Winnipeg Free Press

Loathe though I am to promote competing media in these pages, I raced to the campus newsstand on my last trip to the University of Manitoba, after I spotted The Manitoban featuring an iconic scene on its cover from absolutely my totally all-time favourite movie.

I just showed it to three young colleagues here — OK, everyone is young, compared to me, but these are really young people, like under 30 — and, alas for the future of our society, none recognized it.

But there it was, the classic lobby poster scene of Robby the Robot carrying Anne Francis as Altaira, rescuing her from the Monster from the Id by fleeing deep into the Krell laboratory. Classic, though, the blue sky and white clouds on The Manitoban’s cover certainly weren’t indigenous to Altair IV, and the scene in the film actually took place inside.

Yes, I’ll pause while you try to recover your composure.

I have no idea which genius on The Manitoban staff chose to put Forbidden Planet on the cover.

I first saw the movie that I’ve since memorized play first-run at The Golden Mile in Scarberia in 1956, and it unlocked my imagination so vastly beyond anything else I’d read or seen before that time  — not even Treasure Island, Robin Hood, or Dan Dare, certainly not Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

Forbidden Planet was the first big-budget Hollywood film to take us into outer space, using Shakespeare’s Tempest as the basis for a space opera adventure about a starship crew sent to find out what happened to a long-lost scientific expedition. Forbidden Planet was the template for Star Trek, and rock-jawed hero Leslie Nielsen — yes, that Leslie Nielsen — was the template for James T. Kirk, playing starship captain J.J. Adams. Robby the Robot, of course, was the sprite Ariel.

All right, enough, I know what you’re thinking, so all together now:

Can you say ‘Nerd’?

Can you say ‘Geek’?

Can you say ‘Dork’?

Well done, The Manitoban.

One of the books I read at the lake this summer was The Historian, the marvelous Dracula tale by American author Elizabeth Kostova.

It’s one of the most literate and entertaining vampire novels I’ve ever read, the kind of enjoyable read I’d rate up there with the original Dracula by Bram Stoker, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, and the largely-overlooked treasure, A Terrible Beauty, by Canadian Nancy Baker.

So, OK, I’ve heard there are several vampire novel series aimed at teenagers out there that are selling like totally a bazillion copies, and I’m all into having kids reading. Tanya Huff’s books, with a Toronto detective hooking up with the undead illegitimate son of Henry VIII to solve supernatural crimes in T.O., aren’t aimed at teens, but they’re a decent read for kids and adults. But I digress.

The Historian is more than 900 pages long, rich in character, overflowing with historical detail, taking readers into Turkey and Bulgaria and Hungary and many fascinating places beyond the Borga Pass. It’s told with flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and over centuries of journals-within-diaries-within-letters, from different key characters’ perspectives.

All right, I’ll eventually get to the point.

I wasn’t the only adult at the lake to be reading or to have read The Historian.

But there was a friend about to go into Grade 12, who had devoured the book after watching his mom enjoy it. And as soon as I finished the final page, another student about to go into Grade 12 dove straight into Kostova’s massive tome, took the sunscreen down to the beach, and lost herself in the novel.

And I think that’s really neat.

Two weeks ago, when I was still a spry young 59, we took the kayaks on a five-hour paddle to the tunnel which connects South Cross and North Cross lakes.

 And we pulled up at the big rocks, and had our lunch, taking our little bit of waste back with us.

So what I’m wondering, the people who’d made the fire pit at the tunnel, just how soon is it that you think all your beer cans are going to biodegrade?

If you could carry them in full, why couldn’t you carry them out empty?

Sigh.

OK, now I’m 60, and I get to play the stereotype and be grumpy.

We made a lot of kayaking jaunts up the Whiteshell River, so one day I’m doing the turnaround at the little wood-and-rope bridge for the Mantario Trail, and there are two young hikers crossing the bridge with serious-looking backpacks, outfitted to camp several days on the trail.

And they’re smoking.

Let’s play word association games here — what images do the words ‘forest fire’ conjure up for you?

It goes without saying that I assume you carried some little metal box with you so that you didn’t drop your hot ashes on the Mantario Trail, and so you could take your spent matches with you, and so you could take your cigarette butts with you, so you wouldn’t disturb this pristine wilderness.

Sigh.

OK, OK, I know this blog is supposed to be about education.

Which segues into the stories I was reading in my WFP as I had morning coffee at the lake, about possible rapid bus transit between U of M and downtown. I recall that this was being bandied about when I was covering city hall around 1991 or so, people such as Terry Duguid and Glen Murray pushing for it on city council.

So how long has the due diligence been going on to study rapid transit, since Governor Semple’s day?

Sigh.

I see that this will be the last Olympics for baseball and softball. So let me get this straight, games played by tens of millions of people will be dropped for 2012, but the London games will still have 10-meter air pistol.

If 10-meter air pistol is that big a deal, we need to get the kids involved now. Let’s organize tryouts, and leagues, and get uniforms and adult coaches, and parents on the sidelines screaming at their kids and at the officials and at the coaches and at each other.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, just to get me in the perfect mood this morning, as I’m leaving the house, the phone rings, a call from a major financial institution. I’m on one phone, my wife is on the other phone. Short version, there’s a recorded message in both official languages telling us to stand by for an urgent message, then a real person comes on from a call centre. Her message, again short version, was where’s our money, you deadbeats?

This was about our having bought something over time, and I start to explain that I’d paid our installment on-line.

The woman breaks in, says the account is in my wife’s name, I’m not authorized to take part in the conversation and she’s not authorized to speak to me.

 My wife on the other line says she’ll authorize it. The woman says, if my wife wants me to be part of the conversation, my wife has to send a letter to the company’s head office authorizing it.

Finally, my wife convinces this call centre person to make an exception for this one time only, and to listen to me. So I tell her that before we went on vacation, knowing we wouldn’t get our mail at the cottage and knowing that we had no Internet at the lake, I paid twice the normal installment, to cover both July and August.

The woman tells me that I did not make two payments, that what I’d done was to double the payment for July, and that our August payment had not been paid, and we were now in arrears.

I told her I’d sent double the amount to avoid just the kind of call she was making. She replied, in a tone that made it clear she was having trouble keeping her patience with someone so obviously and incredibly stupid, that didn’t I understand that they include an envelope with the monthly bill so I could send a postdated cheque?

Sigh.

It’s ages since I’ve blogged about all the catches in Education Minister Peter Bjornson’s tax incentive grant (TIG), but I go away on vacation, and here comes another TIG surprise.

 I’m sitting at the lake, reading my WFP, and there’s a story about the Doer government’s coming up $25 short on the promised increase to the education property tax credit, because it was rolled into TIG.

Gosh.

I’m sure that I remember asking where the government was getting the money for TIG, which was the $16 million cash bonus intended to entice school boards to cap their spending and avoid tax increases. I’m sure I asked, because I always put the damper on the most joyous of announcements by asking how they’re being financed.

Seems I recall being told that TIG came out of general revenues, but hey, I’ve been wrong before.

So, as the government told my colleague, editorial board member Catherine Mitchell, a $25  education property tax credit  is worth $8.2 million.

The province paid out $11.8 million in TIG to 17 school divisions which accepted the cash bonus and froze school property taxes. That left $4.2 million on the table, which will vaguely go to other education purposes.

Meanwhile, as you’ll recall I wrote in umpteen stories as the catches began emerging back in the winter, there were 10 divisions which did not qualify for TIG. And the rest of the province’s school boards turned down TIG, rather than make the cuts to jobs, programs and services necessary to freeze taxes.

But the $25 was supposed to go to every ratepayer in Manitoba, regardless whether the division in which the ratepayer paid taxes accepted TIG, turned down TIG, or didn’t qualify.

If you can follow the government’s math or logic, or can explain why this is equitable, feel free to hit the reply button.

I won’t be blogging again until I return from vacation on Aug. 12, but when I get back, I’ll be telling myself constantly that I’ve become the 60-year-old Swede.

Those of us of a certain vintage remember the Participaction ads in which we were taunted that the average 60-year-old Swede was in better condition than the average 30-year-old Canadian.

 It was true, too.

Those ads really rankled me back in the day. I wasn’t 30 then, I was in high school, but I’d been cut from every team for which I’d ever had to try out, house leagues were pretty much done, and the philosophy being widely practiced by my high school phys ed teacher was that our role as non-athletic bookworms was to watch and worship the varsity teams, not to find other ways besides team sports of being active.

Anyway, I’m not bitter….no, not really………

A lot has changed about phys ed since the early 1960s. The whole idea behind adding mandatory grades 11 and 12 phys ed credits this fall, and to begin conducting much of the senior grades phys ed activities outside of school, is to introduce students to a wide variety of activities they can pursue throughout their lives, and to encourage them to find physical activities that they enjoy.

I had to do all that myself in my 30s, without the active encouragement of the public education system that kids in high school will receive. Of course, today’s physical education teachers are actually educators, not just varsity coaches with a teacher’s certificate like my….sorry…..no, I’m not bitter, not at all.

By the time I was 30 myself, I was sedentary and quite overweight.

But as I turn 60, I’ve just run a half marathon, my 31st event of 21 to 42 km. I’ll spend two or three hours a day kayaking over my holidays, the weather willing. I’ve had 46 kids’ and adult soccer matches I’ve officiated so far since the start of May, a lot of running. Until soccer started, I was doing at least three workouts a week all fall and winter at Reh-Fit, treadmill, bike, weights, wind sprints. I joined a weekly volleyball league. I run outdoors, and we’ll be doing as much hiking as we can over the next few weeks.

Point I’m trying to make, especially to high school students, is that I’ll still never make a competitive team, I’m still completely non-athletic, but I’m healthy, and I absolutely love the forms of exercise I’ve chosen. Maybe you’re one of the 15-and-16-year-old soccer players who was huffing and puffing late in the match, trying to keep up with the play, and wondering how the old guy with the whistle could run with the players and not be out of breath.

I’m going to be 60 when next I bore you again.

I enjoy being fit and I enjoy being healthy, and I enjoy not worrying about whether my heart will stop any time I’m active.

It’s a great feeling to have at 60 — work with your phys ed teachers now, and chances are you’ll some day know the feeling too.

I received a bizarre e-mail after my recent piece on new U of M president David Barnard, demanding to know why I have not revealed that Barnard is a multi-millionaire through massive sales of his biblical novel With Skilful Hand: The Story of King David.

I really hate it when I miss something that big.

I e-mailed back to my correspondent, and asked the source of such astounding information.

Back came links to Amazon.com, showing the novel’s data on Amazon’s websites for several large countries.

Alas, my informant had confused the rankings of the book ’s sales, compared to other volumes available through Amazon, with actual copies sold. He had added up the rankings, and concluded they were book sales.

Moving right along, I occasionally get a pitch for a story on someone who’s hired a p.r. firm, who expects that if they blitz me with e-mails and phone calls, I’ll stop being parochial and knock local coverage off the front pages to tout what their client who lives in another province is doing in another province.

This time, the publicists wanted me to interview Gerard Kennedy about his plea to teachers to join the Liberal party’s Green Shift and make climate change and poverty a priority in their classrooms teaching.

Kennedy is the former Ontario education minister who made an unsuccessful run for the federal Liberal leadership, is now a federal candidate in Toronto, and just received an award from the Canadian Teachers federation.

So teachers, if you want to ditch the curriculum, and get your classroom with the Grits’ program, let me know, and I’ll set up the interview.

Seguing again, a propos of absolutely nothing, but I drove past College Jeanne-Sauve on the way to an assignment nearby on Dakota, and saw the school’s message board wishing me a happy and restful summer.

Thanks, I appreciate it………but I’m wondering, why would CJS not display its summer greeting in French?

And another flawless segue, like trying to find the seams in the exterior hull of Klaatu’s ride……

Some of us were talking the other day about new principals around Winnipeg School Division, and it struck me that I never have these conversations with the parents I know in Pembina Trails. Lots of them from soccer and volleyball, who know what I do for a living, but we never talk about who’s going where, and which principal is replacing whom.

Are we that much more political in WSD, or do we just like to gossip incessantly?

I received a pitch for a back-to-school story from a company in the Toronto area which makes security systems.

The company tells me that “code red lockdowns” were unimaginable a generation ago.

A generation? I got out of high school in 1966 — OK, let’s not even go there. Point is, I have a kid going into Grade 12, so I read on.

“Lockdown is a term that older generations associated mainly with prisons. This doesn’t mean, however, that schools need to look or feel like prisons. If handled correctly, security can blend in with the background, leaving students, teachers and parents comfortable, not fearful, with their surroundings,” said the company.

“The “Code-Red” lockdown is a procedure that warns of a possible danger—an armed student, perhaps—and instructs teachers to secure the classroom doors from threats that may loom in the school hallway. In practice classrooms are locked from the inside until the all clear signal is given.
 
“Now that the “Code-Red” lockdown drill is standard practice, school administrators, teachers and parents must be aware of new technologies that offer greater protection.”

New techologies? Could it be that this company is selling those new technologies?

Gosh, what are the chances?
 
“New security innovations have been developed to help accommodate lockdowns and keep students safe inside the classroom. Locks are now available that allow teachers to secure the door from inside the classroom, thus avoiding the need to insert a key in the outside cylinder and expose students to danger (still standard practice),” says my correspondent.

Keith Thomas, the risk manager at the Manitoba Association of School Trustees, has urged for years that schools not turn into fortresses with metal detectors and security guards, though many schools have cameras, lock their doors from the outside, and leave open only the front door, which is ideally in full view of the office staff.

Classroom doors lock from the outside, because schools don’t want kids able to lock them for inappropriate reasons. Only the teacher has a key, but that means exposing herself to potential harm by having to go into the hallway to lock the door, then pull it shut behind her.

But what if she didn’t have to do that?

This company has yet another option: “Better still are networked electromechanical locks that can be secured instantly from a central location.”

Remember that reference awhile back to prisons?

OK, moving along……

I’ve e-mailed the company, wondering if anyone in Manitoba has bought this technology. I asked specifically how someone at security central in the office would know that all students and staff were out of the hallway and hunkered down in a classroom, and that all doorways were clear, and all doors closed from the inside, before locking them down with one push of a button. I’m awaiting a response.
 

There’s quite the turf and territory struggle shaping up at Winnipeg School Division over the next gym to be built at an older school.

As we told you a few dozen blogs back, amazingly, WSD is the only division which currently has a list of gym projects before the provincial public schools finance board (PSFB) in its five-year capital forecast. The PSFB just approved a new gym for George V School, which means kids going into Grade 2, or more likely Grade 1, have a decent shot at enjoying the new gym in Grade 6.

That left Kelvin High School next on the list, followed by Queenston School.

Kelvin is Manitoba’s second-largest school, but has only one gym. Other large high schools have two gyms, and do I have to point out for the umpteenth time that grades 11 and 12 gym credits become compulsory in about seven weeks?

Queenston is nursery to Grade 6, less than one-seventh of Kelvin’s enrolment, but kids have been making do since 1931 with a multi-purpose room which is way too small to accommodate the gym activities that most of our kids take for granted.

Yes, 1931.

The Queenston community has been lobbying big-time for a new gym for a few years now, putting the heat on the division and the province. People such as provincial Tory leader Hugh McFadyen and federal Tory candidate Trevor Kennerd have been spotted among the delegations to the WSD school board.

Trustee Jackie Sneesby, whose ward includes both Kelvin and Queenston, has just put forward a motion calling on the board to bump Queenston ahead of Kelvin on the priority wish list.

Is it a huge surprise that trustees tabled the motion, to study in committee and discuss later?

Look, every kid deserves a decent gym, and a school the size of Kelvin needs a second gym. It’s appalling that Queenston does not have a gym, 77 years after it opened.

I haven’t been in every school lower down on WSD’s list, but my daughter’s indoor soccer team used to practice at La Verendrye, and I don’t know how children are supposed to carry out the physical education curriculum in a space that tiny. Elmwood High could use a higher ceiling in its gym. I could go on, but I digress too much.

Peter, Kerri, you’re making some good moves with the healthy children initiatives, now get the finance minister to put some bucks into it and get some gyms built.

Look at page 42 of FRAME (Financial reporting and Accounting in Mnaitoba Education), and you’ll find $142.3 million in education property tax credits. That’s the money that comes directly off the bottom of your peoperty tax bill, to encourage you to feel grateful to the Doer government, but not a penny of it actually goes into education, operating or capital.

Greg, how about directing some of that cash directly into education and into helping kids — don’t forget community access weekends and evenings — and ensuring that every school has adequate gym space. And no, don’t wait until the week before Gary calls the next election.

Amazing news from Winnipeg School Division — privacy legislation be darned, the division has confirmed that the late U.S. Senator Samuel I. Hayakawa did ineed attend St. John’s High School, and graduated in 1923.

Officials say that under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, that they are allowed to confirm school enrolment of a deceased person, given how long ago that he was in division schools. They’re still checking out which elementary school Hayakawa attended, though it’s looking as though it may have been a downtown school that disappeared long ago.

Alas, such liberties under FIPPA do not extend to releasing Marshall McLuhan’s report card from Earl Grey School, which principal Gail Singer found in a dustry basement filing cabinet after learning that McLuhan had been a student there.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if schools had some way of holding up grads as role models to their students, especially schools in areas where kids face significant challenges.

Hey, wait a minute — how about if you know of someone who attended a school in the city, letting me know? I’ll be glad to pass it on.

I’ve been hearing quite regularly recently from Joseph Rougeau, a retired U.S. Air Force officer in Florida. He’s not too happy about the lack of recognition received from the University of Manitoba by the late S.I. Hayakawa, a man whom Rougeau met and greatly admired.

I certainly stand to be corrected on this, but Hayakawa may well be the only United States senator to graduate from the University of Manitoba. Rougeau can’t understand why U of M doesn’t list him as a distinguished alumnus.

Hayakawa was born in Vancouver in 1906, but moved to Winnipeg as a young boy, and graduated from U of M in 1927. Rougeau thinks he might have been the school’s first grad of Japanese heritage, but there’s no confirmation on that so far. Hayakawa went on to become a university professor in The States, writing linguistics textbooks which — various websites say — are still considered classics.

I first heard of Hayakawa when he was president of San Francisco State University, at a time when students across North American campuses were striking and occupying university libraries, often to protest for civil rights or against the war in Vietnam. Hayakawa broke the strike at his university, which in some quarters was considered a good thing. Certainly, it was a key factor in Hayakawa’s becoming a Republican senator from California in 1976.

U of M says that so far, the designation of Distinguished Alumnus or Alumna is limited to recipients of the Order of Manitoba or Order of Canada. U of M says that it may add members of royal societies or other celebrated grads, but right now, being a politician in Canada or elsewhere isn’t enough to make the cut.

I found one article in which Hayakawa talked about having attended St. John’s High School, in which he also mentioned that a younger brother went to Isaac Newton.

Winnipeg School Division, one might think, might like to tell students at St. John’s about someone who grew up in the north end as a visible minority, and made it big. One might think.

Shaftesbury High School has its Alumni Wall of Fame, touting grads who’ve achieved great things while facing somewhat less challenging life circumstances than kids in the north end. Shaftesbury knows how to present role models to its students.

But citing FIPPA, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, WSD will not even confirm that Hayakawa ever went to school in the division. WSD cannot under FIPPA divulge personal information unless a grad, or a grad’s descendants, authorize release of the information.

I recall how Marshall McLuhan’s 60ish children were at U of M a few years ago, attending the dedication of a reception hall in their father’s memory. They told me that McLuhan as a young lad had gone to Gladstone School, Earl Grey School, and Kelvin High School in Winnipeg.

Alas, WSD has done nothing with that information.