Collegiate Renewal

I am very disappointed about the recent bad press in regards to Nutana Collegiate’s proposal to abolish failing grades. I would encourage anyone who wishes to criticize this proposal to do a little research in order to have an informed opinion. This proposal will be a very minor change. It does not mean that students will be pushed ahead if they have not completed a course. A grade of 49% or under indicates that a student has not yet met the course requirements. Thus, putting an “incomplete” on the transcript is quite accurate.

This initiative is just one of many ideas that are being proposed as part of the Saskatoon public school board’s collegiate renewal initiative. There are many reasons why education remains beyond the reach of many people. We really need to do a better job of being inclusive and focusing on learning rather than grading. Learning can not be summed up by a letter or number grade. We need to examine why so many people continue to be frustrated with school. This will require members of the public and the media to be more informed about what this requires. I would encourage everyone to read readily available public documents which are accessible on the school boards’ web site at www.spsd.sk.ca. There are many interesting schools of thought regarding traditional grading practices that need to be examined and discussed in a meaningful way. The works of Ann Davies and Alfie Kohn would be a good place to start. Hopefully we can move beyond meaningless criticism and have an intelligent conversation about educational reform.

I do realize that thanks to a successful public relations campaign from the likes of hateful jerks like Rush Limbaugh that most people wouldn’t touch feminism with a ten foot pole. So I fully expect men to have their worthless anti-feminist opinions published in the newspaper. But when that kind of garbage comes from a woman, it really burns my britches. So here you go, the unpublished LTE.

Morgentaler award renews women’s rights debate

I wonder why I have not yet seen this headline. Just about every article about abortion that I have seen emphasizes the fetus while completely ignoring the woman. While I expect men, especially those in the Catholic church, to act as the uterine police, I can’t help but be especially angered by women who choose to judge women for acting on their bodily rights. Bronwyn Eyre’s article “Morgentaler award renews abortion debate” was especially disappointing.

“96, 815 babies were aborted in 2005 alone.” You can not abort a baby, you can only abort a pregnancy. No mention of the woman carrying the pregnancy. No mention of the fact that women have been ending unwanted pregnancies for generations. Eyre opines that we need to discuss the effects of abortion on women. Why not a discussion of the impact of pregnancy? Even with the best of medical care, carrying a pregnancy to term is a much riskier activity to the emotional and physical health of a woman than a legal abortion. Why not a discussion of the dangers of illegal abortions? Dangerous abortions kill millions of women worldwide every year.

Eyre complains about the misogyny of Morgentaler’s writings. Let’s talk about the misogyny of the Catholic church and religion in general. The Bible is an instruction manual of oppression. It has it all. Instructions for selling your daughter into slavery and/or marriage and continually referring to women as the property of some man are just two of many shining examples of misogyny.
The Catholic church still refuses to ordain women as priests and is still telling women what to do with their own bodies. The organization has misogyny woven into its’ very structure. The worldwide oppression of women is a humanitarian crisis. When is that debate going to take place?