[When] asked to choose the most important activities for parents to be involved in, helping young children read and helping with homework ranked low, selected by only 14% and 7% of teachers respectively. Only 5% of teachers believe the most important role for parents is being active in such school-related activities as field trips.
The survey found gender differences: Male teachers are more likely to emphasize that parents spend time teaching young children to read (19% of men versus 11% of women), while female teachers are more likely to expect parents to be involved in a disciplinary role (37% of women versus 31% of men).
Conrad Winn, president of COMPAS, said this may reflect general differences between male and female parenting styles. "Often times, mothers think the fathers are wimps when it comes to disciplining the children. There seems to be a gender pattern."
Doug Wilson, registrar of the college, said discipline has become an issue for teachers in some schools where parents have requested their children be moved from special-needs classes into mainstream classes. The result has been that those teachers face a greater challenge dealing with students with a variety of needs, including some with behavioural problems.
Public school teachers have also often complained about overcrowded classrooms and, according to the survey, appear to expect parents to do their part ensuring students are not being disruptive in their busy classrooms.
My Commentary:
For too long, the worst behaved have been able to disrupt the classes and the teacher, if not blamed, is not trusted to take action based on that teacher’s pedagogical experience and common sense. School administrators have bent over backward to accommodate and NOT punish disruptive students. The chickens have come home to roost. Discipline is obviously a major problem. Kick out disruptive students based on the word of the one who has to run the classroom!
Teachers have been cowed by the blame-everything-but-the-child zeitgeist and the current child-centered theories, and by weak administrators who, in turn, have been cowed by the prevailing laxity and aggressive others—whatever their role. Take the word of the adults in charge of the classes. Stop listening to and catering to whinging kids and their parents. Get some guts! It has to stop so that those who want to work, can work. Kick out the bad actors; be firm and never relax your grip.
Teachers, stick together; get some guts, yourselves!. Call a spade a spade and stop making excuses for a**holes who ruin it for everyone else. So what if his or her tender pink feelings are hurt. His/her actions are probably not your fault -- but if you let the a**holes get away with it, it is your fault. Talk to other teachers. No-one should have to put up with what I hear goes on in schools today. Demand that other teachers and your union support you. Get a life! And allow your real students to learn!
Teachers’ unions, where are you on this issue? Support the ones who pay you, your membership. No education takes place in a rowdy classroom. Money is not the only issue in teaching -- nor is class size -- nor whether schools have adequate professional development days, the latest word in modern buildings, the latest buzz-word laden curricula, or adequate school supplies including and especially computers. The bottom line is that schools need books, paper or pen, and teachers who are able to teach in an atmosphere conducive to learning -- teachers who are not utterly cowed by the need to address every social, physical, and psychological ill that a child may be heir to -– along with trying to handle the just plain a**holes who make the day sheer H*** for all. Address this first!
Why am I Not Surprised: Another Refugee Scam Using HRDC $ and the Naive Members of our Federal Immigration and Refugee Boards
When are Canadians going to use savvy people to screen incoming students and refugees instead of government appointees? I believe many are compromised because they owe their loyalty to the governments that appoint them. Also, there are too many stakeholders working within the system -- stakeholders who were themselves refugees and immigrants or worked in some way to facilitate their entry to Canada. I want more who were born here and remember what our country was like before the borders became sieves.
Toronto — The federal government provided funds to students of the Ottawa Business College, . . . until just days before its registration was suspended.
The Ontario Ministry of Education [adminstering the Canada Student Loans Program for the federal HRDC] confirmed yesterday that students registered with the college received loans from the federal government totalling $8,910 during the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 2001. The ministry revoked the college's registration the next month.
Citing questions of privacy, a ministry spokesman would not comment on whether any of 21 men arrested by a federal antiterrorism task force in recent weeks had received loans under the program.
The college provided fraudulent letters to foreigners so they could enter and stay in Canada on student visas even though they did not attend classes, immigration hearings have been told.
Have you noticed how often privacy concerns are used to keep from having to give out information? It is replacing patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel.
[. . . .]
The college is a link among many of the individuals swept up in the immigration and terrorism investigation. At least nine of the men told Immigration Department officials they were students at the college. Four said they were enrolled even after there were no classes to attend.
[. . . .]
Hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board were told that Luther Samuel, onetime owner of the school, has admitted that he provided several fraudulent letters attesting that students were attending classes and had paid tuition fees.
Here are a few choice quotations from the article:
--charged fees ranging from $400 to $500 for false letters indicating an individual had paid tuition
--400 fraudulent entries into Canada through the school.
--no tuition fees . . . have ever been paid to the college
--"The persons who purchased the letters never had the intention of attending class, and in fact, even if they had, there were no classes to attend."
--a massive immigration scam
--used the college to extend their stay in Canada --bogus diplomas and fictitious vocational courses
[. . . . ]
In an apparent reference to Mr. Samuel, Mr. Mohammed testified that a man named Mr. Luther came to his house and handed him an envelope after he paid $1,000 to the college.
When Mr. Mohammed asked what had happened to his money, he testified that "Mr. Luther" told him he couldn't get into the course to which he had applied. He said the man then handed him an envelope, containing a diploma.
My Commentary:
Couldn't the Immigration and Refugee Boards be staffed by native-born Canadians who have some knowledge of the scams that are normal business in some of the countries from which we get so many immigrants and refugees? Working as a volunteer abroad or acquiring one good training stint of a few months travelling around the world and having to protect oneself from the usual Third World's scams would give each a fair idea of what to look for. Or would writing this be considered racist? Better to appoint recent immigrants and Liberals--aided and abetted by a surfeit of immigration lawyers--who know when to close their eyes, believe whatever they're told, and figuratively stick their heads in the sand.
September 5, 2003
Golden oldies
By LINK BYFIELD -- Calgary Sun [via AOL online]
The release of a report two days ago by the Canada West Foundation had about it something of the nostalgic.
There it was -- how to solve western alienation in 10 easy steps.
[. . . . ]
The CWF replay was like a whole album: Less party discipline in Parliament, a fairer distribution of Commons seats, annual first ministers' conferences, more provincial say in federal decisions and programs, more westerners (i.e. fewer Quebec francophones) in the federal bureaucracy, monitoring of the regional benefits of federal spending, provincial input into appointment of senators,etc.
[. . . .] how many western recommendations has the federal government actually implemented?
Not one. The country has become more centralized, not less.
[. . . .] It's an undemocratic country run by people who think it works just fine the way it is and who have no interest in sharing power with the West. "Sharing" to them means siphoning Alberta money to the voters in eastern Canada who elect them.
They weaken the West with federal taxes to weaken the East with federal subsidies.
The only people who actually come out ahead all work for the federal government. [and speak French]
It's called "fiscal federalism," and it's been going on since the 1960s.
Between 1961 and 1997, Albertans contributed a net $167 billion to the federal government, and Quebec consumed a net $202 billion.
And during that time, how many Prime Ministers from Quebec have we had? It has been called racist (incorrectly used, of course) to even mention it but I don't really give a hoot for the Liberals and their Human Rights Police so . . .
[. . . .]
A common response now is, "OK, let's just separate." Or "Let's threaten to separate. That's how Quebec always gets its way."
[. . . .]
Recall that back in the 1960s, there were Cuban-trained Quebec crazies running around blowing up mail boxes, kidnapping and even murdering.
[. . . .]
There's a much better approach, but it would require a serious Alberta government to pull it off. Alberta should take over three federal operations.
Instead of the Canada Pension Plan, we should have an Alberta Pension Plan. . . .
We should stop using the RCMP, and establish a provincial police force called the Northwest Mounted Police.
. . . start collecting our own provincial personal income tax.
We do not need Ottawa's permission to do any of these. Quebec does all three for itself already. We should follow its example.
The Maritimes is so used to government strings attached to handouts and something-for-nothing programs that they no longer know there is any other way. The Maritimes, it seems, will never take a stand—it might interfere with the pogey--but I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THE WEST DO THIS! LINK, KEEP ON TRUCKIN’!
Canadians think more like Americans than Europeans when it comes to labour unions.
Some 93% of Canadians who responded to a National Post/Global National poll said they feel workers should be able to choose the union that represents them. Nearly two-thirds, or 62%, said removing a union should as easy as voting in one.
Nice sentiments, but no such rights exist here. Canadians only think they do.
Nearly one-third of Canada's workers belong to unions that are entrenched because of laws and court decisions that are as restrictive as Germany's or pre-Thatcher Britain's.
It's all but impossible to unseat unions.
Wonder why? Diane answers some of the following questions:
1. Can you refuse to become a union member? (You may refuse, but can you succeed?) What happened to the fellow who “mounted a Supreme Court of Canada charter challenge on the grounds that a worker's right of assembly or association, contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, also guaranteed his right to NOT have to associate or belong to a union.”
2. Can you stop paying dues to your union?
3. Can you stop your union from taxing you and giving money to the political party that keeps the union strong—parties such as the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois?
4. Can you work in construction in PQ without a union card? (For that matter, can a citizen of one of the Maritime provinces go to Quebec and work in a unionized job -– installing cupboards, for example? You jest!)
5. What is there about the politics of the City of Toronto councillors that makes them disallow any but union contractors getting city contracts to do work for the city?
6. What did the Supreme Court of Canada have to say about the situation where a worker did NOT want his dues directed by his union toward the NDP?
7. Can workers replace a union with which they are unhappy with a union of their choosing?
8. Can you be a private contractor—non-unionzed—and get a government contract? After all, you are a citizen and this is your government--isn't it?
Make a guess as to the answers; then read Diane Francis. She is always a good read! Why doesn’t someone ask Diane to run for office? The Canadian Alliance? Are you listening? This gal has a good head on her shoulders. She cuts through the crap!
I have a few questions that I wish she would answer.
1. Will the teachers’ unions protect teachers who express their own views on any subject in their free time or are they supposed to be politically correct and make only Liberal-approved political statements? For example, can a teacher any longer publicly support a traditional Christian position on gay marriage, on gays teaching in Roman Catholic schools and flagrantly displaying their contempt for RC teaching on homosexual practices, on teaching with books that treat same-sex parents as perfectly acceptable and normal?
2. Will the union support teachers who refuse to go along any longer with some currently approved practices in education--practices with which many teachers disagree?--for example, method of reading instruction, formal instruction in spelling and grammar
3. Will it support the teacher who disagrees with what is taught in sex education classes and who does not support certain attitudes that are being discussed with students--attitudes about which reasonable people may disagree--but attitudes which are currently considered healthy in most school systems?
4. What will the union do if a teacher does not want to go out on strike? What if the teacher helps students during a strike?
This is just for starters. Now, you think of a few that you would like to find about your pet union.
Freedom--of speech and of association--are relative in Canada. When I think of JC and the SCOC in Canada, I can only paraphrase Snowball’s line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
All Canadians have freedom of association and freedom of speech but some have more freedom than others.
In Animal Farm, Orwell had the pigs rising to the top. In Canada, we do not have pigs rising to the top; we have Liberals -- who are never far from the trough, however. They are not about to curb the power of unions. The Liberals and the NDP are hard to tell apart much of the time, particularly on social policy and social engineering. The unions support the government's pro-union stance.
Whether your child is beginning kindergarten, struggling with reading or math, or struggling because he or she cannot read the high school texts because the current method of reading instruction did not teach the child to become a proficient reader and learner, there is help at this site, the Organization for Quality Education.
What is there is based on research and also offers parents a list of books for teaching reading, for examle, that will help the parent who wishes to help his child. Teaching a child to read is not brain science but it is common sense. The one thing I would reiterate that I read on the OQE site is: listen to your child read to you every day so you can find out what errors the child makes and help or get help at the first sign of a problem. The ability to read well determines the child's success in every other subject and thus, determines the success of the child's education. Here is an excerpt but go to the site for all of it.
Will Existing Kindergarten Programs Help Poor Kids?
Disadvantaged students need structured, academically-intensive schools which use proven methods.
Why?
A disproportionate number of disadvantaged students go into the non-academic levels, and many drop out before graduating. But their problems do not suddenly begin in grade nine or ten; the die has been cast for these students long before they reach high school.
The dominant approach to education in most Ontario publicly-funded elementary schools is called 'child-centred learning.' Because the intent of child-centred learning is to encourage children to be active, motivated, life-long learners, the emphasis is on helping the students discover (as opposed to be taught) the necessary skills and knowledge. Most good research has shown that this approach discriminates against disadvantaged children, particularly in the early grades. The reason is quite simple: disadvantaged children are far less liable to have the resources to fill the gaps which child-centred learning often leaves. Children from enriched homes are more likely to have already picked up the missing skills and knowledge and, failing that, they can receive them at home as the need arises.
There is no reason to believe that an extra year of child-centred learning in junior kindergarten is going to help disadvantaged children. What the research does say, very plainly, is that disadvantaged children can learn via direct instruction (teach, practise, correct, apply, test, review). During the 60's and 70's, the U.S. Government sponsored Project Follow-Through, a massive comparison of different approaches to teaching disadvantaged children. Project Follow-Through clearly and strongly showed that direct instruction methods not only helped disadvantaged students learn more academics but also gave them better self-esteem.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Around 2,000 baboon noses were found in an abandoned suitcase at Amsterdam airport after they started to stink, officials said Wednesday.
The noses were en route from Lagos to the United States, apparently intended for an immigrant market.
Baboons are protected under international law. Their noses are used in traditional medicine in parts of Asia and Africa.
The local supermarket will just have to get cracking and import them for our multicult brethren. Only in Lagos, you say? Pity!
TORONTO — Several men being held at a Toronto-area detention centre on suspicions they have al Qaeda terrorist ties have been moved into their own cells because they've been attacked by other inmates, the men's lawyer said Wednesday.
Tariq Shah, who represents seven of the 21 men arrested in the Project Thread probe, said the attacks are also the reason his two clients who appeared at detention reviews Wednesday requested that they not appear on camera during their video teleconference hearings. [I suppose it might affect their subsequent appeals for refugee status. I'll bet Tariq makes plenty of money from helping these types become Canadian.]
[. . . .]
Fears of being associated with the investigation dubbed Project Thread -- which alleges some of the suspects experimented with explosives and wanted to find out the measurements of prominent buildings, including the CN Tower, also led a man to reconsider his offer to post bail for Imran Younas Khan, who also had his detention review Wednesday. [Would it not be a good idea for the RCMP to look into who is posting bail or has posted it? With friends like these . . .]
[. . . .]
Khan's review was told his surety feared the extraordinary publicity surrounding the case, including recent interviews with another man who posted $10,000 bail for Mohammad Akhtar. [Note! Another one.]
Akhtar and only one other suspect in the probe, Saif Ullah Khan, have been released on bail while immigration and RCMP officials continue their investigation, which includes going through 25 boxes of evidence and 30 computer hard drives.
Poor illegal refugees. immigrants—or is it terrorists?—would surely need 30 hard drives amongst the bunch. These illegals who are suspected terrorists are released into Canadian society? "Now, be good boys and come back for a hearing at your pleasure." Does that fill you with trepidation -- make you furious?
In his review before the Immigration and Refugee Board . . . [Muhammad] Naeem was described as a self-employed Pakistani doctor who came to Canada in November 2001 to upgrade his medical qualifications, and that he also possessed forged documentation claiming he enrolled in the defunct Ottawa Business School _ the institution that links many of the men in the probe.
The review was also told that during the RCMP bust of 19 of the suspects on Aug. 14, pictures of airplane schematics and guns were found on Naeem's apartment wall.
With Canada’s desperate need for more doctors, he couldn’t get in through the legal avenue?—the Canadian front door? And why would this healer need “airplane schematics and guns” on his wall?
These illegal immigration stories always end on a humorous note, don’t they? Finding these makes my day! Liberal Canada’s great God multicult! Insulted again! Now, what did his lawyer say? Are you ready for it?
However, Shah told immigration board adjudicator Mary Ann Stottart that the arrest of Naeem was based simply on his ethnicity, which is "unbecoming of Canada.''
Shah told reporters outside the review room that Khan also denies being in possession of the alleged airplane schematics and gun pictures, and that the federal officials' case is based on "vague'' evidence.
Duh? He denied having the stuff on his wall? It’s rather like saying there are no dishes in my sink. The evidence is there for all to see! Certainly. illegals have pegged our immigration and refugee system and the courts involved as dumb. They got that right. Why are these b*****ds not put on a plane without further expense to Canadians and hurtled right back to Pakistan from which they spewed?
Also Wednesday, Charles Hawkins of the Immigration and Refugee Board said the 20th man arrested in Project Thread on Friday would have his first detention review later Wednesday, but the review would be private.
The 20th suspect is the fourth man to have their reviews go private, usually meaning they're claiming refugee status. A 21st suspect and another client of Shah's, Mudassar Awan, 26, turned himself in to immigration authorities Tuesday.
Just the kind of refugees Canada needs! God! When is it all going to end? We’re the laughing stock of the world for what our addled-brain Immigration and Refugee Boards and our Liberal dominated courts allow in and to claim refugee status here--and then to our horror--usually accept! Begone, Liberals! A pox upon you!
Update:
I have just been warned by a friend about even publishing the title of the following article from the Dr. Homa Darabi site because I have been told it is insulting to Mohammed -- so I shall remove the offending word in the title. You can look it up for yourself. We wouldn't want to call a spade a spade in Canada, now, would we? Dr. Darabi was a Muslim and an Iranian, knew life and suffered under Ayatollah Khomeini and his regime.
News Junkie Canada: 8:48 am
Mohammad The ********* on the website of the Dr. Homa Darabi Foundation which “is a nonprofit organization concerned with all violations of human rights focusing on defending the rights of women against religious, cultural and social abuse” via The Canadian.
This is an absolutely unbelievable site. Don’t miss going to it and do check all the various threads. I repeat! Don’t miss it!
How naive I am! I knew nothing of this perversion—at least, I hope it is a perversion--of one of the world’s great religions!
My Commentary:
To anyone who believes in and follows the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini or this stuff at the above-noted link, I say, you’re too uncivilized to live in Canada. So much is simply Horrible! How could any civilized being take this stuff seriously? The West has bent too far over-–backwards, even—in accommodating people who believe in this crap! Spread the information; it must not be hidden! No wonder Muslim men are beginning to suggest Canadians have a separate set of laws to accommodate Muslims. Just check the site out!
Read on – and consider where the Liberals have been leading us and where our laws could go. The floodgates have been opened by the Liberals. The original article appeared in the Globe and Mail.
Multiple Marriage: the Next Court Challenge
Harriet the Harried Hausfrau needs help in the home. Now why didn't Christianity think of this?
The best solution may be a multiplicity of laws, says Islamic leader MOHAMED ELMASRY, to accommodate each group
[. . . .]
. . .courts cannot function in a vacuum without regard to many considerations that are extra-legal in character, including moral and political values held by society. What happens when those values are divided?
Take homosexuality, first of all. Homosexual acts are considered immoral according to the teachings of most world religions. This does not mean that homosexuality is not practised.
[. . . .]
Now, take multiple marriages. Today, in Canada, it is illegal for three consenting adults, a man and two women, to be husband and wives. They can be husband, wife and mistress.
They also can be part of a legal contract -- in effect, a husband and two wives.
But the law cannot allow a man to marry his mistress if he has a wife, even if his faith allows it, as does Islam. Why not? Perhaps because the issue has not yet been politicized.
So what is to be done when, in a liberal democracy, morals of different groups collide? Must it always come down to politicization? It seems to me the best way out is a multiplicity of laws, to accommodate each group.
[. . . .]
"Marriage, for civil purposes, is the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others," the new definition says. In other words, it allows same-sex marriages, but excludes marriage between more than two persons.
The legislation, however, affirms religious freedom by recognizing the right of all religions to marry or refuse to marry same-sex couples according to the principles of their faith.
Will multiple marriage soon be argued on these grounds?
[. . . .]
Would the solution then be using a new made-in-Canada word for same-sex marriage?
Mohamed Elmasry, a professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
My Commentary:
***But the law cannot allow a man to marry his mistress if he has a wife, even if his faith allows it, as does Islam. Why not? Perhaps because the issue has not yet been politicized. . . . Will multiple marriage soon be argued on these grounds? ***
The slippery slope again. Coming to a court near you -- a multicultural challenge to marriage as exclusively encompassing ONE man and ONE woman. After all, one of the world's great religions thinks it is perfectly acceptable. I suppose it would make the housework burden easier. Come to think of it, ladies, what do you think? The fourth wife gets to minister to the husband's every whim; the third gets to to do the housework while the first and second wives can play kalaha*, visit the Hyde Park condo and go shopping in London. Maybe Islam could bring in a special dispensation for a fifth wife to look after the brood. Wouldn't life in Canada be heaven, then, gals?
News Junkie Canada
Note: Bold and italics are mine.
*The spelling is phonetic; I could not find it in a dictionary.
Sept. 3 -- This book review of Inside al Qaeda The man who got inside al-Qa'eda hammers home a point that is too often overlooked (ignored?) by the liberal intellegentsia and media: the largest numbers of those who suffer terrorist attacks are not Westerners but Muslims.
[. . . .]
The author, however, states that Britain is the biggest safe haven for the hard-core fundamentalists. Good review -- and there's a link to Amazon if you want to buy the book.
The French Libertarian Wednesday, September 03, 2003 has a most interesting post concerning US terrorism abroad and on the media’s willful blindness and omissions in reporting.
Published on Tuesday, September 2, 2003 by CommonDreams.org U.S. Government Must Take a Consistent Stance Against Terrorism by Stephen Zunes
Last Friday’s terrorist bombing outside the Tomb of Ali in the Iraqi city of An-Najaf was the deadliest such attack against a civilian target in Middle East history. It recalls a similar blast in the southern outskirts of Beirut in March 1985, which until last week held the region’s record for civilian fatalities in a single bombing.
[. . . .]
While no existing government is believed to have been behind the An-Najaf bombing, the Beirut bombing was a classic case of state-sponsored terrorism: a plot organized by the intelligence services of a foreign power.
That foreign power was the United States.
[. . . .]
Despite increased corporate control of the media, there is very little outright censorship of the news in this country. There is, however, a kind of selective historical memory that makes it difficult to even recall events which go beyond what the noted M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky has referred to as the “boundaries of thinkable thought.”
As Thomas Kuhn describes in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolution, if something occurs outside the dominant paradigm, it -- for all practical purposes -- did not really happen because it is beyond the comprehension of those stuck in the old ways of thinking. In this case, if the dominant paradigm says that terrorism is the exclusive province of movements or governments the United States does not like and the United States is the world leader in fighting terrorism, there is therefore no such thing as U.S.-backed terrorism.
Go to the site and read the whole thing. Then you might be interested in taking the political leanings quiz to which Francois links.
