I was challenged by my teacher this week, (the second of my 10th master's of education course which is the Understanding Barriers To Learning course I am taking right now) to imagine there are two students with learning disabilities in my classroom. What would I do with seating arrangement (eye roll) and how would they impact my role as teacher. This is what I wrote to make the best of this pretty pedestrian writing assignment:
Two Students With Disabilities
I have worked with students with disabilities before and have read
literature that included recommendations for classroom accommodations that
should be made for students with physical, sensory, or intellectual
disabilities and it seems the more I do either, the more my teaching style is
reinforced as “disability friendly.” Like Faris Algahtani, I attribute some of
my methods to constructivist and behaviorist principles (Algahtani,
2017), but I think I owe even more to a young man named Kelly who is
one of the members of a family of very close friends of mine.
Almost single-handedly
Kelly taught me about challenges with recall, learning generalization, and
motivation that are common in students with intellectual disabilities (Algahtani,
2017). He gave me object lessons on the difficulties with self-esteem
students encounter when they try very hard but are just overwhelmed with the
information teachers are trying to teach them and they become frustrated and
lash out (Algahtani,
2017). He graphically illustrated struggles with social skills,
conceptual skills, and practical skills that make learning more difficult for
students with intellectual disabilities as well (Algahtani,
2017). Maybe most importantly, Kelly employed the teaching tactic of
modeling to educate me on the various strengths that exist alongside the
weaknesses students with intellectual barriers to learning have. Incidentally,
Kelly has Down’s Syndrome, and he has the above weaknesses.
Kelly has many strengths as well. To list just a few, Kelly has an
uncommonly developed dedication to making people laugh. He has capacities far
beyond most of his peers for joy, affection, and forgiveness. When Kelly hugs
you, he means it. These are strengths that short-term teachers may not discover
in Kelly and without getting to know him well, some of his teachers have
developed similar weaknesses as described above such as frustration,
demotivation, and, sadly, self-esteem issues that cause them to question their
efficacy as teachers.
Patience was the key that allowed me to unlock methods that were
successful with Kelly, and I found that most work well with all students
regardless of intellectual ability. For example, teaching from the known to the
unknown; employing meaningful real-life contexts; increasing active participation
with engaging lesson subject matter; simplifying using mnemonic techniques such
as summarizing/paraphrasing/predicting/using mental images; rewarding good
performance; chunking; and modeling (Algahtani,
2017). I cannot imagine any of these being very effective without utilizing
time and patience to get to know the students and to find out what the “known”
is; what is meaningful; what is engaging; what is memorable; what is a good
reward; how big a chunk should be; or whether I am trusted enough to be an
effective model for each individual student.
So if I had, for example, a student with autism and a
hearing-impaired student in my class, reasonable accommodations would be made
for IEP’s such as more time for processing and assessing, closed captioning on
videos, arranging desks to make room for note-takers or other helpers, special
equipment, noise/light/space allowances due to sensory sensitivity, repetition
of answers and questions, not turning to write on the board as I speak (Aruma, 2019),
and so on, but my teaching style would not change much. As for my role as the
teacher in my class, it would remain the same: to get to know the students so I
can pinpoint any learning barriers. How else can we overcome them?
References
Algahtani, F.
(2017). Teaching students with intellectual disabilities: Constructivism or
behaviorism? Educational Research and Reviews, 12(21),
1031–1035. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1160452.pdf
For reference if you ever teach Kelly, anything about wrestling or Hello Neighbor will maintain his attention, he will exercise if it involves walking the family dogs or riding the bike while listening to tunes or watching something he likes. His "known" requires only a little bit of interest and care to unlock. Meaningful real-life contexts and engaging subjects also require getting to know him which will not take too much time if he likes you. Same goes for what is memorable. I found smoothies to be a good reward in the summer but that changes... Chunk size and trust is determined by how genuine you are. Kelly can tell. These things will all be outdated by the time you read this. You need to do the same research as I did. Get to know Kelly!
Future teachers be warned: This kid can be your best or your worst student! One time he looked at me, smiled, and dropped my cell phone on the ground smashing the screen! And he LOVES me! But if you ever need to recuperate from such a nightmare, you can always reference the part of this post that outlines Kelly's strengths. If you haven't yet seen them, have patience. He'll show you a student that is easy to love.
When I first got back to Canada in early 2023 I worked in Trail, B.C. There is a college there called Selkirk College where I have been trying to get a job for years in the ESL program. There's also one in Castlegar and one in Nelson. I've applied to and been ghosted by all of them. Until quite recently this was a nagging annoyance to me. I thought it would be the perfect way for me to settle back into Canada and make enough money to eventually retire or at least semi-retire. Now I think it might have been a blessing that I was not hired.
I took a bus trip or two to the Selkirk College in Castlegar and easily 75% of the people on the bus were young Indians. Presumably they were students at the college since they all got off the bus there. I worked at Teck in Trail and about half the guards I worked with were Indians, most Punjabi, and all were former or current students. They told me some stories about the lives of Punjabi friends studying and working and being exploited.
Sorry to say I told you so but how many times have I said that when we are measuring the quality of our immigrants by their bank accounts we are importing the business tactics they use in their countries to GET big bank accounts? How many times? But did anyone listen? I'm not saying Canada is totally innocent, but we were not like this before, were we?
Watch this please. It's long, but it might piss you off and that's what needs to happen. It's another example of exploitation of Indians in Canada. If there were only a way to reach more than the usual dozen people who view my blog...
If you go back to my "Immigration Frustration" post from Jan. 15, I scratched the surface of this problem. I mentioned our immigration minister Marc Miller saying that international students have the "right" to work in Canada and employers need them for cheap labour. Well it is Miller's recent proposal of a student visa cap in Canada and the reaction it is receiving that have been the catalysts for this new post. I think a little history is in order here.
I was in university when the big problem that has led to this nightmare was governmentally manufactured. In the 80's, 90's, and 2000's federal government funding of post-secondary schools dropped from the neighbourhoods of 90% to 50%. Schools were left to find a way to make up the loss. They found it in international students. Now they're being asked by the government a la Tommy Boy, "What did you do?"
I remember one of my rare visits to the library at Lakehead University when I went between '87 and '94 and I was with a fellow student who was really smart and active in Canadian politics. We saw a whole section of books in Chinese and she commented that they were probably all about how to get the Canadian government to pay for my expensive Canadian education or something to that effect. "Thank you Myron Baloney (Brian Mulroney was the PM during my entire BA at Lakehead). This was a bit of an exaggeration but there ARE jobs in Canada reserved for international students, some that are high-paying even by Canadian standards, and there are programs that include promises of international graduate jobs as well. The government has been complicit in this problem for decades. These international students aren't all coming over here with no prospects. Some have more government support than Canadian students get. I'd be interested to see a report like this on international students from China. You can bet the corruption is even deeper there.
At any rate, the bottom line is the bottom line. The problem can be traced back to the instant education stopped being concerned with education and started becoming a business in Canada and that was roughly when I started studying. I have no doubt that my government assistance dried up because I went from a promising young mind from socioeconomic disadvantage to a pecuniary drain when the businesspeople took over for the educators in Canada. Especially since I could be replaced with a far more valuable international student.
But so what, right? They're just trying to make a buck. We have the right to do that in Canada and so do the schools, no? Go to the 10:10 point in the video and you will see why some things just should not be allowed to privatize and corporatize. People are dying! 4-5 dead bodies of Indian international students EVERY MONTH from ONE funeral home! What can justify this?
Go to the 11:40 mark and you'll find out. 23 billion dollars a year. Canada has put a price on the lives of Indian foreign students.
Earl Blaney says this international student "gold rush" started about 10 years ago. So the comment I made about international students NOT paying a whole heck of a lot more than local students is now outdated. Their tuitions have quite recently jumped to 4 or 5 times what locals pay. 23 billion will attract the scumbags. And nothing motivates like money folks. They WILL rise to the top in educational institutions and they WILL get rid of educators. The results are already evident. Some students can't even speak English (24:20), massive over-enrollment (30:50), quality of education is far down the priority list behind financial concerns of the "schools" (14:55), and the government is well aware of all of it (29:55). You can even see our current dipshit PM (17:40) saying he's "glad" that these ApplyBoard assholes are screwing international students in the same ways they were probably screwed when THEY were international students in Canada. Money can really fuck shit up!
Interestingly, Sean Fraser, the Minister of Immigration at the time this episode of the Fifth Estate was filmed, is now the housing minister. He said he was concerned about the "problematic" conditions in Canada regarding international students. Now he's gone. Maybe as housing minister he can improve the conditions for migrant workers and help accommodate the exploding populations of immigrants and international students. Or maybe not. I'm speaking of Canadian politicians like they do stuff here.
How about we just go back to using Canadian tax money to support education again. I don't know a taxpayer who would object to that. Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure, these are the things Canadians want to pay for with their taxes. We all know that. You know how we can prove that? Because there are no official government studies on that.
Stop exploiting international students and regulate this out of control racket while at the same time compensating for the educational funding it will cost with tax dollars. It's a simple solution but it is probably one of the last things anyone will propose. Why? Here comes that scare word again: Socialism! That would be socialism wouldn't it. I guess we're fine with people DYING as long as we can't be accused of socialism.
I can't tell you how ashamed I am of how one of the things that used to make me proud of Canada - our quality education system - has been sucked down into the gutters of avarice. I would be proud of the people of Canada if we did something about this but I don't think I'll hold my breath on that one.
I thought I had sufficiently vented with Is Equity Equitable Part I, but I guess there's more that needs to be said. Peter Shawn Taylor says a lot of it in the above article and he says it in a well-polished, well-researched, literary way that brings me back to my days of reading the classics while labouring through my BA in literature. You see, during those days (from 1987-the first full year of Employment Equity-to 1994) even though I was from a rock bottom SES, single parent family the Canadian government still found a way to screw me out of financial assistance I desperately needed. That's how I managed to cram a 4-year degree into 8 years. (Grade 13 in Ontario in 1986 counted as year one) Who knows, maybe being white and male was already being held against me. As Taylor writes, "No other country in the world divides itself along racial lines as we do in Canada."
To show how ignorant and frankly STOOOOPID our national policies are, federal legislation defines "visible minorities" as "persons, other than Aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." To get an idea of how ignorant words like "Caucasian," "race," and "white" are I urge you, I BEG of you, please read my former post about erasing the word race. Only 20 have and I think it should be mandatory knowledge for everyone in Canada! The video at the beginning is gone now, but skip over that part to the shocking origins of this outdated, imprecise, and racist terminology. We like to think of ourselves as a smart country here in Canada, but as long as we maintain any federal laws that include such hillbilly lingo, we're just a country of hockey goons.
But back to the first article, Taylor came to the same conclusion I did in my last post, "It's time to abolish this outdated, imprecise, and subtly racist idea." The surprising race-based data show Canadian born Japanese men taking home $1750 a week while white men earn $1530. In fact, Chinese, Korean, and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, etc) males also earned more than whites. For white women, the stats are even more surprising. There's a handy graph that shows it all in the link at the beginning of this post. White men get an average income of 79,000 a year. White women get 58,000 a year. I have never had a year approaching either. I've never made 30 grand. So white women, white men, and a whole pile of "visible minorities" are out-earning me. PSSST, these figures are from stats compiled from the 2016 Canadian census. Imagine how things have changed in the 7 years since, every one of which (I think) set a new immigration record!
Meanwhile, here's me disqualifying myself from yet another job by either admitting to my shameful white, male condition, or refusing to:
What's a white fella to do? I mean I suppose I COULD just write that since groups designated under the Employment Equity Act are now an overwhelming majority in the labour market of Canada, as a white male I qualify as a visible minority but I'm sure that would give the application reviewer, who statistically is not a white male, a good chuckle while she/he is eliminating me from qualification.
Can you see how if these laws and the Canadian governmental blocking of employers just hiring the best person for the job ever really had a spirit of justice and equality, the results are empirically divisive? If you can't, or aren't ready to abandon this well-entrenched Canadian mentality yet, let me borrow one last time from Peter Shawn Taylor who is a white male who resorted to the words of a person with a more trustworthy skin tone... sigh... see what we've done to white dudes?
This is a quote from Martin Luthor King Jr. who strongly opposed race-based job quotas: "It is my opinion that many white workers whose economic condition is not too far removed from the economic condition of his black brother will find it difficult to accept... special consideration to the Negro in the context of unemployment, joblessness, etc. and does not take into sufficient account their (own) plight."
I have a dream myself. I dream that one day I will be able to speak of an opinion or fact, and maybe my children and their children too can state opinions or facts without their fellow Canadians judging their words against the socially indoctrinated Canadian colour coding that exists in our unliberated minds. I dream that I can safely say what is on my mind without referencing the words of those with skin of a darker hue. I dream that Canada will stop being a country that discriminates more than most based on skin colour and not content of character.
MLK Jr., PST, and me - we're all still waiting for that simple concept of fairness to become the law.
Here's another vid to start a post. Start right from the beginning (after the intro music) and you see a white male apologizing for laughing. At a comedy show. Akaash Singh, from a position of non-white safety, says, "Look what we've done to white men." As another comedian Louis C.K. might say, "Yeah, boo, white men! Fuck them! Hah hah!" The last members of our society that can be shamelessly mocked or slagged or criticized. Why? White male privilege. Before I go on, there IS one other group we bash whether we like to admit it or not. We openly discriminate against the ugly Louis CK also points out. And if you don't think that's true YOU fuck them then! Go ahead. Pity the poor white, ugly, male! Three things he had no control over are destroying his chances of getting laid or being taken seriously.
But back to this guy who had the nerve to be white AND male... Akaash Singh goes on to make one of the best speeches I've heard in years! "White men are like shelter dogs now." "Like watching Reek in Game of Thrones." "Name one thing a white man can't have. Okay, an opinion." "If you don't let white guys express themselves they bottle up their feelings. They fester and get real dark. Then they walk into a voting booth every four years..." "And we all wonder 'how did this happen?' THAT'S HOW!"
So anybody in the U.S. who doesn't want Trump .2, anyone in Canada who doesn't want another Trump wannabe messing things up more than they already are, let the white guys off the hook. Older white guys, well maybe. We might have had a taste of white male privilege, but the young fellas are on your side. They're not the bad guy but if they are marginalized because of some mysterious thing they've never experienced, they could be. And it's not like we're easing off at all.
Remember a couple of posts ago when I said I believe ethics should be allowed in schools as long as it's not taught with bias and there's no indoctrination or inculcation? Well this is not the way Canada has chosen to tackle issues of what is called "equity" but is really the revenge of the non white males. This is what has turned Canadian males into shelter dogs. A lot of them anyway. If you disagree with me I invite you to take this course:
"Employment Equity" is an initiative that was started exactly when I graduated high school, 1986, and was trying to get work to support my university education dreams. At the time I was heartily against it because it blatantly contradicted its main purpose: to discourage employers from basing hiring on gender or sex. If anything it has gotten more blatant, I mean look at the name. Gender Based Analysis. It means you have to analyze prospective employees or projects or initiatives based on gender. The plus is for every other prospective employee or team member except... you guessed it, us Reeks over here. They have over the years honed their explanation of how "equality" and "equity" are different and they throw that at you in hopes that you don't see the massive flaw in that argument. Let me explain it and see if you think it isn't even MORE misogynistic than just hiring the person who is best for the job.
We've all seen this pic, no?
It illustrates how showing INEQUALITY to the short purple shirt kid allowed him to see the ball game. This was presented to us students studying the GBA+ program with the insinuation that the tall dude is the white male. Born with the privilege of being able to see over the fence. It's not too big a stretch to see the fence as the barrier between gainful employment and/or participation in the workforce. They certainly don't say this but are they then comparing women and minorities to the person with a birth defect that makes him short? Are they implying that by birth women, and minorities are just naturally ill suited for employment so they need MORE than equality, they need equitably applied INequality? It sure looks like that to me and that is awfully discriminatory don't you think? Take the course, see if you don't get that impression. It was laid on pretty thick in my opinion. Thick enough to qualify as indoctrination and/or inculcation.
Just recently at work a person uploaded some Christmas cards that we could personalize and send to students during the Christmas season. IMMEDIATELY that person, who I'm pretty sure was male but I don't know about the colour of his skin, was jumped all over for not showing proper sensitivity to Muslim students or students who just don't celebrate at that time of year. Yet this course that is mandatory for all government employees and even for people like me who are paid indirectly by the government with government funds shows this video:
which includes graphic video of black women being manhandled by police. White male police. Why? This is nowhere near as serious a problem in Canada as it is in the U.S. BUT, do you think that showing preference, or in governmental indoctrinational terms, "gender based analysis" when hiring people for jobs across the country that favours women and minorities is the best way to make sure it never comes to this in Canada? Like I said last post, it's a foot-shooting government strategy if I've ever seen one.
I think we've had employment equity for long enough. I think we should have gone with employment EQUALITY right from the get-go, but now that we've included punishment for white male privilege for a few decades and most men in this country have never experienced it, can we please knock it off?
I work in a place where white and male are extremely underrepresentative of the gender and ethnic make-up of the country. I feel like I am walking on eggshells all the time trying not to be insensitive to anyone. There are no other white males there although I could probably say something about some genetic defect shared by males and all the women and the other three men would let it slide. I might even get away with bashing white skin and everyone but me and the one other white person would just play our submissive roles and laugh it off. But woe unto me if I said anything that could be construed as disparaging of females or any ethnicity of colour! This is the reason I can't just talk about this sort of thing or write about it in my blog. I have to make sure I START the post with a brown guy saying it first to possibly mitigate the blowback I am likely to get.
Is this fair? Is this equality? Is this multiculturalism? Is this Canada? I'll tell you what it IS, it's EQUITY or at least the Canadian version of it. I'll tell you what else it is, it's bullshit.
What do you reckon? Is my white male privilege showing?
Go to about the 2 minute mark in this video and watch for a while.
The vid shows Marc Miller the Liberal immigration minister being, as host Russell Matthews says, "Kinda forthright about" international students' "RIGHT" (our immigration minister uses that word) to work full time while attending school in Canada.
Miller says there are industries in Canada looking for "cheap labour." Cuz labor has a U up here. The host didn't even make the mistake of being that honest. He said that industry is "struggling to find employees." Then Miller uses the phrase "labour gap" to try to muddy his honesty a bit but don't let that fool you. The fact is Canadian industry is only struggling to find CHEAP labour. There are plenty of Canadians who would work for these cheapskates if they paid properly, or enough to pay the bills. But they don't wanna. And in modern day hyper-capitalist Canada even under Liberal leadership industry gets what industry whines for.
The immigration minister goes on to say that "If they're paying a whole heck of a lot more than a domestic student to come to study in Canada, why not?" Or something to that effect. Notice that in his rhetoric there is the intimation that international students pay a whole heck of a lot more but he doesn't say that. Why not? Because he's probably been warned against it. Cuz they don't. See Canadian students pay less at point of purchase due to provincial tax subsidies in the province where they are studying. That's assuming they're going to a school in the province where their guardians live. If they go to a school in a different province they're not paying "a whole heck of a lot less" than international students. If they go to school where they or their guardians pay taxes and you add tuition fees to tax subsidies, again it's not a whole heckuva lot less than foreign students if it's less at all.
Add to this the insult that any international student working full time at the lowball wages industry wants to pay will file tax and will get a pretty hefty refund and we should have an immigration minister who is not so "forthright" about this matter. But like so many of the capitalist schemes and scams we are increasingly subject to - they aren't even trying to hide it any more. Time was in this country when a foreign student had to breach his/her student visa agreement and/or break the law to work here while studying. Even in the early 2000's the government was well aware they were doing this and any citizen who informed the government of the occurrence ran the risk of being called a racist. I know because it happened to me. But at least it was on the books. You couldn't legally go to school AND work at your uncle's Chinese restaurant for 2 bucks an hour. I think at the time there was an 80% attendance expectation for international students as well. Any less and they would be in breach of their student visas and could be deported. I laugh now when I think of that. NOOOOObody was deported. They were put on the cheap labour list and probably fought over by companies that were tired of using their billions to pay a Canadian a decent wage.
I've done this before, but let's update it shall we? At the time I last did this there were lots of people in China making a dollar a day. Well the Chinese Communist Party has indeed lifted many people in China to a higher wage. Whether it has kept up with inflation is doubtful though. Now there are almost a billion people making 10 dollars a day! China is cheap but not THAT cheap. That's still poverty. Okay, so minimum wage in BC, where I was working with international students at Teck, is $16.75 an hour. We were getting 18 but let's use the minimum. That works out to $134 a day. Now reverse that and you will get some perspective. Imagine a minimum wage worker was offered 13.4 times his/her wage to work in China or India or wherever. That's $1795 a day! What WOULDN'T a minimum wage worker do for that wage? This is what working in Canada looks like to someone from India or China or the many other countries we are packing in immigrants from. This is why they'll work any hours, any shifts, do any crap jobs you want them to. This is why the whining companies of Canada prefer them to Canadian workers too, don't kid yourself.
It's impossible to blame the immigrants or international students for jumping all over this sweet deal. It's a little easier but still hard to blame even the industries of Canada for falling all over themselves to cash in on this greater than ever influx of cheap labour. We need to blame our government and ourselves for historic levels of immigration and the disastrous effects they are having on Canada. We don't even have enough housing for the people we had before the biggest immigration surge since confederation. Wonder why housing prices are so ridiculous? How about unemployment? It's not just the students, it's immigration in general.
But let's continue on in the vid. The host makes a classic blunder around the 4:20 point by equating "growing the economy" with growing the quality of life for the average Canadian. One of the most common capitalist schemes and scams. The economy largely reflects the profits of the big businesses and while they're screwing average Canadians out of work by hiring foreign students that is hardly translating into quality of life improvement for Joe Canuck. He then talks about the Bank of Canada printing tons of money increasing supply and lowering demand (value) thus manufacturing inflation while calling it "stimulus." Yes, they pissed on Canadians and told them it was raining. Again, nothing new in a capitalist society. Also messing with the interest rates and ruining lives with every decimal point. That's a fun game for central banks too.
All this is somehow translated into "economic growth." This is what the government will call it when they beg for your votes at election time. And regardless of who is in power, they all do the same things and we all keep voting for one or the other and perpetuating the pattern. This all contributes to the classic foot-shooting behaviour I have seen in so many extreme government policies where they try to do something, often with good intentions, and they mess it up so badly they accomplish the opposite of their intention. I still feel like Employment Equity has caused people to consider sex before hiring, the problem they stated the program was implemented to fight. And it's only gotten worse. I am certified in that knowledge. I just completed my government of Canada Gender Based Analysis training. I have the certificate but can't upload it. Server isn't recognized.
I believe that the people are seeing the huge influx of immigrants, refugees, and foreign students, and perceiving the negative effects on Canada. The only thing that might be rising faster than immigration rates is the general disenchantment toward these newcomers to Canada. This is the manufacturing of racism that I have mentioned in past posts. Another bad thing immigration is creating here.
There are some countries, and I'll say it, evidently SMARTER countries than Canada that are limiting immigration to more sustainable levels in the interest of their own citizens. Sweden and Australia are two examples that come to mind. When is Canada going to smarten up and do the same thing? Well I guess with so many positions in post-secondary educational institutions taken up by immigrants it'll be harder for Canadians to smarten up. And I suppose with so many jobs taken up by immigrants it'll be harder to afford the trip to the polls or even a residence which is necessary to vote.
Well another year has come and gone and I have added another 24 posts to this my gift to humanity. How wonderful this planet would be if this were required reading like Xi Jin Ping Thought or Mien Kampf! Alas, the world is, as yet, unaware of my genius so I'll have to keep plugging away till I become the Il Duce or Ze Fuhrer or Lord of the Flies. World domination ain't as easy as I'd expected.
I have been asked by my university (the current one) to relate to them my story so that they might publish it but I am not about to share the book or Hollywood movie rights so easily.
I'm actually not kidding about that one small part. I HAVE been asked to type out the story of how I came to sign up for my M. Ed. I don't know if it has anything to do with my weekly writings or not but I'd like to think so. I have to write a discussion post every week that my fellow students comment on and I have to comment on three of their discussion posts. In any given week there are three other possible assignments which include formal written assignments and marking those of three of my co-students, portfolio assignments which usually involve reflection on the week's readings and discussions and ensuring the prof of how massively he/she is "informed my pedagogy," and the erstwhile group projects which are genuinely good educationally for in-person teaching but are usually absolute disasters in the international online format being used by my uni, not to say being DEFIANTLY used by my uni.
By way of example, I'll give you the three comments I posted this week. I regularly receive comments in the discussion area about how other students, and sometimes the prof, enjoy my posts and the stories of my experience. So this is one of the reasons I think I have been asked to write up something for my uni's webpage. This week we read and wrote about the role of the teacher in educating students a la Socrates, Freire, Dewey, how to think critically about ethical dilemmas and develop moral autonomy rather than settle for legalism and obedience to structured rule systems. A well-developed aspect of my personal pedagogy and one that I think is among the highest mandates of proper education, but one that is kept from the classroom mostly by private corporate and conservative interests.
But before you take my word for it, watch this vid and you'll see what I mean: Okay, here are some comments I made this week:
Hi Anthony.
I have to invoke my background in literature to give an example of the point of morals. "Lord of the Flies" comes to mind. It's briefly about a group of boys on a deserted island who, with the loss of their moral compass (parents/society/English laws) descend into savage, bloodthirsty chaos. The moral of this tale is that the shape of society must depend on the ethics of the individual and not some set of political, religious, or any other kind of rules. Take the Mr. Heinz example from Kohlberg (1971). A druggist who can save the life of Heinz's wife with the drug he makes for 200 dollars and sells for 2000 dollars refuses Heinz's offer of 1000 now and the rest later. Essentially the druggist is refusing a profit of 800 dollars and allowing a person to die for an extra 1000 dollars. Heinz decides rather than to lose his wife over an amount of money (lower than the value he places on his wife's life) he will break a law (which he also regards as less valuable than his wife's life) and steal the drug. I believe Heinz did nothing wrong. I think ethically speaking the druggist is the villain and his greed should be far more punishable by law than Heinz's theft. The society I live in protects the druggist more than Heinz, and every year the laws of Canada are even more protective of such selfishness. It is the same in the US where 50% of people dislike the values of the country and 78% think they are getting worse. A change is needed to make these countries better and it will be necessitated through moral cognition (hopefully). That is what I see as the point of morals.
Anthony had posed the simple question, "What is the point of morals?" This was my answer. See the Heinz example in the Wikipedia link under "Examples of applied moral dilemmas."
This is excellent Daniel! While compiling answers to a survey for my group project I interviewed siblings who were quite different even though they were raised the same by the same parents too. My siblings are also a good example. In fact I have a brother with identical twins who are very different in many ways. In answer to the question, it's just reinforcement of the value of differentiation, a tool every good teacher needs in his/her tool box. As for your other question, I lived in Asia for over 20 years including China. I found that the societies we think of as more collective are being changed drastically by the same economic philosophies that made western societies individualistic and a lot of citizens hate it. I was walking with a Chinese friend in Beijing one day and remarked about how there was an automobile horn blown every few seconds at least. He told me that in China (modern China) the horn sound is not "beep beep beep," it's "me, me, me." In answer to your question I believe our cultures force values onto us, some good and some bad. It is up to the people's moral compasses and their Kohlberg Level III critical thinking about ethics to temper that cultural influence. I don't think my culture does a good job because we have left it to weak political representatives who rarely represent the true ethics and values of the people. But that's my opinion.
Daniel's two questions were, "With such difference in children raised the same, how should teachers approach students in diverse classrooms?" And, "What effect does culture have on our morality?"
A superb post and a great question Erland. I was talking to my sister about the Heinz example of an ethical dilemma and my brother-in-law, a really good hockey player in his youth, said that Heinz should go to jail before I even finished explaining the scenario. We were actually watching hockey at the time and there was a totally unintentional high stick that was penalized the same as if the offender had intentionally hacked the other player in the face. It made me think of how legalistic sport can be and how that could influence those who have played sports for a long time. I played sports for many years too but the advice that affected me was more like your statement about winning not being more important than our values of respectful and fair play. Much like the society I live in, I see sport actually going the OTHER way and teaching that nothing is more important than winning, so I applaud your efforts at keeping fair play in sport. Incidentally, when empathy and ethical reasoning were elicited from my bro-in-law, he changed his tune. As for your question, I had a recent occurrence in my school that was similar. There was a meeting in which the majority of the time was wasted (in my opinion) on matters of finance and funding that had little importance to the teachers while the issue of part-time teachers not being able to get into the school for night classes was not discussed. It is winter and some teachers were waiting 10-20 minutes in the cold for a security guard to open the emergency exit to let them in. Meanwhile all the administrators wanted to discuss was how much money they got from the government to finance our school. I knew it would have been considered bad form to bring it up at the highly structured meeting so I tangentially influenced administration through an intermediary. It's incredibly silly that it needed to be handled in this way but in the end it was dealt with. Management does not like to be told what to do by the teachers so they did not employ the obvious solution but their band-aid solution has proven satisfactory. Just another underappreciated social dynamic skill a lot of teachers need to have...
Erland's question was about balancing roles as teachers. Sometimes roles that are at cross purposes. Neutral roles and roles in which modeling of moral reasoning is involved.
As the vid and many great educators have pointed out for over a century, kids spend a lot of time at school so maybe the super significant development of ethical reasoning is a job that doesn't have to be left to just parents, church, and peers. So long as teachers avoid inculcation or indoctrination, they might even be the preferred purveyors of this cognitive quality. Children, educational studies have shown, are shaped more by arousing their curiosity than by external reinforcements like rules, lectures and orders. Although teaching seems to be a skill that a lot of people think anyone can easily do, this is something teachers work on to become better than the average bloke. But it's one of a thousand un or underappreciated skills teachers require and it's why we should all be making a million bucks a year.
I'm not sure why I chose this tack today, the first day of 2024. Perhaps it has to do with a couple of major choices that have been forced upon me by my culture. I've been working two part-time jobs and studying my 9th of 12 M.Ed. courses since coming to Calgary in September '23. I have barely made enough money to survive and the stress and strain has not proven to be worth the effort. I have had a toothache for about 2 weeks and I'm pretty sure I need a wisdom tooth pulled. I went to a dentist and was quoted a minimum of $300 to have that done. I guess I feel like Mr. Heinz although the dentist does not know my personal situation. I feel like breaking into the dentist's office and yanking the tooth myself.
The 300 or more bucks will set me further back in my bill payment than I already am. I don't have medical insurance from either of my jobs because I am part time. Probably the only solution to this problem I can afford would be to quit both jobs and go on welfare because Canadian social assistance will cover the extraction. Should there be medical insurance for part-time workers? Should the prices for dental work be less? Should the prices for EVERYTHING in Canada be less? Should I get an ice skate and knock my own tooth out like Tom Hanks in "Castaway?" All ethically debatable questions.
Maybe my hindsight isn't exactly 20/20 but I recall a Canada in which a cash-strapped person who needed emergency medical work done could find a compassionate medical professional to make adjustments. A druggist who would take the 800 dollar profit instead of the 1800 dollar profit he prefers. But I think those days are gone if they ever existed here.
How do I think it has gotten this way? I'm positive I know one major contributor to the ethical deterioration of Canada that is more to the point than just saying "capitalism run amok," but like the role of teachers having to remain neutral or silent when they have something that needs to be said, I'm feeling like I should not blurt out what I have seen happen over the years. I think you know if you have followed my blog or if you're my good friend. I just can't be too forthright at this time...
I am seriously considering quitting my teaching job and doing the warehouse work full time. That way I won't need to pay out of pocket for teeth getting pulled or my diabetes supplies. I have also not yet registered for course number 10 in my master's studies even though registration time has long passed. I may not go full time at the warehouse or take a break from school or just become a welfare bum, but if I DO resort to drastic measures here, you can be sure I'll blather on and on about it.
At any rate, happy new year everybody. Hope this is a good one for you all. This is not really the way I had hoped to start the year...
I guess I'll start this post with a few updates. After being GUARANTEED that my Telus account has a balance of zero and I should not be getting billed, I'm still getting billed. The latest email begins with, "Do you want to keep your phone number?" It goes on to say, "Hi David allen. 😒 Your account is scheduled for cancellation Dec. 14, 2023. You need to act now! If we do not receive payment, your account will be cancelled and you will lose your phone number. The current balance owing is $213.22..." blah blah blah "We're here to help! If you want to speak with an agent, click below..." and we'll send you down an Olympian rabbit hole of telephone gymnastics Nadia Comaneci couldn't navigate.
My phone number is with Koodo, not Telus. I never HAD a phone number with Telus, Only internet. But does THAT stop the scumbaggiest companies in the nation - the Telecommunists? Why, no, it doesn't.
In fact, my original phone account was with Bell back when I got off the plane from Korea at the Vancouver airport in early March. Yeah, nine month ago. Guess who ELSE shot me off an email this past week. "Dear David Maccannell 😒(can NOBODY get my name right? Reminds me of Ernestine calling General Motors. "Hello, General? How is Mrs. Motors?" What's that? You don't know Ernestine?), Thank you for choosing Bell." I chose long ago to CANCEL Bell and that took me a couple months because they have the same non-existent cancellation policy as Telus. It goes on to say, "This email contains the details of the order you placed on Dec. 4. Please keep a copy for your records." The "details" are my name as the "account owner" and a monthly bill payment method of "regular (invoice)." They've cleverly included a big, blue box I could click on that says, "Complete your registration." This, I suppose, would legally represent voluntary sign-up for whatever they're not telling me I'm signing up for. But, "We are not subject to city, province, or federal regulations... we are omnipotent. That's potent with an omni in front of it." I can't believe you don't know Ernestine!
This is from 1971! I had it on a cassette tape called "Comedy Classics" that also included "Who's on First," "Fat Albert's Car," "Wonderful Wino Radio," <------ George Carlin, and some other oldy and moldy bits. But, still relevant. "We may be the only telephone company in town but we screw everybody."
So now I have THAT to look forward to... In other news computers still SUCK! Apps, IT, hardware, and software are continuing to WARE me out. I'll only cover one day of issues. Any more than that might give one the impression that computers are not worth entrusting with our entire lives the way we have. (see previous post) I use the Tim Horton's app. They have this game where you pick hockey players and if they score goals you get Timmy's points that you can use to get Timmy's merchandise. I've been playing for a month and a half. At one point I got goals 8 days in a row. I got a week of free coffee for that. Yesterday TWO of my picks, Daniel Sprong and Mikko Rantanen scored. Today I got the message from Tim Horton's that "None of your picks were correct. Play again."
ADP and Outlook Express, both of which SUUUCK but seem to be popular with Canadian employers, are glitching this week. Trying to upload a photo to ADP before the deadline. Nobody can do it. Deadline has passed. Let's manufacture even MORE stress for our workers! We got a calendar on Outlook Express that is supposed to have important dates at the "school" on it. This past week we had a meeting and the handout from that says we have Wednesday, Dec. 13th off. Mark everybody present and claim the hours as "teaching" for that. So that's what I did. My Outlook calendar doesn't have ANY of the important upcoming dates highlighted or marked in any way on it. Like the 3-week Christmas holidays, the Christmas party... I saw the day classes resume marked as Jan. 6 which is a Saturday so I told my students to come Jan. 4, but I'm just going by what I heard IN PERSON. Computer's gotta be better, right? Sigh...
Then I get to my classroom. I have a smartboard. I go to show something on it and the touch function is not working. So we waste 5-10 minutes randomly inserting HDMI, USB, DMI, VGI, LMNOP cables and unplugging them until it finally works. Minutes later I try to do a listening exercise and the audio is not working. Same routine ensues. If people would only leave things plugged in... But I can't tell anyone or ask for help because I've already been backhandedly accused of computer illiteracy. I just go by what is written on the meeting handouts or what I can find out from other teachers. Which... also isn't the best. Sigh...
I remember something being written on the last LAST meeting's handout about binder check. I have no idea what the hell that is and in a building chock-o-block full of teachers I would think one of them would INSTRUCT, EDUCATE, SCHOOL, TUTOR, COACH, TRAIN, EDIFY, ENLIGHTEN, ILLUMINATE, or PREP me, and all the other new teachers who have never done binder check before. Nope. So at the last meeting after it was mentioned again as something we need to do without the courtesy of telling us how to do it (an all too common occurrence) I asked one of the nicest teachers there what we are supposed to do. She told me to just collect one of the student binders and submit it to Michael. Michael will check if I've been instructing my students in the proper binder maintenance, something ELSE nobody has informed me on how to do. So I get a binder from my best student and label it and put it in a box Michael had left in the resource room. A few days later I get an email (on the erstwhile useless Outlook Express) from Michael saying that Rabia is in charge of my binder support group and then one from Rabia asking me to please leave my binder in our classroom. We both use room 204. Well I don't HAVE the binder so now I have to hunt down Michael. Eventually I found him and got my student's binder from him and left it in my classroom. All this while never being officially told what the hell binder check is or what the hell I should be telling my students to keep in their binders, where it goes, what to check, what to sign... Rabia is going to have a FIELD DAY criticizing my inability to do the stuff I haven't been shown how to do! I am wondering if SHE is the one who keeps switching cables around. I DID notice at one meeting a glare from one of the supervisors when she mentioned she had found a LOT of scissors in ONE room and that we should be sharing the supplies with other teachers. Just before that meeting I noticed the 20 or so pairs of scissors that had always been in Rabia and my classroom disappear. I can't be sure if I was blamed for that or if Rabia has been pulling plugs but I've been in "schools" before where teachers were in competition for jobs and I've seen worse.
I used to write on this blog about how Koreans seem to equate complicated with sophisticated. Like they haven't heard of the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle. That principle strongly implies that if you complicate things, you are stupid. I've been told it takes at least 2 years for a teacher to get used to doing things the way they want them to be done at this "school" and now I'm beginning to understand why. Everything is unnecessarily complicated. And we have meetings where it seems only ONE of the speakers is interested in uncomplicating some things while the others are stroking their egos and regaling us with their business acumen while enjoying the sounds of their own voices. Meanwhile there are legitimate issues that go uninvestigated. I'll give you an example: There are several part time teachers. Many of us work at night (7-9 PM). We have keys to our classrooms but have not been given fobs that allow us entry into the "school" after hours. There are people at the reception desk until 5 PM. I usually get there around that time and the main entrance doors are promptly locked at precisely 5 PM. People without fobs have to go to the side door and knock and wait for someone to answer. Usually it is the security guard, but he has other stuff to do I'm sure like rounds and is not always near the door. I have spent 15-20 minutes waiting a few times. It's getting cold. Employing the KISS principle here, maybe keep the doors of the place open while it's open? Now they have nametags for everyone and are super strict about the wearing of them ostensibly (because we are only told wear them or else, not why) due to some security threat. Maybe there are people who disagree with immigration laws and want to harm immigrants or refugees that get Canadian tax payer money or something like that. Okay, understandable. So have the friggin guard sit behind the desk where the receptionist sits. We show HIM the ID's instead of the receptionist. Is this rocket surgery? Brain science?
I talked to one of the receptionists, a nice Filipina who let me in while I was knocking a couple of times, and said it's getting too cold to keep this system up. We need to do something. Well, something was done. Now they have a little desk by the side door that the guard sits in and waits for someone to knock on it. Main doors are still locked so all the students and teachers at night have to use that side door. There was even something brought up at a meeting asking teachers to inform their students about the courtesy of not just letting the door go when exiting but keeping it from smashing the next exiter in the face. This, believe it or not, has become a problem. It seems the simple solution is being avoided here, and in so many other areas! Are there stupid people in charge or do they believe in the concept of complication being equivalent to sophistication? I'll just say it's too early to tell as yet.
It does seem a lot like quasi-intellectualism focusing on appearance not substance. "So much style without substance! So much stuff without style. It's hard to recognize the real thing but it comes along once in a while." Good old Neal Peart! He nailed that one! Let's make things complicated so we can use a lot of jargon, big words, abbreviations, and acronyms so we can impress people. What? Teach? Educate? What on earth for? Eduardo Galeano the Uruguayan writer... I can forgive you if you don't know him, but Lily Tomlin's telephone operator... sheesh! Anyway, his famous quote was brought to mind by a colleague of mine in the ESL racket.
“We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.”
Maybe I should just increase my hours at Richelieu, the warehouse I work in. Although, we've just moved everything from one huge warehouse to another even huger warehouse in town and those were some of the hardest shifts I've ever done. I've worked as a tree planter and a diamond driller and those are tough, but I was young then and had boots and clothes that fit properly. I'm using the work boots that I bought in Trail for the Teck security job. I did 12-hour shifts there too but it was mostly sitting down in a chair watching the cameras. I did some 8-hour shifts with Marty in Richelieu receiving and even that, not walking much but standing all day, was hard on the feet. Then I got two shifts on cleanup. Just wandering the warehouse picking up boxes, sweeping, emptying garbages, etc. That was even harder on the feet. But 12 hour shifts of lifting boxes from pallet to pallet is a killer! I was worried about my back, knees, hands, wrists, arms... no problem. But my dogs were barking! By the end of my second shift I had blisters on my blisters but you know what? In some ways I would rather do that than work at this highly regulated, micromanaged, and overcomplicated "school." Besides, it's a 2-hour bus/train trip there and an even longer train/bus/walk trip home so it has only been worth it to me for the exercise I'm getting.
Ah but who knows? I just had a classroom observation done when a supervisor sat in; I am having my binder check done as I type this; I also have a monthly report due day after tomorrow (parenthetically and superfluously, I haven't been taught how to do THAT either); and I had an interview with the supervisor who observed me telling me I'm still on probation and asked how my class aligned with the CLB standardized curriculum and the mandate from on high... I'm not a big fan of this job to be honest and wouldn't mind getting sacked and working full time at the warehouse. At least until I find a GOOD teaching job though I've been trying for, what, 25 years? Sigh...
On the bright side I DID get extra hours at the warehouse and will be getting some more before Christmas that will allow me to pay for Christmas and another three-week-layoff from my teaching job. Honestly if I last till April and am offered more hours I will either have figured out a way around all the crap there or will be so sick of it I'll just refuse. I think Dec. 21 will give me a good indication of which way to go. That will be our Christmas party. Of course it's not on the Outlook Express calendar either and we've been informed that we'll be paid for three hours of work but have NOT been told how to enter that into ADP. Should we call it teaching or a meeting? There is no "party" designation on the program. Endless tedium and pedantry.
I am SOOOO looking forward to Dec. 21 actually! That will be the start of Christmas for me. I will still be studying (course # 9 of 12 is halfway through and am nailing it) but I'll have time (and money) for Christmas shopping and a bit of celebration, not to mention the World Jr. Hockey Championships!!! I can't wait for that! It's in Sweden this year so I'll STILL be getting up at weird hours to watch but that's nothing new. I thought being home in Canada would change that, but it's not in N. America this year.
Being home in Canada WILL have one big advantage though: I can visit family over the holidays. At least I hope... That hasn't been as easy to do as I'd hoped. STILL haven't seen brother Jeff. But I hope to spend some time with Mark and Sheri-Lynn and their giant clan, maybe a check-in with Rob and Terri, and some nice holiday spirit with Marty and Jenn and the two adolescents I am living with. Who knows, maybe a cameo by Mom and Art, Andy and Linda, Tyler, Dylan. That would be nice but it'll just be nice to have an actual Canadian Christmas! It's something I've been looking forward to since getting back and Jenn and Marty do a good Christmas.
So there you have it. Social life: projection positive. Work: not so much. Canada: expensive and tedious.
