Although I was not elected (not even close) I’d like to give my thoughts to the new Board of Education in Abbotsford School District, SD34. Please take ideas from all of the candidates platforms. I mentioned during the forum that it’s important to cast a wide net to bring in a lot of ideas so that the best can be examined. Please use the ideas of all of the candidates, or at least examine them.
To that end, I’d like to propose four points for you to look into.
There have been many cases against anonymous comments.
Popular science removed their comments entirely for a good reason, as referenced in a New Yorker article:
“The editors argued that Internet comments, particularly anonymous ones, undermine the integrity of science and lead to a culture of aggression and mockery that hinders substantive discourse.”
Huffington post brought up To Kill a Mockingbird:
“Lee’s basic claim is this: We are capable of doing far worse things to one another when we do not have to own up to the things we do.”
The cases for anonymous comments tend to focus on the lack of effect restricting it will have as people are still willing to say terrible things in public under their own names.
My thoughts on the 2014 Abbotsford municipal election. Actually just about the SD34 Board of Education Trustee election.
I’d like to start by thanking the 3500 people who voted for me. It was a great experience and my first time putting myself out there in a city context. I hope to run for School Trustee again in four years.
It’s interesting to look at the election results and compare them to the campaigns run. As expected the incumbents were re-elected (generally the majority of incumbents get re-elected for school trustee, though it is by no means easy), but the interesting thing is the numbers for the non incumbents.
Beloit College in Wisconsin puts out an annual “Mindset List” to give you an idea of where the newest college students are coming from in regards to what they see as being “the world as it has been”.
Take a look at the info behind it here: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/ and this years here: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2018/
The list is very geared towards the US, as it’s from a US college, but I wanted to show a few that I felt were particularly important:
Students heading into their first year of college this year were generally born in 1996.
1. During their initial weeks of kindergarten, they were upset by endlessly repeated images of planes blasting into the World Trade Center.
The campaign season has wrapped up and I did not make it in. But I wanted to keep my platform here for people to see.
Noah Arney grew up and attended school in Abbotsford and returned to establish a family after receiving his Bachelor of Education from UBC. He has worked in education for six years at both the secondary and post-secondary levels; working primarily with Aboriginal learners.
During his post-secondary education Noah was active in student government and institutional committees at UFV and is now interested in pursuing a more active role in the community through service to the Board of Education.
Noah hopes to bring to the school board his expertise as an educator and his commitment to current best practices in education.
The current Abbotsford School Board has done some very good things over the last three years, the strategic plan is a sound document and I would love to be part of the implementation of it, and the increase in the Aboriginal student graduation rate to being within 5% of the general graduation rate is an accomplishment that should be lauded and continued to be worked on. But there are some areas that I feel need to be revisited.
Stephen Poloz, of the Bank of Canada, had a rather tone deaf line the other day:
“If your parents are letting you live in the basement, you might as well go out and do something for free to put the experience on your CV.”
That’s great for people who can do that, but most of my students live on their own, often with kids, and have been doing so for years.
I understand where he’s coming from, and who he’s talking to, but it betrays a bias that he needs to get over. By saying things like this he’s ignoring the huge number of students who are barely getting by through their education, and are only going to school because they know it’s the route to a job that doesn’t pay minimum wage.
Today someone was wrong on the internet. Yesterday someone else was. Actually a lot of people were wrong on the internet, and why does that bother us? I think we get bothered because we feel deep down that what we are doing/thinking/saying is right. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be doing/thinking/saying that. Then we take that one step further and assume that because someone else does/thinks/says similar things to us on topic A that they will do the same for topic B.
The daily show had a great bit a few weeks ago where the corespondent expressed shock that it was left leaning people primarily in the “anti-vaccination” movement. The idea that someone who agrees with us can also disagree with us shouldn’t be a surprise, and yet it is. In any large religion there are as many viewpoints as there are believers. And some of those viewpoints are opposite each other. And some of those opposite viewpoints are over key tenets of the religion. Yet both are considered part of the region. Similarly two people can have very similar views on child rearing but completely opposing views on the environment, or labour laws, or the advantages of ketchup or ranch as a condiment.