Contempt for Calgary Teachers

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Editor’s note: I had planned to keep with this month’s theme of sound, with a piece about a friend’s hearing impairment, but news has overtaken me.

Hello Reader,

Got breaking news?

Just when you hoped teachers could learn? 

BREAKING NEWS: 

Bullying Report Merits Contempt says Sean Crawford

This week, the Calgary Herald newspaper page 3 headline (Thursday October 17) goes, 

Staff training urged in CBE bullying report. 

(CBE stands for Calgary Board of Education) Right below is the “kicker,” 

Critic charges board review ‘dismissive’ of parents, students facing difficulties.

As it happens, although I graduated from the department of disabilities at the local university’s Faculty of Education, with due respect for my fellow alumni, I must agree, not with the school board that made the report, but with critic Barb Silva, the spokeswoman for the Support Our Students advocacy group. The context is the suicide of a bullied nine year old girl in March.

History repeats. I sympathized with parents and students back in mid-2015, in my essay Saving Tomorrow Land (regarding a movie about George Clooney wearing a jet pack) where I noticed that Bully Solutions, with 40 case studies, gave little hope because nearly all of the solutions had come from parents: Teachers with university degrees seemingly knew less about bullying that an untrained parent with common sense. Hence my contempt. I am of the opinion—let’s hope I’m wrong—that the tragic death of that nine year old, and the many tragic deaths at the Columbine School, have been in vain. In tomorrow’s land, as astronauts soar into space, the bullying down here will go on and on.

Please forgive me for voicing this distressing opinion. In February I reviewed What We Want You to Know by children from a good affluent area of southern Ontario, subtitled Kids Talk About Bullying. Of all the stories told, (think case studies) the teachers were effective only twice. May God and parents help those poor children, because nobody else will.

The fresh report by the CBE (Calgary Board of Education) says teachers need more training. Really? Where have I heard that line before? Oh yes, in South Vietnam and Iraq, remember? 

Experts told us that with “more training” those well-equipped armies would bravely take on, face to face, ragged insurgents and ISIS forces which are without training, only common sense. Rubbish! Soldiers will not risk their sacred lives, nor teachers risk their sacred comfort, unless they feel mutual trust in each other, having confidence that the “hearts and minds’ of everybody else are in agreement. In February I documented, from practical U.S. for-profit hospital meetings, how such a “win” is indeed possible—without reliance on classroom “training,” while noting it might take a year or more for teachers to trust each other. The founder of those for-profit meetings is living right here in Calgary, a former Calgary Alderman and Member of the Legislative Assembly, (think US state government) Brian Lee. (Note: Lee’s plan takes three years, not ‘one year and then stop,’ lest confidence, attitudes and momentum be lost) 

The school board, through Kent Donlevy, interviewed 150 CBE staff. Donlevy said there was no time to interview parents and students since the research was done over the summer months. Silva asked, “So why not do this important research over the span of a year?” The Herald article by Eva Ferguson notes, ‘But Silva argued the language being used in schools is too vague and serves little purpose:’ “Why use well-being or wellness? Why not call it what it is? It’s bullying. Where is the discussion, action and initiative around conflict resolution for students? Where does the board address emotional resilience?”

Long ago a philosopher said, “If a goal is true and good and beautiful, AND if it is not being reached, then there is an obstacle in the way.” Want to stop bullying, unrelenting misery and suicide? There is an obstacle here, and it’s not the parents.

Sean Crawford

Wetaskiwin

October

2019

Footnotes, for those with hardy stomachs: 

~A field tour of Vietnam stopped after one year. (Six months for officers) Unfortunately, children may be in misery for years, plural, according to those Ontario students.

(Reminder: There’s no excuse for being surprised anymore—It was back in the early 1970’s that Women’s Liberation, to society’s big surprise, discovered that even drab nuns in shapeless clothing can be assaulted, with rape being not from arousal, but from the joy of violence and bullying)

Three news links from the BBC, from this year:

(link) A wife and mother, even though (sarcasm) ‘kids will be kids and you should just ignore them,’ has Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

(link) A young girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted by bullies on the playground but her teacher didn’t believe her until she was too sore to sit down.

(link) A boy is no longer the same since he was raped by a bully on a play date.

Three essays of mine, archived from this year:

Human Warmth and War of the Worlds includes a part regarding a  U.S. school shooting, and teacher’s CYA response, May 2019

History repeats. During Vietnam, angry young soldiers observed that army paperwork was not to advance the war effort but “to cover your ass.” (CYA)

Bullying Still, is regarding teachers at that Calgary school not changing their culture after suicide, and a girl, with an award from the prime minister, having to change schools, May 2019

Bullies and Teachers, regarding practical advice for teachers, beyond “try harder,” February 2019

For folks “archive challenged,” here’s (a link)

Nerds and Normals

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Reader,

Got nerds?

Nobody believes me when I say am a nerd. So then I chuckle to myself thinking, “OK, then I’m a recovering nerd.”

Here’s a cool nerd factoid: How about that South Korean flag? It includes a prominent Yang and Yin symbol, two-in-one black and white teardrops. 

It was Chairman Mao, the first communist ruler of China, who pointed out that, actually, the black and white did not have to be scrupulously fifty-fifty. In his essay On Contradiction he explained how one color can be dominating, sixty-forty, for example, then—flip!—The colors can switch places, so the other one is more prevalent. He wrote this to explain the philosophy of “dialectical materialism,” (footnote) to give brand new leaders, after the revolution, some self confidence that they could replace the mandarins and officials—who were given the boot— and then go run the “people’s republic.”

Right now, I am imagining those two colors as nerd and non-nerd. I’m sure all of us have a touch of nerd, as when we like factoids, while all of us have a touch of that Regular American: a plain fellow who believes that everything could, and should, be explained simply, distrusting educated complexity. That distrust is why Hollywood rivals and villains, like that clown on The Simpsons, are often educated Britishers… implying that US universities, except for the household name ones, are below the level of British and Canadian ones. (Probably so, given that my degree equals a US masters degree, according to my professors who have compared curriculums while at American conferences) 

As for understanding nerds, it was a computer millionaire, Paul Graham, who wrote of how the really smart boys, back in high school, were supposedly, somehow, not smart enough to figure how to appear normal and be popular. His explanation was: Yes, teens all want to fit in—something easier to do back in elementary school—but teenage nerds want something even more: to be smart. OK, I’m oversimplifying. Graham also said teen “high school society” has a lack of shared real problems. Therefore the only shared “problem” they have, of helping each other strive to be “normal” and popular is, for a nerd, just too unreal, too un-motivating, and too airy-fairy. But for an unthinking regular teen, “normal” is whatever other teens say it is. 

Of course, in the adult world, with real group problems, status is not from being the most conformist, but from who will help the most with tackling a group’s problem/project/shared goals. There’s a reason why, at the annual dinner, people clap for the volunteers. Those hardy volunteers have earned some status. 

A few decades back, a baby boomer wrote a book called Is There Life After High School? I answer: Sure there is, but I think, in adult society, the trick is to find your vocations and avocations within groups small enough for a person to be noticed for achieving some “status and popularity” through real contributions.  Graham, who preferred small computer startup companies, would warn that in the big conventional companies it is harder to measure your actual contribution, hence there is more attention to office politics and image and fakery. Call it, ‘high school lite.’

Some former teens will see the entire country as their peer group, and resort to status from the only thing they have left for such a gross undiscerning crowd: conspicuous consumption. Money. But adult nerds are quick to see through that ploy. That’s why in Silicon Valley no brainy millionaires will desperately crave to know what is the latest, most excruciatingly correct clothing-fashion-for-the-wealthy. In fact, they dress rather like nerds.

I have been over simplifying, so far, by making nerds seem non-regular because of their brains. But there can be another reason for being different: social isolation. At the end of the movie Revenge of the Nerds II, as I dimly recall, a laundry list of nerd characteristics is recited, a list which includes things having nothing to do with being smart, such as poor hygiene or being able to burp long and loud. Well. If I was a proud hermit, coming into town only occasionally for supplies, then I would nevertheless make it my business to cultivate an “awareness level” for what is normal among the townsfolk. Examples of folks employing such an “awareness skill” would be undercover spies, television set decorators, actors, and the writer of the Jack Reacher mysteries. Being observant, as every Boy Scout knows, is fun. 

Oh, such a fun life the founder of Boy Scouts had! Life would never be boring for the man who once drew a few sketches of different men to show how each man’s personality is reflected by how he tilts his hat. As for folks who would never do the Boy Scout thing of being “observant,” well, I think they would risk living in their own little bubble. As if they value being oblivious.

What I observe, besides other things, is nerds: Because if I’m real smart, then being a nerd would be my default—I want to know what to avoid.

I wonder: Are nerds stiff and humor-challenged? Then I could take a night class in stand up comedy improvisation. Not that I ever have, but I could. Do they dress dull? Then I could rip through my closet tossing out anything beige. Hey, maybe I’d look good in mauve. Are they close-minded and set in their ways? I could take a night class in liberal arts. 

Are nerds scared to meet and mingle? Me too, sometimes, but …then I remember how comedian Red Green ends each show by saying, “We’re all in this together” adding “I’m pulling for you,” and “remember to keep your stick on the ice.” As I see it, the best way to de-nerdify would be, just like Red Green, to care about others. Call it the Zen of Caring—No wonder the Boy Scouts  learn to do a good turn every day. Here’s a mantra: “If I care about others, then awareness of others will come naturally.” And for mingling, there’s always that mantra from Galilee: “Perfect love casteth out all fear.”

I enjoyed mingling in my shared house. I’m still chuckling over talking to the parents visiting a young man there. “For an only child,” I marvelled, “your son is sure unspoiled.” 

“We had the only swimming pool on the block. That way, when the other kids came over, they made sure he wasn’t spoiled!”

I guess somewhere along the trail I must have mingled enough, because no one today believes I’m a nerd.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

June

2019

An abstract footnote:

~”Dialectical materialism, “the trick of seeing things “in terms of their contradictions,” can be a life-changing trick, according to Barak Obama’s mentor Saul Alinsky, in his book Rules For Radicals. I must confess I don’t do any dialectical materialism myself, but I’m throwing it out there. I suspect it was Karl Marx who saw things as “thesis, antithesis and synthesis.” Just throwing that out for you.
Or as a comic book hero says:
“Contradiction is the seed of conciousness. I knew, from the pain of contradiction, that I was. And what I was.” 
― Joss Whedon, Astonishing X-Men, Volume 2: Dangerous

Some not so abstract footnotes:

~In his review (link) of Revenge of the Nerds II, (a movie of regular popular culture) Roger Ebert explains what nerds are, saying it’s something the movie doesn’t understand.

~I sympathize with struggling nerds and “social isolates”: Nora Ephron once remarked in an interview, “Nobody interesting had an ordinary childhood.” She wrote interesting things like her 2006 bestseller I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman and, back in the 20th century, Wallflower at the Orgy where she slightly mocked editor Helen Gurly Brown’s articles in Cosmopolitan magazine saying “She’s just trying to help” which is, I guess, what folks might say about my own essays. (And yes, her book title is more literal than figurative)

~Nora mentioned that her fellow writers wrote “beneath themselves” doing simple articles for popular magazines in order to pay the bills. If here, for my essay site, I write simply with very few complex-compound sentences, it’s because I write for regular people, in keeping with my journalism past. As feedDigest Channel on the web says:

QUOTE: 

According to the data and stats that were collected, ‘Essays by Sean’ channel has an excellent rank. The channel mostly uses long articles along with sentence constructions of the basic readability level, which is a result indicating a well-balanced textual content on the channel.

UNQUOTE

link to more stats: http://channels.feeddigest.com/Essays_by_Sean

Also, my site has “low traffic” and “extraordinary global rank.” Hurray! The blog sometimes gets translated too, which I only know about from having google statistics. The translators are never polite enough to say hello.

~As for our cultural belief that it is best to speak plainly, that everything can be simplified and paraphrased and summarized to be simpler: Wrong! There is a reason why professors don’t talk like high school teachers, but will instead use several clauses in their sentences. Samual Delaney said that, for detailed sentences, to even paraphrase is to change the meaning.

I’m angry at our culture because: It was “busy” politicians who wouldn’t read past the summary and into the actual report, which had nuance and qualifiers, probabilities and footnotes, who would then conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One politician, too self-important to read the report, bleated like a sheep, “We mustn’t let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud.”

Meanwhile, I am a little angry, mostly contemptuous, at the UN because the IPCC, the UN’s climate change guys, according to a Manchester reporter, write their UN report summary first, and then the various scientists are expected to constrict their reporting to fit the summary.

Here’s a dense sidebar about the consequences of our distrust of complex talk, 

in the form of a quote included in my essay Death of the Liberal Class archived May 2015:

<< …(The liberal class was) forgetting, as MacDonald wrote, that “as in arts and letters, communicability to a large audience is in inverse ratio to the excellence of a political approach. This in not a good thing: as in art, it is a deforming and crippling factor. Nor is it an eternal rule: in the past, the ideas of a tiny minority, sometimes almost reduced to the vanishing point of one individual, have slowly come to take hold on more and more of their fellow men.”

The cultural embrace of simplification, as MacDonald warned, meant reducing a population to speaking in pre-digested clichés and slogans. It banished complexity and further pushed to the margins difficult, original, or unfamiliar ideas. The assault on radical and original thought, which by definition did not fit itself into the popular cultural lexicon, saw art forms such as theatre suffer.  (P. 88) >>

Young Fascist Idealists

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“I know something about Brexit because for a long time, every single day, before checking the exchange rate for pound sterling, I would click on British politics.”

Sean Crawford

Hello Reader,

Got rosy cheeked fascists?

Young fascists in Britain

Old bullies in parliament

Two philosophies

Young fascists in Britain

I was reading a news story out of Britain, that land of frequent rain, good skin and rosy cheeks, when I was struck by the fascism of the young and innocent.

No, I’m not thinking about the leader of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who despite losing a referendum on independence a few years ago (Fall of 2014) is talking about reviving the idea, of independence through a referendum, using “Brexit” as an excuse. (Britain exiting the European Union)

Historical note: Of course, once you say referendums don’t count, are NOT to be grave and respected like the Charter, but instead, for Brexit and Scottish independence, can be re-done, can be taken as lightly as a changeable set of by-laws, then: (besides making referendum voters cynical) What’s to keep politicians from having a referendum every few years, until they get their sought-for result, and then having a “one-way valve” where no referendum on reversing independence is allowed? In Canada, certain Quebecers were all set to pull such a trick, while in the US, to make the full nation gravely respected, the pledge of allegiance says the republic is “indivisible.”

End of note.

Rather, I am thinking about something First Minister Sturgeon said, in relation to her ideas. She referred to what Abraham Lincoln said: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” What Lincoln said next, less often quoted, was, “Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”

It was to mold public opinion that Greenpeace, over here in Canada, unfurled banners down the parliament buildings. (In December of 2009, according to Google)

As for sentiment, I know what President Roosevelt would say. Because he said it—not to Greenpeace, of course—to people of an earlier generation who went to see him during the Great Depression, advocating for some legislation. “OK, you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and bring pressure on me.” 

I have an idea as to why Roosevelt said that: While big business saw him as a communist, a marxist, a bolshevik, and a “red” devil with horns, and while the president could live with their hateful opinion, as he was enacting his New Deal to help the public… he had no desire for that same public to see him as a fascist, a dictator, a king, doing something that he, and only he, sincerely thought was right. (Here are (link) some cartoons about him)

Historical note: Fascism was invented in Italy by Benito Mussolini, although by WWII—according to the writings of George Orwell in London during the blitz—just like some word out of the double-speak of  Nineteen Eighty-Four, “fascism” merely meant something “bad.”  … Even today, with our higher rates of education and our World Wide Web, most people, even idealistic Greenpeace-types, still cannot define fascism beyond “bad.” (I have trouble myself, although the word is in the dictionary)

End of note. 

In the British Isles, recently, idealistic youth were having school walkouts against climate change. I find that charming, since my long haired generation did the same thing, the year Greenpeace was first invented: We, and Greenpeace, protested the atomic testing over in Alaska. In Surrey Canada, as I recall, about half our student body skipped school one day, and of those, half went down a trail to a culvert, while half went off to formally protest. Back then, as in ancient Rome, we students were less like responsible citizens and more like the classic illiterate mob. For the mob to mobilize, issues must be presented as very simple, and action-to-be-taken must be very simple as well. No complexity, no nuance and absolutely no requirement for reading.

What I find less charming, more fascist, is when the young people seem to think they need to go demonstrate to change the minds of parliament. I think I know what Roosevelt and Lincoln would say: Why aren’t these young fascists trying to change the public sentiment?

If I was in conversation with a few young students, then, knowing how they like Star Wars and Star Trek, I would refer to one of the episodes of the original Star Trek. You may recall the Enterprise transporting a tired old man, secretly Kodos the Executioner, hiding among a traveling troupe of players. A player quotes the bard: “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch, The conscience of the king.” (episode title) I wish here on earth, Sol III, those rosy cheeked children wouldn’t treat parliament as being a bunch of kings; instead, I wish they’d  try to catch the conscience of the public. But that would take time and effort, two things kids have trouble with, as we all know. But still. 

Couldn’t the kids aim at both parliament and the democratic masses? In fact, I think an effort for marketing, for interpreting to the public, would develop, for the students, excellent “project skills.”(Hint to teachers)

As for my Canadians readers, can you recall why those Greenpeace grownups unfurled banners down the roof of parliament; or remember whether they followed up with more education for us? No? Then I guess, public-wise, their project failed.

So Many Fascists are bullies, aren’t they?

Old bullies in Parliament

Or

With MPs like this,  we sure do need citizen involvement

As you may recall, the Brexit agreement-deal with the European Union was last year. It was this year that, among the many groan-worthy things that many Members of Parliament have said, it was an MP from Northern Ireland who announced the prime minister should go back and “renegotiate, hard.” I groan, because, well, call me a typical North American capitalist, but I will surely tell you this: If someone tries to renegotiate with me after a deal is done, then the HARD negotiation will be from my side, “serving the deal-breaker right.” Of course, as you know, the 27 other members of the EU have already said the deal is not to be re-written, not after taking so long in such good faith to accomplish it.

For many weeks the bullies, with hateful intensity, have demanded that Mrs Teresa May step down as prime minister. So this week she has resigned as leader of her party (her PM role to follow). For my part, I am as egotistical as the next man, but for this? No, no, no, I must humbly confess, I myself could not have done any better than Mrs May. (news story with video speech)

The bullying seems so strange, since May is the only one who has kept her eye on the ball all this time. Stranger still is the MPs believing that if someone else were leader, then that someone would somehow be able to speak better than Mrs May, listen better than her and persuade other MPs better. 

Not to mention persuade the EU to re-negotiate, starting from scratch, expecting 27 EU leaders to pretend they hadn’t already thought long and hard about the issue of Brexit.  And furthermore, the MPs believe a new leader would come up with new ideas that no other MP has during the years since the Brexit referendum in the summer of 2016. I disagree with them, myself; I am merely repeating what so many MP’s have said, time and again. The MPs wouldn’t allow Mrs May any middle way, AND they even formally voted (non binding) against allowing a no-deal Brexit, tying her hands even though such a black-and-white resolution matches the referendum ideal that “Brexit means Brexit.”

I groan. But hey, what do I know, living way over here, on this topping day, simply top hat, on the far side of the ocean on the further side of the American continent, eh wot?—Oh I say, there’s a ripping bridge on the closer side of America. I would surely tell those MPs something: “Pip pip! If you believe what you say you believe, then I own a bridge in Brooklyn, which I am willing to sell to you, real cheap.”

Two Philosophies

Philosophy of Brexit failure: I see on the Canadian evening news that Mrs May has “failed,” and that her predecessor David Cameron had “failed” around Brexit too. Both resigned. 

Memory pops in: I am reminded of something business guru Peter Drucker said in regards to the failure of two top executives in a row. Drucker wrote of great commercial clipper ships: If a ship failed (had accidents) twice then, rather than try a third captain, the ship was labeled a “widow maker” and broken up into pieces.

Similarly, Drucker wrote: (link)

Whenever a job defeats two people in a row, who in their earlier assignments had performed well, a company has a widow maker on its hands. When this happens, a responsible executive should not ask the head-hunter for a universal genius. Instead abolish the job. Any job that ordinarily competent people cannot perform is a job that cannot be staffed. Unless changed, it will predictably defeat the third incumbent the way it defeated the first two.

I dare say history will judge Mrs May was in a widow maker job.

Philosophy 101: The above mentioned Star Trek episode, The Conscience of the King, was a perfect example of  the philosophies of Emanuel Kant versus John Stuart Mill. 

In a recent writer’s circle at the Alexandra Writers Centre, local science fiction author Ron Friedman contrasted Kant and Mill. As best I understand it: Kant believed that if something was wrong, such as killing, then it was always wrong, for one should always do right without sacrificing ones values. 

In contrast, Mill believed in practical utilitarianism, that results are what counts, for one should judge by the greatest good for the greatest number. In this camp would be Kodos the Executioner, long wanted for crimes against humanity, after his thousands of executions on Tarsus IV had saved so many lives from famine, so long ago.

Sean Crawford

May,

Calgary,

2019

Footnote on Brexit: I’ve just updated my March essay on Teresa May to explain: Part of the problem, after the referendum was supposed to be a “done deal” is that a desire to act on “remaining” has changed to be no longer a secret vice, but instead, during the agony of a drawn-out Brexit, something to openly declare, although at least until this very month they still wouldn’t openly say that a “confirmatory second referendum” is secretly intended to torpedo Brexit. 

To me all this is is too much like fearfully advancing in a line over “no man’s land” while many of the lads at your shoulders are saying they want to “remain” back in the trenches. Advancing to Brexit would already be very hard, even without the unbelievable folly of "the trumpet giving an uncertain call. " (Corinthians, in the Holy Bible)

Bullying Still

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Sometimes a “bullying solution” is 

not found with “the total school” or “the students” but firstly with “the teachers.” Just the teachers.

Hello Reader,

Got bullying? Still?

Sorry, I know I’m being angry here when I start speaking with words in italics, or in this case, writing with italics, but hey, I’m not apologizing.

In February I reported on bullying in Ontario, where the teachers were in denial. From May 4th, here is (link) a case where a girl’s teacher allowed her to sit in class with orange juice having been thrown on her face, the same girl who had received an award from the prime minister. The girl, Nadia Sparkes, 13, is a hero, except to losers who believe in excruciating conformity. Easier for them to crucify a peer than to look within and face their own discomfort. I had read about Nadia before; I never thought she would have to change to a school eleven miles (17.7 kilometres) away. Because of bullying.

Denial is easy: Regarding my last bullying essay to expose teachers and propose a remedy beyond merely “trying harder,” (link to February essay on Bullies and Teachers) you could smugly say, “Ontario is a b-a-a-a-d province, not like ours.” Oh sure, in fact, on a road trip in a province west of Ontario, I found a newspaper letter by a retired teacher who that said that in her school bullying was dealt with; in her school teachers would report bullying… Doubtful! I hate to burst your bubble Ma’am, but we even had to pass a law to legally FORCE teachers to report child abuse. 

To my knowledge there is no law forcing teachers to report a child sitting through class with orange juice sticking to her. The article adds that a bully who pulled a knife on Nadia “is getting support.” That’s nice, but Nadia is not. In the article there is nothing included about support for Nadia while other children continued to bully her. I strongly suspect she did not get any support at all, right up until she changed schools. Not if her teachers were like the ones in Ontario, and in Alberta, and in your province too.

As for Alberta, the letter I found was from a teacher here. Easy to deny and say,  “Our province is better than Ontario,” but… in March an innocent nine-year-old, here in Calgary, ended her bullying… by ending her own life… The parents had gone to the teacher four times. As it turned out, it was the teacher who sparked the bullying by being, er, “non-nurturing,” one day in class.

—Update, Mary 6: Today CBC Radio reported another family at the same school saying the school is “in denial” about bullying, saying they have given up and taken their girls out.

Now here I am at my keyboard feeling crazy enough to have put words in italics, which my English teacher says I’m not supposed to do. And feeling crazy to say we have to start with the teachers, NOT with the children, by making a concerted long-term effort. (which I essayed about in detail in February) I feel a teeny-tiny bit humiliated, right this second, from knowing, as I type this, that teachers will diplomatically say I’m impractical, or will use that age-old teenager’s slogan, “You just don’t understand!” My reply, after taking a breath… so I don’t use italics… 

“Is that so? Tell me, how are your other methods working out for you?”

Sean Crawford

Calgary,

Hoping a grief-crazed father 

doesn’t try to prevent innocent children suffering another Columbine massacre, 

By going after the guilty teachers in their staffroom at lunchtime,

with a gun, 

that shoots paintballs,

May,

2019 A.D.

Footnotes:

~Sometimes when teachers are supported then they can feel safe in dropping their denial. 

~It was a man from the provincial legislature, Brian Lee, who created the company that leads agencies and hospitals into being world-class, as I mentioned in my Bullies and Teachers essay. His company is called Custom Learning Systems Group Ltd.

~Supporting our dear teachers to effectively have a “non-bullying culture” could then result in less bullying in the adult world. Which could then help our economy. (if only from having less turbulence in the business world from bullying) To explain:

Today, May 4th, (for white coat, black arts)

 the CBC aired a documentary on how a taxpayer-funded hospital paid seven lawyers for a span of ten years to try to uphold bullying. But in the end the hospital was found to have “bad faith” by a jury and was therefore ordered to pay a bullied innocent doctor over a million dollars. What if future doctors, back in high school, had seen that everyone should have dignity? Had seen, with their own eyes, that bullies would not succeed? The taxpayers could have been saved millions of dollars.     

SIDEBAR, May 4th, after British council elections, 

On British adults being Bullies in Parliament.

Is it OK to have initiative? 

When I chair the weekly Friday Fee Fall, if volunteers are learning to put healthy expectations on themselves for their role as participants in a meeting, (and doing so much better than folks in the working world who “hate meetings”) 

then I don’t mind at all if they intervene to help things move along.

At work, if some staff are standing by a fence line, I am confident my manager wouldn’t mind if I started picking up litter blown against the fence, or sparked others to join me in doing so.

So yes, initiative is fine. 

But right now, certain Members of Parliament, while having zero initiative themselves, are saying Prime Minister Teresa May should step down, so that “someone else” could talk and lead, amongst the members of parliament from various parties, in order to deliver Brexit. Well.

This begs me to ask the question: Why isn’t the “someone,” who could be anyone, such as the conservative party’s Boris Johnson, already showing initiative? Perhaps by talking to other MPs; perhaps through joining Mrs. May in talking to the labour party’s leaders; or through keeping an eye on the ball by taking initiative, every day, to mingle with all the rest of parliament to spark new, improved ideas for Brexit. Instead, I have read about MPs claiming “new ideas” could appear “if only” there was another extension to the Brexit date, or if only Mrs May would quit parliament. From MP’s, such talk is fantasy. From teenagers saying “if only” I sense victim-talking. Better to replace “if only” with “next time…”

Those idle MPs who publicly want Mrs. May to take her eye off the ball by resigning are the same slackers who seem unwilling to be part of the solution. Mrs. May is too busy to reply or call them names. Not me: I call them bullies.


Update: The prime minister of Ireland is not impressed either. For June 11, 2019:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48602072 Also he said:

"What people are saying is, 'give up the backstop' which we know will work legally and operationally in return for something that doesn't yet exist but might exist in the future. 

"I can't do that to the border communities."

Mr Varadkar also said he was "concerned at the idea, and there is an idea there in Westminster, in London, that somehow Theresa May was a bad negotiator and got a bad deal. 

"That's not true. She was a good negotiator, she had a good team.

"She probably got the best deal that she could get given that a country leaving the EU doesn't have much leverage. 

"The fact that the failure of the House Of Commons to ratify the Withdrawal Agreement somehow means they are going to get a better deal, that is just not how the European Union works," he said.

Epi-notes:

~For more on MP’s being silly see my essay on Statesman Mrs. Teresa May, archived March 2019, and Billy Bragg and Brexit, archived January 2019.

~Drat! Fooey! Rats! That idiot investor, Warren Buffet, has said he would invest in Britain despite Brexit. And people respect him just because he’s a billionaire. That and his track record. So today the pound sterling has soared in strength against my poor scanty dollars.

~OK, I admit I was angry today: I was “s’posed to” follow up on last week’s essay on Alienation and Isolation. Well. So click in next week for Human warmth and The War of the Worlds.