Good article. All this time we talk about how to measure the problem we're ignoring the solutions. One child below the poverty line is too many.

But i also have to agree with G West one that one.

Amen, G West. Anyone who actually believes one word that comes out of the mouth of anyone at the Frasier Institute on this issue may be interested in a swamp I have for sale. Oh, hold on, Gordie's on the phone. Must've read my ad.

Great article.

The Fraser Institute is once again issuing nonsense that is totally divorced from the bare realities on the ground. There are not infrequent moments when they are an embarassment to conservatism.

I can dimly remember when a similar benchmark for poverty was issued back in the early nineties...It encountered the same issues regarding the definition of poverty. And I explicitly recall that the Carleton School of Social Work had a field day dissecting the prescribed budget....it apparently had neglected such basics as sanitary napkins and disposable diapers, and basically left no room whatsoever for anything we might associate with a liveable quality of life in modern society.

And needs have changed now too. For example, you could put forward a good argument for why internet access should be an essential service alongside telephone and hydro. And with people spending more and more time commuting to jobs they can't afford to live near, with little time to pick up the kids, let alone cook for them, then cell phones have become pretty indispensable too. And lots of families have to rely on pre-prepared packaged foods, which further adds to costs....the list goes on.

And all this sets aside the importance of an optimistic future in promoting socio-economic participation. A family on $23K or less has no margin to improve its circumstances. They probably have little or no access to credit (relative access to which now effectively defines first- and second-class citizens). Which means their kids had better be brilliant and then just *maybe* they'll get someplace (but only if they can avoid the multiplicity of pitfalls and life-changing distractions that await kids from low-income backgrounds).

Without an optimistic future to work towards, what will dissuade kids from making fast cash on the streets? Why be a sucker and work for an unjustifiable "training wage" when you can cold cash doing a wide variety of illegitimate activities, and get some respect doing it? The so-called training wage teaches kids one thing: that their first experience participating in the legimate workplace is a rip-off. They know it.

I would like to extend a challenge to Chris Salo of the Fraser Institute: Open an ING account, deposit $23,000 and see how far that gets him living here in Lotus Land. Of course that's for the family of four, if he's on his own I think half, 11,500, is more than fair. Go on Chris! It would be a true character builder!

P.S. I get the $13 ING offers for referals right?

In a Fraser Institute world, the poor are to be kept in poorhouses, children sold off for indentured labour. In a Frase Institute worls, the poor are poor and the wealthy are supreme.

The truth in Canada is very sad. We treat children extremely poorly. We hardly give them an education; we hardly let them achieve in sport; we do not train them for the real world.
Instead we throw billions in bureaucratic top heavy programs, that have little or no meaning.

Sadly we are letting our future generations down and do not think for one instant that tday's children do not know this!

Canada will reap the whirlwind of our beggerdly treatment of children.

Grumpy - Spot on!

The Fraser is a corporate advertising agency. Instead of selling cars and soap, they sell lies. But then so are all the economics departments in our universities, brainwsshing students with the neoclassical crap, now fully accepted by all political parties.

They also list themselves as a "tax deductible, non profit charitable institution". At $25,000 per membership.

You can live very well on $23,000. out in the country if you're set up for a great degree of "non competitive" self sufficiency. We're doing it and have been for many years. But this doesn't jack up the GDP, so the government is forcing people off the land and into the cities, where living cost are multiplied, which they can report as "growth of the GDP".

The GDP is a fraudulent statistic. It can go sky high, while people are homeless and starving in the streets.

Also, a competitive market economy not only doesn't solve poverty, but increases it, because all forms of competition increase energy inputs, which jack up prices. Now prices are going up in the stores every day to "remain competitive", which means more profits for the inveestors.

Since the FTA in 1989, living costs went up at least 500%, yet it was supposed to lower costs and every time we go into a supermarket, we find higher prices, leapfrogging each other between stores.

But then, this is what we pay for "growth" and "productivity".

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I would love to live in a society where poverty and homelessness are unthinkable. Instead we have the politics of scarcity telling us there isn't enough to go around, you know, "where are you going to get the money". What a crock it is. The vast wealth that could and should provide us all with financial dignity is being sequestered into elite pockets. I hope society wakes up soon.

The Fraser Institute has never done a study on public transit or such and the reason why is quite simple.

In BC, Quebec, and Ontario, mass transit projects are built, not to ease congestion or provide better public transit, but as a vehicle to put taxpayer's money into political supporters pockets, legally.

This is how it works - politicians decide that a transit projects should go from A to B. Costs range from $500 million to $1.2 billion. After much media hype and sham public consultation, the $1.2 billion transit option is chosen, but wait........the once $1.2 billion option is now $2.3 billion! All that extra taxpayer's money flowing into supporters of the government, massive profits at the expense of the taxpayer, all leagal!

You will never see the Fraser Institute do a report on RAV!

Now when it comes to the poor and poor children, they have no such media advocates, no powerful 'old boys/girls lobby in Ottawa and are easy targets for the Fraser Institute. They like bashing the poor, the elderly, and the lame because it is easy and they do not pay their salaries!

As an aside, to those who, who tend to know my interests. i have issued a challange to Faisal Mazur, Fraser Institute fellow and I believe business editor for the Sun to debate RAV and the ecconomics of metro versus LRT, to date, he has not accepted this challange. Why? Simply, on an ecconomic basis, RAV/metro is not viable and he knows that. It just so easy for the Fraser Institute to crap all over the disavantaged!

Do you thing the FI will ever report on the NAFTA superhighway and its Canadian hookups and its purpose?

No bloody way, as the truth would interfere with their precious GDP.

Ed Deak.

Thanks for this timely article, Sharon Mason Singer and David Hay. I believe it is good to start the year by focusing on the needs our cold and hungry people.

I just looked up the MSP premium subsidies for low income people and found that the people ($23,000 - family of 4) listed as impoverished by the Fraser Institute qualify for a 40% reduction on their premiums. They still must pay $43 a month for medical insurance. How can this be? The Fraser institute's figures are not harmonized with the BC Liberal government's heath care plan! It's an outrage! I'm sure if they put their accountants to work, the Good Ole Boys network should be able to find a way to show that the poverty line is actually at $20,000 so those people will require no subsidies at all.

What a load of manure - $25,000 tax-deductible membership in an organisation that tells families earning $23,000 or more they are not poor - Ed Deak and his workable rural economic plan not-withstanding (for even in rural BC, a piece of land large enough to do any bit of farming is $250,000 with a 50% downpayment required for bare land.)

It is nice to read that everyone thus far replying to this article is on the same side. AMEN

Canadians have no idea of what real poverty is. Even the "poor" here live vastly better than about any nation on earth.

Can a family of four live in $23,000? Sure it can (especially with the CCTB which would run about $500 for the two kids). I have done it in the past with equilavent amounts when I was starting out. It just means budgeting your money. Take a thermos instead of Starbucks. Shop at Superstore, not Capers...

Sharing.... the high land costs are the direct result of so called "wealth creating foreign investment", which is nothing more than the inflation of another country's money supply. Now added to with the 1991 secret deregulation of the private banks' money creating powers.

The inflaton started in the early 90s, when land prices here in the Cariboo went up 1000% overnight with the inpour of German and Swiss monies. It has gone down since, but now it is fuled again by Americans and Canadians who realize that the US dollar is dead and our monetary system is hanging by a thread and may fall at any day.

Now add to this the recently announced plan of China to divest themselves of their $3.2 trillion of worthless US dollars. How much of this will be coming to Canada, buying up more land, welcomed by our idiot politicians and economists, while our own people are forced into city shoeboxes?

Like I've seen an economist, by the name of Lang saying on CBCTV: "We must subsidize the farmers to get them off the land"

This is being taught in our universities as so called "economics" .

Ed Deak.

BC Medical plan payment info:

http://www.healthservices.gov.bc.ca/msp/infoben/premium.html

I just performed a serch at LiveDeal ( a rental finder site) and it listed but 6 places where someone could rent a place to live within 40 KM of Vancouver for $1000 or less. 5 of them were basement suites.

Apartments for rent info:
http://www.livedeal.ca/search?zip=V5Y%202E2&query=Apartments+%26+Homes&category=559&minprice=&maxprice=1000.00

working man
I'd suggest the 23,000 includes the child tax benefit and Harper's pander for kids under 6. But it really doesn't matter what you think.

Poverty is always a relative measure - your point about other cultures is meaningless. Families of 4 making a lot more than 23,000/annum in Vancouver are desperately poor. This is where Canadians actually live and this is where addressing the problem is not a priority, period.

And, if such a family were receiving any provincial social benefits they'd be even worse off because the claw back would eat up any gains they were able to make from an earned income point of view.

If you survived for a year or so on equivalent pro rata amounts, you were desperately poor and the fact you have no empathy for someone in a similar situation with two young children tells us less about poverty than it does about you.

Child poverty and poverty in general is not DOWN.

Ed, I'm with you 100%. I was just saying that you were able to purchase land 23 years ago. Now, a poor family has difficulty purchasing that same land that you were able to buy because the cost of real estate has increased faster than what $23,000 wages can afford. Granted, poor families can rent homes for less in the Interior, but until they put in a garden with good soil (and buy rakes and shovels hoses - canning equipment) they are going to have a higher food bill than in the lower mainland. Groceries are much higher in the Interior, as are heating bills.

House and land prices are still much lower in the Interior and you can do a lot on 5 acres.

The funny thing is that although people own acreages around here, even thousands of acres, they're still buying their chemically soaked, imported foods in the supermarkets, as they're too lazy to grow things. Hardly any gardens .

Ed Deak.

Hi Ed,
I live in the Interior, and I know of no habitable houses on lots of 2 acres or more that sell for less than $250,000. Empty lots on larger parcels require developing water hydro and seweage treatment - generally, a $30,000 to $50,000 up front cost. Yes, a person can generate electricity and use an outhouse and use a dug well and rainwater until they get on their feet, but poor families are often living hand to mouth making improvement difficult. This often leads to social/addiction issues that relate to poverty and lack of self-esteem. That said, I firmly believe people can grow a decent garden even on a 1/4 acre lot (with a modest home) if they employ good intensive gardening practices.

Perhaps near you land is cheaper, but is there stable employment? Where I live, much of the employment has always been seasonal and linked to the world commodities markets - often resulting in as much as 40% unemployment. Hard to buy anything without an income. Not many are as hard-working and resourceful as you have proven to be, Ed.

20 years ago, I read a study about (then contemporary) hunter-gatherer societies. The average hunter-gatherer adult (on five continents) spent 2.8 hours per day making his or her living. This included food preparation, house building, clothing making etc. We have become foolish over-consumers who have forgotten how to live with nature. We don't teach our children how to farm and fix things. We have traded self-sufficiency for paycheques and we have given away our resources in exchange for those paycheques. We allow the government to sell off our resources in huge chunks to huge multi-nationals who have no interest in our welfare.

SIG

SIG..... Prices are a bit lower here in the Williams Lake area and here we have a couple of roaring copper mines that pay
very well, for 10 days of 12 hour shifts.

We can see a continuous traffic of ore trucks on the mainroads, taking BC's wealth abroad. Each of those trucks carries half million $ worth of ore.

Overloaded, even at breakup, they pay millions in fines to the government, I've heard $10 million a year by Polley Mtn alone, breaking up the roads, without repairs, going to hell. There are deep ruts in the pavements, while the government is giving them taxbreaks so they can take out more.

Of course, when you look at house and even apartment prices on the Lower Mainland, $250,000 is very cheap.

We bought our 120 acres for $30,000 in 1975 and gave it away last year to hard working, decent people who'll preserve it and look after us in our old age. Works very well, everybody's very happy and we can stay here forever. They could never have afforded it otherwise. Had we sold it, there wouldn't have been a tree left in 2 weeks and we'd be stuck in some crappy apartment.

However, with cattle prices pressed down by the multinational feedlots, more and more ranchers are losing their lands, taken over by the agribiz mafia. We know people who own thousands of acres, worth millions and are forced to live below poverty levels on accoint of the multinational crooks.

All accomplished by the banks' powers to create imaginary capital that can be used as the Soviet bayonets of collectivization into kolkhozes.

Ed Deak.

Hughes, you're too generous. According to Sarlo's calculations, a single person isn't living in poverty unless his/her income is at or below 10,314; your 11,500 would place him in the middle class.

Working man: "Canadians have no idea of what real poverty is. Even the 'poor' here live vastly better than about any nation on earth."

WISE did a study on women living in poverty (yes, they qualified even under Sarlo's definitions). Among the participants were women who had experienced poverty in different lands. The following are excerpts from the story of one of the women:

"Born and raised in the Caribbean, I can identify with the poverty Haiti goes through. I didn’t have to go into the garbage dumps and scramble for food. I was able to go to the banana tree and cut a bunch of bananas, or dig the soil and get yams, or pick a fresh mango from the tree. But pain is pain. If our lives are threatened, from living out of the dumpster or from having to stand on the streets of Vancouver to do prostitution, that’s still pain. The difference with North America is that poverty is hidden. We can live in an apartment and in a house or in a setting where we can mask that poverty. People really don’t take the time to get to know you, to know how you’re struggling. People in the community, they’ve stopped supporting each other and the village no longer raises the child...

"Here, people without gardens must go to grocery stores. That’s how the corporations have taken over. It used to be that people would make cherry pies or vegetable dishes or whatever. They were able to sell that to the neighbours and they would survive that way. Now there are all types of liability issues and insurance and licensing and… When you look at all these big manufacturers, what are they doing but making that very same pie and earning millions and billions in revenue and profit? They’ve managed to take away the very essence of life in terms of how we survive, and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business. The pie that we get at the grocery store now is less nutritious and has no value and no meaning. In fact, we cannot afford the pie anymore."

Relative poverty, or income inequality, matters, particularly because the upper tier of income earners dictate in terms of their actions and inactions how any given society is structured. The greater the inequality of income, the greater the exclusion both in depth and scope. Where fewer and fewer citizens are enabled to participate in society, democracy is threatened.

WISE: http://www.wise-bc.org/

Statistics Canada is well aware of the criticisms from Sarlo and others about their "relative" measure of low-income (Low Income Cut-Off or LICO). StatsCan is developing a "Market Basket Measure" (MBM) based on a theoretical "basket" of goods needed to survive at a basic level in our society. This is roughly what Sarlo does, but Sarlo thinks the MBM is too generous because it includes things like video rentals:
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/chapterfiles/The%20Market%20Basket%20Measure%20of%20Poverty-Sarlo.pdf

I think the key finding is that in 2000 the number of children in poverty, as measured by the MBM, was actually slightly *higher* than the number below the LICO.

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/cs/comm/news/2003/030527.shtml

I haven't followed up on this recently so I don't know what the current MBM vs. LICO levels are - and I don't have enough time to look it up right now!

The new Corporate Communists wil be the death of the so-called free enterprize counties.

Corportate communists need vast populations of poor people to work on the cheap, so the corporations can generate maximum profits.

Corporate Communists do not like a 'free' society because they wish to control all.

The Fraser Institute are just lackeys of the Corporate Communists, espousing their propaganda. God help the poor in Canada because it will only get worse.

Once again Fraser Institute gets it right. If you read this, the definition, in itself does not equate to poverty. Rather, it equates to "financially strained".

Regardless, we are arguing semantics here. It should say that only 5% of Canadian families live below the poverty line, however another 10% live two paycheques away from it.

Fraser Institute is telling the truth, though it is still misleading. Campaign 2000 is flat out manipulating the numbers, but accurately demonstrating that many families live in less than comfortable circumstances. Obviously, when you attach the word "poverty" - you command more attention.

I am also interested to see if Cost of Living has been considered. You can live somewhat comfortably in Trail - with 32K per year. In Vancouver, it is a whole different story!!

There are no people in Canada living in poverty -- if you use Haiti (thanks, cocean) as a base, or (say) Sierra Leone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone
But Canadians do not live in Haiti or Sierra Leone, and Vancouverites do not live in Williams Lake, nor do people in the lower mainland live in the "outback" of BC.

So what is the point of this exercise, except (as Tessa says): "One child below the poverty line is too many."

And Flora MacDonald asserts there are more than 600,000 elderly Canadians living in poverty. http://www.helptheaged.ca/downloads/AAG_brochure.pdf

This is supposed to be the land of plenty. But plenty of what.....?

Plenty of BS mate!

.....plenty of money and benefits for the multinational corporate mafia to take out of the country.

This is what they call "the competitive equilibrium of the global marketplace" , where people are the first to be sold.

Ed Deak

Much of the problem around this discussion is that poverty is an emotionally loaded term that has no agreed-upon definition (thus the "debate" around the Fraser Institute's stats.) And in Canada it is largely a relative term -- you are poor if you do not have as much as your neighbours.

This makes sense inasmuch as this puts you (and children especially) at a disadvantage in participating in your community and in society.

But I don't think that Canadians (or even Tyee readers, clealry) have an agreement on what kind of minimum lifestyle people should expect to be able to lead.

It is true that many people have lost the homemaking and handyperson skills necessary for living on less. And people in poverty have often experienced some kind of family or community rupture at some point in their lives that made it even more difficult to gain those skills.

A totally tangential observation for those keeping track of a long-running "parallel conversation" on these threads:

I noted that the Vatican is the sole notable international voice of conscience (and the only *state*) to denounce the execution of Saddam Hussein and decry the pornography of his bootlegged snuff-film:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/02/D8MDBFH80.html

I have another wish for 2007. That Cappy should be forced to live on no more than $23,000.00 for the year - adjusted pro rata to reflect whatever size family he happens to have. If he owns a house that he should have to move out of it for the year, that if he has a car that he give it up for the year, that if he has a child in a post-secondary institution that he or she should have to withdraw for the year. And that he should bear, mutatis mutandis, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that every family with an income of $23,000. has to bear in this city - for just one year.

At the end of that year, I'd like to have Cappy show up again and offer his words of wisdom about what constitutes poverty.

You phony!

When schools do not give you an education or job training, you will fail and unless one wins a lottery or inherits money, you will be poor.

One thing I learned on my many travels in Europe, is that the education system, for bad or worse, did straem people into job training and apprenticeships. No so here.

BC and Canada, run education mills, churning out students by the thousands, with worthless paper. Even the universities have become education mills, churning out worthless degrees. What a good degree, then spand another $50 thousand and presto, you will get one!

I have yet to find a planner or engineer that knows more about LRT than me, which is a very sad comment indeed, as modern LRT has proven to be a tool in reducing traffic, etc., but that is another story.

What the hell did he study in university? They may have a degree but they are not educated, not by a long shot!

But back to child poverty, we are exacerbating the situation by not training children to work, to get a job. Oh no, can't stream little Johny into technical school. It sad how we waste todays and tommorrows talent, by not giving the kids a chance!

It is my firm belief that to graduate from highschool, one must have a 1st year in university or technical coledge or a 1st year in an apprenticeship. If we did that, poverty would drop considerably.

Could it be that the provincial government doesn't want an educated populace, just drones to work for the Corporate Communists.

NB:
It was inevitable, given camera phones et al, that this would happen. Those "in charge" would surely know this would happen. That it did happen means they countenanced some form of video of the hanging, "bootleg" or official. Otherwise, they would have hung him with only notaries to record the act.

The RC church is the least credible authority to speak up on this issue. If it truly abhorred the death penalty, it would do something about the child poverty around the world, instead of simply decrying it. After all, child poverty is not the "will of God", anymore than hanging Hussain was the "will of God".

G West:
Did you make these wishes before or after midnight, 31 Dec......?

Absolutely, and holding onto a 4 leaf clover - happy new year dude

Then they are indeed doomed........(insert insane cackle here)

Grumpy - Your observations on the education system are on the mark. That's certainly my summation, I've got a special place where I keep all my pieces of papers and other assorted "smart stamps". I've got another special place where I place my updates on my interminable student loan payments. By rights, I should be able to trade in all those papers for a high-end Mercedes, or a nice starter condo (well, okay, not in Vancouver...) but it ain't so. Those papers are not a commodity you can re-sell or trade in, and in spite of our rhetoric they actually doesn't appreciate in value all that well over time either.

I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that everything I learned after, say, grade six, I pretty much taught myself. All the tuition payments did was buy me time, and perhaps a little bit of structure and exposure. It hardly warrants a decade of time and that much money. It's an inefficient profit mill...and not about the students at all. I've said it before and I'll say it again - hand the liberal arts post-secondary education system back to the Dominicans and the Jesuits, and you might actually get some results (for a fractions of the price, seeing as they don't accept salaries). The sciences are doing just fine, however.

RickW - the RC Church is doing more than any other internaitonal organization, religious or otherwise, to alleviate child poverty in the world....They feed and clothe more kids worldwide than the U.N. And exponentially so, at that. But I knew someone would bite tho... ;-)

QUOTE]They may have a degree but they are not educated, not by a long shot!

Hmm. But I bet they can spell.

The education system is like any other business or industry. If you're smart and sharp, know your strengths and weaknesses and can take advantage of opportunity, you can get your money's worth. And a degree is only the beginning, of course.

If you have some idea that simply acquiring a degree will automatically get you something, well, yeah. You probably will be disappointed.

No we don't. Canadians like most humans labour under the illusion that there is some kind of lack or scarcity in this world, a very understandable illusion given the relentless onslaught from the elite-controlled corporate media supporting this fantasy. Do the elite "expect" to lead some kind of lifestyle or other? Of course not. In their world money is no object because the economy is rigged, because life is rigged, it's rigged to give them an obscene share of our wealth, and we give it to them via debt-slavery.

If society understood money and banking things would be very different. No more poverty. There would still be an elite but their position would be based on intelligence and skill, not on theft. Poverty is guaranteed under this elite system.

Vandana Shiva in a very perceptive article says:

The article is here: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-05/11shiva.cfm

NB:
Oh sure, feed them. But where did I read about the RC chruch ex-communicatinig Guatemala when the death squads were killing street kids......
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/14/guatemala.street.kids/

RickW - I don't think it was necessarily "inevitably" although is *was* predictable. It was really just incompetent.
Several states in the U.S., not to mention other countries, execute people all the time without snuff films getting out. It's pretty incompetent that this happened. They clearly didn't even screen or duly warn his handlers properly, or select and screen the observers who were present. The fact that they can't even identify who was shouting, and when, is a clear indicator of this.

But it's all par for the course at this point, unfortunately. It's done.

RickW - Well, El Salvador *did* see a bishop shot in the face in the middle of mass, and the execution of priests has been a semi-regular occurance in Latin America (and Haiti) for the last several decades. Where have you been--?

RickW - some history & background:

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_Romero[/url]

http://www.justpeace.org/romero.htm

Rick W - And here's The Tyee's own article about a similar murder of an RC priest in the Dominican Republic...

http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/09/22/HuntingKiller/

Yes, yes, but the weight of the Church with it's "morning star" of excommunication (of the whole nation if need be) would do much more than sympathetic speeches. The only way to stop the "bad guys" is with a howling mob, complete with ropes, machetes, pitch forks......

I've been everywhere man,
crossed the deserts bare man,
I've travelled I've done my share man,
I've been everywhere.
- Hank Snow

RickW - What in All Blazes are you going *on* about?

Excommunication of the whole nation--? That is anti-thetical to the very concept. Some crazy shit happened in the middle ages, but I can't remember that one...or fathom what bearing it now has.

And everyone - every group - has their little "excommunications". Trust me on this nasty little human truth.

In any case, it is what it is....and it is ultimately a reflection of the human heart; and actually never pretended to be anything more than that, if you read carefully.

But the point remains....just Google 'jesuit' and 'murder' or 'latin america' and the role-call of murdered human rights martyrs will appear. Those are the facts. Say what you want about the hierarchy, the dogma, the faith....but they put their money on the table and their lives on the line. The record speaks for itself, far more than your own judgmental armchair cynicism.

But what have *you* done....?

I grew up in a strict religion etc. but have left it long ago.

My main objection was, and still is, the political involvement of religions in politics, often in the weirdest ones, like the nazis.

Hitler would never have become anything without the support of the Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholic Churches. Of course, there have been exeptions, some bishops, priests and the famed Pastor Niemoller in KZ camps, but the main body supported Hitler on Biblical grounds, as the "Leader with the cross on his chest" who punished the Jews for the crucifiction.

All Wehrmacht units and most of the Waffen SS have been supplied with clergy by the Churches, as padres, with officer ranks. After the war I knew 2 Catholic priests in the DP camps who have been SS captains, or Hauptsturmfuehrers.

The alleged persecution of the Churches by the nazis was a post war fabrication and an estimated 50,000 war criminals, including Bormann, Eichmann and Mengele escaped Europe with Vatican passports, issued by a certain Bishop Hudal.

I don't want to get into religous arguments, just wanted to state this as a well proven historical fact I have witnessed myself.

Ed Deak.

The smart people are the East Indians. I see East Indians such as: Grandpas and Grandmas working all the time. Any shift anytime. That is why they live in the best houses and have lots of money. They work as a team. Can you say that you work as a team like they do?

pure:
No I cannot.
Ed:
You are much more succinct at saying what I am thinking.
NB:
I will not find fault with individual priests, who can and often are, heroic. But the organization we refer to as "the Church" fits the classic definition of "The Corporation" as psychopath. It's overriding function is self-preservation and advancement. It's just too bad it comes at the cost of the "little people", the believers.

My original point was merely that the Vatican was the only significant international body to condemn the execution and the images. That's all. It's consistent with their long-standing criticism of U.S. policy in the region from the get-go. We can debate the middle ages if you want to, but... ;-)

I don't want to take this thread too far off course...But there's some factual glosses that bear correcting. No one emerged from WWII smelling particularly pretty, but the RC Church did *not* support Hitler. Many of the Protestant Churches were viciferously supportive of Hitler and his ideology, for a variety of reasons. Catholicism's resistance to Hitler stems in part from its institutional rigidity and also from the fact that German RC's had always been an alienated, and not infrequently persecuted, minority in Germany (remember Bismarck's Kulturkampf). That's not to say there weren't some stinkers in the bunch. But by and large the RC minority in Germany tended to be more resistant to the allure of Hitler than the Protestant congregations. Protestantism is, of course, in part a rejection of the Judaic roots of our culture, so it carries that baggage with it as well.

And love it or hate it, the RC's do indeed feed and clothe more kids in the developing world than any other human agency I'm aware of.

One more point: "The Church" traditionally refers to the people (like the muslim word "Umma"), not the hierarchy. All hierarchies, irrespective of creed or ideology, manifest at least some of the flaws described in The Corporation. It's the nature of the beast...that is to say, it's the nature of human beings interacting in organized or semi-organized groups.

You say tom-ah-to, I say tom-ay-to, let's call the whole thing off.......... :~)

Further to poverty among the elderly and Flora MacDonald:
http://www.helptheaged.ca/

So we have poverty (or not) among the children in Canada, and we have poverty (or not) among the elderly in Canada.
Now, whether the number is 5% or 15%, what I wonder, what does the fraser Institute propose to remedy this: gas chambers?

Well, you can be certain that any remedy proposed by the Fraser Institute will be as effective as a placebo. It will reassure those already convinced of its ideological correctness, while doing nothing for the actual issue at hand. That's all they're really aiming for, if truth be told.

The issue is much bigger than simply where we place the benchmark for "poverty". It's about the way that benchmark follows people and families throughout their lives and through the generations. It's about the psychological and emotional impact on children who see every day that they have less than others, and know that they are automatically relegated to a different and lower rung because of it. I wonder how the Fraser Institute would remedy these intangible legacies of chronic inequity?

Just learned the CBC is planning a documentary of some kind on homelessness in Vancouver. Waiting for details, which I'll post when I get them. I have a sneaking suspicion they'll bill it as a very 'complicated' and 'multi-faceted' problem.

education:

"BC and Canada, run education mills, churning out students by the thousands, with worthless paper."

My children tell me: In school, we got processed, not educated! What we have today in the way of education, we got from our parents. This, of course, is hindsight. What is this business of being smart and sharp and take advatage of the school like 'any other business'?
Steer manure! They even rape them here by starting school at 6; everywhere in Europe, where thay have (had?) a decent education system, they waited till 7, and then it was serious business from day one. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. ?? Not by a long shot. Canada has a long way to go, before we aren't just handing each other dumb lines, thinking nobody knows the difference. Some of us do.

I suspect you're right, but please do post on it anyway, as I'll miss out.

Funny how the media peddles a certain generic psychological impotence in the face of systemic problems, rather than apply any genuine faculty in critical thought to these issues. Problems become "complicated" or "multi-faceted", as you say, in the same manner that Talking Barbie once found math "hard".

I'll miss the documentary because I decided Battlestar Galactica wasn't sufficient to justify the indulgence of television, and have done away with the medium altogether (although admittedly I still watch dvds on the computer).

Good for you nightbloom. And I think much of what you say about education is true too dorothy. What the education system is being set up to produce is folks who can make widgets while thinking they're building mansions in the sky.

Go see 'Manufactured Landscapes' if you have a chance and pay very close attention to the first 5 or 6 minutes of the film.

Ther rest of it is worthwhile too of course.

You can live very well on $23,000. out in the country...

And in the suburbs too. But not in a tiny downtown apartment. Real wealth = land.

Self-sufficiency means you are competing against people who are trying to get money out of you for things you could do just as well or better yourself. Centralized daycare is an example. Wealth isn't just about how much money is coming in, it's also about doing what you can to avoid spending money unnecessarily. Stated another way:

"A fool and his money are soon parted, but don't worry, the NDP will confiscate YOUR hard-earned money and give it to the fool so he can keep on wasting and wasting and wasting without limit."

In many parts of B.C., $10,000 will buy enough land to be self-sufficient. Trouble is that even if you install a composting toilet, anaerobic digester, or various other technologies that are much better for the environment than a septic field while costing much less, government bureaucrats will force you to waste another $40,000 building a pointless, useless septic field anyway.

Definitely. If I spend 5 minutes fixing my own leaky tap, that adds nothing to the GDP. On the other hand, if I take time off work, ride a huge diesel bus back home, wait for a plumber to drive his big diesel truck to my home to spend 5 minutes fixing the tap, then ride a huge diesel bus back to work again, that's supposed to add to the GDP. Mostly it adds to the financial wealth of motor vehicle manufacturers, road builders and oil companies. The extra taxes the government gets from the plumber are cancelled out by them getting less taxes out of me because of the time I take off work. The extra taxes collected on the diesel burned in the plumber's truck are more than cancelled out by extra health care costs attributable to the diesel exhaust, road construction costs, etc.

If there weren't any Toyota Priuses and Daimler-Benz Smart Cars to compete against GM's taxpayer-subsidized, gas-guzzling SUVs, GM wouldn't have gotten serious about producing a plug-in hybrid vehicle. It's official now. See the following links:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5272
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061206.wh-lashow07/BNStory/Front

And here's what forced their hand. From http://online.wsj.com :
"GM and Ford reported 13% declines in December auto sales, continuing to lose ground to rival Toyota, whose U.S. sales rose 12%."

[QUOTESelf-sufficiency means you are competing against people who are trying to get money out of you for things you could do just as well or better yourself. Centralized daycare is an example

A poor example, as the research for the most part suggests children who have been in a daycare setting are often better prepared in terms of social development and beginning literacy and math skills for elementary school.

If you're going to choose an example you might look for one that reflects reality rather than the bias you've already demonstrated in another, earlier thread on the subject of childcare.

reposted without the dropped square bracket.

A poor example, as the research for the most part suggests children who have been in a daycare setting are often better prepared in terms of social development and beginning literacy and math skills for elementary school.

If you're going to choose an example you might look for one that reflects reality rather than the bias you've already demonstrated in another, earlier thread on the subject of childcare.

Also, I'm on mls.ca pretty much daily looking for land outside of Vancouver and I'm wondering if you can tell me where this land that will support self-sufficiency can be found for $10k because it's sure not showing up in my searches.

I'm just bored with people whining about how their degrees didn't "get" them "anything" and how everything they know, they taught themselves.

Though clearly, from the level of some of the commentary on this thread, that is all too true.

Mine neither Stump!

Check out the National Council of Welfare website, an agency associated with the federal government and with surprisingly excellent non-ideologically biased research on poverty.

http://www.ncwcnbes.net/

The NCW has a good discussion of the different measures of poverty, with their respective limitations. As I interpret the Fraser institute's "thin gruel" measurement, if you're not starving you're not poor.

Of course, many people who are homeless are severely malnourished. And many children who come to school are very hungry.

By the way, of the ten provinces, BC has the highest child poverty rate in the country, at 23.5%. By comparison Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark have less than 4% child poverty rates.

I also forwarded this piece to the Campbell site. This is why we have poverty and starving kids all over the world.

Ed Deak.
=====================================

Home Depot CEO out with $210M US package

Last Updated: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 | 4:27 PM ET

CBC News

The head of Home Depot Inc. left the home improvement chain on Wednesday in a mutual agreement, taking with him a severance package worth about $210 million US.

The surprise departure of Bob Nardelli from the role of chief executive officer after six years came amid investor unhappiness over Home Depot's share price performance. Nardelli also stepped down as chairman of the board.
Home Depot chief executive and chairman Bob Nardelli, pictured here, resigned as chairman and chief executive on Jan. 3. The decision was by mutual agreement, the Atlanta-based company said.
(Ric Feld/Associated Press)

Under Nardelli's employment agreement, he will leave the company with a massive severance deal, including a cash payment of $20 million US, the acceleration of unvested deferred stock awards currently worth about $77 million US, and unvested options with an intrinsic value of about $7 million US.

Nardelli has agreed not to compete with the company for one year, not to solicit employees or customers of Home Depot for four years, and other conditions, the company said in a release.

The departure of Nardelli has come just four months after he told the Associated Press that he had no plans to depart.

Nardelli was replaced immediately by Frank Blake, the company's vice-chairman.
Continue Article

flyingfish -

It's a point that bears repeating.

If we're going to exert all this effort to indoctrinate an inexperienced 18 year old in the idea of borrowing $40-$60K over the next 3-4 years (not counting additional borrowing for post-graduate education), so they can subsize our post-secondary diploma mill (without guaranteeing outcomes), then the least we can do is be honest about expectations and results.

I'm actually appalled at some of the jobs I've observed for which the requested level of education was an MA (i.e. about six years of university, after high school), but which actually only combined the practical functioning of a grade 10 education along with an adult level of maturity (socialization, self-discipline, deferred gratification, emotional maturity/stability, etc.).

It's an extremely wasteful system, and except for certain crucial pockets in the technical, scientific and some professional fields, it hasn't necessarily produced a more educated or qualified workforce.

Friends of mine teach English at Lower Mainland community colleges, and tell me that the average 18 year old with a Grade 12 diploma is actually fairly illiterate.

Which of course takes us much further back than the university system, to the question of what's happening in the public schools.

Your definition of a PRACTICAL FUNCTIONING of a grade 10 education may be the issue. What someone ideally should have learned and achieved by Grade 10 is probably not where the average 15 year old is functioning. Sadly.

Compared to whom are they 'better prepared'? Compared to those brought up by parents in the same strapped circumstances, but with haphazard 'daycare' provided by neighbours/grandpatrents/cheap imports, or compared to those who have actually had a parent looking after them and - yes - educating them?
I would also like to see the very broad term 'social development' better defined. It is one of those terms everyone assumes carry the same meaning for everybody, but it really doesn't. As social relations have a bearing on success in life and on wealth, I believe we can justify discussing it under this heading.

I take it you are not talking about my forementioned children here, as none of them hold any kind of degree. I do, and I know exactly what it gives me - $100 extra per month in 'qualification differential', as per my work contract.

One thing, which the education my significant other and I provided for our children was the absence in their heads of whining as a means to achieve anything. They are incarnate problem solvers and hard and capable workers, wherefore they can always find work, degree or no degree.

Your reflections on the results or not, of academic achievements I will leave unanswered, as I trust they are not directed at me.

Otherwise, I completely agree with nightbloom's reply to flyingfish. The inflation in degree demand has to do with nobody who hires people knowing how to exercise real judgment, so they look for a massive set of 'stamps of approval'.
I have, over the years, made a study of people's reasons for not hiring somebody, and found that it goes as the wind blows. Maybe there is something here, which we might address under 'social devwelopment?

And those are the naturalized english-speaking Canadian ones...

The problem only gets worse in the college system (esp. in urban areas), which has been watered down academically over the past 15 years in order to function as vehicles for the integration of new immigrants. One year programs are now two or three; two year programs are now four. Same material; double the time, quintuple the cost. Governments have offloaded integration and ESL costs onto the students (and simultaneously offloaded the unremunerated burden of responsibility onto the beleagered college faculty). By the late nineties, up to 80% of my dad's physics and math classes couldn't pass a basic ESL test if their lives depended on it. It created a situation whereby faculty were pressured by enrollment-conscious administrators to pass underqualified students and harvest more tuition, while 'naturalized' (I hate that word, but it's the accepted terminology) Canadian students of community colleges were stuck in a swampland of remedial, literally "retarded" (in an educational sense) courses overcrowded with underqualified peers with little to no functioning language skills in the language of instruction.

The universities, on the other hand, were able to build firewalls against this kind of cooptation by political exigencies, while skimming the cream of the foreign student crop in order to harvest their massive tuition fees (foreign students in Canadian universities pay between 3-5 times the going rate for Canadian citizens, hence to drive to pack classrooms with the english-speaking children of the overseas post-colonial elites...This is the nasty secret behind UBC's chronic shortage of seats for qualified Canadians noted each year by the McLean's annual university survey, notwithstanding strenuous 'politically correct' protestations by university administrators to the contrary).

And don't get me started on public schools, which have become glorified daycare shelters for the emotionally neglected children of the productive two-earner Canadian household, rather than centers of learning and constructive socialization. Those 15 years should be parsed down and compressed, complemented by traditional de-ideologized (teachers unions!) traditional civics and group socialization component. The Tony Blair government is already onto this last aspect, actually.

I personally favour a return to the old grammar school model, which a back-to-basics traditional liberal curriculum and gender-segregated classes in critical topics with observable learning differentials from grade 6 to completion (i.e. the formative and over-sensitive puberty years).

Then after high school, students go to either technical institutes run and supervised by professional bodies in tandem with government, or public Arts and Humanities institutes run by people with a genuine love for the material rather than a pernicious ideologically polarized agenda of dismantlement, vandalism and reckless revisionism. I'm still a fan of the small Jesuit and Dominican colleges which consistently turned out high-quality thinkers using a time-tested curriculum, and they always provided for students from low-income households to enter and perform on an equal footing, but that's my personal opinion. Secular antiquarians make great profs too. Anything but the veiled politicized system of careerist patronage that now predominates in the arts and social sciences, which treats the student as an inconvenient afterthought and an unfortunate necessity.

...Apologies for the sloppy writing. I should have edited more closely...But I think my points are pseudo comprehensible...

...okay, well maybe "pseudo comprehensible" in that Picasso-esque Dadaist kinda way...

Both. Children in licenced pre-school programs benefit from the specialized ECE training that the workers in such facilities possess. Unless you are also a trained ECE worker, or primary school teacher, it's a crap shoot as to whether or not you will have same level of skills and ability. It's not a question of whether you love your kids or not, or whether you want what's best for them, but simply one of training and experience.

We're speaking in generalities here. Undoubtedly there's individual examples to disprove the rule, but my initial response was given to disavow Cycling Commuter of the belief that because he/she thinks it to be true (parents better prepare their children for learning) it must be, when in fact, the evidence indicates otherwise.

RE: social development. I use the term to include such desirable attributes as sharing, taking turns, exhibiting and demanding respect for/from others, etc. My experience is that children who've been in a licenced daycare are better at this sooner than kids who haven't. I believe there's evidence to support that contention available if you doubt it, but I will leave it to you to do the google.

NB:

To the Fraser Institute there are no intangibles. There is only socialist inefficiency and capitalist adeptness......

dorothy:

The powers that be actually fear an educated populace, if only because no one would believe their electoral lies. The conundrum they face however, is that an educated populace is absolutely necessary in contemporary society. They haven't yet figured out how to "selectively educate" the kids.

Now if we look at this together with stump's better preparation, this would make sense, for then they're simply moving from one daycare center to another, so they're already practiced in those social skills required. It is just a question, whether the culture this represents is what we want for our children? Maybe I don't want my children to be happy waiting their turn, for where is then the drive to start your own gig? It is about being successful, but on what terms? these are deep questions.

I'm unclear on how the two might be related. Learning to take turns by no means undercuts one's drive to acheive.

So true! To that end do you really want to rely entirely on the school system/daycares to educate your child. I think this is the core problem with respect to "useless" degrees, illiterate graduates, etc. Too many people have chosen to have children and then offload the repsonsibility for raising them to someone else, be it the daycare teacher, college prof, etc. While I don't negate the role of the school system, and generally I think they do a decent job, all things considering, I question why so many parents now rely totally on the schools to provide their children with moral, health, social guidance etc.

As to Stumps comment that all children benefit from trained ECE daycares/preschools I believe the studies indicate that the benefits go primarily to those would not normally be exposed to such "learning" experiences in their own homes. I'll try and Google the specific studies. Personally, I think most parents are more than qualified to show junior how to do a puzzle, sing a song, share the swing with other kids, or fingerpaint, but unfortunately, a large percentage can't be bothered - they have enrolled their toddlers in the early "uneducated populace" immersion program. I think the social interactions of daycare are vastly overstated. Long before licensed daycares existed chilren got the concept of sharing ... and I think had a much better grasp of it ... given some of self-centered, consumer-mad kids I see today. Funny, for the most part (and yes, there are huge generalizations at either end of the spectrum)the "daycare" kids I have encountered have been the most demanding & socially maladjusted group. What exactly are you learning if you have to continuously "share" with a group of other kids and never, ever have any one-on-one time with an adult who has only your best interests at heart?

Having said that, I would like to see decent preschools & daycare available to those who are "child poverty statistics". The majority of these kids have no other options - no fingerpainting happening here. And whether they are 6% and dropping or 17% and rising, they are out there ... just waiting to become part of that "uneducated populace" that Campbell & the Fraser Inst. so love to "manage".

Except for the recently past brief period of time where one wage earner could support a family, childcare was usually done in a group setting, as both parents were working (in the fields, or what have you) and cared for by elders, etc.

The kids are in daycare for a 8 hours a day. If Mom and Dad can't provide one on one time at some point in the other 16 hours of the day, then the problem doesn't lie with the childcare arrangements.

You can 'think' whatever you like, but it may not reflect reality.

I think many parents lose the ability to play (or forget how to lose the self-consciousness endemic to a generation of spectators who observe but rarely do), something that daycare workers get to practice daily.

Not exactly. Here's the original quote.

There's exceptional parents and sub-standard daycare workers, but that doesn't negate that fact that training in ECE gives one a leg up over parents w/out the same training in terms of preparing children for school and society. This, to me, seems self-evident, in much the same way that I'd prefer my doctor give me a medical exam rather than my Mom.

These settings were not a homogenous group of 3/4 years old though, the group usually included older & younger siblings & the elder carer (be it grandma, aunt, whatever) was almost always related & had a vested interest in the child, not that I'm saying that daycare workers don't care ... they just don't generally care as much as grandma, dad or mom would ... or should. A group of preschoolers is not going to learn appropriate social skills from each other; that's where older siblings (in your past group setting), parents, or if no other options exist, caring & well-trained ECEs come in. I would rather see those "good" daycare & preschool spaces go to those who would most benefit ... mainly those who fall under the category of poverty statistics.

All the research that I have found (Hawaii's Healthy Start, Aboriginal Head Start, Texas Early Education Model, Smart Start - just Google them)with respect to improved school readiness relates directly to kids who are at risk (poverty, teen mothers, etc.), so it isn't really surprising that they would benefit from quality child care/preschool. Here in BC, whether or not a child receives quality child care depends greatly on the child's family situation. Families with higher incomes tend to use higher quality care, leaving the poorer parents to rely on, well lets just say poorer quality care. Those kids living in at-risk families or disadvantaged homes would obviously benefit even more from quality child care.

I don't think it takes an "exceptional" parent or ECE training to make play-doh with your child or sing the alphabet song - more that too many parents find it easier to abdicate this job to someone else. It also makes it easier to put the blame elsewhere (public school, for instance) if things don't go according to expectations.

Okay, I would not go to my mom for a medical exam, or let her fly me somewhere in a plane ... but she can whip up a better dinner than many "trained chefs", my dad could have replaced a transmission better than many "trained mechanics" and a lot of parents I know could out-ITSY-BITSY-SPIDER many "trained ECEs" - not everything in life needs, or should require, a certificate, just some common sense and initiative.

Hmmm... 8 hours in daycare, an hour or so in transit, then dinner & off to bed ... most children of daycare age are sleeping at least 9/10 hours a night. Doesn't leave a whole lot of spare time for the one-on-one, especially if there is more than one child in the home. Which I guess leads me to agree with you ... the problem doesn't lie with the childcare arrangements ... it lies with society's attitude towards children, which in many ways mirrors that of the Fraser Inst. Parents: We want kids but I don't want to have to actually exert an effort to raise them myself, someone else can do it. Fraser Institute: We want uneducated consumers to buy our drivel, but we want someone else to deal with all the negative social ramifications. Both parents & Fraser Inst. (with hands over eyes): if we ignore it will it go away!

It is a different mindset. I did not say learning to take turns, I said, be happy waiting one’s turn. One can do a thing without liking it, because in the situation, it isn’t worth a fight.

Happily waiting one’s turn requires some of the stuffing having been beaten out of one. It often goes with a degree of selfrighteous self-effacing attitude, condemnatory to those who would be enterprising and innovative. Known as ‘don’t rattle my cage’.

And, I did not say ‘achieve’, which is a whole different concept from what I mean. I am not talking about getting A+’s or doing good within a set of terms others have defined, but about having the wherewithal to strike out on your own and create your own terms. This kind of ability is what we need now, we have way too few leaders in our society. So many institutions are lumbered with a top heavy ‘leadership’, consisting of individually weak people, who set up a whole little mob, so they can lean on each other and never really be the sole underwriter of anything. This is so screamingly ineffective, and we need to do better.

Stump made an important observation, when he said that elders often were the child care people. This makes sense, as they qualify as trained ECE’s, having done the job and received the feed back once already. Plus, they do not have vested interest, as they are not on a carreer path. I believe this would work. My own grandparents, the one set I had, were at least as important in my becoming who I am, as my parents, and I can see the difference in my children who grew up without grandparents.

I agree with raingirl, that a certificate is neither here nor there. In dealing with any kind of professional, you surely find an entire spectrum of capability and attitudes. I have walked right out the door of doctor’s offices, sick or not, because I didn’t like the vibes, it’s about horse sense.

I would refer people seriously interested in early childhood, and who isn’t – it’s our future - to this site:

http://www.empathicparenting.org/

And, I would remind us all of these unforgettable words from Ed Deak:

You cannot make something ‘cheaper’ through monetary manipulations. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone or something must pay the full cost.

It assures you that the person in question has had at least of minimum of training and has successfully completed said training.

Sorry, but I don't agree. Happily waiting one's turn is a crucial skill in today's world. To act otherwise is to behave like a toddler who can't defer gratification for even a moment.

Great historical quote on the need to uphold the Humanities & Liberal Arts (the specific issue here was the ouster of Latin, the mother tongue of virtually all European languages, from the curriculum...much to the detriment of all other languages not to mention civic multiculturalism everywhere)...

good. So bridges falling down and rink-roofs caving in are not due to poor engineering, but are 'acts of god'? Or, is training neither here nor there, but grasping the stuff is?

Still beg to differ. You don't see that my focus in on the adverb. I can do many things that don't make me happy. Some of them for money, but I am selling my services, not my soul. Ergo the feeling is not part of the skill, and the absence of it is what drives one onto bigger and better. Or freer and different.

I would hazard a guess that most of us are incapable of teaching ourselves how to build a bridge or ice rink without some instruction and training. Would you hire an unlicenced engineer on his/her say so that they knew how to build a bridge, or might you look for some qualifications?

As to doing things unhappily... if you have no choice but to do something (I'll stick with queuing, as I think it's a good example) why be unhappy about it? The line won't move any faster and being unhappy will just put stress on your body and mind. Being happy is a skill that can be developed.

But, I guess if you like being unhappy that's your business. I've a friend like that. My other friend's think he's a whiner.

I can't believe I just apostrophed "friends"! Oops.

And this has what to do with learning to take turns?

If you want to debate, you must read everything the other person says. I don't know what it is you try to do, maybe you're just in this for some sort of entertainment, but you quote incompletely and then try to hold me accountable for the truncated quote.
you're not using ink, so there's no saving in cutting off...
I don't like being unhappy, that's what drives me to make changes. If instead one just 'learns' to accept whatever it suits other people to fork over, that is not learning to be happy, that's being a doormat. Maybe some people can tell themselves black is white, I can't.

I've never suggested that one learn to accept whatever suits other people. I suggested that taking turns is necessary in our society and teaching children to do so with good humour is a good thing. Further, daycare centres provide a great, early start for children to develop this skill.

As have you.

Stump:

I think the real genuine disagreement we have is, that taking turns in this society is necessary, and being a trooper about it is a good thing to learn.

My claim is, that there is practically no turn-taking, which an individual cannot find an intelligent way around, not by cheating, but by creative thinking. I am suggesting that creative thinking is what will bring us forward, and that therefore daycare centres do damage by not encouraging it.

I don't have the stomach for taking the argument further, for I do not think any of us will convince the other. There must have been good experiences in your life related to daycare centres, not in mine. So maybe we should agree to disagree, so other people will have space for their input.

Sometimes you gotta queue. Why be grumpy about it?

My experience (one child, two licenced daycares) as been overwhelmingly positive. Like a lot of people, I had apprehensions at first. They have been totally dispelled.

The daycares and workers I have been exposed overwhelmingly promote creativity. They also teach respect and consideration, two things in very short supply these days.

As you say, time to let somebody else take a turn! Practice what ya preach n'est-ce pas?

"to which I have been exposed"

For anyone interested, a novel educational experiment is being undertaken in the U.K. I only mention it because I'd referred to gender-specific attempts to boost performance and inclusion in public school earlier on this thread...

Team scheme helps boys to achieve
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6212015.stm

nightbloom:
That is interesting. There have been similarly good results, for both boys and girls, in public school programs where male and female students have been placed in separate classes. Unfortunately, a major difficult arises, for boys at least, because of the shortage of appropriate male teachers with the kinds of leadership skills necessary to work in such an environment. And of course, effective teacher education is a big problem as well - the tendency to focus on girls who have usually been more perceptive to classroom learning - is something that needs to be overcome at all levels of public education.

The fact that most 'experimental' efforts seem to happen in private schools is an indictment of parents, educators and the legislature.

Sorry about the slipshod editing above.

Should be major 'difficulty' arises and, a bit further along 'receptive' rather than perceptive.

Yes, unfortunately boys don't really have organized advocates militating on education policy in the same manner that girls have over the past generation or so.

The importance of gender-specific adaptation of the curriculum was correctly identified by feminists, albeit in a very one-sided way. No thought was given to possible collateral effects in a co-ed environment. Boys found themselves in an environment tailored to let Jane know how great she was, and let Joe know that he can damn well take care of himself.

One of the greatest unheralded triumphs of feminism in the school system was the expansion of sport for girls. Pedagogical feminism was very aware that girls were missing out an this essential rite of passage, whereby boys were learning how to co-operate in groups, take and give direction, handle getting knocked down & picking themselves up again, and how to manage self-esteem in an environment in which defeat was part of the game, and mutual criticism a necessary and depersonalized exercise in team progress. In my opinion, the growth of team sports for girls has done more to give the current crop of girls and young women a leg up than any campus cuddle-session at the womynz centre.

No we have to find ways to do the same for boys, in those areas where boys have become deficient and maladapted.

...speaking of feminism, another luminary has passed:

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Historian, Is Dead at 65
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/arts/07fox-genovese.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Interesting perspective nightbloom. In some respects boys' sports, at the so-called elite level, have turned into nothing more than hunts for fame and gold - often orchestrated by parents with a well-defined sense of entitlement and not much else.

I saw the obit. But thanks.

That's an excellent point - that boys' sports have wandered away from their constructive purpose and are now used to reward and promote the worst kind of socialization. Ultimately, that kind of sporting excludes the vast majority of boys; it effectively locks out those most in need of constructive socialization (i.e. unathletic boys, loners, gay/effeminate boys, etc.). These rejects are the male analogy of the archetypal schoolyard "fat girl" we're all familiar with. They're in a fix, because they can access neither the traditional male socialization structures, nor the new ones that have been created for girls.

I was simply referring to the intramural sports practiced in public school or your local baseball diamond...not to junior leagues or anything.