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The following are excerpts from newspapers throughout Alberta. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the ATA.
Internet fuels parental paranoia
“With the Internet, there’s no need for peer-reviewed testing, or verifiable evidence—just someone to start a scary rumour, and a hive-mind of paranoid people to spread the information. … For some, any evidence disproving the theory they’ve come to embrace … is just part of the larger conspiracy. … This week, Edmonton’s school board became the latest victim of this plague of paranoia, when parents demanded dangerous classroom Wi-Fi be shut down, based on their vast Internet expertise. Thankfully, sense prevailed, and the Edmonton board said no—and hopefully, it’ll be the same answer when some Calgary parent is inflicted with the scare. Wi-Fi isn’t a danger, but the Internet itself? In the wrong hands, it’s proving a serious menace.”
—Michael Platt, Calgary Sun, January 15, 2011
Northland needs action, not study
“Alberta’s Northland School Division has been an embarrassment for three decades and requires drastic changes to bring it up to the standard that its 3,000 mostly-aboriginal students in 23 communities deserve. Education Minister Dave Hancock recognized that a year ago when he dissolved the cumbersome, costly and largely ineffective central school board and appointed a former superintendent to take the reins while a review panel went in to investigate and find solutions. … The hard-edged report describes a school division in crisis and urges the government to act on its 48 recommendations now. … So, how does the minister respond to this crisis and the report’s recommendations? He announces establishment of another committee to ‘analyze and respond to the recommendations.’ But we don’t need another committee. We don’t need another report. We know what the problems are. We know what the solutions are. What we need is a government with the will to act.”
—Editorial, Edmonton Journal, January 12, 2011
Don’t tame Huck Finn
“To delete the word ‘nigger’ from its 200-plus appearances in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and replace it with ‘slave,’ is to evade the problem of education. It is to falsify a world as a precondition for teaching about it. An Alabama-based publisher, NewSouth Books, is publishing the softer new edition next month because, it says, teachers have found the language in the original hurtful and injurious. It’s a fair point. … But that is why Huck Finn presents not merely a challenge but a marvellous opportunity. Everything about today’s world tells the children that books and ‘literature’ … are of marginal relevance to them and everyone else. Entertainment? They can watch movies on their telephones. Understanding of themselves and their world? They have Facebook and Google for that. And suddenly, here is a book almost too hot to touch. This is a book with real power. The problem of education is to teach impressionable and sensitive young people about a sometimes harsh world. The world as it is, in other words. And very much the world of Huck Finn. … Words wound, words enlighten. Satire often features a kind of bravura cruelty. It doesn’t flinch from exposing how stupid and horrible people can be. … Readers do flinch; and so they should, if the satire is sharp enough. … Are high school teachers up to the challenge? If not, it makes more sense to strengthen them than to weaken the book. To tame Huck Finn, to soften its voice, does no favours to young people.”
—Editorial, Globe and Mail, January 7, 2011
