Le gouvernement Couillard peut sauver la réforme de 2006

2014/04/24 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Christian Laville on Quebec’s “history wars” in relation to public education and the historical narrative used. The PQ government had plans to revise the curriculum, in line with their objective of creating long-term disengagement from Canadian history, a more balanced approach may come from the new Liberal government:

Comme on pouvait s’y attendre, le rapport Beauchemin–Famhy-Eid est bien conforme aux voeux du Parti québécois et de la Coalition. Ce qui est central dans ce rapport, c’est la proposition de revenir à un programme ordonné selon la trame nationale. En veut-on une illustration ? Dans la partie argumentative de ce petit rapport, quarante pages bien aérées, on compte 25 fois les mots « trame nationale », dont 13 fois « la trame nationale ». Comme il est expliqué, la trame nationale doit servir de fil conducteur vers la question nationale « qui organise et singularise l’histoire du Québec, depuis les premiers balbutiements d’une communauté découvrant sa singularité jusqu’aux méandres de la “ question nationale ” telle qu’elle circonscrit aujourd’hui nos conflits et nos rassemblements » (p. 41).

Il est donc facile de reconnaître ce que cela implique. D’autant plus facilement que dans les milieux nationalistes-conservateurs, ladite trame nationale apparaît souvent comme synonyme de cheminement vers la souveraineté. Ainsi, chez un des principaux animateurs de l’opposition au programme actuel, l’historien Éric Bédard, qui, commentant la défaite du Parti québécois du 7 avril, explique : « On annonce un peu vite la défaite du mouvement souverainiste. Cette trame nationale traverse notre histoire. »

Le ballon est maintenant entre les mains du nouveau gouvernement. Durant la campagne électorale, Philippe Couillard a déclaré : « Je veux m’assurer qu’on est dans une direction de mieux informer les gens de notre histoire, et qu’il n’y ait pas de teinte politique partisane, qui est parfois subtile. » Le moment est venu de s’en assurer. Et de procéder pour sauver un enseignement de l’histoire de qualité qui peut encore être sauvé, un enseignement de l’histoire moderne sachant tenir compte des réalités de notre époque et des besoins des élèves d’aujourd’hui.

Sauver l’enseignement de l’histoire en préservant la forme moderne du programme en vigueur, cependant, n’empêcherait pas de corriger certains des irritants que les enseignants ont constatés dans leur pratique, et dont plusieurs, il est juste de le dire, sont mentionnés dans le rapport Beauchemin–Famhy-Eid. Nous pensons par exemple au rétablissement d’une chronologie continue, à une rédaction plus claire du programme, à la clarification des connaissances à faire acquérir… Le rapport propose aussi d’accroître la part de l’histoire dans la formation des maîtres, ce que nous appuyons.

Le gouvernement Couillard peut sauver la réforme de 2006 | Le Devoir.

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Professors are Less Likely to Mentor Female and Minority Students, Especially in Business School – The Wire

2014/04/24 Leave a comment

Another version of the blind cv test to demonstrate bias (see How an ethnic-sounding name may affect the job hunt), this time with respect to mentorship in the US:

Faculty bias is particularly entrenched in areas of study that lead to the best-paying jobs, like the natural sciences and business. “The very worst in terms of bias is business academia,” Milkman says. “We see a 25-percentage-point gap in the response rate to caucasian males versus women and minorities.”

Professors are Less Likely to Mentor Female and Minority Students, Especially in Business School – The Wire.

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Komagata Maru exhibit recalls ship that was turned away

2014/04/24 Leave a comment

Good community-led initiative:

This year, the 100th anniversary of the episode, Mr. Girn is helping to tell the story, which has become a passion for him.

He is overseeing the project Komagata Maru 1914-2014, a collaboration among eight institutions across the Lower Mainland to hold exhibitions and events. At the Surrey Art Gallery, Ruptures in Arrival: Art in the Wake of the Komagata Maru examines contemporary art dealing with the event – and more recent histories of mass migration from Asia to Canada’s West Coast.

The Komagata Maru sailed to Vancouver in 1914, arriving in May. It had 376 passengers on board from Punjab, India – most of them Sikhs. They were British subjects, as were the Canadians they were hoping to join on this side of the Pacific. But Canada allowed only 24 to land. The rest, after two desperate months in Vancouver’s harbour, were forced to return to India. By the time they got there, the First World War had begun and they were seen as potentially seditious. Some were shot and many were imprisoned.

A great deal has been written about the incident, but Surrey Art Gallery curator Jordan Strom says finding visual art about it was challenging.

Komagata Maru exhibit recalls ship that was turned away – The Globe and Mail.

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The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

2014/04/24 Leave a comment

Understandably, the Government has claimed credit for Canada now having a higher middle class income than the US (any government would do the same, even though this is a 30-year trend involving many governments).

I recall during the 1990s the then Mulroney government had a “prosperity initiative” that included studies by Michael Porter who was then a major figure on theories and factors involved in growth (and has broadened his focus since then: see We’re Not No. 1! We’re Not No. 1! – Porter’s Social Competitiveness Report). At the time, one of the talking points was that Canada was a Honda Civic nation, the US was a Honda Accord. Times have changed.

And the most interesting part is the explanation, which has public policy implications:

Three broad factors appear to be driving much of the weak income performance in the United States. First, educational attainment in the United States has risen far more slowly than in much of the industrialized world over the last three decades, making it harder for the American economy to maintain its share of highly skilled, well-paying jobs.

Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have literacy, numeracy and technology skills that are above average relative to 55- to 65-year-olds in rest of the industrialized world, according to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group. Younger Americans, though, are not keeping pace: Those between 16 and 24 rank near the bottom among rich countries, well behind their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan and Scandinavia and close to those in Italy and Spain.

A second factor is that companies in the United States economy distribute a smaller share of their bounty to the middle class and poor than similar companies elsewhere. Top executives make substantially more money in the United States than in other wealthy countries. The minimum wage is lower. Labor unions are weaker.

And because the total bounty produced by the American economy has not been growing substantially faster here in recent decades than in Canada or Western Europe, most American workers are left receiving meager raises.

American Incomes Are Losing Their Edge, Except at the TopInflation-adjusted, after-tax income over time

Finally, governments in Canada and Western Europe take more aggressive steps to raise the take-home pay of low- and middle-income households by redistributing income.

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest – NYTimes.com.

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My Take: Couillard Pitches Charter Lite

2014/04/23 Leave a comment

My speculation on what will and will not be included in Premier Couillard’s proposed Charte de laicité:

Will the new premier be able to develop an approach that responds to the concerns of many Quebeckers, while respecting the fundamental rights of each Quebecker, regardless of their religion? Former PQ Premier Pauline Marois, ironically, paved the way by showing the limits to identity-based politics in Quebec.

By moving early in his mandate, while the PQ is occupied in its post-election reflections, and the CAQ is trying to position itself as the main opposition party, Couillard has a unique opportunity to help Quebec to move past the divisive debate over the previous Charter.

Couillard Pitches Charter Lite – New Canadian Media – NCM

The Globe, on the other hand, takes a similar position to Haroon Siddiqui of the Star (Philippe Couillard is in a secular charter mess of his own). Globe’s editorial board wants Couillard to drop his idea of a Quebec Charte de laicité. Never sure how helpful or relevant such editorials are when, as one of the first commitments of a newly-elected Premier, Couillard will press ahead. Likely more productive to note one’s opposition but recognize the reality, and focus more on the form and content:

Mr. Couillard should leave it there. If he truly feels that the combined force of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Quebec Bill of Human Rights and Freedoms, the courts and the ongoing maturation of modern Quebec society are not enough to manage the reasonable accommodation of minority religious rights in Quebec, then perhaps his government can make itself feel better (and keep the PQ quiet) by adopting an anodyne motion restating that Quebec’s government is secular and that men and woman are equals. But the smarter play is to just wait. After six months go by, and then another six, and then a few years, and Quebeckers realize the supposedly imminent threats that the Charter of Values was purported to be a bulwark against never existed in the first place, they will lose interest in the subject and develop even more of a distaste for politicians who play the identity card.

Couillard should bury the Charter of Values – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Charte de la laïcité, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

“Shopping for Votes” Immigration and Citizenship

2014/04/23 Leave a comment

Target voting groups among ethnic communities: Philipino, Chinese and Indo-Canadians, with my comparison table of the figures highlighted in the press releases:

Visitor Visas Permanent Residents Student Visas Ancestry
Philipino Canadians

47,000

30,000

650,000
Chinese Canadians

270,000

34,000

29,000

1,500,000
Indo-Canadians

130,000

33,000

14,000

1,165,000

Welcoming a record number of visitors from the Philippines in 2013

Welcoming record numbers from China in 2013

Indo-Canadian immigration continues to grow

Note: Indo-Canadian release did not include size of community, NHS figures used for comparison.

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Andrew Coyne: Free speech withers when we abandon judgment, proportion, open-mindedness and tolerance

2014/04/23 Leave a comment

Andrew Coyne’s more balanced take on recent free speech controversies:

People arbitrarily declaring issues “settled” about which there remains room for doubt, or at least for honest error, or trying to open issues that really are settled. How should we tell the difference? There are rules of thumb — whether it involves modelling highly complex phenomena decades into the future, like global warming, or whether, like evolution, it involves explanations of the existing order that have been tested and refined over 150 years. But mostly it is a matter of judgment.

Judgment, proportion, humility, open-mindedness, tolerance for human frailty: these are the soil in which free speech flourishes. Where we abandon them, it withers.

Andrew Coyne: Free speech withers when we abandon judgment, proportion, open-mindedness and tolerance | National Post.

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Reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you’re black – Vox

2014/04/23 Leave a comment

While the study is a relatively small sample, and there are a number of methodological flaws, indicated in the article, nevertheless is consistent with some other kinds of tests (e.g., blind cvs) to measure implicit bias.

In an experimental context, when reviewers were told the author of a legal brief was black they consistently rated identical pieces lower in quality and identified more spelling, grammar, factual, or analytical errors. It’s evidence that, even if the days of overt bigotry and explicit discrimination are mostly past, the United States still struggles with a deep problem of implicit racism.

Arin N. Revees, the president of Nextions and the author of the study, argues that the implicit racism happened because reviewers take the racial information she provided as a cue for how they should judge the work. When the author is supposed to be white, reviewers excused errors as out of haste or inexperience. They commented that the author “has potential” and was “generally a good writer but needs to work on” some skills. When the author is supposed to be black, those same errors became evidence of incompetence. A reviewer said he “can’t believe he [the author] went to NYU,” and others said he “needs lots of work” and was “average at best.”

Reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you’re black – Vox.

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Why is Canada botching the Great War centenary? – Granatstein

2014/04/22 1 Comment

Funny to see how the academics who support the overall thrust of the Government’s change of emphasis on Canada’s historical narrative, particularly the increased emphasis on the military, have started to realize the limitations of the Government’s commitment. Jack Granatstein’s commentary on the commemoration of WW1 and Canada’s role is valid and telling (for his critique of the Government’s cuts to Library and Archives Canada see Who will preserve the past for future generations?:

But the Great War years also changed the homeland. Women relatives of Canadian soldiers got the vote in 1917, and thousands of women left farms and hearths to work in munitions factories that produced a quarter of the artillery shells for British and Dominion forces by 1917. Prohibition cut off alcohol sales; millions were raised in Victory Loan campaigns; income tax came into effect (as a “temporary” wartime measure); and farmers and workers began to organize politically as inflation hit everyone. Above all, conscription in 1917 split the nation, pitting farmers against city dwellers, labour against bosses, French against English. That year’s election, won by the pro-conscription Unionist government of Sir Robert Borden, was the most racist in our history.

We certainly don’t want to celebrate all of these wartime events and changes, but we need to talk about them and learn from them. We need TV documentaries on the war and its battles and on the events, positive and negative, on the home front. We need books, conferences, lectures and displays in our national and local museums. We need to remember.

This requires some modest new funding. There will be a surplus by 2015, and there will be money available – if the government wishes to use it. There will also be the money to ensure that veterans get the help they require. It’s not a zero-sum game.

We really must remember the Great War properly. It was when Canada stood proudly on the world stage for the first time, and it would be a disgrace for the government to shortchange it.

Why is Canada botching the Great War centenary? – The Globe and Mail.

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Holocaust Education: Who will tell the story?

2014/04/22 Leave a comment

Good overview on some of the work the Canadian Holocaust centres are doing on Holocaust eduction given that fewer survivors are available to provide personal testimony:

Eyewitness testimony has played a central role in Holocaust education, says Adara Goldberg, education director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. The challenge now is to transition to telling their story without them.

For a recent exhibit called Enemy Aliens about Jewish refugees interned in Canada during the war, a curator recorded internees’ experiences, and those voices were the first ones visitors heard upon entering the exhibit. Three of those interviewed died before the exhibition opened, Goldberg says.

The centre, like others across the country, is consulting with survivors on the best ways to use videotaped testimony. “We don’t want to exploit the voices [of survivors]. We want to make sure there is some pedagogical value in what we do.”…

At Toronto’s Holocaust centre, staff are using the 50,000 testimonies, some of them Canadian, recorded by the U.S-based Shoah Foundation. For the generation of digital natives at home with technology, “that’s an automatic point of access,” Phillips says.

The Toronto centre, aided by a grant from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, has begun organizing some of the testimonies into short, searchable sections, and presenting workshops to adult immigrants learning English. Few of the newcomers had much knowledge about Jews or the Holocaust, but they could relate to the stories of persecution and starting over in a new land, and understand what the survivors contributed to Canadian society. “For many of the… students, this was very inspirational,” Phillips says.

Who will tell the story? | The Canadian Jewish News.

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