I just watched this disturbing video on recent attacks on Afghan schools. These attacks are nothing new, the education of youth, and especially girls, is seen as a threat to theocratic rule.

It was accompanied by the words of Afghan human rights activist and government official Ranna Tareen on the violence carried out on prominent Afghan women. “I see my death too. What annoys me is to see no one cares about it.”

What saddens me most is that she feels all alone. How about we deploy our soldiers to protect these women of note while they attempt to change their country?

This is going to be one amazingly ‘signature’ Conservative plan. No abortion – deep sigh but okay. But to not even include access to contraception as part of our super-duper G8 ground-breaking plan to improve maternal and infant health? I’m having a hard time imagining what will be in this plan.

Guaranteed access to:
Clean water? Not sure how they would do this…
Affordable medication? Nope, this would threaten pharmaceutical monopolies.
Nutritious food? Nope, this would interfere with free-market agribusiness.
Education? Nope, then women might learn about family planning and their rights.

Or maybe they’ll just make sure that every newborn gets a Tory-blue swaddling blanket and a booklet on how to keep their legs crossed in the future.

…and then there is this article which questions the claims made by Annett’s group back in April regarding mass graves. It’s pretty long but the comments following are also interesting. There is so much to think about here and so much that is unknown. I didn’t even know who Kevin Annett was until I read this article, now I want to know more. Knowledge is power.

That is why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is such a great idea. But so is an independent forensic investigation into a few of the supposed grave sites.

The more information we can get into the open, the better. Transparency is the first step towards trust building.

I’m really, really trying to be apolitical. I’m really, really trying to keep my mouth shut…

… but I can’t. Not when this keeps happening.

In my own country. I am so ashamed. Mass graves of children. Hundreds? Thousands?

Canada’s Secret Shame.

I am so angry and I transform this anger into a thirst for justice.

And I will stand in solidarity on May 29th.

Chimo indeed.

Again from Hopgood’s article, a few quotes on the project to assimilate ‘the Indian’ in the U.S. back in the 1800s and early 1900s.

The native peoples of America were considered to be like children by the governments in the U.S. during this time period. They were deemed incapable of taking care of their own land and behaving in a civilized manner, therefore, their lands were held in trust until they showed their capacity. Those who could pass the competency test were given “fee-simple titles to the land and thus citizenship during elaborate and heavily symbolic ceremonies conducted by the Indian Office:”

“The crowd would look on while their ‘competent’ brethren were summoned individually from inside the lodge. The candidates for land titles were dressed in traditional costume and armed with a bow and arrow. After ordering a candidate to shoot his arrow into the distance, the presiding officer… would announce ‘You have shot your last arrow’. The arrowless archer would then return to the tipi and reemerge a few minutes later in ‘civilized’ dress. ‘Take the handle of this plow’, the government’s man would say, ‘this act means that you have chosen to live the life of the white man – and the white man lives by work’ ” (from Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 180).

This process of “cultural suicide” was continued through institutional schooling which in the words of Captain Richard Henry Pratt aimed to “Kill the Indian in him and save the man” (David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995: 212, 52).

“Education serves to both clean the slate and replace it with a new lesson” (Hopgood, 18). The trick is that back in the 1800s, the elites were open and proud of this mission – to replace the savage with the civilized, to create an individual who would be worthy of citizenship and participation in civil society. Today, this intention has had to remain part of the subtle background, elite members of a society can no longer openly proclaim their project to erase the savage and preserve the man but, instead, attempt this aim through the promotion of supposedly universal human rights.

Sigh.

I realize that yesterday’s post may have been a wee bit confusing so I thought I’d provide an example – but first a tiny bit more explanation. Civil society, in the sense that I am using it, is a space in which members of a society can engage in free and constructive debate to determine what type of society they want to live in. Citizens (however that is defined) or more generally, members of the society ideally would all have equal access to this space. To me it seems obvious that anyone who is excluded from this discussion suffers a loss of standing in their level of citizenship – a hierarchy is created between those whose opinion is valuable and acceptable and those whose ideas are not.

On with the example. Back in 2006, there was a controversy about a book that had been well-researched and well-written and that dealt with an important topic. The book I am talking about is Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak by Deborah Ellis. This book has been restricted in many school districts, including Toronto, because of a campaign by the Canadian Jewish Congress after the book made the Silver Birch award finalist list. This article by Mary-Lou Zeitoun provides a quick introduction to the situation from one side, here is an article from the Toronto Star posted by the CJC. The issue was whether this book was appropriate for children, and whether it should be made available through schools.

Another book which has been restricted, or banned outright, from various school boards is The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman as well as the other two books in his Dark Materials trilogy after a campaign by the American Catholic League and the release of the major motion picture in 2007 (although the books have been available since 1995). In this article from the CTV, the reason for the removal is explained – Pullman is an admitted atheist and his values do not fit with those of the Catholic School Board. The best part is that in Halton, the review board okayed to book for Grade 7 and up but the trustees voted to ban it entirely. After all, students can always go the “public” library to get the book. Interesting, where exactly does the Catholic School Board of Halton get its funding?

Okay, the point of this is not that books get banned, after all, we’ve been allowing library boards to do that for decades but that these bannings, I think, point very strongly towards the groups whose views are acceptable and whose views are not. Palestinians, nope, not acceptable. Atheists, nope, gotta go. And, above all else, children must be protected from reality, from the fact that there are terrible things that happen in the world and that there may be people who disagree with the ones educating them.

In order to have a truly open debate we need to hear from all points of view, be able to critically engage with those views, and come to new understandings about why and how we are to live our lives. I’m not sure how this is supposed to happen if we limit the participants of dialogue only to those people and groups with whom we agree and who support our point of view.

To me, that’s pretty weak.