Posted on 06/12/2007 4:09:47 PM PDT by GMMAC
So, what did you learn in school today?
Margaret Wente
Toronto Globe and Mail
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Shortly after the shooting death of Jordan Manners, the 15-year-old Toronto student, eighth-grade students at nearby Oakdale Park Middle School were called to an assembly. The subject: relations with the police. It's a hot issue in that part of town. The community is in an uproar over the shooting and allegations are flying that police have been heavy-handed in their hunt for Jordan's killer.
But the group invited by the school to address the students weren't interested in improving relations with the police. They were there to fan the flames. Their message to the 12- and 13-year-olds was simple: Don't trust the cops. They are not your friends. They deserve to be hated and feared, because they are bullying, brutal and racist. For good measure, they handed out an offensive little leaflet called "Survival Tactics: Dealing with Police." It kicks off with a reference to Rodney King, the black man who was beaten up by the Los Angeles police several years before these kids were born. "Although it may be difficult, be polite when they are insulting and bullying you," the brochure reads.
Who were these anti-cop propagandists? They were law students from nearby Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. They are volunteers with an outfit called Community and Legal Aid Services Programme, CLASP.
Glenn Stuart, who directs the program, told me that CLASP works with many local schools, starting as early as Grade 5. Its goal is to teach the kids their "rights." In these sessions, students are encouraged to relate incidents of police harassment and alleged brutality. Each kid gets a wallet-sized reminder entitled "Know Your Rights." It has an illustration of upraised fists - presumably representing the masses rising up against their oppressors.
Needless to say, the police aren't included in these programs. That's because they're the enemy.
In fact, Toronto's police have made admirable efforts to expand community policing and outreach programs. Some officers spend hours of their own time volunteering with youth groups. And yet the cone of silence remains an tough obstacle to solving crimes and protecting the community from thugs. In this neighbourhood, it's better to go to jail than be a snitch. Hundreds of people turned out to mourn Jordan Manners and to demand that the city, the schools, the province and the federal government do something to stop the killing - but scarcely anyone was willing to help police catch the killer.
CLASP's well-meaning law students are mostly middle-class and white. I doubt if any of them have heard a random gunshot in their lives. Oakdale Park's students are largely a mix of Caribbean (mainly Jamaican), Southeast Asian (mainly Vietnamese) and other kids from immigrant backgrounds. Many come from disorganized, single-mother families where discipline is scarce, and they have a multitude of learning problems. The unwitting effect of the messages CLASP sends will be to keep them in the underclass forever.
Apart from hating the police, what other lessons are students learning in Canada's most at-risk schools? The main lesson is that there are no consequences for bad behaviour, or for lack of effort, or contempt for school. Although many of these students can barely read or write, the pressure to show "success" in such schools has grown intense. Teachers are simply not allowed to fail them, because that is said to hurt their self-esteem. (Last year, for example, the York Region District School Board failed just six Grade 8 students out of 8,064.) Nor are teachers allowed to deduct marks for handing in assignments late, or for routinely skipping classes. Teacher after teacher has told me: "The kids are in charge. We aren't."
Adolescents who lack structure in their lives need firm guidance and clear expectations. Instead, the schools offer a therapeutic approach that demands nothing and excuses everything, and pretends that self-esteem can be built without accomplishment. In this world of endless rights but no responsibilities, students learn that they are systematically victimized by society - starting with police and teachers. They learn that their troubles are everybody else's fault. They learn that mainstream values - such as respect for the law - are contemptible. This is called "empowerment."
This is the culture war that's playing out in Canada's most beleaguered schools. And the wrong side is winning.
When I attended Atkinson college at York University, I don’t recall the students being radicalized. It was usually too damned cold to bother with outrage at the police.
It's not a bad hymn if you like that sort of trumpety Gospel marching song, but it's been overused.
I learned that Karl Rove made steel melt for the first time in recorded history.
A subject on police relations with no police representation. I guess it makes sense in a lieberal idiot world. Sheesh.
Such hypocrites.
The unwitting effect of the messages CLASP sends will be to keep them in the underclass forever.
Unwitting? They can't be that dumb.
They learn that their troubles are everybody else's fault.
Even though that is not true.
Because it came about during a very racist time in the US.
Perhaps ...but if you’re on the receiving end of the whippin’ stick, you will yearn for liberty. What ever else is happening is irrelevant. BTW, I’m just commenting on the song being racist (it’s not IMO), not the article. The white-liberal-leftist are racist because they can never see those in the black community as fully human.
So what? Society was separate though parallel for quite a while. This didn't do the slave or sharecropper or brilliant scientist any favors.
It's the intent behind the song and the characterization that there is such a thing as a "nationalism" based on skin color.
For all intents and reality, there was a separate nationalism based on skin color. We couldn't go where we wanted, marry whom we wanted, attend church where we wanted. What do you expect people to do?! Just sit there and take it and say "Yassah, Sir!"? It is ridiculous to pass judgment on something offensive in the present which was created in the past. The world and life were different then, and people made it through the best way they could. Can you really judge their intent? Neither of us lived in that world, that particular day-to-day existence.
I do know that my ancestors, from parents on back, went through that hell, and it is from those generations of struggle that my generation has its freedom (and responsibilities) today. I will never dishonor that, nor apologize for what they did to make through.
I was a business major going nights, so maybe the political aurora was going over my head. As a landed immigrant American, maybe I was just obtuse, too. LOL
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