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How dumb?
Premier Kathleen Wynne says that in order to "lead by example," she is cancelling her private fundraisers (Provinces Out Of Sync Over Fundraising – April 6).
How dumb does she think Ontarians are? If she had actually led by example in the first place, we wouldn't be discussing this issue.
It's because of the Liberals' "lead by example" policies that Ontario is now the world's most indebted sub-sovereign borrower and that Ontarians pay some of the highest electricity rates in Canada. What other "lead by example" decisions will we suffer from in the next couple of years?
Patrick Haussler, Ottawa
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Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown has the temerity to argue that fundraising is different for opposition MPPs because they can't swap government favours for access. How dumb does he think we are? The draw is that they will be able to do exactly that when it is their turn at the trough – a trough we taxpayers are expected to keep filling for lobbyists' inspection.
A plague on all pols' houses. And speaking of houses, that's something I will never be able to afford here with the Clark government's approach to big-donor developers and brokers.
Sarah Murphy, Vancouver
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Math connections
Re Teach The Teachers (letters, April 7): A letter writer suggests that teachers with an aversion to math when they were students unwittingly pass that on. His solution is that elementary school teachers be required to have a credit in university-level math to weed out aspiring teachers who have no facility in the subject.
I have credits in university math (calculus and statistics) and in no way did this contribute to me helping my children with math homework. The problem with many math teachers is that, to them, the subject is intuitive. They reach their best students because they, too, find the subject easy. It is other students, the ones who need the attention, that they don't connect with. I am not even sure a strong grounding in high school algebra, trig and geometry will improve the ability to teach arithmetic, but I suppose those who've studied these lack the "ick factor" when approaching math.
Starting in elementary school, teachers need to understand how to reach those students for whom math does not come easily, so that by the time they get to secondary school, they arrive armed with the fundamentals.
Lydia Vale, Toronto
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Forcing future elementary teachers to take university level math and science courses in order to teach these subjects to children ages 5 to 11 defies reason. University students enrolled in Education are already required to take courses on the best pedagogical methods in these subjects areas.
Although Ontario's and other provinces' focus on discovery learning may not be producing the hoped-for results, it's not because teachers are afraid of math and science. Teachers and administrators are trying to cope with an overburdened system where classrooms are attempting to meet the needs of students whose abilities range from struggling to extraordinary.
Blaming teachers for the state of education is like blaming the cashier for the price of groceries.
Stephen Price, Calgary
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Trumpism. Lurking
Re Nine Reasons A Trump Couldn't Happen In Canada – April 7): The nine reasons Jeffrey Simpson provides focus too much on the actual Donald Trump, not the possibility of a Trump-eque demagogue rising to the fore of Canadian politics.
Canada is not insulated from populism. Donald Trump the candidate is not as important as the movement he has tapped into. In two countries as culturally similar as the United States and Canada, one has to wonder if the same virulent strain of politics lurks under the surface of Canadian discourse.
Andrew Easto, Toronto
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Walking wisdom
Re Driving Children To School Sparks Concern (April 6): About one-third of cancers can be prevented by eating well, being active and maintaining a healthy weight. To encourage children to become more active, the Canadian Cancer Society launched Trottibus, the Walking School Bus. Primary school children walk to school in groups with organized adult supervision, instead of being driven by bus or car.
The program has grown from 300 students in 2010 to 3,000 today. Now funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, we expect to be in 300 primary schools in Quebec by 2018, and will expand to Ontario this year.
Jacinthe Hovington, director, Cancer Prevention and Health Promotion, Canadian Cancer Society Quebec Division, Montreal
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School boards and urban governments bear a great deal of responsibility for the decreasing number of children walking or biking to school. Many neighbourhoods lack the infrastructure (e.g. segregated bike lanes, bicycle signals at crossings) for children to cycle safely to school. To save money, boards have closed schools and expanded attendance districts so it is difficult for children to walk.
Our children take a school bus five kilometres to class because there is no safe bike route, even though we are car-free and bike almost everywhere else. I don't fancy them on an unprotected bike lane on a street with trucks travelling at 60-plus km/h.
This lack of spending on safe infrastructure and smaller schools, which are at the core of individual neighbourhoods, will prove to be a false economy when the kids perform less well at school and grow up to be less healthy adults.
Charlotte Masemann, Ottawa
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Science, 30 years out
The National Research Council, for the past three decades, has undergone a multitude of changes and turnover in its upper echelons (National Research Council President Takes Indefinite Leave Of Absence – April 5).
Each change, apparently, was the result of seeking new visions, new goals and new leaders to bring its technologies closer to the private sector and the possible commercialization of its most likely spinoffs.
Maybe it's time for the NRC to go back to its core capabilities – pure science at the leading edge. Possibly narrowing the scope to specific scientific areas that are the basis for applications relevant, not to today's societal needs, but to the needs of three decades hence, would provide stability?
Walter F. Petryschuk, former director-general, National Research Council, Integrated Manufacturing Technology's Institute (London/Vancouver)
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Noted …
Re Oscar Wilde Charged With Gross Indecency (Moment in Time, April 6, 1895): Actually, the Marquess of Queensbury's note, left at Wilde's club, did not quite brand Wilde a "sodomite."
Oddly, the note was addressed, "For Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite[sic]." Legend has it that the "posing as" part was done on lawyer's advice. The spelling error, not so much.
John Nigel Pepper, Toronto