Being a nun is no picnic
What has happened to civil debate in this province?
When you disagree with a government policy, is it now acceptable to state that its architects are “behaving like fascists”?
When you dispute the wisdom of a public program, is it fair to characterize those responsible as “amateurs” or “nuns at a picnic”? (Whatever that means, though it surely can’t be good for nuns, elected officials, or even picnics).
If you are a certain former deputy minister who served under the Louis Robichaud government (he knows who he is), and the source of the aforementioned quotes, petulance is oxygen. Or so it seems from a ridiculously over-played, front-page screed in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal the other day. Let’s just say that the good fellow objects to Kelly Lamrock’s prescriptions for French second-language learning in the English morass we love to call “education”.
Now, before I climb too high on that horse I use to cast my twice-weekly aspersions, I concede that I have not always been circumspect in my own commentaries. Occasionally, I have said too much, gone too far, assumed too much, concluded too quickly. In short, I’ve been flat wrong more times than I care to admit.
But I have never used the word “fascist” to describe a democratically elected representative in this or any other jurisdiction of Canada. And I never will.
Once, while tired and emotional, I characterized Stephen Harper’s predilections as somewhat “Hitleresque”. That was during a family party in the middle of nowhere, and my mother (who was born in 1936) quickly disabused me of my conceit. I believe her exact words were, “It’s too bad that you so love to hear the sound of your own voice.”
Men and women of good conscience can disagree. In fact, in our society, they should; discord often yields progress. I, for example, do not accept the argument that early French immersion in this province is working for most kids in the English school system. Educational attainment rates (or, more precisely, failure rates) in both the second-language and core programs are egregious.
Today, we are matriculating children who can’t factor a binomial, parse a sentence in either official language, name the second prime minister of Canada, distinguish between a province and a territory, and discern that Cape Breton is actually part of Nova Scotia. Do I exaggerate? One young person of my acquaintance recently asked me if he needed a passport to visit a friend in Montreal.
This is not the fault of early immersion, per se, but rather of its implementation and execution in a system already burdened with so many other fundamental educational challenges. They are all of a piece; all are symptoms of an insidious disease that this government is trying to cure in its game, if imprecise, way.
Surely, it is not beyond the pale to insist that a publicly funded school system at least attempts to benefit the majority of those it serves. It’s clear that the way French is currently taught in English elementary and secondary schools in New Brunswick fails this basic test. So does, I hasten to add, the way English is taught, and math and science and history and geography and civics.
Just as troubling, perhaps, is the way this debate has begun to mutate into a rhetorical contretemps over minority language rights, which are enshrined and protected as a matter of law. This is lamentable, because the issue is not whether French should be taught to young Anglophones; it’s how.
How do we raise those linguistic scores? How do we ensure that more English-speaking kids graduating from high school can read a sign, write a letter to the editor, converse fluidly in a language other than the one spoken in their homes?
I may be wrong when I say that at this particular moment in New Brunswick’s history, Lamrock may be right. But if I am – if I am incorrect – am I also a xenophobe, a bigot, a “fascist”? And, having been labelled as one, will I think twice about opening my mouth the next time a sacred cow gets led to the slaughterhouse?
After all, being a nun is no picnic.
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April 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am
“But I have never used the word “fascist” to describe a democratically elected representative in this or any other jurisdiction of Canada. And I never will.”
Surprise, surprise – another main $tream journalist gives the 4th Reich (1) another pass while they overtly decimate the populace.
“And, having been labelled as one, will I think twice about opening my mouth the next time a sacred cow gets led to the slaughterhouse?”
Please spare us – our media personalities have either been bamboozled or complicit in the perpetration of every state sponsored crime of late, it seems, i.e.:
- The obsequious retooling of our Armed forces to assist in Bush co’s wars.
- Covering up child rape in Prisons and Churches across Canada
- Insane bottom-up policing in the Nixonian drug war
The mass media’s acceptance of superficial inquiries and the lumping of blame on a few political Oswalds (i.e. Andy Scott, circa 1997) is no small part of why the information revolution is occurring far from the corporo-fascist run newsrooms.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Nicely argued, Dan. Though, in future, I must insist that you take your meds before posting.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am
First, I assume you (alec) have at least read the horrible way that the ‘study’ was conducted. In other words, that common ‘culture of defeat’ that says that virtually every New Brunswick social policy is an abject failure is, well, an abject failure. I’ll post this for your edification as I’ve posted it at others-GO to the department of education and actually READ some studies. Don’t do what is so common nowadays and agree with government just because ‘I met a stupid kid’ (and actually in today’s political environment its not an absurd question to ask if you need a passport…older folks would have said the same about you just a year ago if you said ‘I’m just going to Maine..do I need a passport?’).
New Brunswick test scores are low, but again, they are not THAT low. Bilingualism is bad, but not THAT bad, and the government policy of dumbing down ‘bilingualism’ to ‘intermediate knowledge of french’ will go pretty far to address that problem in an of itself. I never went to immersion and failed french more times than I can count but I can still talk ‘intermediate french’ with my wife. In fact, NB’s numbers aren’t much lower than other provinces, particularly in comparison of immersion or non-immersion (Manitoba is the clear standout here where both sets of students test identical).
As for testing, its odd that NB opts out of most national tests and then claims that they will ‘have benchmarks’. Yeah, I trust that. But let’s look at studies, like the OECD literacy studies that put NB at the bottom of the list (or close to). When you actually go through it you find that the problem is not immersion at all-it is the urban/rural divide, that ‘thing’ that rural people keep complaining about that urban people typically ignore. It’s well established that the further a child is from school, the worse they do. The OECD study found that the worst scores were NOT non immersion students, it is actually rural french students. And guess what, they have among the worst funding, about to get much worse now that ‘community schools’, also known as ‘corporate schools’ are about to be the norm. Vermont, a rural state, kept local schools open, and doubled funding and its low test scores increased in a a decade to above the national average. Rural schools ALWAYS have lower scores, and usually fewer services.
So take for example girls in urban schools. Girls are far more likely to take immersion (another reason it was popular and an issue seldom discussed), and girls in urban areas in New Brunswick actually had scores HIGHER than the OECD average. Their education is about to get worse. In the government’s own studies the number of students in grade two in St. Stephen who never reached benchmark proficiency dropped 60% in ONE year. In other words, and what any parent has and will tell you, is that educational problems have far more to do with individual schools, individual teachers, and even individual kids than it does with implementation of ANY ‘program’. So the government shuffling about programs clearly will not even address the problem. I know of people who took immersion right through to grade 12 and still aren’t bilingual, how many do you think will remember the french they learned in grade 5?
One final point is that opposers to this policy have been saying what is lacking is FUNDING, and I checked it out and New Brunswick spends (by far) the least amount of its budget on education, barely 16%, compared to 20, 22, and 25% for the other maritime provinces. That includes the boost in funding from this year by the way. So the ‘solution’ is quite clear-increase funding, look at individual problem schools and teachers, get accurate statistics, and make the change in bilingualism to support ‘intermediate french’ so that more people qualify.
At least TRY those first, I can well imagine why people get irate, this is just public policy insanity at a level not seen since Irving got an LNG tax break.
That brings us to fascism ( or ‘public policy insanity’). Let’s make a comparison, in international polls the US is by far the most dangerous and feared country on the planet, they also have the most democratic forms available to any country. Does that mean that if current practices hold that in ten years nobody will be able to say ‘democracy’, because a democratic country also did bad things? By that reasoning people won’t be able to use ANY political discourse in describing political events.
The definition of fascism is fairly broad, but even at a specific level EVERY nationalist country in the world (which I think is all of them) is fascist. Fascist means that the state’s rights take priority over individual or collective rights. Trudeau ensured that collective rights weren’t an issue, and increasingly with Canada’s terrorism laws individual rights have taken a backseat, just ask Charles Leblanc.
And of course go ask a native what kind of country it is, and fascist will be a term definitely used. So this particular act of Lamrock’s fits in there quite well. Fascism is now taken to be any action by government that goes against the common good and is done autocratically. The attention to this issue has brought out the analysis of the studies that shows this policy is NOT ‘the common good’, and you’ll notice that it isn’t even an item being voted on in the legislature.
So the term ‘fascist’ isn’t nearly the same as ‘hitleresque’, which I would agree, is so broad and derogatory that it’s ‘stridency’ should have your grandmother not saying that you like your own voice, but rather ‘insisting you take your meds before talking’. It’s true that Hitler was an elected official who acted like an oligarch, and so does Harper, so as long as the definition of ‘hitleresque’ was defined first, then it could fit quite well. That’s a frequent topic made over at Charles Leblanc’s blog, where a large number of ‘fans’ have no trouble accepting the fascist line-just go listen to some of his interviews. But people at different economic levels have always differed greatly on the costs/benefits of their governments. Natives have a FAR different view of the matter, and the poor definitely do. Think of it this way, in germany Hitler cancelled elections. That’s a terrible ‘crime’ and easily ‘fascist’. In Canada, they would never do that, but they have ensured that we have an electoral system which makes any political change impossible and where who you vote for is almost completely irrelevant. Yes, that is ‘different’, but exactly HOW different remains to be seen.