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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1998 THE NEW TANNER With all the discussion now about Bill C68, the new firearms legislation, it's interesting to note that gun clubs used to be a feature of Acton and area before the turn of the 20 century. In his search for material for a Halton police history, Sgt. Bob Andrews contacted Martin Hassard of Oakville and this photo was loaned. Among those identified, are left to right a Mr. Stark, ex- treme right, from Storey Glove Co., shirt) who was once an Acton constable, barrel?), Jay J. Pearson, Mitch Cobban, Warden, the barber. - Submitted photo John Harvey (Martin Hassard's grandfather in a checked Charles Taylor the black man, Dr. Lowery (sitting on George Agnew, a Mr. Wiles, a Mr. McGrail and Hyram As atule I dislike responding to letter to the editor. I have the chance to put forward my opinions and encourage others to do the same. A community newspaper should be the voice of the whole community and not just those privileged to have space on aregu- lar basis. Last week The New Tanner printed a letter from B. Pryslak re- garding my comments about the booing of Premier Harris at the Skydome event honouring presi- dent Nelson Mandela. There are a few points I want to clarify. Mr. or Ms. Pryslak was upset by my "insinuation that teachers are responsible for the outburst of booing aimed at Mike Harris." Excuse me. But that is not what I teachers) claimed that this was a "spontaneous demonstration." at is mind-boggling is that these teachers expect us to believe that codswollop. This was a widely covered event. There were many reports of adult supervisors (one surmises some were teachers) encouraging the kids to be boo-birds. There were also more than one report of adult supervisors stopping other students from cheering for Mr. Harris. While encouraging the dis- respectful display of boorishness (sic). I'm not trying to insinuate anything so let me make myself crystal clear. At the Mandela re- ception some adults (not all, but many) used the children of this province as shills in a labour dis- pute. To me that is totally unac- ceptable. Others have tried to ra- tionalize this fiasco by saying it was the kids' idea - caused by the passage of Bill 160 and its ramifi- cations. I don't believe that for one minute. I do, however, understand 'ound dynamics and understand why those kids joined in. The whole exercise was bush league and an embarrassment to all Ca- nadians. B. Pryslak writes that "students are not the stupid individuals that Mr. Harris constantly implies they are," Excuse me but isn't that play- ing fast and loose with the truth? I don't go to the premier's speeches but I'm positive I would ae heard ifthe premier had ever wrote. "Some teachers", (not all" '¢Bullied students' revisited The Way | I See It with | 4 Mike O'Leary | : called Ontario's children "stupid". As for the premier saying our kids know very little grammar, well, that's the truth. Three of my children have gone on to post-secondary education. The first formal event in their university life was a literacy test. All three failed. I guess it could be a coinci- dence, or a Tory plot, but I doubt it. The fact of the matter is that they were not taught spelling or grammar in elementary school. I used to plead with the teachers to mark spelling and grammar. With few exceptions my requests were ignored. Last year our youngest daughter was doing poorly in French. I asked the teacher why? "Her vocabulary is fine but her French grammar is ter- rible," I was told. "What can I do?" Lasked. "Not much - the problem is they were never taught English grammar so how can you expect them to do French grammar?" the teacher said. The real blame for this situation is not the individual teacher but rather the local board and provincial dept. of education. It was they who foisted asinine programs such as Whole Language training and fin- ger counting on our kids. In many cases, though, teachers were willing accomplices to these trendy pro- grams which, in the end, proved to be worse than useless. I know. I was there. I don't see myself as being anti- teacher but some will try to portray me as such. The Bride and I have dealt with a couple of hundred teach- ers over the past twenty-odd years. We have always tried to be support- ive of the teacher but we wanted our kids to learn grammar, math and sci- ences. In most cases it was adminis- tration and educrats who stood in their way. I have no time for those people. Here are a few examples. I was part of a group of parents who stopped a discipline policy from being instituted that would have left it up to the discretion of the principal if your child was caught with alcohol, drugs or cigarettes on the first offence. This was for elementary school chil- dren. : I was told that because "The "Bride" and I were involvedin our | child's education and the school community we had an obligation to share our social skills. So did our kid. And, if our child's edu- cation had to suffer in order to pass on these undefined skills that that was "a sacrifice we had to make." My answer is unprintable. I sat at the board office and lis- tened to a union official discuss how many tens of thousands of dollars would have to be spent on PR. This money was to offset a greater amount being spent by the public school system unions. The whole exercise was each union trying to convince the public that their system was superior. Most people paid no attention to either campaign. Remind me to tell you some time how $500,000 of your money was flushed down the toilet on a social engineering program called "Building Better Bridges." I called it "Big Brother Comes to Acton." Our children had many fine teachers. They have also had some real turkeys. If criticizing some makes you anti-teacher, so be it. That's not the way I see things, though. We will never accept less than the best we can get for our children. If that means fighting the board and the teacher, then that's what will happen. With school councils that will probably happen more often. The educrats have had too much control. Their initiatives have too often proved to be hair-brained and our chil- dren have suffered. Change is not only necessary, it's overdue. The new curriculum and report card look good. B. Pryslak says that "people like yourself" (I wonder what that means) believe students are a "captive audience". No, I don't, Mr./Ms. Pryslak. My question is - do you? > Successful seat sale The last seat -- number 416 -- has been "sold" at the Acton Arena and Community Centre wrapping up a very successful fundraising cam- paign that helped pay for arena up- grades, including comfortable indi- vidual seats and not bum-numbing bench seats. Sponsors paid $200 for each seat, marked with a plaque identifying the donor. Acton Councillor Rick Bonnette, chair of the Acton Proud fundraising campaign that raised $200,000, said all of the seat name plaques should be installed within weeks. | Book babies If you hurry to might be able to grab one of the few spaces left in the very popular preschool reading pro- grams at the Acton library. Fridays 4 at 10:45 a.m., beginning tomorrow, two-year-olds and a parent are in- vited to a 25-minute story time fea- turing songs, stories and crafts. There are several spaces left in the Wednesday afternoon preschool storytime program for children be- tween 3 and 5 years of age but there GRAPEVINE is just one spot left in the Thursday morning program. For more infor- mation call the library at 853-0301. Cleaner opens Acton's newest dry cleaner prom- ises good, friendly service and great prices. Manjit Bhullar, owner for 20 years of Bronte Cleaners in Milton, opened a store at 39 Mill St., East on Saturday. "A lot of my customers are from Acton and I thought that it would make sense for me to come here," Bhullar said, adding that he's taken a five-year lease on the building. HHSCI staff thanked Staff and volunteers at Halton Hills Community Support and Infor- mation (formerly ASSIC) will be special guests at Trinity United Church on Sunday as the church fo- cuses on how the Community Sup- port workers make Acton a better place to live. 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