dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-22 09:28 am
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-22 09:28 am
About Canada and the war of 1812; about reproductive rights; about Rain Dogs
I follow a few history-sites on Twitter and one of them posted this account on the War of 1812, describing how integral it was to cementing Canada's separate national identity. As most citizens of the USA, I never learned too much about this particular war in school-- and perhaps irresponsibly, I spent my college history classes learning desperately about cultures I had never learned anything about, primarily in Asia and Africa, out of retaliation to an education previously centered on Europe and the Americas. (I must credit my teachers in one excellent respect: I learned more about several South American and Central American countries than I think is standard, thanks to going to charter schools*. Never learned about Oceania, though.)
Anyway, here's the piece, which is pretty awesome and should be read! I think it's silly that we go out of our way to sweep this event under the rugs.
That Time We Beat the Americans:
"There are many reasons why neither side cares to tell the story of the War of 1812. It doesn’t fit America’s ideals of itself, casting founding heroes like Jefferson and Madison as bellicose fools, and showing the United States at its worst: woefully incompetent. For us, the war doesn’t fit the victimology that has nestled comfortably at the heart of Canadian nationalism since the 1960s. Far from identifying Canadians as “beautiful losers,” the War of 1812 casts us as rather nasty fighters with a vengeful streak."
In the realm of reproductive rights, people are talking about Darcy Burner some more. I really like her and plan to support funding for her campaign in the next month or two. She's onto something important, I think, and this article about how abortions have improved the lives of men, as well as women gets to the heart of her point: that we must embrace and accept contraceptives and abortion as rights that are good and positive for the people who make use of them, since they permit women to choose when (or whether) to have children.
It grates me to think that women won't be heard because the society we live in as it stands simply values male voices more, but I don't doubt that there's a lot of unpleasant truth in that. And I do think that abortion has actively made life better for a lot of my male friends who don't even want to be fathers now, and would not have wanted to be fathers at a younger age.
Finally, Rain Dogs: last night I put away my other projects for an hour and a half and designed a t-shirt for DeviantArt's 'musically inspired' contest. I'm not really sure I'm entering the contest, per se, but the idea of designing a t-shirt based on music sounded fun to me. I debated over what song to use; Hello Dolly! by Louis Armstrong, Last Leaf by Ok, Go, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy....I ended up going with Bride of Rain Dog by Tom Waits, because Tom Waits is an awesome guy.
It's kind of a weird design but I enjoyed trying to find ways to represent the song's lyrics visually, since Waits has a tendency to string words together in a way counter to intuition. I love that about him. So here's the result on DeviantArt. Maybe not quite clean enough to wear, but I think if I found a shirt like this I might buy it.
* - I'm not sure how well-known the idea of a charter school is, so here's an explanation for those who might not've heard of them. In the US, there are public schools (funded by the government, representing a specific area of the city's populace and serving students within that specific area) and private schools (privately funded, representing a specific socio-economic class or theological group, serving students of that economic class or theological upbringing). Relatively recently, ie, in the 1990's or so, a new kind of school was proposed and brought into practice. These are charter schools, which receive their funding from the government/state, but are not part of a specific district as are public schools. They must be approved by the Department of Education and generally proposals for funding are written up as a school charter detailing the particular mission of the charter school and how the people heading these projects plan to achieve their goal.
Thus, for example, a charter school like mine has the mission to provide college preparatory level academic classes (ie, they will do their best to provide advanced education that engages students' critical thinking more directly than the current public education model) while also providing guaranteed access to education in the performing arts (preventing them from being cut from the school's programs to balance the budget).
Charter schools are distinct from public schools in the sense that their administrative offices are much, much smaller; charter schools must pursue accreditation to ensure that their graduates' diplomas are recognized by colleges and universities; charter schools may not discriminate entry to the school, legally, but can do placement testing once a student is enrolled; and charter schools can be headed by a single individual or a board, depending on how the charter is presented, though the board model is considered safer after multiple instances in the last twenty years of people creating charter schools and embezzling the funding intended for the school for personal use.
I've seen several successful charter schools in my home state, and I know that they can work, provided the right people are in charge. However, I also know there's been a lot of trouble getting the model accepted elsewhere because of some very public failures (esp. those to do with embezzling, as mentioned previously) and as far as I'm aware, charter schools aren't too common outside of the southwest corner of the USA.
I only know as much as I do about the running of such schools because:
1) My mother worked as the administrator for a charter school that I attended for two years
2) I went to another charter school for middle school and high school
3) My mother also worked as an English teacher at another charter school
The first example actually ended up being one of the embezzling cases, which meant attending several public hearings where my mother was asked to defend the principal, who'd embezzled money from the school. It was a pretty bad deal, but as a result of that and my own interest in the education system, I got to see a lot of how these things are handled, at least in this state. The more you know!
Anyway, here's the piece, which is pretty awesome and should be read! I think it's silly that we go out of our way to sweep this event under the rugs.
That Time We Beat the Americans:
"There are many reasons why neither side cares to tell the story of the War of 1812. It doesn’t fit America’s ideals of itself, casting founding heroes like Jefferson and Madison as bellicose fools, and showing the United States at its worst: woefully incompetent. For us, the war doesn’t fit the victimology that has nestled comfortably at the heart of Canadian nationalism since the 1960s. Far from identifying Canadians as “beautiful losers,” the War of 1812 casts us as rather nasty fighters with a vengeful streak."
In the realm of reproductive rights, people are talking about Darcy Burner some more. I really like her and plan to support funding for her campaign in the next month or two. She's onto something important, I think, and this article about how abortions have improved the lives of men, as well as women gets to the heart of her point: that we must embrace and accept contraceptives and abortion as rights that are good and positive for the people who make use of them, since they permit women to choose when (or whether) to have children.
It grates me to think that women won't be heard because the society we live in as it stands simply values male voices more, but I don't doubt that there's a lot of unpleasant truth in that. And I do think that abortion has actively made life better for a lot of my male friends who don't even want to be fathers now, and would not have wanted to be fathers at a younger age.
Finally, Rain Dogs: last night I put away my other projects for an hour and a half and designed a t-shirt for DeviantArt's 'musically inspired' contest. I'm not really sure I'm entering the contest, per se, but the idea of designing a t-shirt based on music sounded fun to me. I debated over what song to use; Hello Dolly! by Louis Armstrong, Last Leaf by Ok, Go, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy....I ended up going with Bride of Rain Dog by Tom Waits, because Tom Waits is an awesome guy.
It's kind of a weird design but I enjoyed trying to find ways to represent the song's lyrics visually, since Waits has a tendency to string words together in a way counter to intuition. I love that about him. So here's the result on DeviantArt. Maybe not quite clean enough to wear, but I think if I found a shirt like this I might buy it.
* - I'm not sure how well-known the idea of a charter school is, so here's an explanation for those who might not've heard of them. In the US, there are public schools (funded by the government, representing a specific area of the city's populace and serving students within that specific area) and private schools (privately funded, representing a specific socio-economic class or theological group, serving students of that economic class or theological upbringing). Relatively recently, ie, in the 1990's or so, a new kind of school was proposed and brought into practice. These are charter schools, which receive their funding from the government/state, but are not part of a specific district as are public schools. They must be approved by the Department of Education and generally proposals for funding are written up as a school charter detailing the particular mission of the charter school and how the people heading these projects plan to achieve their goal.
Thus, for example, a charter school like mine has the mission to provide college preparatory level academic classes (ie, they will do their best to provide advanced education that engages students' critical thinking more directly than the current public education model) while also providing guaranteed access to education in the performing arts (preventing them from being cut from the school's programs to balance the budget).
Charter schools are distinct from public schools in the sense that their administrative offices are much, much smaller; charter schools must pursue accreditation to ensure that their graduates' diplomas are recognized by colleges and universities; charter schools may not discriminate entry to the school, legally, but can do placement testing once a student is enrolled; and charter schools can be headed by a single individual or a board, depending on how the charter is presented, though the board model is considered safer after multiple instances in the last twenty years of people creating charter schools and embezzling the funding intended for the school for personal use.
I've seen several successful charter schools in my home state, and I know that they can work, provided the right people are in charge. However, I also know there's been a lot of trouble getting the model accepted elsewhere because of some very public failures (esp. those to do with embezzling, as mentioned previously) and as far as I'm aware, charter schools aren't too common outside of the southwest corner of the USA.
I only know as much as I do about the running of such schools because:
1) My mother worked as the administrator for a charter school that I attended for two years
2) I went to another charter school for middle school and high school
3) My mother also worked as an English teacher at another charter school
The first example actually ended up being one of the embezzling cases, which meant attending several public hearings where my mother was asked to defend the principal, who'd embezzled money from the school. It was a pretty bad deal, but as a result of that and my own interest in the education system, I got to see a lot of how these things are handled, at least in this state. The more you know!