL-COOLING"). The sidewalk was blocked by enormous bikes with bulky child seats, hitches and trailers.

Mounting the steps to the front door Iris passed PEACE PLAY PLAZA. At the entrance, a young woman in a short dress, exhibiting multiple tattoos, nose rings and pink-streaked hair, was with one hand distributing flyers saying “SAVE SUDAN”, while scrolling through a smartphone with the other.

“Save which part of Sudan and from whom ...” Iris began to ask, when the woman gave a joyful whoop at the sight of friends arriving behind Iris, at which point Iris realized from the flute-y tenor of her squeal that this woman was a boy.

In the foyer was a Children's Creativity Wall. Across the growing crowd of visitors Iris saw her daughter Kate arrive.

“Did you get the Sudan flyer?” asked Iris.

Kate looked at the paper she was holding. “Mine says Somalia.”

“Where will we find Venetia?”

“I think her room's down this hall ... ”

Iris followed Kate but the rooms they passed were filled with older students, half of whom were wrestling while the other half hunched over smartphones. “This is a madhouse,” said Iris. “Let's ask somebody. Which are parents and which are teachers? They all look like freaks ...”

“SHH,” hissed Kate.

“Excuse me,” Iris said to a middle-aged woman staring at her smartphone, “where would the Grade One room be?”

“We don't have grades here. Too prescriptive. We're all one community.”

Iris caught sight of a sign with an arrow. TO LIBRERY, it said. “I see you have a school library, anyway,” she said with an effortful smile.

“A community librery. For kids not connected at home.”

“No books at home? How sad.”

The woman stared. “No wifi,” she said.

Venetia and three of her friends burst out of a room. “Granny! Mommy! Come and see my art!”

“Are these your friends?” asked Iris. “What are their names?”

“Roughi, Merlou, and Reveel,” said Venni, pointing at each in turn.

Another middle-aged woman presided over the room to which she led them. “And is this your teacher?”

“Companion,” said the woman. “We don't call ourselves teachers here.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“A pretty colonialist label, don't you think?”

“Well ...”

“Mom,” Kate interrupted, “let's look at Venni's art work.”

Iris looked at a swirl of blues. “That's the sky,” said Venni. Next to it was a slash of greens. “That's a tree,” said Venni. Next was a smudge of browns. “That's Margaret's puppies.”

“And who's Margaret?” asked Iris. Finally, a friend with a normal name.

“Margaret's the mother dog.”

Surveying the art, Iris said to the Companion-In-Charge, “You don't teach drawing skills, I gather?”

The woman shuddered. “God no. Skill is so limiting.”

“I guess you have to teach skills in the Math class though; some things just can't be non-limited, without being not themselves.”

“Math? We don't do Math. Numbers are so confining.”

“Oh. Do the students learn languages then?”

“Oh yes! There are five indigenous languages to choose from.”

“Oh. And that's because ...?” but Iris knew not to ask.

“To make up for history,” the Companion explained anyway.

Iris had been, before retirement, a Professor of Economic History, and before that, a professional economist. “Make up for ...” she repeated.

“History's all lies,” explained the Companion. “It's just a story of bullying.”

“Yet quite a bit of history consisted of standing up to bullying ...”

“We don't repeat the lies told by the victors.”

No, you repeat jargon, Iris wanted to say, but she stopped herself for the sake of anxious Kate and oblivious Venetia.

“Where are these puppies then?” she asked Venetia.

“In the Animal Therapy Room, of course!”

“Of course,” said Iris.

It was full of cages, some of whose occupants – lizards and snakes -- didn't look alive. There were cats, dogs and rabbits, segregated in separated zones. Some dogs were barking. Cats, ignoring them, lounged on top of carpeted clawing posts. “They have to stay in here because of allergies,” said Venetia, importantly. “Lots of kids have allergies, you know.”

“Yes,” agreed Iris. “So we're told. And do you know what an allergy is?”

“I think it's, like ... autism? ... It's ... um ... oh yeah ... bi-polar!” She looked down at her shoes. “I think. But we can't have polar bears in the Animal Therapy Room, they're too big. Even Margaret is too big, says the Assistant to Teaching Animals.”

“So, wait, you're saying the animals teach, and humans assist?”

“Mom ...,” said Kate, warningly. “I think it's to save money,” she whispered, shepherding her mother out of the Animal Therapy Room. “Teachers' salaries are high. It's cheaper to call them Teaching Assistants, who aid the animals, who lend wisdom but don't ...”

“Speak English. Know Math. Assign homework. Grade papers. Kate, what are you thinking, sending Venetia to school in this mad place?” Iris asked as she, Kate and Venetia left for home.

“It's not mad, it's ideologically experimental. You know, equitable and inclusive and ...”

“... 'diverse'. Right. On second thought, maybe the animals are the most qualified teachers there. They should make Margaret the principal.”

Kate, relaxing, laughed at last as they made their way home along the sunshiny street. “But don't call her the 'principal'. That means 'first in rank'. Much too elitist.”

“It is a madhouse.”

“If we did have polar bears they would get very mad at the dogs' barking,” offered Venetia. She skipped ahead. “Quick, let's get home and read my polar bear book!”

Pre-School Early Learning Graduation Day

 

Pre-School Graduation Day

A Welcome From Early Learning Daycare

As the Team Leader of your children's Early Learning Daycare I'm thrilled to welcome parents, grand/step-parents and all other significant influencers to this celebration. Your five-year-olds have successfully graduated from the national Early Learning Program. They have had a wonderful first five years of life, transitioning seamlessly from the womb to our richly intersectional training environment.

You and your children may not have seen much of each other over the past five years, as they come and go from daycare and you come and go from work, meetings, Zoom calls, fitness regimes, therapy, and professional upgradng. Seeing them up here on this stage, about to receive their Childcare Graduation Certificates, you might hardly recognize your kids. You might be amazed at how big they have grown, how many tattoos they have, how much longer, or maybe shorter, their hair is, and how their eyes are still that deep colour that Grandma's were!

Maybe you have stayed in touch with your kids through the regular texts they have sent you (we encourage maintaining close ties between students and family), so you know how many acronyms and emojis they have learned at Daycare! 

They have learned to fit into a crowd and navigate time. That means they go online a lot, and rarely stray into time-wasting day-dreamy private introspection. Becoming fully absorbed into our inclusive and equitable shared learning environment is key to their social adjustment. They have had opportunities to play with blockchains, enjoy digital inclusivity games, and do real-time anti-bias role playing. 

They have practised performative allyship in non-racialized learning rooms, so you know they're prepared for primary school. It's hard to believe that that used to be the beginning of schooling, back in the unprogressive era of half-day kindergarten. It's amazing how far society has come since children once played in back yards and spent time at home for the first five empty unstructured years of their lives.

You will be proud of the graduation which takes place today, and there is of course nothing competitive about this Awards Day: every child will be the winner! Each child will take their place in the rainbow. So get out your smartphone camera, and in case some non-custodial parents aren't sure which child is theirs please refer to the display of selfies projected onto the wall behind the kids, with the name of each one displayed (with pronoun preferences) under their head-shots.

First Day (Never Do Anything By Yourselfie)

First day of the term, and Mom drives you to the University. She wants to meet all your new teachers. She wants to make sure they all have her email address. She drives you up to the main door and says, "Now don't move 'til I get back, don't get lost while I park the car."

She manoeuvres around others parents' vehicles, and then dashes back waving a large bag: "You forgot you lunch!" You enter the building together, crowding in with other students, parents, grandparents, social workers, guardians and counsellors. 

"Is there a 'fridge where you can keep your medication?" Mom asks anxiously. 

First day of kindergarten? No: first day of university. 

Remember the old days when First Year students went to University by themselves? Finally free of adult supervision they could pilot their own educational boat and plot their route through adulthood.

They didn't need counselling because the buildings were big and there were other students they hadn't met before, and they had to find a room on a map and choose a desk to sit at, all without consulting a therapist. They arrived in their own second hand car, bought with money made in summer jobs. Or maybe they arrived by bus, and picked up its schedule because they'd be coming here every day -- by themselves. With parents here, they wouldn't have been seen dead.

Maybe they'd be living in Student Residence -- where Mom had not performed a hygiene-sweep ahead of time. Or maybe they'd still be living at home, but no one would tell them when to get up in the morning and what time their first class was; they just had to know that, as if by magic!

What has happened to independence and growing up? To being "able," instead of fetishizing "disability"? Such nostalgic concepts for those who started University in the 1970s and '80s. High school classmates melted into memory as we left our home river for the big ocean, like human salmon (me, I was entering a Biology program …) Salmon have a juvenile stage and adult stage in their life cycle, but it seems humans have evolved an endless recycling of juvenile stages. (An evolutionary decline?)

For us those first heady days of university were a rocking roll-over from grade school to independence, experienced against the throb of The Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin. We picked up our course reading lists (we read books back then) and checked out the masses of cute guys who had materialized all around us. 

Today, Mom is here, asking, "where are your anxiety pills? Have you got your smartphone? Have you taken any selfies yet? Here … let me take one of me! Got one! Straight to YouTube! Here, let's take one for your ex-step-father who said he'd be here but of course isn't ..."

"Look at all these cute guys!" adds Mom, and she doesn't mean the 18 year olds; she means other parents. "There's one heading for the Starbucks across the street," she says. "You know what, I should get a double latte to celebrate -- this is such an important day for me! So I'll just pop into that Starbucks -- if you'll be okay on your own for a bit? Have a look around, but don't get lost. I'll be back soon -- text me if you need anything, okay?"

Education Comes Down With Absurdity-Virus.

Christmas seems a long time ago (everything pre-COVID seems a long time ago), but I well remember the dire annual Christmas warnings from lifestyle coaches and mental health experts who flooded the media with warnings about the "depression and anxiety" we we're suffering due to "seasonal stress". These experts fell all over each other giving us tips for "survival". What a relief to find when it all died down in the new year that we had survived. How glad the mental health Cassandras must have been to have a new bundle of warnings to issue, when by late February COVID had raised its crowned (corona) head. 

With the lock-down phase came a whole new raft of stresses: isolation, loneliness, financial anxiety, boredom, fear of the future, fear of coming within six feet of others ... Then, the schools were closed. Now they're partially re-opening, but unfortunately the stress-and-anxiety industry is telling parents (and kids) to be fearful and worried -- because it will be "different". 

Telling kids they can't survive something being different, that they're allergic to change, is a recipe for emotional enfeeblement. Tell the kids they'll be fine, and they will be. The desk is in a different place? The hours of attendance have changed? That's not a reason for mental breakdown. But of course to say this is to reveal uncaring insensitivity toward … whoever. Yet someone has to mention the un-mentionable: stiff spines, bravery under bombing, and so on. (You want stress? Ask a WWII survivor.)

Some of us are old enough to remember when kids always lined up at the school door before entering. (Remember not running in the halls??) Being told by a teacher that something's going to be done differently never used to be a reason for a nervous breakdown. Teachers ran classrooms, and students didn't have a daily meltdown when told what to do. Those meltdowns are more contagious than coronavirus, that's for sure. Just see one and the next kid catches it (copies it).

Sitting in rows of desks at a distance instead of clustering around a table for "group work" was routine in the old days, and kids learned to work independently, not to mention to spell, use a pen, read books and do math. A therapist in the emotionology trade recently announced on CBC radio that schools during the COVID partial re-opening must practice "emotion-focused learning". That is code for no learning, or for learning to whine about feelings like the adults around you do.

It would be more reassuring for students to look outside themselves, to study a subject other than "feelings". How about … Geography! Learning where mountains and oceans are, and learning the capitals of ten countries a day. Or history! Memorize the kings and queens of England since 1066 (okay ... of Israel, India, Morocco or whatever ethnic place you favour). Learn how many moons Saturn has, how many substances appear in the Table of Elements (and what an element even is …).

The post-pandemic "new normal" in Education is to avoid the "old normal" of disinterested knowledge. There was already fear that knowing stuff is a privileged, elitist and colonialist affectation that marginalizes those who need to tend to Self due to stress and anxiety. If you shrug and turn your mind to impersonal study, well then you're just stigmatizing … someone.

Whether new or old, the word "normal" comes from "norm", a geometrical term for an exact angle, such as a draughtsman needs to know. A right angle is the norm because there is only one measurably correct right angle. The word "correct" is linked to rectitude of course, and implies standards as well as exactitude, and is therefore not a concept people feel comfortable with. It's not "emotion-focused" or marginalization-concerned. (Interestingly, teachers used to graduate from what was called "Normal School", meaning a college upholding established standards in skills and knowledge.)

But sarcasm aside, it would be helpful for kids to focus on math as something inarguable, measurable and reliable. If they're bobbing around on the sea of adult emotionology, something impersonal and outside self could be a life-raft. They won't be scared of germs, of school, of every minor change in routine, if we don't tell them they should be.