Experts? by Robert Bruce Baird

ACCREDITATION: - Scholastic regimentation from the post WWII period has accelerated to the point that Canada won't let an Olympic figure skating medalist teach or coach young Canadians the errors and damages of the present system. She could earn more in the U. S. or other places but she is willing to do this for free if they would let her. How would Einstein or Bucky Fuller become professors in today's structured adherence to accepted models of learning? Canada is held up as a fine example by the U.N. committees which evaluate governments throughout this world. Last week the support staff went on strike in our schools of Toronto. Here is part of an article by Jim Coyle in the Toronto Star.

"Tough times teach those who have eyes to see

I spent a few hours in the emergency ward the other night with my 11-year-old, owing to a cut he acquired as a consequence of the prevailing mayhem in a houseful of boys. {Such an easy way of sloughing-off other issues.}

As we waited, he seemed intrigued by what went on around him. How could the triage nurse be so cheerful? Why did the man with chest pains get rushed right in.? What made the woman ahead of us in the suture room slit her wrists?

{No answers to come, and no coping skills taught in our media or schools. No awareness of the alternatives and soulful causes that would motivate people to help each other.}

He said he was amazed, watching the parade of ill and injured, that doctors and nurses could work under the pressure they do and make so few mistakes. {He is not interested in exploring the reality of how many mistakes are made, and probably hasn't read Ivan Illich's book 'Limits to Medicine'. He doesn't want to hear about the lack of family violence questionnaires in schools and hospitals which might prevent a growth in family violence and the cycles of attendant violence associated with incest. I have sent him letters and called, to no avail. Is he making a case for the 'status quo' at the behest of his employer and their political cronies?} A miserable night had turned into something educational. And I was reminded that, given the right attitude, little is wasted in life's economy, that difficult moments usually bring lessons.

It was the notion I'd been tossing around about the disruption in Toronto schools last week and what kids could learn from it. For teaching often occurs when we least expect it, not in the lecturing but in the living, not in the theory but in the behavior {So true.}. In fact, the person with the wisest observations in this respect might have been Justin Trudeau, son of the former prime minister, who was in Toronto last week to speak to teachers {He teaches in British Columbia and is an ardent and eloquent example for good behavior, to be sure.}.

'How can you teach character?' he said. 'Well, I don't know that you can teach character. I think you need to teach with character. You have to model character, you have to demonstrate character. That's how we learn.'

{This does not obviate the need to build a joy of learning or encourage socialization through tolerant consideration of comparative religion. It does not contradict the 'co-operative education' programs that research shows should focus on group projects, results and less testing for competency in early life, to be followed by more testing for creative and worthwhile learning and productivity as well as emotional coping skills later. It doesn't mean that what is being done is anything much better than 'glorified baby-sitting' to produce 'followers' who fit the needs of industry and society. It doesn't mean that teachers learned how to teach, as Kaoru Yamamoto points our in the 'Social Sciences Encyclopedia' put together by the Kuipers in 1995.}

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BIO:

Excerpted from my Encyclopedia which can be found at World-Mysteries.com

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