If someone has to proclaim that they 'are not ageist'...

My graduation in 1979, married and 7 mos. pregnant!
Tuition was $484 per term, which I earned
working summers.

If someone has to proclaim that they 'are not ageist', then methinks there is something smelly here. I'm not a Baby Boomer, but I'm married to one. We are the majority of the population right now. We have a right to our opinions. But we are the ones who vote and pay taxes!
We didn't borrow money to pay for our university education. We worked for four months to pay for it. We did not rack up thousands of dollars in tax-free loans.

Ivory Tower Blues, an excellent Canadian book about Canadian universities tells us,
Throughout, the authors argue that fewer and fewer students are experiencing their university education in ways expected by their parents and the public. The majority of students are hampered by insufficient preparation at the secondary school level, lack of personal motivation, and disillusionment. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no administrative or governmental procedure in place to maintain standards of education.

Not everyone SHOULD go to university. The jobs aren't there, and many cannot achieve at a university level, and we must face this fact. Universities stuff classroom with underachievers, who will not be failed, and profs cannot and do not give students realistic marks. I know, I taught at the University of Ottawa. Some students beg and argue about marks, but don't feel compelled to attend classes. They expect to get 'A's. They don't expect to earn them.

A Macleans Magazine young-looking journalist wrote:

Idle No More, and the reliable Old Fart

Emma Teitel on Friday, January 18, 2013 6:31am - 98 Comments

Emma Teitel
calling us old farts!

I would like to coin my own term for people like McParland, and Barbara Kay, and Margaret Wente, pundits who defecate rhetorically on every liberal protest movement that makes the nightly news. My term is easier to remember. I like to call these people FAIPOFS—For all Intents and Purposes, Old Farts. Not necessarily physically old, that is (I’m not ageist), just unfathomable to fathom as young...

U of A

I wonder why she has to label, typecast and group people? Name and Shame? Where are the columnists who would report the news, rather than write some of the facts and then wax eloquently about them? It used to be you would read an article to find out the 5 Ws, Who, What, When, Where, Why - and the good ones would answer the So What question. All people of my generation are not Conservative, we differ as much as small l liberals!

 The above article points out that writers like Barbara Kay, who feels that Quebec students who ought to finance their own education, isn't entitled to an opinion without being named and shamed. Truthfully, it is the elected politicians who are in control of our tax dollars, for which they can be held accountable. They are supposed to represent the majority of us, those actually paying taxes, rather than those like Occupy, who do not. Youngsters who do not vote have no voice, and, therefore, have no right to complain.

Kay writes: As my colleague Matt Gurney noted in a recent column, inflation in Canada from 1991-2007 rose by 35%, while tuition costs throughout the country rose as high as 275% in Alberta (in Quebec a comparatively paltry 111%). Read more (National Post)

Caitlin at Waterloo U.

Occupy Ottawa - in a pub!

 Someone has to pay for it: heat, hydro, new buildings, professor salaries. Salaries are meagre, and research is poorly funded. Higher education is cheaper for users in the province of Quebec, more highly funded by taxpayers, but then, they also have inexpensive day care! As you might recall, the students 'went on strike' (from which employment and which employer?) in order to protest tuition hikes in Quebec. Kay did her research, granted it was based on another journalist's research that she quotes tuition rates (sigh), and calls for an examination of tax-funded universities. University funding includes donations from alumni, and I get requests from all three that I attended.

 I have long read many journalists, like Margaret Wente who bashes teachers without having enough information to support her rants, and wrote an article without crediting her sources. I keep wondering why I bother reading those who cannot do research, and why I truly care about their uninformed opinions. Truthfully, I do not care for their opinions. I am an old fart, I guess, with opinions of my own! On the other hand, rather than an argument between generations, maybe it is an argument between those who think they have a liberal entitlement to our tax dollars.

University of Alberta

Then there are those who have children, but have no means to support them.
My school chum had three kids by the time I graduated high school. She, of course, did not graduate. She quit after grade 11.

Occupiers are blaming the wrong people

Student residence, The Hub

MARGARET WENTE
Laurel O’Gorman is one of the faces of Occupy Toronto. She believes the capitalist system has robbed her of her future. At 28, she’s studying for a master’s degree in sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury. She’s also the single mother of two children. “I’m here because I don’t know what kind of job I could possibly find that would allow me to pay rent, take care of these two children and pay back $600 each month in loans,” she said.

Too Asian?

*This article was originally titled “‘Too Asian’?” For Maclean's response to the controversy it has generated, click here. 
Maclean's has now retitled the article:
*The enrollment controversy

Worries that efforts in the U.S. to limit enrollment of Asian students in top universities may migrate to Canada. The phrase “Too Asian?” is a direct quote from the title of a panel discussion at the 2006 meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling where experts examined the growing tendency among U.S. university admission officers to view Asian applicants as a homogenous group. The evidence suggests some of the most prestigious schools in the U.S. have abandoned merit as the basis for admission for more racially significant—and racist—criteria.

Mr. Layton, the freshman councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina (Toronto), proposes to consume valuable time at the new city council’s very first business meeting with a demand for an apology from Maclean’s magazine. Seconded by Kristyn Wong-Tam of Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale, his motion recommends that “Toronto City Council disassociate itself from the views expressed by Maclean’s in its article entitled ‘Too Asian?’* and request that Maclean’s apologize unreservedly for the negative stereotyping of the Asian-Canadian community.”

I hardly know what to think of this item. Maclean's has gone downhill since it has shortened the depth and breadth of articles. It read more like People than a Canadian journalist newsmag. That said, you get what you pay for.


What a Toronto city council has to do with a national magazine, I don't know.  Secondly, the title is meant to attract attention to a bizarre trend in the US of racially streaming students, and deselecting merit as a criterea, it arose from the name of a conference. This has slipped by many who complain. In fact, the point of the article seems to slip from many minds.


Education and the cultures around it differ around the world. As with any system, a work ethic makes all the difference. We know that Asian countries have more controls around who goes to which schools. You must study your way into a 'good' school. Discipline and hard work makes for higher marks. The value of education and culture and attitudes towards it differ by many factors. It varies by country, ethnic group, region, towns and communities. That said, within one classroom you can find a wide range of attitudes by family and the students you teach. We do know that what you put in comes out. 


We know that parents continually for for or against homework, field trips, extracurricular activities, too much work, or too much play, too little or too much parental involvement, and so on. I found that the best students were raised in a climate or hard work, caring, and family investment in the process, as much as my efforts. Kids who like to work and play, live and learn. Kids who had a goal and a dream and achieved it.


Too much pressure results in tragedy, too.

The thing is that  'Suicide Rates Rising Among Asian Americans'

At Cornell University, for instance, 13 of the 21 student suicide victims between 1996 and 2006 were Asians or Asian Americans. That picture is not complete unless you consider that Asians make up of only 14 percent of the total Cornell student body.