University Education - An oxy-moron?

 The Walrus is, in my mind, a very fine Canadian magazine. The selection of topics is somewhat uneven - perhaps more so under the current editor than in the past, but the quality of writing is generally quite wonderful.  On occasion there is an article that is so on point that I feel compelled to suggest that others read it. In the April edition, there is such an article. It should be required reading for every potential post secondary student and their parents as well as every professor and administrator in our post-secondary system.

Ron Srigley, a professor (tenured I assume) from the University of Prince Edward Island has written a harsh condemnation of our universities. In clear prose, Srigley's frustration of working for an institution that focuses on the lowest common denominator both in terms of cost and academic performance, and that continually lowers the expectations of what  students should be learning  is obvious from the first paragraph. He argues that universities have transitioned from a place where learning is valued to a consumer based institution where the customer is always right and is therefore pandered to. There is little in his essay that I can disagree with. His comments as to the number of staff with MEds (master of education) who frequently teach topics that they are not qualified for, the ever increasing focus on keeping the classroom entertaining and the denigration of scholarship rang loud bells for me. They were some of the reasons why I left teaching at the community college. But I think he avoided the question as to why or how we got ourselves into this mess.

At some point in the mid 1960s, in response to the pressure from the  baby boomers who were about to graduate from high school and the new awareness on the status of white color professionals, the provincial governments created new universities and expanded the old ones. It was not that everyone went to university - I think only a handful of kids from my grade 11 class went, but more lower-middle class kids went to university than at any other time. Teachers, who up to that time had not needed a B.A. to teach high school - now did. Some companies started to give preference to graduates from a university - on the assumption that they could both read and write better and that they had an expanded view of the world. I suspect in 1970 that was generally true. However, during the next thirty or so years, universities and society's expectations of those institutions evolved in a very strange direction.  I think there were three reasons:

One - companies with no clear understanding of what people were being taught in university started to demand a general BA as the basic requirement for an entry level position. Secondly - universities because of the expansion, now needed to find ways of keeping the classrooms full (and thereby keep their government funding) . Thirdly society shifted from the belief that post-secondary education was privilege reserved for the very bright and the affluent to the belief that every person had the right to get a post secondary education regardless of their capacity.

In our desire to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to further their education, I think we have become confused as to the difference between ensuring that (1) post-secondary education is accessible to all and  (2) that everyone should be able to go to post secondary institution.   The former concept suggests that we need to ensure that there are no barriers including class, race or gender that prevent children from aspiring to go and going to university. The latter concept says the post-secondary is a right that everyone has. Because society gradually has assumed the latter to be true, universities have become places that young adults go because they are suppose to go somewhere. If the primary goal of the institution is to keep the young person there, it follows that we will do all that we can to make a comfortable and easy place to be for the three or four years. What the student learns there is somewhat irrelevant. While it is tempting to, as does Professor Srigley, to blame the university for this watering down of our post secondary education - the fault in fact lies at least partially elsewhere.

Over that thirty year period companies increased the level of education required - perhaps under the mistaken belief that they could reduce staff training costs. High school teachers encouraged their students to go on, even when they knew that many of the students lacked either the skills or even a viable career path. Parents, perhaps originally because of the status of have an offspring in university and later the shame of not having one there, demanded that the high school award marks high enough to get into a university. And perhaps worst  of all, the schools, the parents and the students all allowed themselves to believe that learning was not hard work.  

It would seem to me that if we want a universities to actually teach something, then we need to value the process of education, not just the piece of paper at the end of it all.

Another State of Emergency in a First Nation Community

The Attawapiskat First Nation on remote James Bay has declared a state of emergency because they are overwhelmed by the number of suicides and attempted suicides that have occurred during the past year. On this past Saturday evening alone, there were 11 attempts. In the month of March there were a total of 28 attempts. All of this in a community of approximately 2,000 people (CBC). What few health services there are - were long ago over-whelmed. Clearly the community is struggling just to stay alive. To date there has been no clear answer as to what to do.

The causes of such breakdown in the community are well documented. The Canadian government's inability/unwillingness to deal with some basic land rights, its refusal to fund schools at the same level as schools in the south and the ever present long term effects of residential schools and other tools of cultural genocide have all had an impact of the mental health of many residents of First Nation communities. It is far past the time that we need to accept the historical consequences of our collective action or inaction, accept that we have a moral if not legal responsibility to address those issues and to start to look for solutions.

The demand from the Attawapiskat First Nation is that they need more mental health workers immediately. The federal and Ontario health ministries have responded by sending skilled mental health practitioners. However one has to wonder who is being sent in and why were they not there already? I would think that at the very least, a minimum requirement of such workers would be verbal fluency in the variation of Cree used by the members of this community. I suspect that there are relatively few individuals outside of this general area who can claim such skills. A second requirement would be a degree of understanding of the culture of the community or at least of communities such as this one. A well intentioned, Cree speaking individual from southern Ontario may lack some of the basic awareness needed to provide the necessary level of support and understanding. A final qualification would have to be experience and education. In spite of my over 30 years of experience in social services, my community college diploma that ideally prepared me to work with troubled youth, two university degrees and countless workshop hours on a range of topics including suicide prevention - I would be profoundly unqualified to offer any assistance to the people of the  Attawapiskat First Nation.  I taught hundreds of students at a community college - all of who took a mandatory half-semester length course on issues related to aboriginal peoples. I can't think of one of those students who would have the above set of skills needed to work effectively in communities such as Attawapiskat . Our inability/unwillingness to train people to work in their home communities must surely be one of our greatest sins.

It is tempting to just assume that the problem is money - that all that we have to do is to throw more money at the community and their problems will go away. Clearly, while money is needed for better education, better health care and better housing, money will not "fix" the problems. The level of despair is so high that one could easily become so over-whelmed by the depth of the problem and the apparent complexities, that one would just give up. In fact that is the conclusion that some of those who have attempted suicide have made.

But within some of the First Nation communities across Canada, there are solutions. In a 189 page report titled Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada prepared for The Aboriginal Healing Foundation in 2007(report) , the authors discuss that " some Aboriginal communities or bands have suicide rates comparable to or even lower than the general population (e.g. the Cree in Quebec)" (p18). The authors go on to note however,  that in most geographical areas of the country aboriginal suicide rates are generally higher than non-aboriginal rates. None-the-less it is clear that some First Nation communities, in some areas of the country, some of who speak the same language and have a very similar history of interactions with the Canadian government do not have the same horrendous pattern of suicide and self destruction. I have argued before that it is time that we invest some money in understanding what those communities are doing. Are there lessons that we all can be taught? Can those efforts be duplicated in communities that are struggling?

It is somehow more "sexy" to talk about the failure of the Canadian government and the resultant chaos and despair in our First Nation communities than it is to talk about what appears to be working. It is so much easier to blame our parents, the politicians or anyone else for the disaster that is our public policy on supporting First Nation communities than to get down to business and to facilitate the growth of communities that work. It is so much easier just to say it is a failure of funding and then move on to the next cause. Clearly in the very short term money and other resources need to be poured into communities such as Attawapiskat. But we cannot keep on making the same mistake again and again and again of assuming that the experts have the one answer. We need to learn from the communities that are successful.

I don't understand why we don't.

The Poor NDP

One has to feel a little bit sorry for the national NDP who are this weekend meeting in Edmonton to decide their direction and their leadership for the next few years. The leadership is not in much debate. Tom Mulcair will garner enough delegate support to remain as leader if for no other reason than it is not the style of the NDP to dispose of their leaders in public. Whether or not he leads the NDP into the next federal election will be his choice (at least in public) to make. Perhaps a year from now,  Muclair may decide to step down.

The future of the NDP and the policies that will direct that future are far more complicated and therefore much more difficult to predict. On one hand there is the ever bright image of the late Jack Layton who managed to lead the party into the ranks of the official opposition. Unfortunately he did not live long enough to show that he could lead the party into becoming the next government. Therefore his star remains untarnished. That star shines so bright that all leaders are dull in comparison. The memory of what  could have been creates possibilities that might well be impossible to achieve for those who wish to follow in his footsteps.  Almost tasting power may have convinced some party members that all that needs to happen is some minor tweaking and the continual drift towards the centre.

 On the other hand there is Alberta. Who could have thought that in a province where the words "Conservative Party" and "government" were synonymous would vote for the "left". Who could have imagined that a province that spawned and supported the former Prime Minister would chose the NDP to run that province? But they did. And while it is clear that Rachel Notley has strong philosophical roots in traditional NDP values, she is also the premier of a province that is hurting. It is hurting for all kinds of reason including a reluctance to tax its citizens to the same level of other provinces. But the Alberta is mainly hurting because oil is no longer as valued as it once was.  Its value has been reduced primarily because of the glut of oil on the market. However, investing in oil and the needed infrastructure is also less attractive because the western world appears to becoming (finally) aware that it needs to reduce its dependence upon carbon based energy sources.  In the short term the most obvious solution for Alberta is to sell more oil. To do so it must find a way to get its oil to markets based at either end of the country.  For that to happen, the other provinces must agree to either have a lot more trains pulling endless cars filled with heavy dirty crude passing through their towns and cities, or to agree to have pipelines running through or at least near those same towns and cities. There would appear to be no public will for either of those two options.

How can the national NDP stay true to its stated environmental values when some of it members want to sell more oil? How can it mark itself as being innovative and worthy of national leadership when its policies, at the very least, appear to be not in sync with many Canadians.  How can the party expect to be a major player in Canadian politics when it is demonstrating less leadership than the Trudeau led Liberals?  To uphold Premier Notley's demand for support for her province's need to sell oil will alienate potential NDP supporters in other parts of the country. To deny support to that province will at best only confirm Alberta's sense that it is ignored and uncared about by other parts of Canada. It could, in all likelihood, make it very difficult for Notley to get re-elected. I suspect that there is no happy solution to this problem. The only joy for the NDP may be that both of the other national parties are going to be faced with exactly the same dilemma when they are forced to publically deal with this issue.

Of far greater concern for some members of the NDP is the gradual but clear drift towards the centre. The party has a choice. Does it want to have a reasonable chance in the next 10 years of forming a government or does it want to stay true to its socialist roots? It probably cannot do both. Dealing with the choices to be made around supporting Alberta's NDP government become much clearer if the party's goal is no longer to better Jack Layton's success. If the goal of the party were to be the voice of all of us who are concerned about the environment and concerned about the ever increasing inequities within our society, then they would never be elected to run the country. But there would be a clear voice in Parliament defining some core values and every once in a while they might affect government policy.

With the possibility that our voting system will change to something different than the "first past the post system" - Canadians may be able  to vote for a party that (1) has clear socialist values and (2) would have a chance of having enough members to have influence. The NDP need to decide who they want to be. If they don't  there is a very real risk that a splinter party will be formed to assume the leadership vacuum left by the central drifting NDP.

P.S. It has just be reported that the NDP did vote for new leadership. Clearly I was wrong.  I am surprised and more than a bit alarmed. It seems to me that the party members have voted for a new leader - because they think that a new leader will give them a better chance of forming the next government. I fear they are still looking for Jack Layton. I fear that they will continue to sacrifice their political heritage for the possibility of running the country. I think that is a poor trade.

Tax Shelters For The Rich

The financial columns of various news outlets are all abuzz this week at the release of thousands and thousands of files containing information from a Panama-based law firm. Those files indicate that numerous  fraudulent shell corporations were set up to provide tax shelters for people with lots of money. I think I am always a little bit disappointed in myself when I realize that I am still surprised every time I hear such stories. It is not that I am surprised that people hide money - lots of Canadians bend the rules to avoid paying tax.   I am not even shocked at the amount of money that has been hidden away. What  astonishes me is not that just that rich people lie about it,  but that they act as if not paying income tax is no big deal.

In the past three or four years I have written a number of times about the fact that Canadians from all walks of life complain about the lack of services, complain about amount of taxes they pay and then do everything they can to avoid paying their share of income tax. It continues to frustrate me almost above anything else that people do not  seem to be able to make a connection between everyone paying  their fair share and there being enough money to provide  an adequate level of services. When I rant about this to my peers, the most common response is that the real problem is that big corporations and the very rich do not pay their fair share. And my peers are at least partially right.

On a regular basis there are news stories of another tax fraud scheme being found.  Rich Canadians are not unique in wanting to hide their money from the national taxman; every country has the same problem.  What is perhaps remarkable is that the Canadian government seems to be unwilling to do anything to correct the problem. If you are really rich it would appear the chances of being charged are rather minimal. If the cases that were reported in the Financial Post or are posted online on CRA's website are any example - the people who are pursued are the relative small fish, not those who are, and having been hiding millions of dollars for years. My suspicions as to the biasness of CRA is confirmed in a MacLean's article from 2014. The article in part says that Canadian government does not, unlike some other western countries, invest in enough resources to find the major violators.

As well the minimal consequences that may be imposed if caught are well worth the gamble. For example, of the 128 people that were convicted of tax evasion in Canada in 2013, only 29 went to jail - for an average of 22 months (CBC) (they also were fined and had to pay back money owed). People who voluntarily admit to tax evasion just have to pay the money they owe plus interest. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me considering that CRA only pursues a small percentage of violators. It is even a better deal when government's investigators appear to allow the companies who set up some of the fraudulent tax avoidance schemes to negotiate good deals for their clients (CBC). I am not convinced that CFS's policy of shaming the convicted by posting their names is a particularly  effective method of punishment. I suspect that it only perpetuates the guilty's mythology of having done nothing wrong and of having been unfairly treated by the Canadian government. 

There is no debate among those of us who pay taxes that everyone else should pay as well. For those  who don't pay income tax because their incomes are too low or don't because their incomes are so high that they can hire people to help them avoid paying, the responses seem to be less clear. At one end of the spectrum it is argued that the lack of services etc. is someone elses fault - that those who are rich, should pay more. At the other end, the argument appears to be that they already pay enough and that it is not their responsibility to take care of everyone. Both responses seem wrong or at least incomplete to me.

We all need to give what we can so that everyone can get what they need. Those who chose not to - should get punished so that they and others who aspire to be like them learn there are responsibilities that cannot be avoided.

Does Winter Make You SAD or Does Science Know What It Is Talking About?

Some days - perhaps even most days, it is hard to know who to believe. In fact, it frequently feels as if even our major news media don't know who or what to believe. Take for example the CBC and its reporting on seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

In February of last years the CBC reported on the benefits of using special lighting to counter the effects of our long winters and reduced sunlight. CBC told readers that as many as 1.2 million Canadians (more likely women than men) were clinically depressed in the winter, with "another 10 to 15 per cent of Canadians  suffering from a milder form of SAD" (CBC). That does not include the large numbers of Canadians who on occasion express some sadness or tiredness with the apparent never-ending winter. The main point of the article was to discussed the effectiveness of using a high-intensity ultraviolet-filtered bright-light for a period of time every day. The article also, using the work of Dr. Robert Levitan suggests that SADs may be a genetic holdover from our cave dwelling ancestors who would have had to reserve energy during the long dark months. Regardless of why the lack of light affects us - it is good to know that the medical community both recognize the existence of SADS and that there is a non-invasive "cure".

For all of us who have suffered through the long winter months (on either coast or anywhere in the middle) - we can easily recognize that feeling of just not wanting to get up on another dark and cold winter morning, on those days  or perhaps weeks  on end when we barely have the energy to function.

On the other hand,  just today CBC reported that an article in the  Journal of Clinical Psychological Science is suggesting that there is no evidence to support the theory that our long and dark winters are making people depressed. It should be noted that the researcher, Steven G. LoBello is from Montgomery, Alabama  and may have never really experienced a long cold winter. He may therefore, not know what he is talking about.  He does however cite a  research project done in Norway that " did not find any relationship between an increase in depression and the duration of the polar light" (CBC). The article is not suggesting that people are not more likely to get depressed in the winter - just that there is no scientific proof that it is the lack of light that causes it.

I am not a scientist. Neither do I have access to the kinds of data needed to examine which of these polar opposite hypothesis are true. But what I do know is....Thank God it is spring!!!"

It had been interesting and quite marvellous to be on the west coast during spring time. Spring time here is completely different from that in Ontario. There is not, for example, that sense of collective celebration of having survived another winter. There is no spontaneous shedding of heavy winter coats and boots (in part because half of the people here don't own heavy winter coats). There is no slow build up of excitement, no mental measurement of how much the snow bank has melted in the past 24 hours and no real sense that life will finally get better- which after all is what spring is really about. Perhaps most important of all....I don't think anyone here actually believes that they have earned better weather. It may be our natural right to get it - but unlike in central Canada, we didn't earn it.

On the west coast, spring has been a gradually meandering process  where spring has happened without any real realization that it has. Trees have been in bloom for at least the last three weeks, flowers are blooming (some of the tulips are almost finished) and most people have cut their lawns at least once if not twice. Vegetable gardens are being planted and there is a sense that we are all slipping into summer mode. It is a nice feeling but I must confess - I miss, just a little bit, that sense of celebration and excitement at the coming of spring.

Although the trees sure have been pretty.