Olympic indoctrination a matter of perspective
The dust-up about The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) providing an Olympics protest workshop for a local of the British Columbia Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) began at the end of last week. I’m not big on political statements being made to children by teachers in classrooms, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily going on here. A look around the various web sites associated with this group certainly shows some political rhetoric, but also a lot of information focused on thinking critically about the effects of the Olympics, historically and in Vancouver 2010 specifically.
The ORN also suggests that they could come in and do workshops for students at the secondary level. I’d be hesitant to go there as I think there are some real risks about rhetorical opinion being presented as fact, and we’ve already had enough broken financial promises about the Olympics from government. I’d want to make sure that what the ORN was offering students directly was prepared with appropriate levels of research, and was presented in accordance with prescribed curriculum and in a way that allowed students to make informed decisions for themselves. What I’m focusing on here is the workshop for teachers.
Since it was reported that this workshop was to take place in Lord Strathcona Elementary on October 28th, the event has been moved to SFU Harbour Centre, due to media coverage and the reaction of Lord Strathcona PAC chair, Angelia Ellis. According to an article by reporter John Colebourn in the October 13 Vancouver Province, all parties are distancing themselves from each other and the event is now being held off school grounds. In my mind, the debate ends there, as teachers can attend anything they like on their own time and they’ve likely heard more political rhetoric at the average BCTF AGM, than they will at this workshop.
A little balance
… on this issue might be a good idea. News1130′s radio spot about it was far more circumspect:
A local with the B.C. Teachers Federation, the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers Association, is encouraging an event later this month called Teaching 2010 Resistance. It’s meant to help teachers raise critical questions about the Olympics by considering issues like homelessness and poverty.
However, Colebourn’s article veered dangerously close to editorial rather than journalism when he used words like “radical” twice, and “zealots” to describe the ORN. Zealots they may be, but wouldn’t a journalist (as opposed to an editorialist) leave labels like those to the reader to apply? Oddly enough, he gives many more column lines to PAC chair Ellis, Solicitor General Kash Heed and even Premier Gordon Campbell to support his bias, than he does to ORN member Marla Renn in providing the other side of the story. If supporting quotes were going to be solicited, then how about finding some from 2010 Olympic Games Watch or the Impact on Communities Coalition (IOCC) for a bit more balance?
The cheerleading that the major media are doing on the Olympics is nothing new, and an article like this might as well have been written by Vanoc, themselves. However, what I don’t understand is the article’s underlying idea that naysayers are necessarily zealots, or that since the Olympics are here in four months, no critical analysis or debate about the social and economic effects of the games should make its way into classrooms. Don’t we want children to grow up questioning the world around them and trying to understand at more than a surface level? Do we want them blindly accepting government promotion as fact, without something a little deeper? The ORN is probably guilty of no worse zealotry than anyone on the government or Vanoc side of the equation.
PAC chair Ellis was mostly concerned about the lack of communication and that the workshop was to happen in the school without official permission, and I can understand that concern. However, what about the traveling photo ops going to elementary schools all over the place in the guise of educational programs, with Olympic mascot costumed actors, ensuring that all school kids will have a glowing mental image of something that’s not so cut and dried? Apparently, according to Ellis government funded propaganda is just fine, but opposing viewpoints have no place in the minds of impressionable children:
With the 2010 Olympics so close, nothing anti-Olympic should be happening at the school …. Critical thinking is one thing, but not if it’s going to be a political platform.
The difference, of course, is that the photo ops are all part of Vanoc’s education programs; no fewer than 27 separate educational promotion opportunities, funded by your tax dollars and mine. There is no shortage of edutainment supplies and lesson plans, with none of it seeming to ask critical questions. I won’t even go into the notion that, while some of the material rightly promotes the healthy living effects of sport, this runs in stark contrast to the BC provincial government’s continual cutting of physical education programs, including mandating 80 hours of exercise as a graduation requirement but not funding it in school.
Where’s the real concern?
While Colebourn’s article also suggests that the local of the BCTF is now distancing themselves from the ORN, the quotes he used simply clarify that media reports that the two groups were associated were inaccurate. In other words there was never something for the BCTF local to be distanced from. The ORN’s Marla Renn also confirms that the two groups have never been associated.
BC Premier Gordon Campbell feels that children shouldn’t be pawns in the debate … that is, unless it’s at the hands of government classroom edutainment:
I don’t think it was right taking all the enthusiasm for the Games away from the children.
Let’s not forget that the enthusiasm Campbell refers to is, in part, whipped up by the government in the first place in using the classroom for their own biased information.
What’s not clear is what actually had everyone up in arms. There’s a lot of stuff on the Teach2010 web site and some of it undoubtedly draws a very long bow, like connecting the racial issues associated with the 1936 Berlin Olympics with what the ORN perceive as present-day aboriginal racial issues. Most of it is suggestive of lessons and materials that teachers can target at secondary children. Of the couple dozens links from the main page, only one is focused on primary school aged children. Maybe, with the negative media coverage, some previously available material was taken down, but if not, then the comments of Solicitor General Heed seem to draw an equally long bow:
You know, encouraging teachers to recruit kids to break the law, to commit acts of vandalism, or to occupy private property, you know even to the extent of sabotaging children’s food, is absolutely and completely unacceptable.
Heed may have seen some material I haven’t, but vandalism and food sabotage doesn’t seem to be part of the Teach2010 agenda. Frankly, even if that kind of material is part of the workshop for teachers, let’s have a little trust in them to not only speak out against it, but to certainly not present it to school kids.
Engage kids on what really matters
As a fan of international athletic competition, I hope to see some great events on TV. As a taxpayer who accepts that the Olympics are coming in four months, I hope they succeed financially so that any debt associated with them does not get passed on to my kids. As a concerned citizen, I have many questions. Particularly when we continually watch the Campbell government do the following in the name of the games:
- continue to downplay homelessness and drug problems in downtown Vancouver and other communities while throwing tons of cash at the games;
- run a provincial deficit that could hit close to $3 billion and a ‘published’ games deficit of $60 million;
- cut grants and programs in light of the provincial deficit;
- let Vanoc run out of money while paying up to $30 million in staff bonuses;
- leave Vancouver taxpayers at the whim of market forces to deal with athlete’s village cost overruns.
Financial questions alone should be cause for grave concern and the next generation of citizens shouldn’t be sheltered from as many perspectives as possible in considering their government and what something like the Olympics may actually cost us, financially and socially.
October 19th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
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October 19th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Hi James! Just saw your farewell comment on Transcendental Floss and thought I’d stop in. I haven’t had the time to read this entire article, but I am eager too, as we’re getting some Olympics impact down here, have been for years, it partially fueled some of the ridiculous real estate speculation that screwed up our economy so badly, etc.
Also, I thought I’d point you to my new blog. I’m going solo, trying to get back to writing on a wider variety of subjects, and it feels pretty good so far.
I’ve linked to your site, but there is, of course, no obligation to reciprocate. After all, who knows who’s reading independent blogs anymore?
October 21st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Hey Howard, good to hear from you again. Commented on the video on your new blog. As for our Olympics, I’m very much on the fence about it.
Unfortunately I think the games has become the antithesis of what it is supposed to be. In particular, the government is making changes that make it difficult to protest, or at the very least contains it to specific places, as well as allowing them to come into your home if you post protest messages in your own windows under the guise of protecting ‘brand’.
If we put half the energy into homelessness and drug addiction we’d make a lot more headway into the problems.