The battle to preserve the rights of all Nova Scotia children to an inclusive education is joined. The opening of hostilities came in the tentative agreement on a new teachers' contract, and its concession to whispered demands for a retreat from inclusive education: This tentative agreement creates an independent Commission to study and make recommendations on inclusive education. This Commission, which is funded by the Department and the NSTU, will study how inclusion has been implemented in Nova Scotia, review best practices throughout the world, and provide recommendations related to funding, resources and resource allocation and accountability, professional development, alignment of initiatives, and such other matters...

24 January, 2017

  At a celebration in Toronto Tuesday night, New Waterford filmmaker Ashley McKenzie took the Toronto Film Critics' prestigious Jay Scott Award for an emerging artist. The critics honoured McKenzie for her first feature-length movie, WEREWOLF, a gritty portrayal of a New Waterford couple dependent on methadone. Here's the Trailer]: The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, which named it one of Canada's Top 10 films for 2016. It has also screened (or soon will) at festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, and Berlin. This is a remarkable feat when you consider that McKenzie shot WEREWOLF entirely in Cape Breton, with an all-Cape Breton cast and crew (a fact that put a...

11 January, 2017

  CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke wants to build the new Sydney library in Centre 200 as a way to save money. It seems the hockey rink came with an extra big heating system, built to accommodate the adjacent Casino. After construction, the casino operator bailed on the deal, and the heating plant has been running at half capacity ever since. Bingo: Cheap library! Other advantages: Centre 200 is on a bus route. There's lots of free parking (except when there's a hockey game). It's handy to the casino, giving borrowers the chance to double their money before paying off their library fines. It's a visionary...

19 December, 2016

If you're interested in Nova Scotia civic affairs, you should be following NDP cabinet minister turned law prof and CBC commentator Graham Steele on Facebook, and checking in regularly with his blog, a Citizen's Guide to the Nova Scotia Legislature. [caption id="attachment_16720" align="alignright" width="380"] Graham Steele does not believe "Laws are like sausages — best not to see them being made." (Usually, but perhaps incorrectly attributed to Otto von Bismarck.)[/caption] Steele, who's a friend, is not everyone's cup of tea. Some fellow MLAs, including members of his own caucus, thought him too much above the partisan fray of the house. This is precisely...

16 December, 2016

  Tuesday's post about the absurdity of closing schools during minor snowstorms provoked comments pro and con. I'll try to get to a sampling over the next few days. Tellingly, none of the closure defenders could explain why Nova Scotia's snow days have exploded in recent years, nor why they are so frequent in the Atlantic Provinces, but so rare in other parts of Canada and the northern US. Obviously, the gents in this video couldn't possibly be from the Maritimes. Oh, wait...

16 December, 2016

Nova Scotia school boards justify the 21st century epidemic of snow days on grounds of safety. It's too dangerous, they argue, to put children in buses (even though buses are designed for safe transport and piloted by professional, specially licensed drivers). What if there's an accident? What if even one child is injured? Since no one advocates dead or injured children, these emotional pleas tend to be argument stoppers. The trouble with snow day logic is the fallacious assumption that school closures entail zero risk. A proper risk assessment would weigh the small risk of injury during transport to school — a process in which injuries are exceptionally rare — against the risks of setting...

13 December, 2016

The torrential rains that hit Sydney in October—eight inches in one day—are but a precursor of what's to come, according to a study by US climate scientists published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. Warmer air holds more water. As global temperatures rise due to increases in atmospheric carbon, parts of North America can expect fourfold increases in the frequency of extreme rainfall events by the end of this century, coupled with a 70 percent increase in the severity of those events, the study predicts. A map published by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, which carried out the research, indicates...

07 December, 2016

This morning, a 60-year-old teacher stopped into the CBC's Sydney studio with a donation for the station's Christmas campaign in support of Nova Scotia food banks. Information Morning host Steve Sutherland took the occasion to quiz her about the teacher's pending job action. In the banter that followed, the teacher made several veiled references to "working conditions." Sutherland, who has a gift for drawing people out, pressed for details: What exactly is it about the working conditions, he asked. The teacher hemmed and hawed before blurting out, "It's accessibility!" She went on to complain about the inclusion of children with disabilities in regular classrooms, calling them "violent"...

02 December, 2016

  Remind you of anyone you've heard speak recently? [Video link via James Fallows and John Kenney.]...

20 November, 2016

  Toronto reporter and sometime journalism teacher Ira Basen is upset to discover that Cape Breton University has made itself Canada's most successful recruiter of foreign students. He vented his disdain in a 45-minute takedown on the national broadcaster this morning. How dare we? Cape Bretoners are supposed to content ourselves with fishing lobster and mining the few scraps of coal we have left. What business have we in any sort of academic venture, let alone one that has out-recruited far more prestigious Ontario schools? Basen reports that some foreign student arrive in Cape Breton with insufficient language skills for university study (but glosses over the fact...

20 November, 2016
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