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1 AA oh letters Action needed on washrooms | hm Dear Sir: quite often used by PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, July 31, 1984 -- § the PORT PLRRY STAR CO LMNTED ( 233 QUEEN STREE! ® CNA PO #0A%0 SOU eee Ontamo LO8 NO " (416) 98% 738) (GD 1 reve r---------- cn | ©) Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association J. PETER HVIDSTEN Ihave read the article arding the problem of public washrooms which appeared in the July 24th edition of the Star and I am pleased to see that the problem is receiving some attention. Like those of other local merchants, the facilities at the Dixie Lee Chicken and Sea- food Restaurant are non-patrons as public washrooms and change- rooms. This activity causes line ups for the washrooms at certain times which inconven- omers. There is also a noticeable increase in vandalism in the wash- rooms during the summer months, typif- ied by purposely clogg- ed toilets. . J.B. MCCLELLAND I wholehearte aby Yours truly, Editor and Ontario Community Newspaper Association support a reasonable Joan Keene, Published every Tuesday by the solution to this problem. Dear Sir: . As you know Big Brothers has been in this area since 1976 and now has been united with Big Sisters since the middle of May. Manager, Dixie Lee Port Perry. Let us help iences our paying cust: Big Sisters differs somewhat from Big Brothers. Big Brothers helps boys from 6-16 who have no male influence in the home, and need (Turn to page 6) CATHY ROBB News & Features 198A LULL OVAN COmpy ant UNIS Port Perry Star Cp Ltd , Port Perry, Ontario Authorized as second class mail by the Post Office Department. Ottawa, and for cash payment of postage in cash " Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Subscription Rate: In Canada $15.00 per year. Elsewhere $45.00 per year. Single copy 35* © COPYRIGHT -- All layout and composition of advertisements produced by the advertising department of the Port Perry Star Company Limited are protected under copyright and may not be reproduced without the written permission of the publishers | --_ oe ih remember when? 60 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 25, 1924 Port Perry has accomplished the laying of new cement roads and on August 7th a Road Opening Ceremony took place when many dignitaries were on hand for the large affair. Among them were County Road Superintendent, Warden MacMillan, W.E.M. Sinclair MPP and Mr. L.O. Clifford, MP. A parade which assem- bled at the Town Hall was in charge of councillors Neil Sweetman and George Jackson. The first Port Perry Boy Scout Troup held a camp on the farm of Mr. Wm. Irwin, Honeydale. Scoutmasters Arlidge and Woodcock wére in charge. 35 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 29, 1949 The 50/50 Club gave a farewell party for their treasurers, Mary and Dave Walker when they left Port Perry to go to St. Thomas. At the Port Perry Field and Crop Competition, the following people won prizes: 1st - Lloyd Smith; 2nd - Leslie Smith; 3rd - Roy Robertson; 4th - Harold Honey; 5th - Eugene Darborn; 6th - Edward Oyler; 7th - Clifford Redman and 8th - Burnsell Webster. Port Perry's baseball team drew their best of three semi-finals with Sutton, when they defeated them. 7-3. Bill Harper was the pitcher on the mound. 25 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 30, 1959 Miss Doreen Evans, R.R. 3, Uxbridge, was declared Ontario County Dairy Princess. The runner up was Miss Doris Evans, sister of Doreen. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Martyn of Port Perry were awarded 5th prize at the bowling competition in Lindsay. The Blackstock Cub Pack went to camp under the leadership of Lawrence McLaughlin, Harold Martyn and Gerrald Asselstine, assisted by Roy Graham and Delton Fisher. > 20 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 31, 1964 Miss Jessie Hope and her grandson Rick, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Hope, took off from Toronto for a three week vacation in Scotland. Sixty five persons attended the annual Ferguson Clan picnic in Cartwright Park. Mr. Sam Oyler of R.R. 2, Port Perry, is the owner of a calf making a history record after weighing 160 pounds at birth. Rev. A. Rice of Toronto will be the new minister of the _ Port Perry United Church. 15 YEARS AGO Thursday, July 31, 1969 Some 60 friends and relatives honoured Mr. and Mrs. Earl Jamieson at their home in Caesarea on Sunday, July 27. The occasion was their 50th Wedding Anniversary. Mr. C.S. Jones, 92 years old, was a visitor in the Star office a couple of weeks ago. He was born and raised in Port Perry but has been living in various places in Manitoba since he was a young man. Miss Jo-Anne Ruth Eileen Harris, daughter of Rev. & Mrs. David Harris of R.R. 6, Bowmanville, formerly of Greenbank, graduated from the Nightingale School of Nursing in Toronto on July 25, 1969. Jo-Anne is a graduate of Port Perry Public School and Port Perry High School. She will be nursing in the Oshawa General Hospital. Fire completely destroyed a barn on the 11th Con- cession of Reach Township on Tuesday afternoon. Prior to the arrival of the local fire department, the owners Mr. and Mrs. Edward Bain were able to save a number of calves and pigs from the flames. With the early arrival of the firemen, the rest of the 40 or 50 pigs were also saved. Round the Town - Mrs. Donald Crosier of Prospect is enjoying a motor trip for a few days to Ohio to visit relatives. She is accompanied by her sister and mother. 10 YEARS AGO Wednesday, July 31, 1974 Bill Katocs of Oshawa escaped serious injuries when he was forced to land his plane in a field near the Oshawa Skeet Club. Construction is progressing well on three tennis courts at the recreation area on Water Street. Bennett Paving Limited was awarded the contract by Scugog Chamber of Commerce who is spending about $16,000 on this project. Constable Larry Reesor recently graduated from the Ontario Provincial Police College, Toronto, and has been posted at the Downsview Department 5 of the O.P.P. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Lorne Slute who were guests of honour at a dinner and dance to celebrate their 25th Wedding Anniversary in Utica Hall on Saturday evening. Mary Lynne MacMaster, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Archie MacMaster, Bigelow Street, Port Perry, graduated from The Hospital for Sick Children, School of Nursing, Toronto, on Saturday, July 27, 1974. She will be working at The Hospital for Sick Children. bill smiley EDUCATION STALEMATE In thirty plus years as an editor, a parent, and a teacher, I have been inundated (though not quite drown- ed) by several waves of self-styled "reform" of our educational system, especially that of Ontario. Each wave has washed away some of the basic values in our system and left behind a heap of detritus, from which teachers and students eventually emerge, gasping for a breath of clean air. Most of the "massive" reforms in our system are borrowed from the U.S., after thirty or forty years of testing there have proven them dubious, if not worthless. We have borrowed from the pragmatist, John Dewey, an American, who had some good ideas, but tried to put them into mass production, an endearing but not necessarily noble trait of our cousins below the border. We have tried the ridiculous, "See, Jane. See Spot run. Spot, see Jane vomit,' sort of thing which com- pletely ignores the child's demand for heroes and wit- ches and shining maidens, and things that go bump in the night. We have tried "teaching the whole child,'" a pro- cess in which the teacher becomes father/mother, un- cle/aunt, grandfather/grandmother, psychiatrist, bud- dy, confidant, and football to kick around, while the kid does what he/she dam-well pleases. And we wonder about teacher "'burn-outs." We have tried a system in which the children choose from a sort of Pandora's Box what subjects they would like to take, and giving them a credit for each subject to which they are "exposed," whether or not they have learned anything in it. That was a bit of a disaster. Kids, like adults, chose the things that were "fun," that were "easy," that didn't have exams, that allowed them to "express their individuality." New courses were introduced with the rapidity of rabbits breeding. A kid who was confident that he would be a great brain surgeon took everything from basket- weaving to bird-watching because they were fun. And suddenly, at about the age of seventeen, he/she discovered that it was necessary to know some science, mathematics, Latin, history and English to become a brain surgeon (or a novelist or a playwright or an engineer, etc.). There are very few jobs open in basket-weaving and bird-watching or World Religions or another couple of dozen I could name, but won't, for fear of being beaten to deathy by a tizzy of teachers the day this column appears. The universities, those sacrosanct institutions, where the truth shalt make you free, went along with the Great Deception. They lowered their stanuai ds, in a desperate scramble for live bodies. They competed for students with all the grace of merchants in an Arme- nian bazaar. Another swing of the pendulum. Parents discovered that their kids know something about a lot of things, but not much about anything. They got mad. The universities, a little red in the face suddenly and virtuously announced that many high school graduates were illiterate, which was a lot of crap. They were the people who decided that a second language was not necessary. They were the people who accepted students with a mark of 50 in English, which means the kid ac- tually failed, but his teacher gave him a credit. Nobody, in the new system, really failed. If they mastered just less than half the work, got a 48 per cent, they were raised to 50. If they flunked every subject they took, they were transferred to another '""level,"' where they could succeed, and even excel. The latest of these politically-inspired, slovely- researched reforms in Ontario is called SERP, and it sounds just like, and is just like NERD. Reading its contents carefully, one comes to the con- clusion that if Serp is accepted, the result will be a great leveller. Out of one side of its mouth it suggests that education be compressed, by abandoning of Grade 13, and out of the other side, that education be expanded by adding a lot of new things to the curriculum. How can you compress something and expand it at the same time? Only a commission on education could even sug- gest such a thing. There will be lots of money for "Special Education" in the new plan. There will be less money for excellence. Special Education is educational jargon for teaching stupid kids. Bright kids are looked down upon as an "elite" group, and they should be put in their place. The universities would enjoy seeing Grade 13 disap- pear. That would mean they'd have a warm body for four years, at a cost of about $4,000 a year, instead of three. : I am not an old fogey. I am not a reactionary. | believe in change. Anything that does not change becomes static, or dies. Ideas that refuse the change (Turn to page 6)