Elder Advice wants to be an optimist. Primarily to avoid being disappointed twice. But it is increasingly hard. Because it is increasingly evident that he was wrong about evolutionary biology. Elder Advice has always thought the inevitable changes in heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations involved incremental improvement of the species. Apparently, he is mistaken.
While in past times, Elder Advice was concerned that some people were too clever by half, he is now regrettably persuaded that most are too stupid by 7/8ths. As the situations in Ukraine and Gaza deteriorate, there is plainly more public interest in speculating what cancer the Duchess of Cornwall is contending with, where Donald Trump will find $175 million in the next week, and the sticker shock over the price of superfluous chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies. French legislators passed the time last week passing legislation banning discrimination on the basis of hair… as if the gingers need encouragement. And someone paid $718,750.00 US for the piece of wood - the door which kept the fictional character, Rose, afloat in the fictional movie Titanic, and by doing so, saved no one from drowning.
Coincidentally, one of my favourite clients is in the challenging business of selling doors - door to door. But that is beside the point, which is that we are regressing.
Elder Advice recently came across the most current authoritative data from the Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA testing assesses the ability of 15-year old students from the 37 democracies with market based economies, to solve problems, think critically and communicate effectively in science, reading and mathematics.
Hmmm. Elder Advice is not an alarmist but, honestly, I didn’t think most kids were all that bright in 2003.
Of course, responsibility for the precipitous decline in academic performance rests with adults, not with children. Rather, not with most children. Who among us has not watched meltdowns in the cereal aisle and thought: “Do Not Resuscitate” should be tattooed on some young foreheads?
While they are apparently not learning to read, write or think, young people are learning to be terrified. Including of their own shadows. Which promise to be much larger on April 8 as a total eclipse covers the sun in eastern North America. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board which, given its geographical location and Canada’s patently discriminatory and divisive policy of official bilingualism, oversees schools that will continue to churn out the vast majority of the nation’s civil servants, is closing schools on April 8th. In light of the coming occultation. Or, more accurately, in light of the lack of light of that event.
Now it is true that celestial occurrences have been of concern in the past. Goffredo Malaterra recorded an eclipse of the sun that caused alarm to some people, although it appears to have been regarded by others as no more than a practical inconvenience: “On the sixth day of the month of February between the sixth and ninth hours the Sun was obscured for the space of three hours; it was so great that any people who were working indoors could only continue if in the meantime they lit lamps. Indeed some people went from house to house to get lanterns or torches. Many were terrified”. Goffredo was a chronicler of the Norman rule in Sicily and southern Italy. During the 11th century. And from his account, it does not appear that they closed the schools.
Perhaps the purported adults on the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board view their diversity and inclusion policies as requiring them to take inspiration from other sources or even earlier times. The ancient Greeks, for example. Who believed that a solar eclipse was a portent of angry gods, and the beginning of disasters and destruction. Or from Hindu astrology, in which Rahu represents mischief, fear and confusion and people believe that taking a bath before and after a solar eclipse will erase his unholy shadow and avoid its ill-effects. Or from the Tewa tribe in New Mexico, who were certain that a solar eclipse signalled an angry sun who had left the skies to go to his house in the underworld.
God, or Gods, forbid schools take the rare celestial event as an opportunity for a teachable moment or two. Similar to the approach of the Venerable Bede, an Anglo-Saxon scholar who patiently explained the phenomenon in his scientific text: De natura rerum [On the Nature of Things]. Which he wrote in 703 CE.
The Toronto District School Board and other boards in the Greater Toronto Area are following Ottawa’s ill-advised example although, in transparent efforts to avoid the same justified ridicule, they slyly voted to revise their school calendars by rescheduling the April 19th “Professional Activity” Day to April 8th so that students can cower at home in a literal return to the Dark Ages. “We have heard concerns regarding the potential for students being outside and inadvertently looking at the sun, which may cause serious health problems, such as loss of eyesight,” the York District School Board spokesperson said when media uncovered the ruse: “We have also heard concerns of traffic and students walking home during peak darkness.” While Elder Advice is not fluent in Bureaucratic, all that roughly translates as: “We have heard concerns from our lawyers and insurers regarding the potential for liability of the school board”.
Elder Advice? Is it any wonder the planet is warming … to the task of getting rid of all of us? Appreciating homo sapiens are an imperfect work in progress, “progress” implies movement forward. Or so Elder Advice thought. Ironically, some forward movement and improvement of the species would result if schools went backward. Back to promoting and practicing resilience, scientific curiosity, personal responsibility and common sense.
Anyway, if you know of any other people out there who will spend money on bits of wood, please refer them to me. It’s Easter, and Elder Advice has some pieces of the True Cross they will doubtless be interested in.
Great, Tim, as usual. I rwmember a total eclipse of the sun in the early 1960's, and as a ten year old I was given a special piece of equipment to watch the event. My eyes were not impaired and I was in awe of what I saw.
Surely, more than 60 years later, we have equipment that we can give to school age children to watch the eclipse and trust them nor to look directly at the sun. I rememver being warned several times before the event of the danger of looking directly at the sun, without the protective lens.