Sex-Ed Not Welcome at Any Age for Many Immigrant Parents – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/03 Leave a comment

Some good reporting on the sex-ed debate within different communities. Not surprising, but I think that many are living in denial of reality:

Politicians in the South Asian community also spoke out against the curriculum. The Weekly Voice and South Asia Mail reported former MPP Harinder Takhar (who served under Premier Dalton McGuinty) as saying that he had advised McGuinty against implementing the curriculum in 2010. He maintains this view stating that, “a serious debate is required in the community on this issue.” The same report also states Conservative MP Parm Gill’s apprehensions. Gill said that being the father of three children, the new syllabus is a cause of concern for him. He was of the opinion that the Liberal party had, “destroyed the institution of marriage and now it is (sic) on its way to put our children on the wrong track.”

There are some who support the provincial governments move, though their voices may be barely audible amongst the loud clatter of all the protestors. Two of the five parents interviewed by Can-India News thought it was, “about time.”

“Parents opposing the new sex-ed curriculum are living in denial. Schools should be discussing these issues and giving students the information they need,” said one parent, identified only as Parineet. “They should know about these things because everyone talks about it in schools and it is easy for them to get the wrong idea or information from friends or the Internet. The school would do it scientifically and professionally.”

Irrespective of how parents feel, Premier Kathleen Wynne is determined that the new sex-ed curriculum will be implemented this time. How much of a difference it will make is another matter though, as parents will have the option of pulling their children out of sex-ed classes.

Sex-Ed Not Welcome at Any Age for Many Immigrant Parents – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Fair points on the media and bias but there are any number of studies on coverage and portrayal of groups, not only Muslim, that show a particular slant:

However, some of my colleagues, among them Muslims, and the nattering voices of social media jumped immediately to the conclusion that the media were biased in not instantaneously identifying this as a hate crime and in being slow-footed with their reporting. If we believe it is the job of the media to draw conclusions about racism, we are wrong. The reporter’s job is to tell the story. Absent conclusive evidence, reporters did not say that the alleged killer was Islamophobic.

But I have to point out that deliberative and well considered reporting works both ways. If we media were permitted to conclude the UNC killer was a Muslim hater, then the Parliament Hill shooter, who killed Cpl Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, should have been immediately identified by the media as an “Islamic terrorist.” They didn’t do that. The man may have claimed he was inspired by his (faulty) understanding of Islam, but the Canadian reporting more readily identified him as a deranged – even psychotic – “lone wolf,” more likely influenced by drugs. The coverage got it right.

There’s also the matter of simple reasoning that seems to be lacking these days. If all terrorists are, say, men of the Purple religion – and the media simply report that fact – it doesn’t mean they hold a bias.  Logic 101: just because all the terrorists are Purple men, doesn’t mean all Purple believers are terrorists. It doesn’t mean all men are terrorists, either. It’s a simple matter of reason.

But Landau’s recommendation makes sense:

In the media welter, there are some proactive steps you can take to heighten your community’s media profile. Tell your own stories by starting your own website. Contact the mainstream media when you have a story you think others might want to hear (I know New Canadian Media is always listening). Encourage your children to go into journalism. Teach yourself and others media literacy so that you can separate fact from opinion. Wherever possible, make sure that whoever lays claim to speaking for your community is articulate and credible.

Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Why Immigrant Kids Excel: They are NOT Tiger Parented – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/02/21 Leave a comment

Good piece by Dr. Shimi Kang on the myth of the “Tiger Mom” and success:

Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor at the University of Texas, followed more than 300 Chinese-American families for eight years. She looked at why tiger parenting may work for Chinese-American families, when that same harsh parenting style proved damaging to non-Asian children. As it turns out, tiger parenting doesn’t work for anyone. Kim discovered that most Chinese-American parents aren’t really the authoritarian tigers one might expect after reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. And, more important, harsh Chinese-American parents end up with children who were just as miserable and rudderless as the children of tiger parents from other ethnicities. The children of parents whom Kim classified as “tiger parents” had lower academic achievement and educational attainment, as well as greater psychological maladjustment and family alienation than the children of parents characterized as “supportive” or “easygoing”. The children of supportive parents had the best developmental outcomes, as measured by academic achievement, educational attainment and family integration. These children also avoided the academic pressure, depressive symptoms and parent–child alienation suffered by their tiger peers.

“There is no question that when we measure success as progress from generation to generation, Mexican-Americans come out ahead.” – Researcher Jennifer Lee

In addition, Chinese kids are not even the immigrant group making the biggest leaps in success – Mexican kids are (and they don’t have tiger parents either). In a study published in the Journal of Race and Social Problems, lead researcher Jennifer Lee concluded, “There is no question that when we measure success as progress from generation to generation, Mexican-Americans come out ahead.” When it comes to the rates of college admissions, Mexican children double the rates of their fathers, and triple that of their mothers. When a child, whose parents have never seen the inside of a classroom (except perhaps to come and clean it like my mom and many other immigrant women did), attends post-secondary education that is self–motivation.

Why Immigrant Kids Excel: They are NOT Tiger Parented – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Why Some New Canadian Communities are More Prominent in Politics – New Canadian Media

2015/02/20 Leave a comment

Richard Landau on some of the reasons behind greater prominence of some communities over others, highlighting the following factors:

  • Educational Attainment
  • Economic Self-empowerment
  • Longevity & Social Engagement

I think he underplays two additional factors:

  • Community cohesion around ‘homeland’ issues (e.g., Ukrainian Canadians, Canadian Jews);
  • Greater diversity with the community (e.g. among Canadian Muslims with the large number of diverse ethnic origins) or lack thereof (e.g., Haitian Canadians, Italian Canadians).

And of course, as Landau notes correctly, the first-past-the-post system means that communities with higher community concentrations will tend to elect someone from within the community:

Some communities punch far above their weight. For example, if we use political representation as one yardstick, Canada has nearly 500,000 Sikhs (about one and a half per cent) and yet with six MPs, nearly two per cent representation in Parliament. According to the World Sikh Organization of Canada, there are currently 17 elected Sikhs at the provincial and federal levels.

Meanwhile, the close to 1.2 million Muslims in Canada, are vastly under-represented and currently can count amongst themselves only three elected members at the provincial and federal levels along with the Mayor of Calgary.

“Sikhs have been more successful because they tend to concentrate geographically. They are more cohesive as compared to others, especially Muslims. This is not to say there are no internal differences between them.” – Mohammed Ayub Khan

Mohammed Ayub Khan, PhD candidate in the department of political science at McMaster University says Muslims must contend with an immense national linguistic diversity and a lack of effective electoral education in the community. As a result, voting percentages continue to remain low among Muslims.

“Sikhs have been more successful because they tend to concentrate geographically,” Khan says. “They are more cohesive as compared to others, especially Muslims. This is not to say there are no internal differences between them.”

Khan goes on to add that this is exacerbated by an absence of professional media, which can highlight and discuss what the issues are within the Muslim faith community. He also points to negative attitudes, if not outright hostility, from the larger population. He says that while Sikhs come second in terms of unfavourable attitudes, they are able to overcome this due to their geographic concentration.

When a community embraces educational attainment, economic self-empowerment, and to a lesser degree, social engagement with the broad mosaic, it can indeed give itself appropriate representation and a prominent voice in the life of the nation.

Why Some New Canadian Communities are More Prominent in Politics – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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When Culture Robs Girls of Role Models

2014/05/10 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Amira Elghawaby on the need, within Muslim communities,  to provide more role models and visibility for women in both institutions and in popular culture:

Just take a look at most North American Muslim conferences.  How many women are on stage? From Chicago to Toronto to Ottawa, the answer is, very few. This is not for a lack of successful women leaders in our communities. We have Canadian Muslim women who are doctors, scientists, academics, educators, lawyers, engineers, filmmakers, authors, journalists, activists, editors, entrepreneurs, etc. But for some reason, our community seems unwilling to showcase their talents. Just last year, after praising the success of the Reviving the Islamic Spirit conference which attracts over 20,000 people annually, the well-known American academic, author, and consultant, Dalia Mogahed, nevertheless lamented the dearth of female speakers. Mogahed is one of just over a handful of women who have ever spoken at this immense gathering, now in its 13th year.

What is behind this? Surely, young women and girls deserve to hear from women who are paving the way forward. And, certainly, women were not invisible in Islam’s earliest days as a pioneering faith that recognized gender rights and women’s agency. Why then are our communities today so reluctant in acknowledging and spotlighting female achievements?

There seems to be a disconnect, or, more specifically, confusion around the role of Muslim women in society. There is a deep and ingrained cultural fear about intermingling. That fear is so strong that it has essentially led to the erasure of the female presence from many community institutions.  Take the barriers that have popped up at mosques across North America over the past few decades, making many women feel unwelcome and apart, as chronicled in the 2005 Canadian film Me And the Mosque. While some Muslim women themselves have internalized concerns over intermingling, so much that they cling to the barriers, the fact is that these barriers have come to represent an unwillingness to model respectful interactions between the genders. This emerges out of misplaced concepts of modesty and piety and is perhaps the attitude that led a York University student to famously ask to be exempted from working with female peers.

When Culture Robs Girls of Role Models – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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