Hello friends! Welcome to your Friday MashUp for May 10-14, 2010. It seems to be a bit of a slow news week unless you count Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court but US politics aside, we’ll hop right too it.
Oh and an unofficial plug for the Edmontonian, who compiled a list of headlines this week for…well, Edmonton. For the record, we do human-rights or education related news. 
On to the MashUp!
Alberta Drops Plans for Written Portion of Achievement Tests
The Province has decided to cut the written portions or long answer out of the Achievement Exams written by Grades 3, 6 and 9 in order to save money. Critics of this plan suggest that the Government is prioritizing money over education since this reduces all achievement exams to multiple choice.
As someone who struggles with multiple choice, I probably would have failed grade school if this had happened to me. But more to the point, what do standardized tests really accomplish and how does robotizing them help the students? I’ve heard it said before (about human rights learning) and I’ll repeated it here: education isn’t for learning. Education is for teaching people facts and figures that are ultimately meaningless in the day to day because it has no relation to the experience. Learning, on the other hand, puts you directly in the path of the experience and makes you immerse yourself in it.
That’s why you’ll occasionally hear people refer to human rights “education” not as an education but as a learning process. Interestingly, (and conversely) I’d also argue this is where having a liberal arts degree is beneficial–most Arts degrees provide a rich and varied learning experience that shapes perceptions and critical thinking.
New Edmonton anti-crime projects focus on immigrant integration, mentoring, and Somali youth supports
Perhaps in response to the demand by the Somali community in Edmonton and elsewhere, the Government of Alberta announced this week that they have issued funding for three Edmonton projects through the Safe Communities Innovation Fund:
- Reducing Crime by Enhancing Resilience and Capacity Among Immigrant Families and Youth: $1.3 million to the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers to provide wrap-around programming that includes addressing the barriers to community integration faced by new Canadians;
- Immigrant and Refugee Mentoring Programs: $400,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Edmonton and Area to use mentoring as a way to reduce high risk behaviours such as drug trafficking and gang activity. This project is also being funded with $195,000 from TransCanada; and
- Keeping Edmonton Somali Youth out of Street Gangs and Drugs: $202,000 to the Somali Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton to reduce and prevent crime in the Somali community through quality afterschool programming and academic support.
These are meant to be preventative measures, not crime-solving measures (i.e. the money does not go towards solving existing crime but towards a long-term solution to prevent the crimes from happening). The Edmonton Journal story that covers the above press release features an interesting juxtaposition of views from Allison Redford, the Minister for Alberta Justice and Mahamad Accord of the Alberta Somali Community Centre.
However, to be honest, $2 million is not nearly enough to do anything with and the problem is a lot bigger than Alberta. Many of the Somali-Canadian youth who were killed in Alberta originated from Ontario. Obviously, preventative measures here don’t do any good if they’re not even from Alberta in the first place. It’s indicative of a broader issue of immigration and refugee support across Canada, a criticism that has been leveled at the federal government for a long while now.
MPs Learn Tough Lessons about Using Wheelchairs
About 24 MPs and Senators were using wheelchairs on May 12th as part of the Spinal Cord Injury and Canadian Paraplegic Association Awareness Month. One MP, John Rafferty of Thunder Bay-Rainy River (NDP) found out that the signs around Parliament Hill regarding accessibility were awful since he couldn’t find a way into his own office building. And he learned that “accessibility” means different things to people using wheelchairs (the third thing he learned was terminology that people use wheelchairs and are not in them).
I sincerely hope that they learned something out of their experience and will now take the action to rectify the situation. Or is that too much to ask?
That wraps up the Friday MashUp for May 10-14, 2010. It looks like the weather is improving for Edmonton so please go outside and enjoy the….oh hang on a second. I forgot that there’s a fire advisory going on in Thorchild county because of the big fire.
Well…enjoy the sunshine and don’t breathe too deeply.
