Cultural Relativism and When Parents are Wrong

For most of my adult life I have believed that people should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they what they want to do, does not harm (including physically, mentally or spiritually) anyone else. That may sound a bit simplistic but if everyone followed that rule, there would be a lot less strife in this world. That is I believed that to be true until this past week or so. Now I am not too sure or at least I need to expand my definition of harm.

At the end of February, the Liberal Government in Ontario announced that in September they would introduce a new sex education program covering grades one to eight. The revision was long overdue. It should be noted that the proposed curriculum is not the most progressive in Canada. There are other provinces that are dealing with some of the complex issues at an even earlier age (Toronto Star). Some parents are not happy with as to in which grade the topics are being raised  or even that they are being raised at all.

Those parents are using a number of reasons as to why they are opposed to the new curriculum. They have suggested that the children will be "sexualized by radicals in government who push a sexual revolution agenda under the guise of protecting children"(Campaign Life). They have argued that talking about same-sex marriage, masturbation and safe sex amongst other topics are within the purview of the family - not the government. They say that the material is too age-inappropriate, and too explicit. Some have argued that if the Ministry of Education "forces" children to participate in these classes, they will be violating some basic fundamental human rights. Some individuals are making the argument that Canada as a democratic country has no right to force overly liberal values on its citizens; that people's cultural values, beliefs and heritage need to take precedent when such programs are being designed. Those parents want to be consulted, although I suspect that they, no matter how much consultation was done, would ever agree to the new curriculum. Some parents are threatening to remove their children from school for a day to protest the proposed changes.

I can appreciate parents being concerned that their children may be exposed to, and learn things that they, the parents, don't want them to learn. As a parent and a grandparent I truly wish that I could protect my children and grandchildren from everything that will confuse them, scare them or hurt them. I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave over them so that they never had to learn anything until they wanted to (including algebra and geometry). But I can't. My grandchildren will see graphic pornography long before they have any real interest in the topic of sex, they may be exposed to bullying or undue pressure to do things before they have the tools to defend themselves, they will observe the abusive behaviour that some exhibit towards those who are gay or trans-gender and they will not know how to respond and they will at a very early age have access to a range of technology and communication devices whose capacities we don't truly understand. If I could believe that all parents, especially those parents who have conservative values, had the capacity to know when their children were ready and needed to learn and that those same parents had to skills needed to teach such sensitive topics, I would perhaps be willing to agree that the Ministry of Education has gone too far. I would perhaps agree that parents should be the ones who teach this stuff. But I don't believe that to be true.  Parents do not always know their own children well  as they think they do- especially as those children approach adolescence. Most parents would not know where to begin.

Anyone should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they what they want to do, does not harm anyone. Withholding information from a child - information that is needed to keep that child safe and to allow them to be caring and nurturing adults, information that will allow them to make choices in their future lives - that is harming the child. It cannot be allowed. We as a society have a responsibility to ensure that our children and grandchildren will thrive. And that means giving the information that they will need. If that offends those who chose to live in a world where they think they can control what their children will be exposed to when they are not monitoring them - too bad.

P.S. some of the media have subtly suggested that this issue has been raised mainly by immigrants' (code word for Muslim). Not true - it is an issue for fundamentalists - regardless of what religious text they ascribe to.

Weaving

It had long been my dream to make a bit of a living spinning and weaving wool. When I retired the first time ten years ago I thought I might work at it for a year - just to see if I could weave or spin on a daily basis and equally important, if I could make any money at it. I never attempted it in part because at that point I lacked the courage to try. When I retired this time around last December I decided that it was finally time for me to see if I could work at this passion full time. My primary concern was whether or not I would still enjoy it if I worked at it daily. Playing with wool gave me such pleasure - I didn't want to lose that sense of fun just to make money.

I knew I could make money - not a lot - but enough to buy most of my food for the year. Starting just over a year ago, I had been selling my weaving at the Saturday Farmer's Market. I did it just for seven weeks in the spring and seven weeks in the fall. Much to my surprise, I had enjoyed the process of meeting potential customers. While no craftsperson enjoys people ignoring them or even worse looking at one's stuff and then not buying it, it was fun sitting behind my spinning wheel, chatting to the folks who stopped. On occasion little kids would become mesmerized watching the wheel go around and around. I always gave them a chance to touch the wool and see how soft it was. Men, who normally would have perhaps not approached a woman playing with wool occasionally stopped and chatted with me about the "machine" I was using and how it worked. On a reasonably warm Saturday - it was a great way to spend a morning. Even if I did need to be there by 6:00AM.

I never really knew how long it took me to make a rug or a shawl. I would buy a few raw fleeces in June and then slowly putter around washing, carding, spinning and then finally weaving the wool. During some weeks when I was doing little else, I did a fair amount of work. On other weeks when I had exams or papers to mark, or if something else was happening I might not touch the wool for a whole week. It was something that I looked forward to doing and something that I missed if I didn't do it for a few days. The product gradually accumulated over a few years until rug racks were overloaded and my bins were full of bags and purses. When I started to sell stuff if felt pretty easy. Pretty easy until this year when I had to replenish my stock. I had not thought seriously about how much work it took to make $3,000.00 worth of weaving.

In fact it is so much work that I am not too sure if it is sustainable. For the past three months and a half months I have done something with wool for at least five to six hours every day. I have taken time to write (over 30,000 words) and there have been numerous times when I just sat down and read a novel. But most of my time both during the day and in the evening has been spent with wool. The good news is that I still love doing it. As well I think I have learnt a fair amount about some of the techniques of my trade. I think I use my time more efficiently and certainly there is less waste as I have learned to better measure how much I am going to need for any project. However, I have found out that the amount of time that it takes me to process the wool before I start to weave is far longer than I would have guessed. At the end of the three and half months, I have enough to sell starting this Saturday but I am not over stocked and I suspect that by the fall (if my sales continue as they did last year) I will have to be working hard to keep up. For the past three and half months playing with wool has consumed me. I am not sure if I want to work this hard for the next few years. It is depressing.

The other alternative of course is to raise my prices. It seems to me that there is a fine balance between selling a fair amount of product at a low price and selling less product but at a higher price. I have no way of knowing how to find that balance. I want people to buy my stuff - not just because I need the money, but also because it gives me pleasure to know that someone likes what I do.

I am such a bad business person. I just wanted to play with wool and know that people enjoy using what I make.

Ontario Budget

I can't remember the last time that both the federal budget and the Ontario Provincial budget were released within a few days of each other.  It was interesting to compare the two budgets both in terms of substance and perhaps more importantly in terms of how the opposition parties reacted to each of them.

The Ontario budget was, in many ways, diametrically opposite to the federal budget. While both governments are prepared to sell off major assets to finance their plans (see blog of April 21/14 for comments on the selling off of Ontario Hydro), the Liberals in Ontario appear to be far less concerned about the level of provincial debt. It is difficult to know whether or not the ruling party are being too optimistic about the ability of the provincial economy to absorb the consequences of a budget in which the third largest expense after Health and Education is the management of the provincial debt. On the other hand, if their calculations are correct and a massive investment in infrastructure will have the desired effect it in terms of stimulating the economy, the debt may be manageable. Unfortunately much like the federal budget, those promised infrastructure investments are spread out over the life of the next two elections.

It is too early to tell whether or not the government, because there are three more years before the next provincial election, missed out on the opportunity to increase taxes or to set up other perhaps unpopular income generating measures early in their term to deal with the debt load. They had no need to be gentle with the electorate nor did they need to cater to the opposition parties' whims. If there were sharp cuts to be made in service delivery - now was the time to do it. I am, of course, slightly delighted that they see no need to increase taxes and very delighted that there will be no dramatically cut services. I can only hope that both the government's economic prognosticating ability and money management skills are superior to other governments in the past.

Within minutes of the federal budget being presented in Ottawa, representatives from both the Federal Liberal party and the New Democratic Party were predictably in front of the microphones condemning the budget as presented in the House. Their comments were frequently indistinguishable from each other. Both parties argued  that the budget did nothing for the "middle class" or job creation and the budget was only balanced because of a reduction in the size of the contingency fund. Suggestions of what they would have done different were unfortunately missing from their comments. In contrast, within a few hours after the budget was tabled in the Ontario Provincial Legislature, I watched a very reasonable debate on TVO with representatives from the Conservatives, N.D.P. and the Green Party. It may be because the provincial election is three years in the future that there is less need to keep their cards to their vests (e.g. so the other parties don't steal their ideas); it could have been for the Conservative party that because they are going through the process of finding a new leader, the representative was free to speak his mind or because they actually had some ides that were worth sharing. For whatever reason it was a pleasure to see politicians critique the budget and to at least some of the time have an alternative proposal. To be clear - the three parties soundly condemned the budget as presented in the Legislature. They just did it in a slightly more reasonable and helpful fashion.

Not much of an improvement - but I will take anything approaching civility that I can. Generally speaking, our politicians are sorely lacking skills in that department.