Timothy Snyder's Talk on The Road to Unfreedom

I haven't read the book yet, but I stumbled on Timothy Snyder's talk about it from four years ago. Unfortunately, it's all still very relevant! 

"The things that are happening to us are not just bad but there's something weird, something unsettling going on."

He speaks of the politics of inevitability, that sense that things will run their course as they should, and how often that belief snaps and becomes implausible, like with the housing market crash in 2008. History isn't over, and there are always alternatives to our current path. Our ideas about which direction to take matter. 

Here's a bit of what he said on Trump's election, and much of it might apply to Poilievre too, who may have some connections with Gerald Chipeur, a lawyer with dual citizenship, tied to Stephen Harper and tight with Ted Cruz, and he may be benefiting from money on offer from the MAGA crowd: 

It Ain't Over!!

Just a quick update on Ontario's Covid numbers, currently: 

In the words of Colin Furness, MISt PhD MPH:

"It's clear politicians from all parties won't act until there is public outrage. And there can't be public outrage if the public is in the dark."

Covid is still disabling and deadly, although the media would have you think otherwise.

We're not hearing anything about this, but more lives have been lost to Covid in Canada than in WW2, and in about half the time. In Ontario, looking at the period from August 14 to 31, Covid cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities are dramatically higher this year than the previous two Augusts combined: 

Hospitalizations:  80 in 2020;  406 in 2021;  1,034 in 2022

Fatalities:  24 in 2020;  87 in 2021;  207 in 2022

In Ontario, Covid is killing about 10 times as many people as automobile collisions, yet nobody's fighting against seatbelt laws or airbag regulations or traffic rules. We just do all that to keep ourselves safer because it makes good sense. Right?!  

On Peanut Butter and Covid in Schools

A woman on twitter posted an unfortunate tweet, I assumed satirically, that a good solution to keep immunocompromised kids safe from Covid while they eat lunch indoors is to send them with a peanut butter sandwich. Then they'll be made to eat lunch in an isolated room to keep others safe from them. 

The poster was summarily lambasted, and has since deleted the offending suggestion.

I responded early on, before the shit hit the fan (a bit expanded here):

I don't at all support doing this, but it does show how differently we react to different risks. One is a risk to about 5% of people, causing 82 Ontario deaths in the last 25 years, but it has immediate effects. The other is a risk to everyone and caused 68 Ontario deaths this week, but more slowly.

To clarify a bit, those 82 Ontario deaths aren't just from peanut butter in schools, but from all cases of anaphylaxis. Deaths from nuts specifically total 18, but it's not clear where those fatalities happened or the age range. Almost all, 17, were from 1986-2000, and only 1 after that largely because of education campaigns around allergies and Epipens, and the banning of nuts in elementary schools. Changes came from Sabrina's Law, which was passed in 2005 following the 2003 death of Sabrina Shannon from exposure to dairy protein through tongs used both for poutine and french fries. I'm not discounting concerns about anaphylaxis at all. We absolutely must remain vigilant about protecting kids with allergies. But we should also notice how much we can reduce cases from contamination when we put our minds to it! 

On Divisiveness

This post is so short! 

As I wrote about anti-anti-racism education (and that two 'anti's don't necessarily make a 'pro') yesterday, a connection became crystal clear to me. It's often the same people who are, to various extents....

• anti-CRT in schools and against any diversity training or lessons on discrimination in class
• anti-2SLGBTQ books in the libraries or discussion of same sex marriage or trans experiences
• anti-abortion
• anti-sex education in the schools (pro-parents' rights)
• bring back prayer and Bibles in schools (but only Christian ones)
• climate change isn't caused by humans
• anti-mask and anti-vax

It's curious to me how often those views seem to coincide. I noticed the anti-sex education stance fitting in there from a request for my opinion on a dubious list of items including "Should education get back to reading and math and stop talking about personal issues?" and "Should parents have the right to decide what's taught in classes?" 

This is a position that hopes to care for kids by not educating them. It hopes teachers won't tell kids about anything perceived as bad or dangerous. Ignorance is bliss, and we all want our children to be happy, right?  

A Really Deep Dive into Anti-CRT Rhetoric

This will be a long one, but I'll break it into headings (after this preamble) for easier bit-at-a-time reading!

There's a division among school board trustees and some parents around the best way to tackle discrimination to ensure the best outcome for students and society. The board currently has been providing anti-racism education to staff, and many teachers discuss discrimination in various ways in their classrooms, but now we're seeing some backlash against these policies. It's happening in other boards as well, and it's starting to feel like an organized movement. Taking the most charitable view possible of the backlash, which is at various times part of the "FAIR" movement, anti-CRT (critical race theory), anti-anti-racism, and/or anti-2SLGBTQ+ books in the library, those opposing anti-racism education might be well-meaning and don't necessarily harbour racist or homophobic/transphobic views at all, but they have a different solution to discrimination than is currently outlined by the board. Remember that's the most charitable perception of this perspective. From what I've seen so far, however, their solution hasn't been overtly described, so I've been left to piece together that they're hoping to end discrimination by no longer discussing it. That summation might be in error, so I'm open to hearing a more comprehensive plan of action. 

If it is an accurate summary of their stance, then here are the two positions we're exploring in our goal to reduce discrimination and dismantle roadblocks for marginalized groups:

1. Anti-Racism Education: Educate teachers on implicit bias to ensure fair treatment of students and assessments in the classroom, and educate students on implicit bias as well as systemic discrimination and intersectionality to help them understand how some people are able to get further in their field with less effort and mitigate those embedded structural components. 
2. FAIR: Stop discussing CRT, privilege, intersectionality or discrimination in order to help all students feel equal. 

As a teacher and parent, instead of telling people what not to do, I've found it's generally more effective to tell them what to do. For instance, instead of "don't stand on the chair," we tell kids: "feet on the floor." It saves a whole host of misunderstandings and corrections. From an amalgamation of sources including board meetings here and elsewhere, I've heard that we shouldn't discuss CRT or offer diversity training or use present day discrimination to make up for past discrimination. It's not entirely clear to me what the concerns are, though, or what we should be doing to foster a fair and inclusive classroom experience for all students beside just not discussing any problems. 

If my understanding of their solution is accurate, that we shouldn't discuss racism in the classroom or allow access to books about trans experiences or same sex unions in our schools, then that makes about as much sense to me as hoping to decrease pregnancy rates by not talking to kids about sex -- or, a more current example, as much sense as hoping to end Covid transmission by claiming it's over and removing all protective measures. Some anti-CRT delegates have attempted to show evidence that our current practices don't work, but I've seen no research suggesting that just ignoring it all has a remotely positive effect. To change paths we'd need to see that talking to kids about these issues, also known as educating them, is detrimental, and that staying silent is beneficial. 

My concern is that pretending that racism and homophobia and transphobia and same sex marriages, and trans experiences don't exist, a lack of education on these issues, will increase discrimination over time from creating a fear of the unknown and just plain ignorance. The idea that prejudices are alleviated through knowledge has been with us for decades if not centuries, so this recent challenge to that understanding has provoked eye-rolling and exasperation instead of a thorough exploration. On top of that, CRT on its own is a bit of an American far right dogwhistle, which is what, I believe, led the board to avoid the topic, understandably, instead of doing a deep dive.

But let's actually take a look! (That was just the preamble!)

Privatization in Ontario

 It's vital in Ontario that we understand the problems with privatization because the shift of essential services from the public to private sphere is happening right under our noses. Brittlestar does a great job of explaining it here: 

The typical disaster capital scheme goes something like this: 

1. Wait for a crisis (or create one). Then people will be busy struggling to manage and won't have the resources to protest the government or, in all the chaos, will be otherwise willing to allow new sweeping changes to take place without a thorough democratic process. This Covid situation just fell into the laps of the uber-right-wing.

On Finding Answers in Research

I recently posted, on social media, a list of studies showing the effectiveness of masks and of mandates. One commenter said he doesn't trust studies because they could be biased, and instead he has used raw data to come to his own conclusions. 

A few problems here:

• If a group of scholars in a field work together to analyze data until they reach a consensus, and then the paper undergoes a peer review process in which no less than three impartial and anonymous reviewers scrutinize the methodology and then further analyze the gathered data to ensure they come to the same conclusions, if all that can be warped by bias to the point that all these studies coming to the same conclusion are flawed, then what makes it likely that Joe Blow, basement data collector, has no bias in his data analysis?
• Part of the problem is that Joe thinks he can consciously recognize and avoid bias, as if it's something within our awareness, as if all researchers and their anonymous reviewers are biased consciously due to their some benefit they hope to get from nefariously leading the data to match their hoped for conclusions. But often bias is covert, which is why the scientific method has so many rules and systems to undermine any possible subconscious confirmation bias, like double-blind studies. Can Joe be sure that he harbours no unconscious biases??

A Useful Crisis

I'm a big movie buff, and I used to love watching meaty psychological thrillers and films with evil people murdering one another. No Country for Old Men is one of my favourites. Or deep absurdity, like Synecdoche, New York. But I find I can't watch that anymore. With the exception of Better Call Saul (because Kim Wexler is one of the most fascinatingly complex female characters written for a series), I've developed an aversion to the cruelty and mayhem of films I used to love. It appears I've become too sensitive! I blame the current socio-political climate making our lives full of death and chaos. I'm limited to comedies and cartoons. 

But even there, I can't escape our current situation. Last night's viewing was The Lion King, and this bit, when Nala confronts Simba, wouldn't allow me a brief respite from the current turmoil caused by Ford's privatization shenanigans:

What Happened to Politics?

I want to save this thread by Jeff Rybak, defence lawyer, lecturer at the University of Toronto, and a not-for-profit corporate director: 

"I'm trying to understand what's happening with politics in Canada, especially on the right. I read a lot of comments, though I obviously don't have time to pick fights with all of them. Still, I have to say, I'm discouraged. We're seeing the worst in people lately. 

I'm seeing freedom defined as never having to do what you're told - even if that's just not to make life worse for other people. Forget about legal and illegal for a moment. We're just talking about human decency here. Apparently we're only free when that's optional.

Strap One On For Safety!

I wrote about the almost total absence of PSAs around using masks to prevent transmission of a virus that, in some areas, kills ten times as often as traffic collisions, and then look at the possible reasons we're being pressured to ditch this simple and effective tool: On Mandates: Mitigating Over Minimizing. I wrote it a week ago, before the new CDC guideline change that throw us all under the bus (see Eric Topol's takedown of it here), and then I spent a week in the woods to emerge, of course, too late to fix a glaring error -- an extra word bungling up a sentence. It happens. 

Here it is:

A mandate isn’t necessarily tyrannical. It’s a rule that, in any good government, is devised to protect the people from harm so we can better live and work together. We must monitor legislation to ensure we stop laws that can harm people, but we also need to get involved when harm comes from a lack of legislation. A good mandate is put in place when harm can be prevented in an enforceable way. For instance, despite the fact that skin cancer costs many lives each year, and suntan lotion can prevent these deaths, using suntan lotion isn’t mandated. It would be nearly impossible to enforce its use. Seatbelts, on the other hand, have been mandated for decades. In the states, traffic collisions take about six times as many lives as skin cancer*, so seatbelts potentially save more lives than sun lotion. They’re also much more easily noticeable and enforceable. 

I was just 11 years old, when I was first forced by my mum to strap myself to a car with a 2″ vinyl band with metal clips that held me tight against the seat. It felt like wearing a straight jacket, and I protested the infringement on my freedom. I wasn’t the only one; in many places “resistance was the norm” to seatbelt laws. Mum was avoiding fines of $240 from our Conservative Premier Bill Davis (about $1,200 now), and she was further cajoled by ads on TV showing the aftermath of people thrown from a car. Children weren’t kept from these gruesome images, sometimes shown at school assemblies. Such was the level of care we could expect back in the 1970s. 

Covid-Free Schools are Possible!

A school in Texas has been 100% Covid-free with zero learning loss. They used good masks indoors (N95 or better) with no 'mask breaks.' Everyone eats outdoors even in the hottest weather. Every room has a HEPA or Corsi-Rosenthal box filter and a CO2 monitor to track air quality. At 650ppm, windows open even in the worst weather. At 800ppm, students vacate the room. 

It helps significantly that they acknowledge that, "There is no such thing as a harmless single case of Covid" because of the potential for long-term effects on kids, for seeding a super-spreader event, and/or for hosting a mutation. 

On Anti-Racist Education Provoking Bullying of White Kids

Addressing a local concern about bullying:

I'm very sorry to hear about any child's bullying experience in school. Bullying of any kind has no place in our schools, but we've seen that it can be so difficult to eradicate. Kids will jump on any little thing in order to try out their power over others, and that has to be nipped in the bud by school staff or, perhaps even better, from other students who recognize the problem. I experienced bullying myself back in the 60s just because my last name was similar to a popular cartoon villain. When I surveyed grade 12 students on their experiences with bullying each year, almost everyone reports having been bullied in grade school in some way. We have to keep working harder at teaching students what playful teasing of a good friend looks like compared to mean teasing, and we need to implement mediation techniques to work through any harassment or worse treatment beyond just "shake hands and make up" strategies that have shown to be ineffective. 

On Showing My Cards

 I'm showing them!! People keep telling me not to let people know what I stand for until after the election, and that doesn't sit well with me. Others have told me to choose my words more carefully and avoid words like "equity" or "inclusion" because it will turn people off. It's the one type of advice I've gotten across the board, from everyone who is trying to help me, yet I'm ignoring it. 

I get it. I get that it's all a popularity contest and you don't want to say that one thing that gets people to avoid your name on the ballot. But I hate that so much. I hate hearing the word salad of some politicians who get very good at skirting around questions and/or refocusing on saving you money or attacking other parties, and then they win, and we're all horrified. I guess the reality is that I hate that underhandedness more than I love the ideas of serving my community as a trustee. Maybe that's selfish of me - risking a negative outcome in schools because I failed to get a seat at the table for following my ideals, but it's worth it if it works. And then maybe it can catch on!! 

I'm not naive, but I'm going to be fully honest and upfront anyway - a less offensive Bulworth perhaps. So I'm going to think of this as running an experiment. My hypothesis: It is possible to win an election while presenting all views and ideas clearly and openly and answering questions as honestly as possible. 

We'll find out!

We Need to Discuss Systemic Racism in Schools

In The Record article, "Waterloo Region District School Board Trustee Mike Ramsay speaks up about sanctions against him," Mr. Ramsay writes that he is concerned that education has shifted from a focus on literacy and numeracy to White Privilege and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

As a teacher at WRDSB this year, it is clear that anti-racist education is definitely part of the board's mandate since significant Professional Development time was provided for teachers to learn about how racial prejudice affects our students, but I have yet to see any evidence that the amount of time discussing race in our schools has in any way remotely outpaced or distracted from teaching curriculum. Our PD aimed to impact any implicit bias that teachers might have, information that is vital to student equity in our classrooms. Understanding prejudice means really understanding that we can never extrapolate information about a group to better understand any one individual within that group. We can't know a person until we get to know them. One PD video in particular, The End of Average!? reiterated that message specifically. The ETFO resource Mr. Ramsay berates, "Rethink, Reconnect, Reimagine," encourages teachers to see all students for who they are, for their unique skills and abilities, and to "create schools where all students are seen and remembered for their diverse identities, experiences, and talents." Becoming better teachers doesn't take any time away from the curriculum.

Masked and Vaxed in School

Q. Do you support bringing back masks mandates for schools, defying provincial orders, if necessary? Do you support your board demanding that the province add vaccination for Covid to the provincial list? 

 A. (on the fly on Twitter) It will be so much harder to get masks back now that they're gone! I'll do whatever I can. At the very least better messaging can make a huge difference. Vax being added to the list seems pretty do-able and more supported. 

 A. (after more thought): One of the concerns that provokes me to run for trustee is protecting students with Mask Mandates. N95 masks are very effective at stopping the spread of this virus, and the BA.5 mutation is even better at skirting around vaccine-provoked immunity. In Ontario, our rate of hospitalization for Covid is six times higher than for a car collision. We wear seatbelts to protect ourselves in traffic; we should be wearing masks to protect ourselves in classrooms. Removing mandates because cases slowed down just makes the next wave come sooner. 

Tossed My Hat in the Ring

I officially put my name forward to campaign to be a Trustee for WRDSB, Waterloo/Wilmot area. I'm confident in my ability to be a Trustee. I can read difficult and tedious reports and condense them into more accessible chunks to help people understand some of the issues and the decisions being made. I can research and present information. I've been teaching for decades, so I'm pretty good at explaining ideas to people and clarifying any misunderstandings. And I really, really care about the fate of the public education system in general and of the students in my region specifically. School should be a place that's safe for all kids and that kids enjoy. I whipped together a website: MarieSnyder.ca,  in no time, and Covid made me a pro at online meetings. 

3QD: Tossing the Canon in a Cannon

 I've started contributing to 3 Quarks Daily once each month. Here's my first:

Tossing the Canon in a Cannon - about choosing philosophers to read that aren't posthumously tainted by racist, sexist, or homophobic commons mixed in with more useful arguments.  

Here it is:

I knew it was coming, yet I was still surprised when it hit my classroom. 

“We shouldn’t be looking at this.”

Students have complained about my course before, certain that they should not be expected to read anything so difficult in a high school philosophy course. The effect of this grumbling can be seen in the watering down of some English courses deciphering Hunger Games instead of Hamlet.  I enjoyed that popular trilogy, and I’m no Shakespeare stan, but I do assert that it’s vital to develop more complex reading skills and close reading habits  in our teenagers with works that demand consideration of each word before they walk out of high school. Too many in our society are losing their ability to sustain attention to the end of a magazine article and grasp the nuances of an ambitious claim to the point of believing radical headlines and letting noxious chants sway their voting habits. So I firmly stand my ground, luring them to continue with the potential reward of being able to impress their friends and destroy their enemies with their enhanced reading superpowers.  

On Claims of Porn in Schools

There's a call to arms on a social media from a few people who think the memoir in graphic novel form, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir pronouns), should be removed from shelves in school libraries for being pornographic. For the uninitiated, "graphic novel" means it's a cartoon, not that it's graphic in its content. My former school was named as one of the offenders who dares to carry such smut, so of course the post had the ironic effect of making me curious enough to go out and buy a copy of the book to see what all the fuss is about. 

Content Warning: Kobabe's drawing of a sex act is further down. Don't scroll down if you think you might be offended.

The original social media poster suggested parents call Family and Children's Services with their concerns about this bit of pornography in our schools, which is a horrible idea that would put undue stress on a service that has much more important needs to tend to than mediating quibbles around which ideas and images teenagers should be privy to. She doesn't seem to understand the scope of the organization. She also doesn't seem to understand what pornography is or what might actually harm teenagers today. 

My only criticism with the book is that, while it shows the main character, Maia, incrementally more courageous as e finds eir voice, illustrating specifically noteworthy events in eir life, the telling doesn't have a strong story arc. A graphic novel memoir that does this brilliantly, for comparison, is Persepolis, which is also a series of true events, but Satrapi crafts scenes together with a trajectory and more elements of storytelling, making good use of foreshadowing for instance. Gender Queer didn't end as much as it just stopped when e got to the present. But that's besides the point here.  

A Plague of Willful Incompetence

This The Tyee article, "Get Ready for the Forever Plague," by Andrew Nikiforuk, hits all the important notes about our ongoing pandemic. He says that we're dealing with a "plague of willful incompetence" as Covid continues to evolve. All reasonable responses have been abandoned, including masking, testing, data collection, and robust ventilation. Covid is not inevitable and in no way beneficial as reinfections increase the damage from Covid and each infection damages the immune system regardless how mild the symptoms. Two years ago Anthony Leonardi predicted that Covid would destabilize "the immune system by subverting T-cell function" creating a cumulative damage. 

We're headed for a BA.5 wave, which is more transmissible than any previous variant. Vaccinations help reduce death rates, but we need to focus on preventing infection or reinfection in the first place. 

Covid and Climate Change: Similar Rationalizations, Different Intensity

I was searching through YouTube looking for things to include in my career retrospective, mainly looking for a clip of an old CKCO show, What's Your Point/The Final Round, from March 28, 2009, filmed at my school. Four teachers were set up to argue on various random issues, and Brent Hanson provoked us to argue with a poke in the back to indicate when we should each talk, and I'd jump in as commanded, which made it sound like I was intentionally interrupting people! By a student vote, I won the debate. Unfortunately (or not) that clip appears to be lost to the ether. But I did come across an old CTV newscast about an Earth Day festival I used to put on, and it has interesting connections with my reaction to our current Covid crisis. 

Back in 2010 (at 1:30 min. in), I said, "The feeling with a lot of my students, maybe 30% or so, is that this is all a conspiracy, that we're fine, we've done nothing to change the world, and some crazy environments are making us think that we did."

Sound familiar?