Correlation between education and voting in the USA

Here's an interesting little rabbit hole to go down. Based on US census data, the best-educated American states are:

1. Massachusetts
2. Colorado
3. Vermont 
4. Marylamd
5. New Jersey 
6. Virginia
7. Connecticut
8. New Hampshire
9. New York
10. Washington

The least-educated states are;

1. West Virginia
2. Mississippi
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Kentucky
6. Nevada
7. Oklahoma
8. Alabama
9. Indiana
10. New Mexico

Well, maybe you could have guessed most of those. But what's interesting is the correlation of these results with election results.

ALL of the top ten educated states vote Democrat. And ALL of the top ten least educated states voted Republican.

Of course, it could just be coincidence.

You can see why senior assassin raises hackles

If you have kids of a certain age, or if you are at least moderately well-informed in general, you will probably have heard of a popular kids' game called "senior assassin".

I don't know who came up with the name but, thankfully, it doesn't actually involve killing old people. (At least not yet.) It is, however, becoming more than a little controversial. Many kids love it, of course. Many PARENTS love it too, as it gets their kids outside and off their screens. Some parents, though, dislike it. Police and school officials typically HATE it.

Senior assassin is essentially a game of tag with over-sized Nerf-style water pistols. 12th-graders in particular are using it as a kind of rite of passage, marking the end of their schooldays/childhoods, and their passage into the big bad grown-up world (or at least college/university). 

The idea of the game is that they attempt to catch their assigned target with their neon-coloured plastic water guns, eliminating their quarry while avoiding being eliminated themselves. The twist is: no-one knows who is targeting whom, and the assignments are constantly changing as players are eliminated; dedicated apps are used to organize and track the game. There are safe zones, and, bizarrely, you can claim immunity by wearing swim goggles. At the end of the week, the last person standing is the "winner", for what that's worth.

Well, so far so good, I guess. There are some general behaviour rules: be respectful; no trespassing; no chasing people in cars; and no realistic-looking guns. But, of course, kids will be kids, and some of them like to push the rules to the logical limit, and often well beyond. 

There has been a string of unfortunate incidents around the game, including a teen in Guelph, Ontario, who was arrested at gunpoint by police last year when his water gun was mistaken for a real firearm, and a viral video of a homeless person in Kenora, Ontario, being targeted from a car. So much for the rules. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, just this week, a senior assassin player got caught up in a police chase of real gun criminals.

Some schools not only discourage senior assassin but actively ban it, arguing that it is disruptive and potentially dangerous. Some police departments have warned against it too, especially given the very real fears some people in some areas have about gun violence.

Now, I'm all for kids playing outside as the weather warms up. But does it have to involve shooting, whether pretend or not? And does it have to be so feverish, intense and viral?

Alberta education bill a classic of DoubleThink

Alberta's right-wing government at it again with the DoubleThink and the gaslighting. They must be big fans of classic books and films!

The irony has probably never occurred to them, but by introducing a bill called "An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms and Amend the Education Act", the Alberta government is in fact introducing politics and ideology into classrooms, where none existed before.

Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides introduced the bill, with a straight face, saying,"This bill reflects that schools should teach students how to think, not what to think". The bill in fact bars teachers from making "political or social statements", displaying flags, and naming or renaming school buildings. It imposes school trustee codes of conduct, and various other restrictive measures. It is demonstrably NOT designed to make classrooms less political, merely to change the politics to something they approve of.

They might just as well have included, "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength", for good measure.

The challenges of doing science in Trump's America

Here's a good account of how scientific research has had to pivot in Trump's America.

The article deals specifically with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but I'm sure it applies to any number of government departments and agencies. Scientists and researchers are having to self-censor and find creative ways around the Trump-mandated ban on using MAGA trigger words and phrases like "global warming", "climate change", "solar energy", "alternative energy", "decarbonization", "energy transition", "renewables", "environmental justice", "greenhouse gas emissions", "carbon sequestration", "sustainability", even "safe drinking water". Otherwise, they run the risk of having their research censored or their grant applications denied.

So, instead of using phrases like "climate change", resourceful researchers - those that have not already given up completely or moved away, that is - are trying to use less controversial, softer phrases like "elevated temperatures", "soil health" and "extreme weather", so as not to trigger discovery by the automated tools of the Trump woke police.

I know it reads like a bad science fiction story, but this is really happening in modern-day America. In Trump's America there are about 100-plus words and phrases that are essentially banned in academic and scientific research circles, about a third of them related to climate change (which is, remember, a "hoax"). Some of them are real head-scratchers, like "diesel", "affordable housing", "runoff", "microplastics", "rural water". There are also whole other categories of banned words to do with DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), gender, abortion, immigration, etc. 

Of course, if your whole paper or grant application is about solar energy or affordable housing, it is essentially impossible to avoid these phrases. So, the beleaguered American scientific community is finding alternative sources of funding and alternative publication destinations. And some of them are just leaving for less restrictive and repressive regimes. This is having a huge impact, not only on the American research community, but on that of other countries too, where local talent is now having to compete against well-qualified American ex-patriates and academic exiles (as my son-in-law, who is currently looking for post-doc opportunities abroad, is finding, to his chagrin).

US government department websites have been dilligently "scrubbed" of offensive words like "climate change" and "renewable energy" since early in Trump's second administration. Whole reports have been conveniently removed if they were considered too woke or prejudicial. It makes me wonder: did Trump personally come up with the list of proscribed words and phrases? And who are the people who carry out these bizarre instructions? Talk about the banality of evil.

Imagine working in such a system! Imagine that the field of inquiry you have spent your whole career in (or your future prospective career) is in one of these proscribed areas! Imagine having to avoid using the word "green" or "black" anywhere in your dissertation! I'm sure that many are just hoping to wait it out, on the assumption that "this too shall pass". Others, though, may be second-guessing their whole careers.

I have a suspicion that most Americans are not even aware that this is going on under their noses. Many will not care, of course, those who routinely complain about "radical wokeness" and other such nonsense. But many others will. And if I just found out about it (or at least about the extent of it), I'm sure there are many potentially concerned citizens who have no idea just how close to Margaret Atwood's Gilead or George Orwell's Thought Police modern America has become.

Does a liberal arts education set you up for modern-day employment?

Recent US data suggests that a liberal arts education may not be such a bad thing after all as regards employment prospects, flying in the face of conventional wisdom.

For example, art history graduates are more likely to be employed than computer engineering grads (3% unemployment, compared to 7.5%). The theory is that liberal arts graduates are more adaptable and flexible, able to move between different job types and industries. They also tend to be more creative and willing to think outside the box than computer science geeks (sorry, grads).

Other research papers suggest that jobs requiring AI tools are much more likely to require social, cognitive, language and interpersonal skills, all areas in which arts graduates supposedly excel, and computing graduates most definitely do not.

It all seems a bit improbable to me, but that's what we're told. Certainly, my 30-year old daughter has many friends who are in full employment, but the only ones who are buying houses are coding and computer science specialists...

Trump's "war on science" summarized

Donald Trump's all-out assault on pure and applied science, and on academia in general, has been widely reported in the news media. But, as it has come in bits and pieces over a period of time, it is hard to get an overall picture of just how bad things are (which I'm sure was an intentional ploy by the administration).

An Economist article tries to collect it all together and put it in some perspective, something that The Economist does so well. The article's title, "Looming disaster", give a sneak preview of their analysis. Without going into the kind of detail the article provides, a quick summary might be the following: 

The US federal government doles out about $120 billion every year to research, of which about $50 billion goes towards tens for thousands of grants and contracts to universities and other higher education institutions, the rest going to public research bodies. Trump's proposed cuts to federal research and grant-making agencies - like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defence (DoD), the Department of Energy (DoE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - probably amount to about $40 billion a year, although that could well go up as new features are announced piecemeal (and apparently randomly and/or deliberately chaotically). 

Also, some areas that have particularly attracted Trump's spleen are disproportionately affected, something that these overall figures do not reflect. Trump, and the administration that carries out his every imperial whim, seems to have a problem with science in general, but in particular he wants to clamp down on anything to do with DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), sexual orientation and transgender issues, climate change, misinformation research, COVID-19 and vaccination.

Thus, the NIH and NSF between them have cancelled over 3,000 already-approved grants, some of them worthy projects like cancer research that just happen to mention words like "equity", " sexual orientation", even "Latinx". Anything that appears "woke", even superficially or incidentally, is a target. Any criticism of Israel, or even a perceived lack of enthusiasm in countering "antisemitism" (in its broadest, and often misleading, sense) will also attract financial humiliation, as in the cases of Harvard and Columbia Universities. In some cases, Trump or one of his henchmen may just have a personal grudge against an organization or an individual. And in some cases, it is entirely unclear why projects are being cancelled, and transparency and justification is not a requirement. 

The Economist article gives many more details and examples, and it makes grim reading. Other articles in the same issue look at how the cuts to science funding might affect ordinary Americans, and how all the uncertainty in American research, once the envy of the world, is resulting in a new academic brain drain. Compelling, but chilling, reporting.

AI is making us dumber, and there is nothing we can do about it

It comes as no surprise, but some pretty robust research by Michael Gerlich at the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability (who comes up with these names?) in Zurich has confirmed what most people already knew: there is a "significant negative correlation" between the use of generative AI (think ChatGPT) and critical thinking abilities. 

So, higher dependence on AI is associated with lower critical thinking scores, particularly among younger people between 17 and 25 years of age. You'll note I say "associated with" rather than "results in", because technically the research does not show causation, merely association, but I think we all know what is really going on here.

This is not the only such study suggesting the same. A KPMG study last year found that 59% of post-secondary students are using AI in their school work, and two-thirds of those students admit that they don't think they are learning as much or retaining as much knowledge. A Chinese/Australian study found that using AI gave students a "short -term boost" but "long-term skill stagnation" (and many participants used the AI to cheat in the study despite being specifically directed not to!) Most teachers and lecturers will tell you the same, anecdotally.

Part of the problem is that many students have a cynical attitude towards university and college education in the first place: they are not there to learn for learning's sake; they just want a qualification to get them into whatever job they have set their minds on, and they will do that in any way they can, preferably with the least effort possible. Imagine teaching in such an environment! "It's terrible to teach in times of AI", remarked one weary professor. But an aversion to putting in unnecessary effort is a general human failing too.

Of course, this debate goes on whenever any new technology comes in, whether it be calculators, computers, the internet, GPS, etc. Hell, it goes all the way back to Socrates, who warned that the newfangled fashion of writing things down would surely erode out memories and our debating skills (although, as the article points out, we only know about Socrates' views because Plato wrote them down!)

But that doesn't mean that the debate is moot. It has been proven that people who regularly use GPS to navigate their way through life have atrophied hippocampus regions in their brains (the hippocampus is the seat of our spatial memories, but also of a bunch of other learning and memory functions). And yes, the generations brought up using calculators are indeed worse at mental arithmetic. (I know, I am one.) It makes sense.

There have been attempts to play down the negativity. Teachers back in the 1970s argued that allowing students to use calculators for rote arithmetic freed up brain-power and time for them to focus on more complex and challenging mathematical concepts, which may have been true, at least in some general sense.

In the same way, researchers and educators have looked for a silver lining in AI. About the best they have come up with is that students could use AI as a kind of intellectual sparring partner, to push for evidence, alternative views and logical gaps before writing up their answers. They can bounce ideas off computers just as they can with their fellow students or professors. But this is not a natural habit, and students would need to be taught this new way of learning. And anyway, what's to stop them from going the whole hog and getting the computer to write the essay entirely?

It's a thorny problem, and not one that's going to go away. AI is being incorporated into everything, whether we want it or not. OpenAI recently gave post-secondary students in Canada and the US access to a premium version of ChatGPT for a limited time. These are commercial companies that want to spread their products as widely as possible. The horse has well and truly left the barn, and the genie is out of the bottle; there is no going back. 

The first step is to recognize that there is a potential problem. But how we deal with it now is anyone's guess - I haven't seen a convincing solution yet.

Did pandemic school closures really save lives? Yup

A study out of McMaster University is giving credence to the beliefs of some that the decision back in the early, panicky days of the pandemic to keep kids back from school was wrong-headed, ill-advised and downright dangerous.

Except that other studies - for example, a large one by the University of Manchester and Imperial College London in 2022, based on data from 130 countries - have concluded the exact opposite. According to that Manchester study, closing schools and workplaces appear to have been the two most effective strategies out of the nine interventions looked at in mitigating deaths from COVID-19 in the early days of the early days of the pandemic. And school closures were nearly five times as effective as workplace closures (1.23 daily deaths saved per million, compared to 0.26).

That's pretty compelling stuff. So how then are we supposed to take McMaster's opposing conclusions?

The McMaster meta-study is not quite as black-and-white as the media coverage suggests. It admits that "the overall findings were mixed". But it seems to be the case that results changed over time, and that school closures were probably a very important measure in the early days when good information was hard to come by. 

Remember, these were the days before vaccines, the days when cloth mask held sway, and we were wiping down our groceries and doorknobs. These were the days before the pandemic was a pandemic, and the death rate from those early variants was huge. It stands to reason that removing children from general circulation saved many, many lives. At the cost of education outcomes and some mental health issues, granted; but given a choice of death or a poorer education, I know what I would choose.

As the pandemic progressed, however, we suddenly had vaccines, we had mask mandates, etc. And the review confirms that vaccines, masks, and test-to-stay policies were, overall, the best methods to reduce the spread of COVID and to save lives (whatever the Feeedom Convoy may have you believe).

Suggestion that black people can't do math ruled out by appeal court

I don't often agree with the current Ontario government - on anything, really - but I do agree with a new Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that sides with the Conservative government's education policy in this one particular case.

A lower divisional court had found earlier that the Ontario government-imposed math proficiency test (MPT) for teachers discriminated against racialized teachers because, for whatever reason, they had more problems passing the test. No-one was ever disqualified as a teacher on these grounds, because they could just re-take the test until they passed it. But some, including the lower court, felt that this still discriminated against them.

The Appeal Court, however, ruled that racialized teachers were actually passing the test at a generally similar rate to white teachers - 93% compared to 95% - as you would probably expect, and there were multiple opportunities to pass the test anyway, so no discrimination was happening.

I'm not totally sold on the need for the test in the first place. But, given that such a test exists, to assume that racialized teachers are somehow more poorly equipped to pass it seems ridiculous to me. If indeed they do pass the test at a lower level than white teachers (which is now debatable), then that's just an indication that they need to buck up their math skills, not that they are somehow being discriminated against. Indeed, the very suggestion seems inherently racist to me.

Quebec university tuition hike is self-defeating

The province of Quebec has made news again by drastically increasing out-of-province university tuition fees for the province's three English language universities, McGill, Concordia and Bishops 

Premier François Legault says this will help protect the French language by limiting the number of anglophones studying in Quebec. "It's nothing against anglophones", he assures us, "it's a question of equality for French universities". Equality? Right. Quebec's Minister of Higher Education says that it will "balance" the funding of the English and French universities in the province (in some way).

Tuition fees for these universities will nearly double, from $9,000 to $17,000, for out-of-province students, while overseas students will pay at least $20,000. (For reference, in-province fees for Quebeckers are just $3,000.) This will seriously disincentivize the English universities, which are much more popular with out-of-province and overseas students, as well as much more successful and renowned. It is a tax on language pollution, but it will have much more far-reaching effects than just reducing demand for a few English language universities. The amounts of money involved aren't that large in the context of the provincial budget, but this is a matter of principle for Legault and the CAQ.

In his crusade to boost French in Quebec at the expense of English, Legault seems happy to throw the province's best universities under the proverbial bus. Student unions are calling the move discriminatory and elitist, and are considering more robust opposition. At the very least, it taints the universities' - and Montréal's, and the province in general's - international reputation. Bishop's, by far the smallest of the three, and the most reliant on out-of-province fees, may see its whole business model upended and its very existence may be imperilled, according to its principal.

But, for the CAQ, the French language is paramount, common sense be damned.

Police in schools - where are we now?

While I am on the subject of education (see my previous post on cellphones in schools), another perennial debating point is whether police belong in schools. 

My gut reaction may be "no, of course not", but this issue is not as simple as it seems either. Police officers, or school resource officers (SRO) as they are officially referred to, reduce crime, keep students safe, and improve police-community relations, argue proponents. But they are expensive, disproportionately disadvantage Black, Indigenous and other marginalized students, and contribute to a "school-to-prison pipeline", counter detractors. And, who knows, maybe both arguments are correct, and then it becomes a judgement of whether the pros outweighs the cons. All of this is also in the context of a marked increase in incidents of violence in Canadian schools.

What is interesting, though, is new research, admittedly limited to schools in Edmonton, Alberta, but there is no reason to suspect that the conclusions are not equally valid in other cities in the country. This found that - regardless of race, sexual orientation and self-reported disability status - some 45% of students and parents reported positive experiences with their SROs, citing feelings of safety, assistance with victimization and personal problems, conflict resolution, mentorship, legal education, and innovative strategies for discipline and reform. This compares with just 7% who reported negative experiences. 

Further to this, few students apparently felt targeted or intimidated by their SRO (again regardless of their background), and few felt that Black, Indigenous or other racialized students were treated worse than their White counterparts, or that they were biased against sexual minorities or students with disabilities. Some 80% of respondents (students, parents and teachers) wanted to retain or reinstate the SRO program at their schools, compared to 8% who wanted to see it suspended permanently.

This seems to be a resounding accolade for the police in schools program, although the research has been largely dismissed by many anti-racism campaigners as it does not play into their narrative. It also flies in the face of many reactions to policing in schools south of the border, which tend to be much more negative, and particularly play up the line that racialized students are receiving excessive and disproportionate attention from police officers. There isn't that much hard research to back this up, but that certainly seems to be the anecdotal response.

And here's where my reaction gets a bit contentious. It's about the use of the word "disproportionate". Maybe proportionately more Black and racialized students are receiving attention from in-school police officers than their white counterparts, and in that respect the attention is disproportionate. But is the attention unwarranted? I have not seen any data on this. 

What I mean is, if a diaproportionate number of racialized students are in fact committing crimes, then an apparently disproportionate police response will probably follow, but that does not make the attention unwarranted (and therefore probably not racially motivated). I have no idea whether this is in fact the case, and I am certainly not jumping to that conclusion; I just feel we need to know in order to properly assess the program. 

For example, are there any statistics on the relative number of convictions of racialized students as a percentage of those arrested, compared to White students? That at least would give an indication of whether school police are unduly targeting Black and Indigenous students, on spurious or unwarranted grounds. That WOULD be prima facie evidence of racism at work. But let's not just assume.

I know this will be anathema to many an anti-racism campaigner. But I don't think it is unreasonable to ask the question (especially as I am not assuming an answer). 

Cellphones in schools - where are we now?

The issue of cellphones in school has been discussed and debated for some twenty years now, and we don't seem to be any closer to a consensus or a solution.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is unequivocal: its research has led it to recommend a universal ban on cellphones in schools, due to the demonstrable negative effects on student academic performance and emotional stability. UNESCO points out that most of the research cited in defence of technology in education has been provided by the private companies that are selling it. 

Well, I believe UNESCO; why don't countries and school authorities throughout the world?

The thing is, most countries do believe that UNESCO is quite right, but banning cellphones is a harder proposition than it sounds. In practice, about a quarter of the world's countries have instituted some kind of cellphone restrictions in schools, but most of these are severely curtailed in some aspects, and their application and enforcement are far from ideal. 

In Canada, Ontario (of all provinces!) is the only jurisdiction to have a cellphone ban in force, although its policy is all but toothless in practice. It theoretically restricts cellphone use to educational purposes, while permitting their general use during lunch and recess. Quebec is said to be thinking about a ban, and previous attempts by British Columbia and Nova Scotia have failed miserably. Other provinces are firmly on the fence.

One of the main arguments against banning cellphones is that they have a genuine educational role to play, "To enhance student learning and support curriculum delivery", as the Toronto District School Board phrased it a few years ago. But the constant lure of distractions has always proved too strong to balance out any good cellphones might be able to claim. 

It has been shown repeatedly that teens who are heavy phone users tend to suffer sleep deprivation, poorer academic performance, and lower self worth than others. Cellphone use among youth shows all the hallmarks of a full-blown addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms. Levels of teen depression, anxiety and suicidality have sky-rocketed. In-school violence has peaked, often as the culmination of a social media bullying campaign. (These violent incidents are often filmed - on cellphones - and run viral on local social media networks). Kids themselves are worried about their own phone use, and imposed bans are often very popular among most of the impacted students. As one educator puts it, "cellphones destroy our kids' brains and ruin their social skills". Ouch.

In a major consultation on education in Ontario in 2018, 97% of students, parents and educators said they want to see limitations on the use of cellphones in schools. So, why are we not seeing it?

In practice, it is largely left up to individual schools, and even individual teachers, to decide how to treat cellphones. A few, considered radicals, have successfully achieved an in-class ban (and concomitant academic improvements), but most prefer to take the easy way out. And you can understand it: what do you do when a teenage girl stuffs her phone into her bra and says "come and get it" (yes, it happens!)? Or when parents complain that young Johnny becomes anxious and depressed when he doesn't have access to his cellphone (or that the parents do)? Or when parents claim their child was discriminated against?

Some of the few brave souls that have managed to institute a cellphone ban (and make it stick) have seen some dramatic improvements in academic performance. A 2015 study (yes, I know that's 8 years ago, but the principle persists) showed that high school students where cellphones were banned in class did 6.4% better in standardized tests. And, crucially, the weakest students did 14% better, while the effect on high-performing students was almost negligible. If we are serious about trying to level the academic playing field for students, this is surely a key finding. (Other studies in the USA and Europe back it up.) 

So, not an easy problem with a one-size-fits-all solution. But the research is there, and where there's a will there's a way.

UPDATE

Just to confuse things, the suicide help  service Kids Help Phone is now saying that kids need to have cellphones with them at school so that they can make crisis calls to organizations like theirs.

This a red herring, I believe. KHP says that many kids do not feel comfortable calling them after school or from another location, so it's essential that they leave a cellphone with them in class for that in-class crisis. Which suggests to me that that maybe school is not such a safe zone after all. And I find it difficult to believe that they can't find a time or place during recession or lunchbox make that call, or that they can't call on the way home or something.

And anyway, most of the reason why these kids are having crises is due to that damned phone! See above. And KHP want to extend the time that they are tied to it? Obviously, I'm no expert and they supposedly are, but this just seems wrong-headed to me, like someone is making an off-the-cuff opinion without thinking it through.

TDSB's plan for specialty schools will not foster either excellence or equity

Toronto District School Board (TDSB), like many other school boards, has a system of specialty schools, where students can specialize in art, dance, drama, mathematics, computer science, film-making, advanced academics, and a bunch of other specialty areas. They are great resources to stretch kids who have an aptitude for a particular area of education (and perhaps very little aptitude for other areas), and to perhaps give them a leg up to high-performance levels without being held back by other less able kids.

So, as you might imagine, there are a bunch of people complaining that these schools are elitist and privileged, exclusionary and quite possibly racist. But they are not. They are open to any student who exhibits an aptitude, a dedication, and a certain level of skill in the particular area, whatever their background, culture, race or socio-economic stratum. Students need to show suitable report card results, or pass a written test or an audition, depending on the school's specialization. It is entirely merit-based, as I think it should be.

But the TDSB, in its wisdom and its own over- sensitive conception of political correctness, has recommended doing away completely with this merit-based approach, arguing that it is in some way exclusionary and inequitable. They say that access to these programs should be driven by nothing more than a letter expressing interest. Those who throw their names into the hat would then go into a lottery to be chosen at random.

So, what you will end up with is valuable specialized resources being frittered away on students who have absolutely no aptitude for the specialized subject area, but who for some reason feel that they want to get into dance, or computers, or whatever it might be. At the same time, some truly gifted students may be excluded and deprived of the chance to become extraordinary performers or top academics. It's not even clear that such an approach would succeed in its own goal, as all those white middle classed over-achievers that the TDSB is so worried about are probably more likely to send in those letters of interest anyway, no?

If the TDSB is providing specialty education opportunities, which I fully approve of, then surely they should be made available to those who can most benefit from them. If, as the TDSB clearly feels, some lower-income or racialized kids from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks are currently missing out on these opportunities (which is by no means clear to me), then the Board could promote them better, particularly in needy neighbourhoods, and make sure that teachers are looking out of promising candidates.

There is nothing about the current system that assures it disadvantages the already disadvantaged. Indeed, it could well help some of those disadvantaged kids find a way out of their constraining circumstances. What the TDSB is proposing, though, whether or not it is coming from a heartfelt place, is a step backwards, and a recipe for diminishing performance and impeding excellence, all in the supposed name of equity. 

Merit still matters in the real world - you don't get offered a job in aerospace or dentistry through a lottery. Offer specialized school places to those with aptitude and passion, and, if needed, make extra tuition available to those in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. But don't crush the dreams of those with real talent.

The kids in masks are alright, politicians not so much

In a couple of days time, Ontario's mask mandate comes to an end after the best part of two years. Although at least half of the population say they will probably still wear masks in public places regardless, it will still be a time of celebration for some (probably a minority) and a source of stress and anxiety for others.

Doug Ford says it is time for the mask mandate to end: "we have to move forward from this".  Because ... well, he doesn't really explain why exactly. Because it is time. Because many of his more conservative supporters don't like masks for some reason ("freedom"?), and there is a provincial election coming up soon. Because some other provinces are also easing their mask mandates, and he doesn't want to be seen to be left behind. Because our schoolkids are suffering untold mental anguish and psychological trauma. 

Wait. Just a moment. Is that true? 

It has been an article of faith among many of the more vocal child advocates and political commentators for months now (years, in fact) that our children are being irreparably damaged by the wearing of masks. But research (in the USA, in Canada, and elsewhere) actually concludes that masks have caused no appreciable damage to kids, no adverse physical, psychological or developmental consequences. There is "no clear evidence that masking impairs emotional or language development in children" (US CDC). "Right now, there are no data to suggest that there are any short-term or long-term harms when it comes to masks and kids, and that includes both psychological harms and physical harms" (Mass General Hospital for Children). They didn't even adversely impact children's ability to read their friends' emotions (Queen's University).

Mr. Ford, and his sidekick/lackey Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, are suggesting, nay insisting, that the mask mandates, in schools and elsewhere be lifted on March 21st, the day after all those kids finish March Break, despite many of them having spent the last week on foreign beaches and ski hills, and hanging out together in malls and movie theatres, many of them still unvaccinated. Prudence suggests at least a two-week delay, but Ford is having nothing of that prudence thing.

This is not on the advice of the Ontario Science Table (the body that is supposed to advise Messrs. Ford and Moore), nor on the advice of hospital and other medical authorities, nor on the advice of school boards (many of which have been lobbying to extend the mask mandate, and which have been told, in no uncertain terms, that they can't). This is not "following the science". This is, like so much else that Doug Ford does, a purely political calculation. 

And, as for the argument that the kids are suffering, well, that won't wash either, as we have seen. Masks are what have been allowing kids to attend school in person for all these months, and that DOES have serious implications for their mental health. In short, the kids are alright; it's some of the adults I worry about.

We should be more careful what we claim about residential schools

Manitoba's new Indigenous Relations Minister, Alan Lagimodiere, is off to a rocky start in his new job, as he has to apologize for apparently defending residential schools. 

Mr. Lagimodiere, who is Métis, took over from Eileen Clark, who resigned recently under a bit of a cloud, following Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister's own comments about residential schools.

Lagimodiere was chastised for saying that the people responsible for the residential school system believed they were doing the right thing at the time. He took particular flak from (Indigenous) opposition leader Wab Kinew, and was forced to admit later that he "misspoke". Such attempts to reach back in time and try to understand the context and thinking of the era are not considered publicly acceptable these days.

But here's the thing: what Mr. Lagimodiere said is actually right, politically correct or not. This in no way excuses the residential school system, which everyone understands was iniquitous and inexcusable, in its effects and even in its intentions. But to say that the system's architects - both politicians and Church officials - did not think that what they were doing was the right thing to do is clearly incorrect (or revisionism, or even censorship, depending on how you look at it). 

There were some more enlightened individuals who objected to the idea, even back in the day. But the evidence suggests that most people thought - rightly or wrongly - that educating and assimilating "the Indian" was the best thing white Canada could do for the Indigenous population. This was the prevailing colonial settler mentality of the times, similar to what was happening in the United States, Australia and elsewhere. And yes, this applies even to some of the (now) most reviled politicians of the period, like then-Chief Superintendant of Education Egerton Ryerson (who, by the way, learned to speak Ojibwe, developed close friends among the Mississauga people, and who consistently campaigned against corporal punishment in residential and other schools).

Yes, they were wrong-headed by the standards of modern ethics, arguably even by the standards of the time. Yes, the system continued way longer than it should have. But a large proportion of the population, and their political representatives at the time the residential school system was established, would have seen little or nothing wrong in the ideas behind it, even thought it commendable. This does not excuse it, but that is the reality, and to claim otherwise is to call black white.

Florida votes that school can indeed ban vaccinated teachers

Here's a good example of just how topsy-turvy, how downright WEIRD, life in the pandemic has become.

You may have read recently about a private Florida elementary school that ruled that teachers who have been vaccinated cannot have any contact with students, on pains of dismissal. Yes, you read that right, I wrote "vaccinated" not "unvaccinated". Not bothering to quote any studies (possibly because none exist), the school's owners maintain that the COVID-19 vaccination is dangerous, and can in some way interfere with a woman's menstrual cycles and reproductive systems. The school's children have been warned not to hug their parents and grandparents for more than five seconds due to the danger. 

The school's owner admits that her views are "new and yet to be researched", but dismisses Florida Health Department's warnings that her policy puts workers, students and communities at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. The school, which luxuriaties in the rather high-flown name of The Centner Academy, making it sound like a specialist college or a think tank or something, is run by a couple who have made substantial donations to the Republican Party. Go figure.

Well, many people to the left of rabid, conspiracy theory-prone hyper-conservatives thought this was ridiculous, and brought in a state bill that would prevent schools (and other businesses and government entities) from banning vaccinated people from entering or receiving services, and the bill was - get this! - promptly defeated. (To be fair, the final vote was 19-19, and some Republicans did cross the floor to vote for it, but the bottom line is that the bill did not receive enough votes to pass.)

So, in Florida, people who have NOT been vaccinated end up with more rights than people who HAVE been vaccinated. What a world!

No, the kids are not alright

As it is announced that Ontario (or at least southern Ontario) is to keep in-class school learning closed for at least another two weeks, I have finally, after all this time, seen a breakdown of Ontario's COVID-19 positivity rates by age group.

And it is as I had suspected and feared: the highest rates, by a long chalk, are among teens and younger. 12-13 year olds are the worst with a 20% positivity rate, followed by 4-11 year olds (16%), and 14-17 year olds (14%). Even 2-3 year olds have a positivity rate of 9%, similar to the rate for 18-22 year olds, and 23-29 year olds are not far behind (8%). Thereafter, as the age groups increase, the positivity rates fall, until all the over-50 age ranges have relatively moderate rates of around 5-6%. All of the positivity rates are increasing week by week, and those of the teenagers and younger kids are increasing fast, doubling weekly in the case of 12-13 year olds.

So, it is mainly kids that are spreading this thing, even if they are not showing many symptoms. They should have been testing schoolkids regularly and often since September (then we might not be in this situation now). I am very glad that Ontario at least has seen sense and is keeping kids home from school (Quebec, on the other hand, has gone the other direction on this). And all those people who are kvetching that kids are "special", and it is imperative that they be allowed to attend school in person, will hopefully see that there is a bigger picture here.

UPDATE

And now, finally, there is scientific evidence that keeping kids home from school significantly reduces the community spread of the virus (along with banning gatherings of more than five people, and closing bars and restaurants). I rest my case.

Canadian educational establishments re-evaluate their involvement with Confucius Institute

Many Canadian educational institutions are currently going through some heart-searching over their use of the Chinese government-backed Confucius Institute to teach Mandarin and Chinese culture and history in extra-curricular classes.

The Confucius Institute (CI) has been under suspicion for years - really, since it began, in 2004 - for its somewhat blinkered approach to Chinese "culture", and certain touchy subjects (like the Tianenmen Square massacre, Falun Gong, Taiwan and Tibet) are prohibited territory under the Institute's Communist Party-dictated rules. Some of its other practices, like flying school board trustees to China on all-expenses-paid trips, have been criticized as suspicious, and some opponents claim it is nothing more than an arm of the Chinese Comnunist Party's propaganda department. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has even warned in the past that the Institutes could be operating as spy satellite offices, and the USA has recently labelled CI as a foreign diplomatic mission involved in political propaganda.

The Confucius Institute organization currently has 541 institutes worldwide, including 12 in Canada. In addition to language and cultural programming for the educational establishment involved, they also typically offer some classes to the general public, sponsor educational exchanges, and hold public events and lectures on all things Chinese. Some argue that they are just a cultural and language institute like many others, including the British Council, the Alliance Française, the Goethe-Institut, etc. But the difference is that the Confucius Institute operates directly on school and university campuses, giving them preferential access to students and staff, and they appear to be under stricter controls over the content of their offerings.

Many Canadian school boards and universities that did use the Confucius Institute have since thought better of it and cancelled their programs with the Confucius Institute, including the Toronto District School Board, the whole of New Brunswick, McMaster University, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Several more are currenly in the process of re-evaluating the programs. Some institutions, like the University of Manitoba, were approached but chose not to sign up in the first place. Other boards and schools, however, particularly in the Prairies for some reason, appear quite comfortable with the way it operates. A similar process of reappraisal is taking place across the world, and many institutions are choosing to sever links with CI, while others are choosing to continue.

What I hadn't appreciated about it all is that the Confucius Institute does not actually provide language instructors, and that the schools and universities involved retain "control over the hiring, curriculum and academic practices of the Institute". What, then, do they provide? What is the point of them? Do they just provide money, books and the odd tai chi class? And is that money tied in some way to some sort of restrictive content agreement with the Chinese language instructors that are hired? Couldn't schools and universities just offer Mandarin classes without Confucius Institute involvement at all (in the same way as they offer German and Italian classes)?

It's all a bit mysterious. Which is perhaps in itself a good reason to avoid it like the plague.

America is raising a generation of traumatized kids

Apparently, some schools in America routinely practice "active shooter drills", lifelike drills that are supposed to better prepare school kids for the next mass shooting, complete with fake blood, role playing, and even mock "execution-style" shootings of teachers.

In fact, 32 out of the 50 states have laws in place mandating such drills, which were brought in in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, and even more after the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. Many American school kids have never known anything different.

However, not surprisingly, counsellors and researchers are finding that the drills have the effect of unnecessarily traumatizing the kids, and may even be counter-productive in that they try to give the impression that they might be able to actually do something about such an occurrence, thus setting them up to fail badly in the event of a real emergency. Certainly, the evidence shows that the benefits of such drills are out of proportion to the potential psychological damage they wreak.

What I find most difficult to stomach is the idea of "deception drills", where students and even teachers are unaware that a drill is in fact just a drill, and believe that a real massacre is underway. That just sounds like psychological warfare to me. America is raising a generation of traumatized kids.

A bunch of spurious arguments in the TWU debate

There is a whole load of sanctimonious claptrap and posturing going in the arguments around Trinity Western University's proposed Christian law school in Langley, British Columbia.

TWU is a private university, established back in 1962 by the Evangelical Free Church, attendance of which involves, among other things, a "Community Covenant" obliging students not to engage in sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage. You get the general idea... The law societies of both BC and Ontario want to refuse to license the university's graduates, and court cases have, predictably enough, ensued. Some of the arguments being put forward, though - on both sides - seem pretty flimsy and spurious to me, although, given the parties involved, one has to assume that they have some legal validity.

For example, Trinity Western maintains that the law societies are discriminating against the religious freedom of its students because it forbids them to join together to express their beliefs. Not so: they can express their beliefs however they like outside of classes, but if they are to become lawyers serving the whole Canadian population then they need to follow the same educational secularism as everyone else does. Frankly, I'm not sure I would trust a graduate from such an institution to have unbiased and inclusive views on issues such as rape, abortion, homophobia, etc, and thereby serve the populace effectively and dispassionately.

On the other side, some same-sex advocacy groups are claiming that LGBTQ persons cannot be their "authentic selves" while attending TWU, and they they should not be "forced to renounce their dignity and self-respect in order to obtain an education". Also spurious: no-one is forcing them to attend TWU, and I would be surprised that any self-respecting would even consider attending such an institution.

I'm sure there are good arguments on either side of this debate, but these are not among them.