Recent Comments

1. almost 3 years ago on Get Fuzzy

   That’s one measure of architecture. One could also say that there are plenty of religious buildings in the world that surpass in beauty and design brilliance those of Western Europe or North America. There’s a lot of ways to slice that cake.

2. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   I guess I’d have been in grade 4 when a grade 6 student from my school had never heard the word ‘metamorphisis’ before I said it and I had to explain it to him. I was about 3 grades ahead in the language capacity vs. most of my contemporaries. I would have been about 9 then. Feign might have been one I’d not have known, but ‘fake’ … that one most kids learn pretty fast (practically, even if they don’t have a name for it).

3. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   I agree there was bullying, but most of it was after school at our school and a fair bit on the farthest margins of the school grounds or off of it (which washes the hands of any staff because it didn’t happen on school property). However, I’d be the opposite. I loved dodge ball because I could dodge but I have long back and short legs relatively speaking so jogging and running were not for me. I did play soccer voluntarily, but I was too slow to be a forward and when I played defense, I got one chance at a tackle (I was decent at tackling to remove the ball) because if the other team’s forward got past me, I would never catch him.

4. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   My daughter has an elliptical shaped trampoline in our back yard whose springs are part of the body (I’d try to describe it, but I’d fail – they are not exposed) and where the jumping surface goes all the way to the edge (no chance of dropping a leg off near the edge between the jumping surface and the frame) and there’s about a 5’ mesh that goes up all around the thing which can take a fair bit of weight against it if a kid bounces the wrong way. It’s 100x better than the ones I got forced onto in phys ed. On the other hand, it should only be used by 1 or 2 (if careful and responsible) kids.

   The old trampolines were a hazard. We put matts around the outside, but I dropped a foot between the fabric and the frame, got my sensitive parts battered by the drop, then pivoted and dropped shoulders and head first onto the mats.

   Not fond memories for certain.

5. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   I had some of the same gripes, but things have changed a lot. My grade 8 girl has learned a lot in phys ed about self-monitoring, nutrition, and health vs. sports. Sports are a factor and its not fair to expect they not be; Many young folk are drawn to competitive team or individual sports and some just like the exercise every day. They don’t tend to shower (at least as of the end of grade 8… which we started in grade 7 but then I was in AB at the time, ON now). I did learn first aid in my last phys ed semester (because anything beyond that was track and field, baseball or football).

   I mostly played raquetball, tennis, and once I got out of Uni, squash and co-ed non-competitive softball and co-ed ringette for social and health reasons. In university, it was Aikido 4 times a week. They’d be better off teaching a martial art in school to all of the girls (and boys, but the girls need that self-defense option more often).

   My best sport was dodge ball because, though my hand eye coordination (big thick glasses) was awful, I was excellent at various dives, ducks, and scampers to avoid getting hit. And I let the other guys expend all their throws at me and then I’d just corner them for the easy finish.

6. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   For what it is worth, there has been a LOT of mental health research associated with corporate punishment. It is true that kids that grew up in houses that weren’t outright abusive but used corporal punishment (I got it a few times) turned out fine most of the time.

   That said, kids who came from homes where corporal punishment was used have about a 3 to 5x greater odds of developing serious mental health issues later in life compared to those that were brought up in houses where other methods were used instead of corporate punishment.

   And since most of the time, nobody can tell from the outset whose kids may become one of those, its just safer not to use corporal punishment.

   The odds are still high that kids will turn out okay if it used, but why use it if there are other effective measures?

   My daughter is kind, considerate, a helper, works hard, helps her friends when they are struggling, is a leader at Scouts and is helping out teachers now and she’s great with her grandfather and her grandma-in-law both in their eighties.

   And we’ve never laid a hand on her. There are plenty of other methods to encourage or even require reasonable standards of behaviour that are just as effective.

7. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Also, public schools are failing for several reasons. In some areas, it has a lot to do with a lack of economic opportunity period with all the attendant other effects that tends to breed. Public schools are also suffering because private schools tend to draw a lot of the best teachers. And school vouchers just encourage any troubled school to have a stake driven into its heart as everyone that can bails out. It exacerbates the school’s difficulties and leads to that failing state.

   The market is amoral. If you turn education into something market driven, you get increased inequality and the people who gain are those who are priviledged in the first place.

   That is (of course) a bumper sticker summation; The actual situations are exceptionally varied, are tied to inequalities in many respects, are tied to historical population distributions, are tied to privatization of many things that have taken quality staff and funding from public education and other areas. Sure, there’s other issues – people in rough neighborhoods tend to get into more trouble, be more economically depressed, and lack good role models for kids and don’t put much faith in public schools either (ironically) because they know none of their kids (or a few only) can make it out to colleges even IF they do well at school.

   The answer on the US conservative view you seem to hold is that its every man for himself and the good folk will survive and the rest get what they deserve. The falsehood is that conservatives want every kid to have a good education because that’s NEVER been possible in any vouchering system and the attitude that the great will shine almost always ties to the US notion that everyone is just a bit of hard work and one lucky break from being a millionaire success story.

   The only metrics of school quality you’ll ever have is high marks and you can be sure that in any school that needs to look good to keep students, assessments will generally inflate.

8. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   I am not a member of any union. I also don’t make assumptions about other people on scant information, unlike yourself. The data shows that in places with smaller inequalities and where education of all levels is more available, that it is a net benefit to the economy and to the people that live in those societies.

   Having a few great minds succeed and leaving millions behind is not exactly success. But most US conservatives appear to think otherwise. Then again, most of them are not in marginalized groups.

9. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   The way you phrased that, they might find a gnawed skeleton and a well-stuffed and napping tiger…. “stuffed tiger” works both ways… ;)

10. almost 3 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

    And yet, vouchers lead to inequitable outcomes. Two kids, one just happens to be born in a poorer neighborhood and one that was born in a wealthier one… one can afford to go to the better schoools (often private if you want the best) and the other can’t, even with any vouchering but the fact some at his or her school did bail out further worsens the school he can afford to go to (the one in his poorer neighborhood).

    That just intensifies inequitable opportunities and wastes human potential.