A story from Terry O’Reilly about monkeys involved in shooting a TV commercial may explain who cult leaders recruit as followers.
Continue readingTag: Prejudice
A Puff of Absurdity: A Disaster Groundhog Day
A few decades ago I watched a video in a class about a Black female musician answering the question how to stop all the racism and sexism in songs at a time when Eminem was using the “N” word liberally. She said she doesn’t waste her efforts on stopping others:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: For all the Fierce Raindrops: Lessons that Should Have Been Learned
Changing minds on big issues takes a long time and the work never ends. Anti-drinking and driving groups appeared in the early 1980s, like MADD, typically made up of survivors or relatives of victims who saw first hand that something must be done to prevent so many disabilities and deaths.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Love Wins Over Hate
On social media, my Covid posts have suddenly lost all their troll-drawing capacity. The angry mob has moved on to bombard people’s 2SLGBTQIA+ posts. Just a few months ago, just mentioning the word “mask” was considered divisive and harmful to the very fabric of society. Some people wanted to get me for
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Parental Rights
It’s not a thing. Well, legally it’s not. There are no “parental rights” section of the charter to defend. It’s a thing as in it’s a dogwhistle to see how many are on board with discrimination and preventing kids from growing up to be who they are, in a method
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Extremist Group Criteria
A mom delegated at a school board meeting in the states about the group, Moms for Liberty. Here’s the Tiktok video (but also at the link in case – I wish TikTok embedded more reliably): @nowthispolitics A mother in Wilson County, TN, read out some of the homophobic and demeaning
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: ASD Assessments
Assessments for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are sometimes a piece of work. I’ll look at two of them here. As a reminder, everyone with ASD is really different from one another. If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. The diagnostic categories are general and
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Charter’s not a Buffet
Trudeau spoke to parents concerned with their right to decide what their children are taught in schools. The group of Muslim parents were very worried about the “gender ideology” being forced on their children. The reporter called his answer evasive. Listen for yourself; here’s what he said in full, “I’ve heard
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Just A Victim Of Circumstances?
Fate can be cruel. It is not unheard of to be going about, minding one’s own business, when a person of unknown provenance accosts you and demands a photo with you. Results of such encounters can vary. There was, one may recall, an incident in 2002 when the Mayor of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Plus C’est la Même Chose
It’s the 80s all over again. We’ve got a killer virus that people are largely ignoring despite a small group of people continuing to fight for protections and medications. We’ve got a big conflict with Russia that could affect us in a nuclear sort of way. And now we’ve got
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Trans Rights are Human Rights
The trans community isn’t safe in Canada, that’s why Pride month is necessary. And there’s no straight month because nobody has ever been discriminated against for being straight! Last week I said, “a glance towards Florida should be enough for the rest of us to recognize this anti-pride position as
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Conformity Experiments
This image comes from a century ago, of course. It’s still very hard to be different, but sometimes it’s vital. When I taught a course called the Challenge of Change, I offered up a number of challenges along the way. Students who were uncomfortable participating in any of them
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Keeping Kids "Safe" From Pride
Student Trustee Kenzy Soror wrote an excellent, brief thread on the problem with parents keeping their children home because it’s pride day or month: “I take great concern with the decision of some families to ‘keep’ WRDSB students at home on June 1st. I hope that those who made this
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Transphobia is the New Homophobia
Natalie Wynn, one of my favourite YouTubers, came out with a 2-hour long video, basically a feature-length film, her first in 10 months. This one is on J.K. Rowling, whom she discussed two years ago (and I wrote about here if you need to catch up on the controversy). This time she goes
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Leading by Example or What’s Good for the Goose…
This is about the Davos World Economic Forum, ending tomorrow. Social media is all atwitter with the incredible precautions they pulled off. Check out their rules here. It’s three pages (!!!) of Covid rules and mitigations. Some highlights here: “To create a safe environment at the Annual Meeting 2023, the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Problems with IHRA
After receiving literally hundreds of emails on this topic, starting before I was even elected, I watched this excellent panel discussion tonight about IHRA presented by Independent Jewish Voices Canada, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Ground UP Waterloo Region, and featuring Fitsum Areguy, Greg Bird, Jasmin Zine, Sheryl Nestel, Mark
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Teachable Moments: Should Schools Teach About Covid?
I’ve been talking with parents who are trying desperately to keep their kids safe in the classroom. It sounds like most staff and students are unmasked despite higher Covid numbers in the hospital and higher fatality rates than last year at this time. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Really Deep Dive into Anti-CRT Rhetoric
This will be a long one, but I’ll break it into headings (after this preamble) for easier bit-at-a-time reading! There’s a division among school board trustees and some parents around the best way to tackle discrimination to ensure the best outcome for students and society. The board currently has been
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Anti-Racist Educating Provoking Bullying of White Kids
Addressing a local concern about bullying: I’m very sorry to hear about any child’s bullying experience in school. Bullying of any kind has no place in our schools, but we’ve seen that it can be so difficult to eradicate. Kids will jump on any little thing in order to try
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We Need to Discuss Systemic Racism in Schools
In The Record article, “Waterloo Region District School Board Trustee Mike Ramsay speaks up about sanctions against him,” Mr. Ramsay writes that he is concerned that education has shifted from a focus on literacy and numeracy to White Privilege and Critical Race Theory (CRT). As a teacher at WRDSB this
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