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I’ve ranted (or at least, linked to a rant) about the sad state of education in Canada these days. A new globe article by Margaret Wente has more… (Local Cache: we-pretend-to-teach-em-they-pretend-to-learn-globe)

It’s no wonder so many university students are floundering. The teacher’s job is no longer to educate them up to a certain standard but to “meet their needs.” They come from a background where no one has demanded much of them, where there are no consequences, and life is deadline-free. On top of that, no one has ever given them an accurate assessment of their skills.

[...]

If we had a motto for this vast charade, it might be this: “We pretend to teach them, and they pretend to learn.”

The trouble is that giving students a no-consequences education will have plenty of unpleasant consequences for us. A few years ago, our kids merely had to compete with one another. But now they’re growing up into a world where they’ll be competing with kids educated in India and China and South Korea, where the competition is ferocious.

I’ve met some of these kids. For them, life is Darwinian. They’re going to eat our lunch.

What’s the answer? I’m not sure, but I’m certainly searching for one, with a baby boy on the way. Ultimately I guess this is another situation where the parents will have to take more responsibility for their kids, by imposing the expectations and requirements that the teachers (hands tied by government or not) refuse to… gee, homeschooling is looking better and better, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, by the time most people figure out this is an issue, I fear North America will be the dirt end of nowhere, run by lazy, ignorant, under-achievers, and our culture, technology, and economy will be eclipsed by the fiercely competitive East.

Oh, my bad, we’re already there. Too late!

… and this awful “health and science” article in the Globe?

The headline proclaims “Folic acid may raise cancer risk in offspring”. Sounds scary, especially since folic acid is recommended to all pregnant women to prevent the risk of neural tube defects. Right off the bat, the article gets this wrong, claiming 1mg is the maximum recommended daily intake of folate in pregnancy. In fact, the recommendation for folic acid was recently increased to 5mg per day for virtually all women.

The meat of the article comes down to:

They found that offspring of rats that received the higher dose experienced a much higher degree of changes to genes in the colon and liver shortly after birth. But as the rats aged, there was a significant drop in the changes to genes.

The researchers don’t yet know which specific gene functions were changed. It could be that the high degree of changes noted shortly after birth could silence genes designed to suppress tumours. But the changes could also activate genes that help protect against cancer.

Paraphrased: Folic acid does something to baby rats. Dunno what.

Yeah, real news worthy.

Can we blame Carly Weeks and the rest of the Globe staff if a spike in neural tube defects appears next year?

… unfortunately, we Canadians did. More of us need to wake up and realize the Harper government are thinly veiled fascists, and getting more overt by the minute.

First, the immigration minister, Jason Kenney, bans a British MP opposed to the war in Afghanistan (and who has some sharp things to say about Israel’s behaviour) from entering Canada on flimsy ‘terror’ accusations.

Now comes the culmination of a Kafkaesque game being played on Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon and his higher-ups.
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The latest Commentary in Canadian Family Physician “Irritable bowel syndrome: Are complementary and alternative medicine treatments useful?” makes the point:

We must keep an open mind about potential new treatments, regardless of whether they are CAM approaches or not. That does not mean, however, that we should not look for evidence of effectiveness of these new treatments.

As they say, don’t keep your mind so open that your brains fall out.

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BoingBoing links to this Daily Kos story regarding the abuse of power by flight crews. Namely, if they have an ‘unruly’ or difficult passenger (and how many of us haven’t lost our temper or been annoyed on a flight?), they report them as potential terrorists.

Not a bad business to be in: for most companies, all they can do when a customer has an argument with a rep is ask them to leave. Airlines get to punish their customers by having them arrested as terrorists. I guess we’re lucky the record industry doesn’t have the same ability.

While mouthing off to a flight attendant is certainly not behaviour to be condoned, how Orwellian is it to be essentially barred from flying, or possibly arrested for it?

It seems the world has gone mad with fear of terrorists to the point where we allow our rabid law-enforcement to bite anyone for no reason justifiable by any sane observer.

How many fantasy plotlines in books, movies, and corny TV shows focus on the setting up some tyrranical arm of government to punish the innocent, for the heroes to come in encourage people to stand up for their rights, claim responsibility for allowing it to happen, and refuse to submit to this sort of abuse in the future?

When will people realize that this is no story, we are living that scenario, and real people are having their real lives ruined, while we stand by and do nothing, meekly cowering and groveling to the powers that be to avoid unjust censure?

Here are some interesting links from the blogosphere, and some thoughts:

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Professor Michael Wesch (a Kansas State University anthropologist) put out an absolutely amazing video on YouTube, participatory culture, and the Internet in general, touching on all kinds of themes. The 55 minutes are a long investment, and I only just now found the time to make it, but it’s well worth it. (via Michael Geist)

Pardon my essentially freethought rambilng that follows:

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One of my favourite (US) blogger-physicians comments on politics:

[...] I cannot bring myself to vote for any political candidate who believes in magic instead of science, and who uses those beliefs to determine policy.

Homeopathy is magic. “EverCleanse” colon cleanse (advertised daily on the radio) is magic. Enzyte is magic, and it’s inventor/marketer is on his way to jail for fraud. Chiropracters run the gamut from those who understand that they’re glorified physical therapists to those who don’t believe germs cause disease; in general, chiropractic is magic.

Creationism is magic, but because it is cloaked in the trappings of religion, it gets treated with kid gloves. Religion needs to stay out of the science classroom, and I cannot bring myself to vote for anyone who doesn’t understand why.

I think it’s a shame that ignorance has become not only prevalent but desirable in this formerly great land of ours. I suppose hypocrites are so popular because they make people comfortable with their own hypocrisy.

I can’t even tell if my dominant emotion is fear or sadness.

All I can do is apply my own private, non-partisan litmus test in the privacy of the voting booth. Magical thinking is a thought process of childhood. It’s time this country grew up.

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