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- HANA PY a TY REE LT a 1 LY ed MV ROAR FA 8 ERAS ANDINA SS RDC EEN a Sr BON ORR A PAN TAL EAO AY EA JRE A] ' hd SRE Le IY SE A Ea WY abd ARIA he FRR RA BAAOF NU SCRA RR UA Sak p TE BRA AR RA ORR AEA PE OR AOR d bak PLES Rs SED Le } re ad? BEF. Ne Trt BN LFA SOY 2% = Et RNC A PR IANS ERs TRL oo FEN ef 3G NE SO ee SY LA FA REE (A A EERE ; JOYA SE RA Br A RR Le Nr CRI KR IR RRA Hd 4 Fo ni SR LIPLS oo Wl 2d ah LS 4 \ PLA AAR yt ay 20 UL RRS 1% [Rares a ae at aA UAVS VT YEA. 23 41 WHEL AR SLR R VRE ah re : A SLES ADC ABW { 2 3 . | y, oo Jad n0%) & ny Ap RC oa a ATS Zo -- oe Ce ry I Trig x Kan Lo rl a _-- Rt a FO a TT AE PSE 22, ET N -- > aN tN Se ww ale [Tr pes ah So EE a SS Re A a 5 - fa Sn S eA RN "editoriol commen Pickering airport Durham Region council should put a quick end to a resolution calling for council to support the construction of the Pickering Airport. Surely, the council has more important issues to debate and vote on than the Pickering Airport plan, which forall-intents and purposes had been dead for several years. With the federal government now moving ahead with plans to construct a third terminal at Malton and the possibility of added runways, surely this is proof that plans for Pickering are so far'on the back burner, they are not even in the kitchen. Durham council was supposed to debate the ~ resolution last week, but one of the sponsors of the resolution was not present at the council meeting. When the issue does come up, likely at the meeting May 16th, council should heed the words of the anti-airport delegation who said last week, Durham council would be spending its time better if it voted to put pressure on the federal government to return the 18,000 acres of expropriated land to private owner- ship and let the area and the communities get on with re-building. In retrospect, the plan for a Pickering Airport was ill-conceived a decade ago. So far, the cost is estimated at $150 million. Durham council should put the issue to a quick end and get on with more important municipal business in the Region. Education study If there is one thing governments are pretty good at these days it is the commissioning of lengthy and expensive studies which seem to wind up collecting dust on some bureaucrat's shelf. But a year long study into education in Ontario, released last week, contains numerous recommend- ations which deserve a better fate than gathering dust. Commissioned by the provincial government at a cost of $360,000, the report was prepared by a team headed by a former director for the Toronto Board of Education. | It recommends among other things that Ontario should abolish grade 13 by 1988: - all secondary schools should establish clear codes of student behavior regarding absenteeism, drug abuse and alcoholism; - morals and values should become part of the curriculum in every subject taught in high school; - schools should step up programs that prepare students for jobs after graduation; - students should have to take 16 English credits, eight in math, four in science, and four in history and social sciences to receive a high school diploma; - the provincial government should increase its share of re education costs to 60 per cent, which currently is slightly more than 50 per cent, with almost all the rest coming from property taxes. School boards, teachers and the general public will 'have until June 30 to offer comments and . suggestions on the recommendations before the report is forwarded to education minister Dr. Bette Stephenson. Rightly or wrongly, the public perception of Ontario's "multi-million dollar education system today is that something is wrong with it. Employers have complained that graduates are not ready for the work place. Universities have complained that many students entering first year are short on the basics of English - grammar, composition and reading comprehension skills. The public complains that education costs are putting too much of a drain against their property taxes. ' And just about everyone, teachers included, have voiced concern about the lack of discipline within the system, which in some schools has led to violence and vandalism of shocking proportions. 'Not surprisingly, the report points out that school discipline emrerged as the number one problem as far as the public is concerned. It would be naive to believe that tougher schools enforcing stricter rules would automatically lead to we graduates with better educations, but at very least it might at least help to curb the violence and reduce the bills for damaged school property. No doubt, the recommendation that will get the most discussion is the one calling for the abolition of grade 13 over a five year period between 1983 and 1988. Ontario apparently is the only jurisdiction in - Canada or the United States which still has a grade 13. The report recommends that students still require 3600 hours of high school study to obtain a graduation diploma over four years, the same number that is required for the current grade 13 or honours diploma. The report and its recommendations are sure to create a lot of waves in the education system. But-it has credibility behind it in that the team received more than 600 submissions, visited 50 high schools across the province, and the team leader, Duncan Green is a highly respected educator who during his career has viewed education as a teacher, principal, administrator and now dean of continuing studies at the University of Toronto. Let us hope that after the flurry of activity surrounding the release of the report has died down, the recommendtions don't end up on a dusty shelf in the Ministry of Education. Once again, I must confront that spectre that looms before quite a few old guys like me. To retire and live on beans and dog food, or to step once more into the breach, dear friends, and not become an old dog, licking its wounds and less savorable parts, waiting for the final stiffening into extinction. : Well, that was a fairly literary first paragraph, anyway, with a reference to a spectre, Henry V, and old dogs, perhaps loved, but increasingly useless, and ready for a shot through the head. I could get the last-named, at times, from my wife, if we kept a gun in the house. That's one reason we don't. Another is that I decided, some years ago, after shooting a black squirrel while thinking it was a black bear, that I wasn't cut out to be a hunter and bring home the game, unless it happened to be chess, or dominoes, or Scrabble. Secondly, I am not an old dog) though I would love to be. I always wanted to be a devilish old dog, twitching my moustaches at the ladies, pouring a sherry for a fascinating widow in a suave flat overlook- bill smiley ing Kensington Gardens at the age of 82, sipping an aperitif in the great square in decaying Venice when I was 88. 'Twas was not to be. I am just a youngish old dog, to whom no widow under the age of 59 (her version) would give a second look. Unless she were really broke. In the third case, I am not young King Hal of Tudor times, looking for breaches to go into once more. I have been in too many breaches (note to proof-reader; that is not britches) already. The next breach I leap 'into will be the last one : that hole in the ground. And in the fourth place, I ain't afraid of spectres. That's what Scrooge said, and you know what happened to him. This retirement gig is not that simple. First of all, that inflation has you by the short and curly. All my friends who are retired cry: "Don't doit!," as though I were a 17-year-old about to take my first drink or something even more sinful, according to the society in which we grew up. They claim that they can eat steak only once a week, that they haven't even the money for one of Freddy Laker's trips to England in the off season, that they're going to have to sell their fine middle-class homes and move into some fine middle-class - apartment where they don't even have any lawn to cut or snow to shovel. It's a horrible prospect. Most of these old friends are in pitiable state. They have decaying discs, heart problems, high blood pressure, the gout, the crud, or some other debilitating nightmare. Yet they're all in their early sixties. My father-in-law, 89, would call them "boys". Well, I don't think I'll be one of the boys, at least not for another year. I am a mere sixty years old. I am as sound in wind and limb as a man of thirty. Forty years ago. I limp a bit with the gout. But that is merely a sign of good living, and I limp rather proudly. I scarcely need glasses, except to tie my tie, or hit an ash-tray. I -can't hear much of what the students say, but my lip-reading is excellent, and I don't want to hear what they say, anyway. They've been giving the wrong answer for years. Ihave a partial plate, but i lithp through it only when we have hamburger in the cafeteria and it gets a bit clogged-no more than three or four days a week. All in all, a fine specimen of homo mithancropus, whatever that means. I wouldn't want to translate it, because some 89-year-old Latin teacher (we don't teach Latin any more) would jump on me and tell me I was either a depressed ape or a melancholy man. That I don't need. I feel like either, at given times. But then my conscience assails me. I think of all those young fellows of 40 or 45, whom I am keeping out of a department head's job , and I pretty nearly break down. Until I recall the fact that their wives are working, they have just bought a new van or boat, and they are making more money than I. Then I decide to stay another year, and I break up, chuckling at the grinding of teeth, the silent curses in the night, the visions of their child having to work during his-her summer vacation to make it through college. "Why doesn't the old nit quit? He can't teach anymore. His department is the worst run in the province. He has no idea how to organize his budget. He doesn't know what a budget is. He's not sure whether it's fall term or spring term. And what is really maddening, he doesn't care." And they're right, or partially so. Well, I've decided. I'll stay until at least Christmas. I'll quit then, suddenly, and leave somebody else to sort out the mess. And some.mess. I have keys to locks that don't work. I have filing-cases full of material taught in 1914, that have never been opened, because the keys are lost. And if my wife doesn'tg stop spending * money on decorating. I'll re-run this column in '88. Why doesn't Trudeau solve it b appointing me to the Senate? : { ---- J -- a --