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Oakville Beaver Ian Oliver Publisher No, I don’t think it has any relevance to Canada. Linda Sellar The Monarchy is very relevant to Canada because the edges have become blurred between us and the Americans. It’s one of the very few distinguishing features. The bottom line is this: we need to create a system where students know where they stand, know what is expected and know the conse- quences of not playing the game. If this is achieved, all sides in the educa- tion debate couldn't (make that shouldn't) complain. Everyone will be watching the Ontario experiment carefully, including the federal government who is already threatening to institute its own standardized testing plan if the province's can't get their collective act together. Failure to do so, they warn, could see the feds kill transfer pay- ments to the offenders. The new education decreed all of the old ways as bad and new-age thinking as the only way to proceed. The student was king, stuff like disci- pline and achievement were regarded as dirty words and the decline in our education standards began. The province's Education Minister, Dave Cooke, is gungâ€"ho about the testing program for students starting grade nine in the fall. To Cooke, and to us, the idea will tell officials which schools are doing a good job and which schools and boards need work. And it's this latter area that must have some school bureaucrats worried. If they all believed the statements they've made in the press about the good quality of education, they have nothing to worry about. If there is a criticism to the proposed tests, it's that they're too vague and don't nail down specifics on the abilities and progress, students have made in the elementary system. Critics also argue that the tests won't tell either students or educators how well Ontario is doing in educating our young people compared to other provinces and countries. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education professor, Mark Holmes has called the Ontario testing plan ‘Mickey Mouse' and said standardized test- ing is needed annually to judge a student's progress. What happened then, however, sowed the seeds of student performance problems that continue to plague the province and the country today. Ontario is finally trying to do something about the situation, much to the chagrin of some educational types who still regard the concept of test- ing and grading as somehow beneath our students. was the so-called departmental exams set by the province and to be taken by Ontario students. The theory behind the exams was to give every student the same advantage or disadvantage as every other student, whether he or she lived in Hamilton, Kingston, Amptior or Windsor. One of the great fears of high school education up to the late 19605, Unfortunately, the weight given these final exams in June, was such that students who performed well throughout an entire year, could find themselves penalized for doing poorly on one exam on one day. It also gave students who did poorly all year an opportunity to salvage a school year and even surpass students who had done better on a more consistent basis. Where once consistency reigned in the schools, we entered an age where education became a free-wheeling, new-idea-a-year experiment, using the province's students as guinea pigs. ' OPHVI ON Do you think the Monarchy has any relevance to Canada today? EDITORIAL Wm wva W The road back CALL845-5585 467 Spears Road. Oakville. Ont. L6K 384 845-3824 Fax: 845-3085 Classified Advertising: 845-2809 Cirwlation: 845-9742 or 845-9743 AKVILLE BEAVE] IiflllESTlflN: 10F 'v-THiE'3iWEEK-I April 19th marks the start of Earth Week. What can the average Oakvillian do to help the environment? A sampling of the best answers will be published in the next Weekend edition of the Oakville Beaver. All callers are all'owed 45 seconds to respond and must provide their name, address and phone number for verification. Give us your opinion on this topic by calling 845â€"5585, box 5012. Marlene Fairbairn Except it’s not so simple any more. Ask a teacher. Any teach- er. When I was a kid in Grade 5, I had a teacher by the name of Miss Sanford. She hugged. If you got something right on the black- board, or brought her a ra in .61.! .t..- .F .1 x uka‘hs; 15th .9 y g‘ I get nervous when I see what the thin-Iipped PC police can do to culture and fashion. How they can geld a Stratford production of The Merchant of Venice or tor- pedo- a North York revival of Show/mat. I don’t much care for what the PC movement is doing to language either. Redefining short people as ‘vertically chal- lenged’ insisting that a quadriplegic isn’t crippled â€" merely ‘differently abled’. Denouncing school dictionaries as racist because one of the many definitions of the color “black” is “evil”. Well, that’s okay. Eons after our humorless and soulless semantic monitors have turned to dust, Dame English â€" feisty old broad that she is â€" will right her- self like,a gyroscope and sail on. When it comes to the New Intolerance, it’s not language I’m worried about. It’s behavior. Take for example, the hug. Among the simplest of words hug. From the Old Norse, ‘hugga’ meaning comfort, soothe. It‘s a simple, basic word for a simple, basic human activi- ty â€" hugging. ‘ ‘ou know the PC Thing? ,' Political Correctness? “ Wherein a bunch of self- appointed Good Taste Arbiters tell us what’s acceptable and what’s not vis it vis culture, fashâ€" ion, language? The new intolerance forces as all to be an uncaring bunch ofpeaple Ontario NDP introduces standardized testing for grade 9 students... mantis, or finally mastered the nine times table, or if she just felt like it, Miss Sanford was apt to fling her chalk skyward and throw her arms outward and plant a great big hug on you. Girl, boy, janitor, principal (well, not the principal â€" but just about anyone else) â€" especially her kids. I got some of the best hugs in my life from Miss Sanford. She’s retired now â€" and a good thing too. If Miss Sanford went around hugging her stu- dents nowadays, she’d probably wind up serving three to five. I’m joking but just barely. I know a master printmaker and art instructor who answered a knock at his door last year to find a couple of policemen standing there. “Yes?” he said. “You’re under arrest,” they said. And they cuffed him and popped him in the back of a cruiser and took him downtown without a word of explanation to his family. Bosnia? No. Nicaragua? Beirut? Nope. Small town Ontario. His crime? Well, he had been playing a game of pickup basketball with his adoâ€" lescent son and a bunch of kids in the schoolyard. That evening, one of the kids had complained to his parents that the teacher had ‘touched’ him during the game. That’s all it took to go from respected pillar of the When his case came to trial, the courtroom was packed. The man’s minister was there. So was his doctor and a platoon of loyal friends who knew he was innocent. Just about everybody this side of Mother Teresa testi- fied to the sterling. character of the man. The judge was furious. With a laser glare at the police and a sulphurous lecture about wasting court time on a case that was without a shred of evi- dence, he threw it out of court. More to the point... where does the New Intolerance leave teachers nowadays? Is it wOrth their career to ruffle a kid’s cowlick when he’s just scored a touchdown? Would they dare to comfort a student who crum- ples, weeping, under the stress of impending exams? Which brings me back to hugging. If a person can get arrested and humiliated for an alleged accidental elbow in a game of pickup hoop ball, what would the sentence be for a Miss Sanford who hugged us all â€" with or without a basketball? community to accused pervert in the lockup. That teacher spent two nights in jail, then one year of hell â€" waiting for his case to come to trial. During that time, eggs were thrown at his house, his kids were harassed at school, there were obscene phone calls. If your kid fails in the schoolyard and comes up squalling with a bloody knee, is the teacher going to be there to administer the obligatory thera- peutic hug? Not bloody lik‘ely.