CSotD: Cruelties: International, academic and oenological
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At Cartoon Movement, Tjeerd Royaards notes the demolition of the refugee center/encampment at Calais, which is starting as I write this and is expected to continue through the next three days.
I haven't been following the situation closely, but news accounts indicate that it is not quite as blunt and sweeping as his cartoon but neither is it as organized and efficient as the organizers would like. The saving grace, such as it is, is that they know this, which doesn't mean they'll stop the process but it does seem to be moderating things.
As with our own Central American refugee crisis a few years ago, it's not as simple as, in the cartoon, bulldozing them off the cliff or, as in the foolish suggestions of uninformed blowhards, busing them to the other side of the closest border, especially when they are 11 years old and alone.
Here's an analysis from the BBC which is a year old but likely not that far out of date in its main points, the most striking of which — for an American audience — is that those fleeing Syria are only #3 on the chart.
With all the coverage of various animals on skateboards and the doings of Kardashians, we seem somehow to have missed finding out about some troubled regions of the world, but it's not news to those who live either in those regions or in the regions that can be reached from there by boat, train, truck or other conveyence.
It's important, as caring people in an interconnected world, to try to understand what has been called the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, and in those above links, you'll find topics like unaccompanied minors and people attempting to rejoin their families, as well as some indicators that these are not uneducated Stone Age dirt farmers, or, at least, the majority are not.
It's also important for Americans to recognize what it means to have "refugees pouring over our borders," because we are facing nothing even remotely resembling what Europe is dealing with.
The process for getting from Syria or any of those troubled overseas nations to the United States is so convoluted, complex and drawn out that the notion of subjecting those refugees to an intensified system of "extreme vetting" is both laughable and disgusting, since promoting it shows both an appalling lack of knowledge about how things are already done and reveals a hidden agenda so unhidden that it might as well come with lasers, sirens and a disco ball.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Italian Swiss Colony no longer makes "Bali Hai" wine or, for that matter, anything else.
Too bad. I think a nice, chilled bottle of what, for those who missed it, might be best described as sangria made with Hawaiian Punch would do the job in either of these situations.
There appears to be a market for the stuff, and I'd wish it were only for nostalgia, but, then, I've seen the alco-pop swill in the liquor stores, and it's no longer confined to the low-voltage "hard lemonade" category.
I was hearing ads for Crown Royal Vanilla on the radio for several weeks before I realized they weren't talking about Royal Crown, and Southern Comfort also comes in flavors.
And here I thought Southern Comfort was a flavor.
You know, like Bali Hai, but not as elite.
Fear and loathing in study hall
Mr. Fitz has been exploring the role of fear in our school system, and it's worth going back to the start of the arc, because, as always, this working teacher has a lot to say, even if nobody is listening.
It's critical to the quality of his argument that he include teachers, and not just students, among those motivated and dominated by fear. The vertical power system in schools is uniform in that intimidation and domination are the chief tools, not only to force compliance from students but from faculty as well.
There are several places to take this idea and, on the faculty level, it was a major reason I stopped pursuing a mid-career change to teaching: As I was taking masters' coursework, I heard discouragement from too many first and second year teachers pursuing their permanent certification, things like "I would never be allowed to do that," and horror tales about the bullying and domination of administrators, curriculum committees or just of senior faculty.
You read handwringing articles about how many young teachers leave the profession within the first three years, but you need to drill down to find the analyses that include words like "hazing," or that talk about saddling the newcomers with impossible students the established faculty don't want to have to deal with.
That's not entirely the result of laziness or lack of motivation: I spoke with a retired department head who said he had no problem taking on those tough underachieving classes and even considered it an obligation at his level, except that, since that level of professional attitude would not show up on his evaluations and their test results would, it was career suicide.
You have to think of your obligation to your family, he said, and cited it as a reason he had retired sooner than he had planned to.
I also heard from a group of very disheartened teachers who had been part of a "shared decisionmaking team" in recruiting a new principal. They had interviewed three finalists and their recommendation was that either of two applicants would be good choices, but that the third was a very bad, unacceptable candidate and … well, you can guess how that one came out.
This is why I cite a vertical structure: Everybody in the system is being bullied by the people on the next rung up.
Poke around a bit at the Mr. Fitz site: He knows his stuff.
Meanwhile, dealing only with the teacher/student component, here's something I wrote in 2000 that, for all the blather over educational reform, has not, sad to report, gone out of style:
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