Diverse ABCs
As an educator for almost 40 years (in Canada and internationally), I cannot agree with you more on the need to find common ground within our diversity (Wrong On Faith – editorial, Jan. 3). As an immigrant, I value this country's commitment to inclusiveness. We are a model for the world of how to make diversity work. Our public schools must continue to be the laboratories of what effective human relationships look like across the lines that often divide us in society. They are the cornerstones of our democracy.
Avis Glaze, Delta, B.C.
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Studies in the U.S. have found that private-school classrooms are more racially-integrated than neighbouring government schools; private-school students are more likely to eat lunch with children of other races. It turns out that neighbourhood schools tend to be stratified because people generally live in the same area with people of similar backgrounds, while many parents choose private schools on the basis of academic or extracurricular factors that have nothing to do with cultural backgrounds. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to develop societal unity may be to encourage children to attend private, religious schools.
Malkin Dare, president, Society for Quality Education, Waterloo, Ont.
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Tough on snobs
I recall a Beaujolais nouveau scandal, wherein a majority of expert wine tasters who were not allowed to see what they were sampling could not discern good from bad. Now, concert violinists who were not allowed to see the instrument couldn't distinguish a Stradivarius from off-the-rack instruments (Concert Violinists Fail To Recognize Stradivarius – Jan. 3). Whatever are snobs going to do now?
Douglas L. Martin, Hamilton, Ont.
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Pizza economics
Todd Hirsch's Malthusian reading of Schumpterian economics sounds like the product of overprivileged, entitled armchair theorizing, and is clearly out of touch with the particularly harsh circumstances unemployed people are already facing (Pizza Delivers Innovation – Jan. 3).
Perhaps if Mr. Hirsch were tossed on to the mean streets of unemployment and homelessness, such anxiety and desperation might drive him to turn his skills and education toward "innovating" a more thoughtful and humane prescription for alleviating the current crisis.
David Skinner, Toronto
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Perhaps the hordes of soon-to-be delivery persons, galvanized by mean circumstances, will invent a network of urban ramps and chutes, solar-powered, to convey Chinese food, chicken wings, etc. to their ravenous clientele – all as result of a harsh economy's stimulus of the limitless innovative talent bubbling within the minds of the stressed dispossessed.
I say solar powered, because nature's winds cannot compete with the blowhard offerings of some economists.
Gwydion Plumstead, Ottawa
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MP pay daze
Bob Plamondon dismisses the loss of earnings argument for generous pensions for MPs using the Jim Prentice anecdote (Look In The Mirror, MPs – Jan. 3). I'll offer another anecdote.
Had I been elected when I ran for Parliament, as a mid-career successful academic physician I would have taken a substantial pay cut, a stressful separation from my family, and an uncertain future if – as is the usual fate – subsequently defeated. How much sacrifice do we expect from professionals interested in shifting to a different type of public service? Do we want such individuals in Parliament?
Gordon Guyatt, Dundas, Ont.
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National standard
André Picard touches on critical issues, which significantly affect patient care, facing the pathology and laboratory professions (Let's Look Beyond Our Pathology Problems – Life, Jan. 3).
The Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science supports implementing nationwide regulation of all laboratory professionals to maintain standards and ensure accountability. Medical laboratory technologists are regulated in seven out of 13 provinces and territories. Don't patients in the other six jurisdictions deserve the same standard of care? Also needed is a national standard for accrediting medical laboratories.
This process should be accountable to governments for review and oversight. We all must ensure patient safety remains the No. 1 priority.
Tricia VanDenakker, president, Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science
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Hockey PMs
Re The Hockey Prime Minister (Jan. 3): Mike Pearson may never have played up his hockey pedigree, as Lawrence Martin notes, but he loved it enough to comment in his memoirs that after Pierre Trudeau won the Liberal leadership convention in 1968, "it was all over in time to get home for the face-off of Hockey Night In Canada."
J.D.M. Stewart, Toronto
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Like, correct
In her amusing essay on grammar (Grammar Geek – Facts & Arguments, Jan. 3), Diane Amato describes how a man tried to compliment her son on his hockey skills. "Eric, you skated so good today." His mother's eyes welled with tears of pride when Eric answered, "No I didn't. I skated so well." Personally, I would have parked the pride. This is one instance where politeness trumps grammar.
Neil McKenty, Westmount, Que.
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Speech and the penned word are different things. Nothing is more annoying when you are trying to express a thought than to have someone rudely interrupt it, regardless of how it was said. The spoken word shouldn't have stop lights.
Perhaps those who can't let an improper spoken word go need to reflect on the compulsion to correct.
Alexandra Gelfenbein, Toronto
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No doubt my kids and their friends think that I, too, am a grammar geek, a "like" loony. I hope my "like policing" will, like, rub off, eh, and that they, like, remember me, like, fondly, when they, too, have, like, kids, and have to, like, write as part of their occupations.
I "like" the idea.
N. Peter Cohrs, Kingston
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Clown canon
I note that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus has a Clown College program, in which successful applicants study, among other skills, improvisation, pantomime, gag development, prop and costume construction, acrobatics, and the physical skills of slaps and falls, including stilt-walking, juggling and arena choreography.
This news may be of interest to those searching for future candidates to fill the post of mayor of Toronto (Praise And Pans As Rob Ford Greets His Public – Jan. 3).
John Lawrence Reynolds, Burlington, Ont.