I'll start with something that won't make the Irving press because it's not about stores closing or stores opening, or who got charged with spitting on the sidewalk. In fact, it's not even happening just in New Brunswick.
Last week, thousands of Montreal students flooded Montreal streets to protest Quebec cuts to university funding. Well, it's understandable. If Mr. Irving were to flip a dime to a street beggar, it would be page 1. But who cares about thousands of students in Montreal? Well, this isn't just about Montreal.
Universities are in very serious trouble - trouble that comes in two parts.
One part is that their funding is being cut - with very deep cuts in some provinces. Even as it is, they are really way too expensive for most families. But the economy is doing well only for the very, very rich. Graduates now routinely have to run up huge debts. In the US, it's so bad that it's common for university debts to continue into retirement.
Other countries, even poorer ones, provide free university education. But I guess that might mean asking our very, very rich to pay taxes. And we don't what them to do that because if they get really, really, really rich then they'll make us rich, too. Or, maybe, not quite so poor. Maybe.
As well, the people who donate money to universities do it for a payback. They want research that will make them money - now. They want research that puts the blame on us rather than them for our economic problems. They don't give a damn about training minds. It's all about profits - for them.
What this means is that universities are becoming an impossible dream for a great many Canadians. And that's bad because you can never tell. It's quite possible that the children of the poor and the middle class could be almost as smart and and almost as good for us as the children of the very, very rich if they had a chance.
(Oh, I know there are quite a few morons among the very, very rich. But they're a much better class of moron than we peasants are.)
And that's only half of the crisis. The other half is that universities, as educational institutions, have made virtually no progress in the last thousand years or so. In those early days, higher education meant sitting on a rock to listen to a wise man in a cave. There has been no education advance since those days.
Universities are obsessed with the status of research. Teaching doesn't matter. And teaching methods haven't changed since the days of the cave and the rock. For a start, course outlines commonly reflect no understanding or how or why people learn. Of all the courses I took in some nine years of university, I would say the majority, by far, were a waste of time. Universities seem to have no understanding of how to design a curriculum - and they don't care.
For example, understanding how to mark is essential to good teaching. Most university teachers don't even know how to set an exam, much less mark it. Nor do they want to know. That's why students - who know even less than the professors do about examinations - are commonly hired to do the marking.
Many, many professors consider teaching an intrusion on the great thoughts they are pondering. That's where prestige lies. And a system like that produces people so lacking in teaching skills they don't even know how to speak to a class. They assign expensive textbooks that are of almost no educational value. They know nothing of the kind of teaching that produces real learning.
And, oh, the university halls reek of ego and arrogance and pomposity.
The result is a system whose teaching methods are both incompetent and very, very expensive.
And forget the idea of "good" universities. I've taught in four universities on three continents. I've spoken at many others. They're all the same. Usually, the term "good" university is simply a snobbish way of saying rich kids go there. Remember, George Bush Jr., almost certainly the most ignorant president in US history, got a master's degree from a "good" university.
We need the research, of course. We also need the learning. But we aren't getting it. We could get it, and we could get it more cheaply. But egos and snobbery get in the way.
This is a crisis that is coming your way.
_____________________________________________________________________
The front page headline was annoying. Using the term "grits" to mean Liberals has had no meaning for well over a hundred years. So far as I know, Irving papers are the only ones who still use it.
The story is that the Liberals are looking at cutting the number of teachers in the province as a part of reducing spending. Of course. It's the teachers and students who caused this recession., and they have to pay for it - just like the minimum wage workers and all those other leeches in this province. Never mind that this province has serious educational problems. The important thing is we don't want to give any impression that the very, very rich and their wide-open theft of high profits while others suffer, and they're very expensive demands on government, and their reluctance to pay any taxes at all might have something to do with this.
In the years I have lived here, I have never seen a single line in the Irving press to suggest that the very, very rich might have something to do with our hard times. Even "policy expert" Don Savoie has never suggested it. And if you read "Over a Cliff", you'll note that we are the ones going over a cliff while the Irvings and friends just stand at the edge and wave goodbye to us.
.I am baffled at the urgency given to school bus children sharing a French/English bus. The number of children involved is small, and there seem to have been no complaints. Heck, we had no school buses in Montreal when I was a kid. So I rode on public transport in which I was commonly the only anglo. What's the big deal?
The big story on A8 is that a restaurant in Moncton might be closing. Or it might not. Nobody knows. That was thought worth a story and a big, colour photo.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The deep-thinking editorial writer gives us an intellectual treat with a long, long editorial about how people shouldn't dump snow where they aren't supposed to. What a privilege to have such a great mind among us!.
Norbert has a column on government corruption and irresponsible use of our tax money. Amazingly, he manages to say nothing about it. And the name Irving doesn't appear even once.
There's really nothing on the commentary page. Alec Bruce has a column on shale gas and how it will make us all rich (despite, as he suggests, that only a fool would would make a prediction on fuel prices.)
Don't worry, Alec. The shale gas companies are in no hurry, not when the price is so low. They can easily wait a year until Gallant gets the report that will tell him there's no problem. And anybody who disagrees will be looking at a line of police with combat rifles.
And, hey, there is no climate change. Don't worry about a thing.
__________________________________________________________________________
Canada&World opens with "Turmoil in Yemen Grows". They must have bought that story at a used story sale. This is not just a 'turmoil" This is a full scale land and air invasion - a war. It's backed by the US which, among other things, has two warships closing in. It's also backed by forces from a large number of arab countries, most of which have shown no similar enthusiasm to fight ISIS. With Saudi Arabia in the lead, this can scarcely be a war for justice and freedom and good things. It is more like a serious blow against any hope for stability in the region, an interference in Yemen's internal affairs, and one that looks as if it will spread the chaos to other countries, and maybe even draw in Russia and China. This is the American dream of world conquest gone mad.
American foreign policy has been one disaster after another for a good fifty years. Millions have died - in the name of bringing them peace and freedom - neither of which has actually be given to anybody.
And Harper has committed us to another year of this chaos which is none of our business.
The other big story is that the New Brunswick government consulted community groups on what they think should be in the budget. This, to the Irving press, is a big story.
Come off it.
The real story is that an elected government gets elected (in a democracy) by having a philosophy of the role of government and by presenting its plans. A democratic government does not ask people what to do. The decision of what to do should be made BEFORE the election. That's why we have elections.
And if they must ask somebody, why on earth would they ask random community groups? What the budget should be requires expert advice. For a government to ask people what it should do is like a doctor asking the general public how he should perform brain surgery.
This is an absurd story. It makes New Brunswick look like a hick place. If the Irving press were a real press, it would have an editorial giving the Liberal party hell for not having policy ideas in the first place - instead of today's babble about snowbanks.
However, there was one, good suggestion. Highway tolls. Boy. That'll make the very rich pay their share. And it will be a big break for the hungry and homeless since they don't have cars.
B3 has a smashing story so special that the reporter gets her colour picture as part of the byline. It's about a woman in Toronto who just loves to breed cats.
B5 has a whole page about the Germanwings crash. I guess nothing else was happening in the world.
__________________________________________________________________________
Well, they might have touched on Ukraine where the billionaires who are the government in Kiev are fighting each other to bleed the people of that country as much as they can. They might have had something on how the government our side installed in Kiev has impoverished the whole country so they can get their greedy fingers on everything. Funny how that hasn't been mentioned at all.
And we are involved on the side of the billionaires. Harper has decided it is necessary for Canadians to risk their lives to help the billionaires who have robbed that country blind. And he's decided it's worth the risk, even of a nuclear war as a result.
And why is there no story on the massive firings at CBC - the result of deep, government cuts to funding.
Oh, I know, some clown will say why should we fund CBC when we get private channels free? The answer is we don't get private channels free. Everything has to be paid for - and we have to pay it. We pay for those annoying ads on TV whenever we buy a product. There is no such thing as a free ride.
Additionally, private TV and radio (especially radio) do a lousy job of reporting. In particular, radio news staffs are normally way too small (and poorly trained) to cover the news. And private radio and TV both get very touchy about dealing with any news that might affect station ownership or sponsors. ( just like the Irving press.)
I've worked years for both private and CBC on radio and television. Sometimes, CBC annoyed me. And people like Harper work hard to influence it and to destroy it. But for quality of news and commentary, CBC outclasses anything in North America. And Harper is destroying. And he's destroying it BECAUSE it's good.
(Don't trust BBC news, though. It's not as bad yet as Fox is. But it's going in that direction.)
Last week, thousands of Montreal students flooded Montreal streets to protest Quebec cuts to university funding. Well, it's understandable. If Mr. Irving were to flip a dime to a street beggar, it would be page 1. But who cares about thousands of students in Montreal? Well, this isn't just about Montreal.
Universities are in very serious trouble - trouble that comes in two parts.
One part is that their funding is being cut - with very deep cuts in some provinces. Even as it is, they are really way too expensive for most families. But the economy is doing well only for the very, very rich. Graduates now routinely have to run up huge debts. In the US, it's so bad that it's common for university debts to continue into retirement.
Other countries, even poorer ones, provide free university education. But I guess that might mean asking our very, very rich to pay taxes. And we don't what them to do that because if they get really, really, really rich then they'll make us rich, too. Or, maybe, not quite so poor. Maybe.
As well, the people who donate money to universities do it for a payback. They want research that will make them money - now. They want research that puts the blame on us rather than them for our economic problems. They don't give a damn about training minds. It's all about profits - for them.
What this means is that universities are becoming an impossible dream for a great many Canadians. And that's bad because you can never tell. It's quite possible that the children of the poor and the middle class could be almost as smart and and almost as good for us as the children of the very, very rich if they had a chance.
(Oh, I know there are quite a few morons among the very, very rich. But they're a much better class of moron than we peasants are.)
And that's only half of the crisis. The other half is that universities, as educational institutions, have made virtually no progress in the last thousand years or so. In those early days, higher education meant sitting on a rock to listen to a wise man in a cave. There has been no education advance since those days.
Universities are obsessed with the status of research. Teaching doesn't matter. And teaching methods haven't changed since the days of the cave and the rock. For a start, course outlines commonly reflect no understanding or how or why people learn. Of all the courses I took in some nine years of university, I would say the majority, by far, were a waste of time. Universities seem to have no understanding of how to design a curriculum - and they don't care.
For example, understanding how to mark is essential to good teaching. Most university teachers don't even know how to set an exam, much less mark it. Nor do they want to know. That's why students - who know even less than the professors do about examinations - are commonly hired to do the marking.
Many, many professors consider teaching an intrusion on the great thoughts they are pondering. That's where prestige lies. And a system like that produces people so lacking in teaching skills they don't even know how to speak to a class. They assign expensive textbooks that are of almost no educational value. They know nothing of the kind of teaching that produces real learning.
And, oh, the university halls reek of ego and arrogance and pomposity.
The result is a system whose teaching methods are both incompetent and very, very expensive.
And forget the idea of "good" universities. I've taught in four universities on three continents. I've spoken at many others. They're all the same. Usually, the term "good" university is simply a snobbish way of saying rich kids go there. Remember, George Bush Jr., almost certainly the most ignorant president in US history, got a master's degree from a "good" university.
We need the research, of course. We also need the learning. But we aren't getting it. We could get it, and we could get it more cheaply. But egos and snobbery get in the way.
This is a crisis that is coming your way.
_____________________________________________________________________
The front page headline was annoying. Using the term "grits" to mean Liberals has had no meaning for well over a hundred years. So far as I know, Irving papers are the only ones who still use it.
The story is that the Liberals are looking at cutting the number of teachers in the province as a part of reducing spending. Of course. It's the teachers and students who caused this recession., and they have to pay for it - just like the minimum wage workers and all those other leeches in this province. Never mind that this province has serious educational problems. The important thing is we don't want to give any impression that the very, very rich and their wide-open theft of high profits while others suffer, and they're very expensive demands on government, and their reluctance to pay any taxes at all might have something to do with this.
In the years I have lived here, I have never seen a single line in the Irving press to suggest that the very, very rich might have something to do with our hard times. Even "policy expert" Don Savoie has never suggested it. And if you read "Over a Cliff", you'll note that we are the ones going over a cliff while the Irvings and friends just stand at the edge and wave goodbye to us.
.I am baffled at the urgency given to school bus children sharing a French/English bus. The number of children involved is small, and there seem to have been no complaints. Heck, we had no school buses in Montreal when I was a kid. So I rode on public transport in which I was commonly the only anglo. What's the big deal?
The big story on A8 is that a restaurant in Moncton might be closing. Or it might not. Nobody knows. That was thought worth a story and a big, colour photo.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The deep-thinking editorial writer gives us an intellectual treat with a long, long editorial about how people shouldn't dump snow where they aren't supposed to. What a privilege to have such a great mind among us!.
Norbert has a column on government corruption and irresponsible use of our tax money. Amazingly, he manages to say nothing about it. And the name Irving doesn't appear even once.
There's really nothing on the commentary page. Alec Bruce has a column on shale gas and how it will make us all rich (despite, as he suggests, that only a fool would would make a prediction on fuel prices.)
Don't worry, Alec. The shale gas companies are in no hurry, not when the price is so low. They can easily wait a year until Gallant gets the report that will tell him there's no problem. And anybody who disagrees will be looking at a line of police with combat rifles.
And, hey, there is no climate change. Don't worry about a thing.
__________________________________________________________________________
Canada&World opens with "Turmoil in Yemen Grows". They must have bought that story at a used story sale. This is not just a 'turmoil" This is a full scale land and air invasion - a war. It's backed by the US which, among other things, has two warships closing in. It's also backed by forces from a large number of arab countries, most of which have shown no similar enthusiasm to fight ISIS. With Saudi Arabia in the lead, this can scarcely be a war for justice and freedom and good things. It is more like a serious blow against any hope for stability in the region, an interference in Yemen's internal affairs, and one that looks as if it will spread the chaos to other countries, and maybe even draw in Russia and China. This is the American dream of world conquest gone mad.
American foreign policy has been one disaster after another for a good fifty years. Millions have died - in the name of bringing them peace and freedom - neither of which has actually be given to anybody.
And Harper has committed us to another year of this chaos which is none of our business.
The other big story is that the New Brunswick government consulted community groups on what they think should be in the budget. This, to the Irving press, is a big story.
Come off it.
The real story is that an elected government gets elected (in a democracy) by having a philosophy of the role of government and by presenting its plans. A democratic government does not ask people what to do. The decision of what to do should be made BEFORE the election. That's why we have elections.
And if they must ask somebody, why on earth would they ask random community groups? What the budget should be requires expert advice. For a government to ask people what it should do is like a doctor asking the general public how he should perform brain surgery.
This is an absurd story. It makes New Brunswick look like a hick place. If the Irving press were a real press, it would have an editorial giving the Liberal party hell for not having policy ideas in the first place - instead of today's babble about snowbanks.
However, there was one, good suggestion. Highway tolls. Boy. That'll make the very rich pay their share. And it will be a big break for the hungry and homeless since they don't have cars.
B3 has a smashing story so special that the reporter gets her colour picture as part of the byline. It's about a woman in Toronto who just loves to breed cats.
B5 has a whole page about the Germanwings crash. I guess nothing else was happening in the world.
__________________________________________________________________________
Well, they might have touched on Ukraine where the billionaires who are the government in Kiev are fighting each other to bleed the people of that country as much as they can. They might have had something on how the government our side installed in Kiev has impoverished the whole country so they can get their greedy fingers on everything. Funny how that hasn't been mentioned at all.
And we are involved on the side of the billionaires. Harper has decided it is necessary for Canadians to risk their lives to help the billionaires who have robbed that country blind. And he's decided it's worth the risk, even of a nuclear war as a result.
And why is there no story on the massive firings at CBC - the result of deep, government cuts to funding.
Oh, I know, some clown will say why should we fund CBC when we get private channels free? The answer is we don't get private channels free. Everything has to be paid for - and we have to pay it. We pay for those annoying ads on TV whenever we buy a product. There is no such thing as a free ride.
Additionally, private TV and radio (especially radio) do a lousy job of reporting. In particular, radio news staffs are normally way too small (and poorly trained) to cover the news. And private radio and TV both get very touchy about dealing with any news that might affect station ownership or sponsors. ( just like the Irving press.)
I've worked years for both private and CBC on radio and television. Sometimes, CBC annoyed me. And people like Harper work hard to influence it and to destroy it. But for quality of news and commentary, CBC outclasses anything in North America. And Harper is destroying. And he's destroying it BECAUSE it's good.
(Don't trust BBC news, though. It's not as bad yet as Fox is. But it's going in that direction.)
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