Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 04, 2014, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A7 W HEN Education Minister James Allum announced a two per cent increase in school funding last week, he said the new money should be used to improve students' basic math, science and reading skills while also boosting high school skills training and career development. Leaving aside the objection educators these days seem only ever to talk of skills and never of knowledge, this is all to the good. The province needs skilled workers, Manitobans deserve to get good jobs, and our schools must do all they can to make this possible. At the same time, there has to be more to schooling than job preparation. Notably absent from the minister's announcement was any mention of education for citizenship, even though preparing the young for democratic citizenship is surely an important function of our schools and has been ever since Manitoba made school attendance compulsory back in 1916. It is true citizenship can be a two- edged sword and has often been used to silence minorities and dissidents. Educating the young for citizenship was the best insurance against " anarchy and bolshevism" said a 1925 Royal Commission, taking aim against labour militants and assorted radicals. There were good reasons why feminists, socialists and other reformers rejected the straitjacketed definition of citizenship that was so often thrust upon them. For First Nations, citizenship was and often still is another word for residential schools, assimilation, racism and denial of treaty rights. For francophones, it once meant denial of language rights. For religious and cultural minorities, it could mean denial of their beliefs and values. Citizenship in a democracy, however, can and must be more than this. It is about what might and should be, and how we get there, not simply about what is. In the words of American philosopher Richard Rorty, citizens have to be loyal both to their country as it is and to the " dream country" they hope it will become. Political scientists tell us the health of democracy depends upon the quality of its citizens, their sense of identity, their acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and not least on their willingness to become engaged with the issues that face them. Researchers also tell us democracy might be in trouble. Despite the existence of Idle No More, student volunteer projects and other forms of civic activism, a shrinking minority of citizens are engaged in any kind of political activity. Elections attract fewer and fewer voters. Political cynicism is widespread. And the forecast is these trends will get worse not better. For Canada, facing all the challenges thrown up by an increasingly globalizing world, this can spell trouble, and some researchers are suggesting one of the most important tasks of citizenship education today is to prepare young Canadians to join in the ongoing debate about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. If nothing else, standard definitions of citizenship are changing, and we do our students no favours if we do not prepare them for the challenges that are to come. The noted Canadian political scientist, Alan Cairns, has written " We must hope that a citizen body lacking the bond of a standardized citizenship but nevertheless participating in common civic endeavours is not an oxymoron." Part of the solution is to be found in a renewed and reformed citizenship education. This is what makes the minister of education's failure to mention citizenship so regrettable, not least because it seems to be part of a wider pattern. In 2002, the provincial Department of Education was renamed as Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth and created a program of grants to support innovations in citizenship education. All this has now gone and, with the exception of the social studies curriculum, education for democratic citizenship receives less attention than it once did, replaced by talk of skills and career preparation. If democracy is to achieve its potential, to be genuinely inclusive, to wrestle with the barriers of class, gender, race, poverty and other forms of inequality, to command the commitment and engagement of all citizens in the never- ending quest to improve the way we live, then we need a vision of citizenship and citizenship education that pervades the whole curriculum regardless of grade level or subject. Skills training and career preparation are obviously important. But we also need history, geography, literature, the arts and all the other so- called " frills" that are so essential if we are to help students make the most of their lives and make genuinely democratic citizenship a reality. It might well be that what we used to think of as a liberal education, grounded in knowledge as well as skills, appropriately organized and tied to a vision of what democracy might be, is the best preparation for citizenship after all. As the 19th- century poet, social critic and school inspector Matthew Arnold once put it, education at its best introduces us to the rich variety of human achievement and aspiration, and in so doing enables us to cast " a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notion and habits." What better way is there to prepare our children for the exercise of democratic citizenship? A former high school history teacher, Ken Osborne is now professor emeritus in the faculty of education, University of Manitoba Winnipeg Free Press Tuesday, February 4, 2014 A 7 POLL �� TODAY'S QUESTION Would you like to see Manitoba Hydro alter its dam- building plans? �� Vote online at winnipegfreepress. com �� PREVIOUS QUESTION What's your reaction to the Seattle Seahawks' trouncing of the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl? Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 VOL 142 NO 85 2014 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204- 697- 7000 BOB COX / Publisher PAUL SAMYN / Editor WFP JULIE CARL / Deputy Editor SCAN TO VOTE ON TODAY'S QUESTION More to schools than jobs I T'S easy to understand the decision to seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. U. S. federal officials allege he and his brother coldbloodedly built, planted and detonated two pressure- cooker bombs that indiscriminately ended the lives of three people and injured 260 near the finish line of the iconic Boston Marathon. Someone responsible for such wanton mass murder is not deserving of sympathy. But life in prison with no possibility of parole is a more fitting punishment, even for such heinous crimes. Little would be gained by putting him to death. The path to capital punishment is slow and costly. Legal wrangling invariably delays resolution of such cases, often for decades. Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, the government has executed only three people. There's little evidence the death penalty deters other killers. The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001 didn't dissuade the Boston attackers. In announcing last Thursday he will seek the death penalty, Attorney General Eric Holder gave Tsarnaev a powerful incentive to plead guilty in return for life in prison. We hope that's what the suspect will do. The evidence against Tsarnaev is strong. He was captured in surveillance videos slipping a backpack from his shoulder to the ground near the finish line moments before the twin blasts. And he reportedly admitted his involvement to the FBI. It appears Dzhokhar Tsarnaev acted only with his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police days after the bombing. Officials have revealed no evidence a terrorist group directed or supported the attack. A guilty plea would spare Americans a highprofile terrorist trial and the burden of taking a life, while ensuring Tsarnaev would rot in prison, where he belongs. M ONEY can buy many things: luxury, influence, security and even time. How frustrating, then, to be vastly rich but never quite able to get what you want. Such is the dilemma faced by the world's richest family, the al- Sauds of Saudi Arabia. Their kingdom has sold the rest of the world around $ 1 trillion worth of oil in the past three years alone, accumulating a hoard of sovereign assets nearly as big as its GDP of $ 745 billion. Immense new investments in infrastructure, industry, health care and education are spreading that wealth by the shovelful. A new underground- railway system for the capital, Riyadh, is to be dug, not one line at a time but all at once, with six full lines due to open by 2018. This is only one rail project among many. The kingdom is to spend around $ 30 billion on mass transit for the cities of Jeddah and Mecca, as well as $ 12 billion on a high- speed link running about 450 kilometres from Mecca to Medina, in addition to billions more on a national freight network. Rather than the ebullience you might expect, however, the mood among Saudi Arabia's 30 million residents, a third of whom are foreign workers and their dependents, is one of nagging unease. Even as shiny new buildings, universities, " financial centres" and entire cities sprout, the machinery of government has remained as creakily top- down and tangled in red tape as ever. Even as Saudis grow ever more sophisticated and worldly - about 160,000 of them are studying abroad on government scholarships, and those left behind are among the world's heaviest Internet addicts - social, political and religious strictures remain stifling. " The government keeps people quiet with money and, in the rare cases where that doesn't work, with threats," a diplomat in Riyadh says. " But this is not a happy place." For one thing, ordinary Saudis have no say in where the money is spent. All too often, what they see, following the much- trumpeted princely opening of each new project, is vast, empty buildings and unused facilities. What they hear is tales of which privileged courtier or business mogul has pocketed how much. Despite sharp polarization between arch- religious conservative Saudis and more progressive types, there is general agreement on two points. One is this is no time to rock the boat: The violence and unrest provoked elsewhere by the Arab spring largely have spooked Saudis into sullen silence. The other is the kingdom's leadership is adrift. King Abdullah, now at least 90, is seen as beholden to a small circle of advisers and sons, with rival courts surrounding the 83- year- old Crown Prince Salman and other contenders for the succession. Amid the intrigue and jockeying, what stands out is a lack of imagination or vision. " At their age, they can't face a curveball," a Jeddah businessman says, " or a googly, if you prefer the cricket terminology." Saudi Arabia's neighbours and allies, too, are increasingly wary. Their concern is not only about internal strains. In recent years, Saudi foreign policy has grown both more assertive and more erratic. It has achieved some modest successes: Long fearful of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose many quiet supporters in the kingdom represent one of the few potential threats to their own control, the al- Sauds strongly backed their removal from government in Egypt. Forceful Saudi intervention in neighbouring Bahrain also bolstered a friendly Sunni ruling family against what the Saudis perceived as a dangerous, Iranian- influenced Shia uprising. Saudi officials see themselves as having bested such rivals for regional influence as Iran and Qatar in those rounds. Yet Bahrain and Egypt both remain unstable and dependent on continuing Saudi largesse. Meanwhile, Saudi efforts to influence other regional contests, for instance those in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, have gone much less smoothly. The kingdom has been unable to match the determination, diplomatic skill or even financial investment Iran has wielded to bolster its proxies in those fights. Worse yet, many of the clients it has favoured have turned out to be unreliable at best, murderously fanatical at worst. " They have too narrow a bandwidth," a foreign diplomat says. " It's barely enough to run their own country, let alone an ambitious regional agenda." It is not merely against their foes the Saudis have stumbled of late. An initiative by the kingdom to push the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six- country club of rich Arab monarchies, toward political union was quickly torpedoed by Oman in December, much to the quiet relief of other members. More bruisingly, the Saudis also felt rejected by their oldest and strongest ally, America, when President Barack Obama's administration failed to seize what they viewed as a golden opportunity to clobber President Bashar Assad of Syria after he used chemical weapons against rebel suburbs of Damascus in August. In apparent anger, the kingdom took the unprecedented step of declining a seat in the United Nations Security Council. " We used to be known for riyalpolitik," the businessman from Jeddah quips. " But now what we do is piquepolitik." V ICTORIA - Canada Post's recent disclosure of a $ 6.5- billion pension- fund shortfall left the federal government with no practical choice but to support the Crown corporation's plan to provide less service at higher rates. Pouring in public funds to bail out a gold- plated pension beyond the wildest dreams of the vast majority of taxpayers would have been politically toxic. Canada Post's inflation- indexed, defined benefits plan guarantees up to 70 per cent of employment earnings starting as early as age 55. It's far from the only gold- plated government employee pension plan. And although Canada Post's unfunded pension liability is huge, it pales in comparison to the combined unfunded liabilities faced by federal, provincial and municipal governments across the country. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates that, " Based on evidence from Statistics Canada, Public Accounts and other sources, the unfunded shortfall for public pension plans across the country likely exceeds $ 300 billion. That works out to $ 9,000 for every man, woman and child in Canada." Despite their staggering size, these taxpayer liabilities rarely make headlines. That's why the CFIB calls them " Canada's hidden unfunded public sector pension liabilities." But they won't go unnoticed much longer. As increasing numbers of public employees retire, billions of dollars must be added to government budgets to pay their annual pension payouts. And lower birth rates combined with baby- boomer retirements mean those rising costs will fall upon the shoulders of a decreasing number of working Canadians. The vast majority of those saddled with that $ 300- billion public service pension liability are private- sector workers, two- thirds of whom don't have any kind of employer pension plan. That public sector employees enjoy vastly more generous retirement benefits than the taxpayers who pay for them is already fomenting rising resentment. Such pension provisions are a legacy of monopoly public sector unions extracting evermore extravagant benefits from strike- fearing governments. Meanwhile, private- sector employees who do have pensions are seeing their defined- benefit plans converted to " defined contribution" whereby the size of payouts depends upon the accumulated value of invested funds. Unlike taxpayer- funded public- sector monopolies, competitive pressures, combined with substantial a drop in the returns available to invested funds, has made conversion to this no- deficit " pay- as- you- go" system an economic reality for most private- sector businesses. And given the unfathomable $ 300- billion legacy the current structure has left the next generation of working Canadians, it's also the route government pensions must take. But even if all government pensions were converted tomorrow, so long as the defined benefit entitlements of existing beneficiaries are considered sacrosanct, it would take decades for the conversion to make a difference. And it certainly won't happen any time soon. Even changes affecting only future employees have been fiercely resisted by public- sector unions. But the status quo is no longer an option as escalating pension costs divert more and more funding from financially stressed social programs such as health care and education. Governments must be prepared to defy union resistance by all available means, including back- to- work legislation and imposed settlements that actually recognize fiscal realities. But the most potent tool available is the reduction of union monopoly power through privatesector contracting of public services. Such resolute actions have the support of an ever- increasing number of Canadians who are fed up with seeing their hard- earned tax dollars spent on extravagant public- sector benefits. Union leaders will protest loudly, but the reality is they have used strike threats to vastly overreach what taxpayers can or will fund. And, given the public mood, their threats may just increase voter support for dramatic change. Democracy is, no doubt, the best of all governance systems. But its major flaw is that " long- term thinking" tends to equal the length of time left until the next election. This has led to excessive concessions to public- service unions and a " kick the can down the road" attitude towards funding pension liabilities. Like any other problem, it gets worse the longer it is ignored. And ignoring this problem is soon to become the least viable political option. Gwyn Morgan is a retired Canadian business leader who has been a director of five global corporations. - troymedia. com Newsday OTHER OPINION Boston Marathon bomber should rot in prison GWYN MORGAN Public pension liabilities top $ 300 billion Money can't buy Saudi happiness The Economist LINDA DAVIDSON / THE WASHINGTON POST Saudi men on the mirrored viewing level of Al- Faisaliyah Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. By Ken Osborne I expected Peyton Manning and the Broncos to run roughshod over the Seahawks 11% I expected the Seahawks' defence to crush Denver 10% I thought the Broncos would win a close game 31% I thought the Seahawks would prevail in a squeaker 17% What's this Super Bowl you're talking about? 32% TOTAL RESPONSES 4,295 A_ 07_ Feb- 04- 14_ FP_ 01. indd A7 2/ 3/ 14 7: 53: 30 PM ;