the cassandra pages

Guest Blog: "L'Onde de Choc Solidaire," by J.

Here's a guest post from my husband and partner, known to some of you through his photo website and to others  as the "J." of this blog. Enjoy!

From the back room where I work the persistent chatter of voices was the first tipoff that something was happening, the second the deep-throated drum beat that came and went. Finally, after a couple of hours it dawned on me that these sounds were not a normal demonstration. I got up from my desk and walked to the front window.

I now am accustomed to seeing demonstrators marching down our street, but peering out I was still surprised. This was not the political manifestation, but a meta-demonstration fed by dozens and dozens of bright yellow school buses which ringed most of the periphery of the 100 hectare park. Many of the buses had hand-lettered placards identifying where the students were from, and from each bus issued a demonstration unit: students, flags, costumes, posters, drums – the raw tools of political dissent. Yearly (since 1970) this event is organized by Oxfam-Québec (far right column, "Marche 2/3 2008") and involves about 15,000 students. This year's theme was "Provoque l’onde de choc solidaire/Provoke a Shockwave of Solidarity." I decided that the work that had been keeping me to the back room wasn't that important after all and grabbed my camera.

   

Inside the park the day was actually winding down, and the marchers were heading back to their buses. Still there were several thousand high school students. I had a role to play as well: spectator! As groups would pass the posters and banners would snap towards me (the spectator!) As such I was the only element not in generous supply. The theme of the demonstration was equitable distribution for each person of the world economy, and the injustices of the current system. From my point of view I was intent on watching and couldn't help but notice many things, but especially the teachers embedded in each group. Marching too as demonstrators with their students, undifferentiated except for their age, it was they who were transmitting the precious genetic code of political engagement to their already receptive students.

The signs in the photo above read " Later is Too Late" and "To recycle is to Predict the Future."

Click on the photos for larger versions, and here's a viewer for more photos from the day.

Vunerabilities

The small number of comments on the post two days ago surprised me, and it's made me think. Did I wrap everything up too neatly, or sound too sure of myself? (Yeah, I sometimes do that, I know.) Am I not leaving room for other people to say how they feel about these really difficult issues of mortality, aging, vulnerability? Because I'd really like to hear what you think. It would help.

The truth is that while I may not be depressed (I know what my depression looks like, and this isn't it) I am certainly tired, and more aware than ever of my own vulnerability, and the sadness and inevitability of loss.There's this sense of deep compassion - knowing we all suffer from the same things, seeing what can be done to help and trying to do it - but sometimes, dealing with aging, mortality, and all those related issues brings up the feelings of loneliness and isolation that have dogged me all my adult life, in spite of the love and friendship I do have. Worry about the possibility of being alone later on, since I have no siblings or children, has always bothered me a great deal, and is one reason I've been drawn to a spiritual path that emphasizes staying in the moment while learning to look more unflinchingly at reality -- past, present, and future -- and hopefully get stronger and less needy as a result. It works -- insights do come, one learns how to cope with things better -- but it's slow, we forget things we learned, and we are all weaker and less clear when we're tired and drained. We're merely human.

How my writing fits into all of this is one of the things I'm struggling with right now. Should I go back to the spiritual autobiography I was writing back here? And where to go with the story of my father-in-law? Or should I forget all this personal stuff and turn my attention to an article about Canadian and US healthcare I've been urged to write? Do something completely different, like some drawings? And, as always, what about the blog?

In the comments on that post, Leslee (who has been through a lot herself with parental responsibilities and loss) said she was glad I was finding grace in what's been happening. I replied that looking for grace felt like my only choice. A while ago I was feeling exhausted and helpless and J. asked me, "what do you want to do?" "Run away," was my immediate, reflexive answer. "You can't do that," he said - meaning "even if you run, it will follow you - this is life." The truth of it sank in deeper than it has before when I've said it to myself, and it's meant an even-more-deliberate return to meditation and reflection on "now", on being present both to others and to myself. Part of that is knowing when to say "no" and when to pull back and take time for self-preservation, otherwise I'm no help to anyone.

But what do you think? I'd be grateful for your insights, advice, encouragement.

Reflecting on a Reading

I went to a reading here in Montreal last night, part of a five-city set of promotional readings of first fiction by published by the Literary Press Group of Canada, a consortium of independent, small literary publishers. Different people are reading in each city: it's a great idea, well-promoted. The reading was in a bar/music venue, and there were quite a few people in attendance, attentive and appreciative, including several publishers and representatives from the Canada Council.

The work was pretty good, if a bit uneven. I liked the writing of the two women who read. Pamela Stewart, the author of Elysium, has done a lot and experienced a lot; she had a gritty, honest, original style grounded in life's realities and, I sensed, in spirituality; the other was a young woman of Canadian and Indian parentage (Nila Gupta, left) who has written a book of cross-cultural stories from her own experience; her reading from the first story drew me in. But the crowd liked the last guy: edgy, urban, self-deprecating; he said "fuck" a lot; they even made him read an encore. Then everyone went back to eating and drinking: from the prices posted on the chalkboard I am quite sure each person there spent at least the price of a book, which were still lying mostly unsold on a table when I left. To be fair, I didn't buy a book either, for two reasons: I hadn't expected to spend that much cash (the bar required you to order food if you wanted a drink, not always the case here), and I couldn't decide which of the two women's books to buy. I plan to go and look at them in the bookstores later this week. But afterwards, riding home, it just irked me how unconsciously people were throwing cash at the bar while supposedly supporting the arts. Who was really profiting from the evening, and how much spillover would there be for the writers themselves?

It's hard to tell. I'm just beginning to learn about the Canadian lit scene and how it works. Literary publishing, like all of the arts, is much more heavily subsidized by the government than it is in the U.S., and it's at least somewhat easier to live as an artist here. What I sense is less struggle, but also less ambition: people have art shows, they have readings, and it's an excuse for a party; it's all very good-natured; there's less at stake, less competitiveness, and also less hope and expectation. Last night's writers were all serious about their work and deserve to be read. People do read here, and they are supportive of the arts: they're proud of Canadian writing, they go to book fairs, they use libraries. It may be easier to get published here. But book sales are low, much lower than in the U.S. I wonder if the Canadian public, knowing that the arts are subsidized, simply doesn't feel compelled to pony up for books, while they clearly spend plenty on booze and restaurants. How many times will these writers get to read their work? How did it feel to them last night? Of course, it's hard enough to sell books anywhere - this is a tough business.

All of this got me thinking about what we're doing at qarrtsiluni , now heading toward its third anniversary of online publication. Even though nobody is making any money, it feels respectful to the artists to present their work this way; the quality is high, the interaction tries to be both compassionate and timely, and there are a growing number of readers and comments on the published works.

What I want as a writer, and what I hope for as a publisher and editor, is for the words we struggle over to be taken seriously and to be presented with as much dignity and integrity as possible, with opportunity for feedback, appreciation, and the possibility of developing interest in reading more of the author's work. The current theme, Nature in the Cracks, is just finishing up and has resulted in some remarkable posts; we're currently receiving a mini-flood of submissions for the next theme, Water. We'd especially like to receive more prose submissions, so if you have something to say on that very broad and fluid topic, please check out the How to Contribute page, and send us your best efforts.

Chariots of Fire

Rainy, cold, London-feeling days. The last light of the day flares low and golden, striking the tenderly-budded trees in the park, turning their chartreuse to lurid orange against a dull slate sky. A gull maneuvers deftly through the trees -- flash, flash -- and in the foreground, shadowed but intense, the yellowish-green of new leaves shines against dark, wet trunks.

Then, just as quickly, it all fades to dun, grey, olive, then monochrome. Apollo's chariot disappears beneath the unseen horizon.

--

A Gabrielli mass today at the cathedral, for Ascension Day, with the "Majeste du Christ" and "Transports de joie" from Olivier Messiaen's "L'ascension" as the organ prelude and postlude bookends. Our cathedral is establishing a "sister" relationship with the Anglican cathedral in Havana, and many of the regular helpers were in Cuba on a first "official" visit there. So J. and I served as ushers, greeting parishioners as they arrived, welcoming visitors, handing them hymnals and the Book of Alternative Services. I talked to a couple from Yorkshire who were trying to see all the large churches of the city, and to a young man, fresh from Oxford but originally from Sri Lanka, in Montreal now for a month of special study in his field at McGill. "I'm finding it hard to navigate in the French language," he said, apologetically, in perfect English. "I didn't expect all the signage to be in French, and I find I make mistakes in transportation, buy the wrong things...but that is to be expected. I am also a musician and an Anglican...what can I do during this month to be involved, to find out about life in this parish?"

Ascension. Resurrection. We heard today of another fifty-year-old about to die; if it's not people our age stricken with unexpected disease, I feel surrounded by older friends and family beset by the ravages and indignities of age. Thoughts of mortality do not arise and flare out like the sunset, but are these days ever-present, like the very air. And yet - and yet ... I'm not depressed. The immersion seems to be moving me toward some sort of greater acceptance; even, strangely, an emotion I recognize as gratitude. Gratitude that I'm learning to become more present; learning, perhaps, to be able to help a little; gratitude that these dear ones are showing me how to be less afraid of growing old and ill and alone, a little less afraid of that boundary we call death.

--

My aunt, 80, had a knee replacement last Monday, and I drove over to the seacoast of New Hampshire to be with her for an afternoon. Her face on the pillow, as I walked into the hospital room, was my father's face, just as it is, and will be, mine. We are a small remnant now, my father and his sister the only immediate relatives I have left. Beyond them: cousins, and cousins' children; photographs in albums; memories. Like my father, my aunt and I are cut from a similar bolt of scratchy New England homespun. She is a musician and actress; a reader; articulate, determined, sharp-edged, often funny, critical; she's lived alone for most of her life. We haven't spent a lot of time together but there's always been an ease and affinity that erase some of the lack of common experience. We were easy with each other in the hospital room, too, in spite of the unusual intimacy presented by recent surgery, wounds, dressings, gowns, examinations, bodily functions.

In the quiet of the mid-afternoon she rested for a while on her side to ease the discomfort. I reached over and took her hand that lay on the sheet - something I've never done before - and we sat quietly together, as she closed her eyes to drift into sleep, waking now and then to talk a little more.

As the daylight began to fade I told her I loved her, and she told me the same. I left her sitting in a chair, starting to eat the dinner they'd brought on a tray, and then I drove back west with the sun in my eyes until it gently dropped behind the forest of white pines.

 

No One is Illegal

For two hours this morning, small groups like this walked around Parc Lafontaine, probably as part of this week's MayWorks events and demonstrations for international workers rights, fair trade, immigrant justice, and against poverty, racism and racial profiling, the latter sponsored by the group Solidarité sans frontières/Solidarity Across Borders. Note the baby carriage and small kids: that's the case in nearly every demonstration we've seen on the streets of Montreal - and demonstrations are a common occurrence. The annual May Day workers' march got broken up by police this year - the police were touchy after the destructive riot that broke out after the Canadiens won a playoff game earlier in the week, and apparently some neo-Nazis came to the MayDay march ready for violence; in any case, the march was practically over before it started. All of which didn't go over well in this city which prides itself on being peaceful but political. It looked like today's march may have been an attempt by certain groups to pick up the pieces and walk in solidarity in a different location on a rainy Saturday instead, just on principle.

In any case, the issues highlighted were underscored by the film we saw last night, "The Visitor." Shot in New York City, near Washington Square, and in Queens, the film focuses on a bored, unhappy white college professor who arrives at his little-used apartment in New York to find a foreign couple living there: they turn out to be a Syrian musician and his Senegalese girlfriend: both illegal aliens. Things get much more complicated, as we watch the professor grow through his relationship with the couple and an unexpectedly personal political awakening. The film also has a lot to say about music as language, solace, quest, and expression; its ultimate point is not so much about deportation and rules as it is about what constitutes our responsibility to one another as human beings - and how far the United States has come from that in its policy about detention, and toward those who aid illegal aliens or anyone who runs afoul of the Patriot Act.

The helplessness of American citizens and accused immigrants alike, against "the system", contrasts so starkly with the grassroots sentiment and activism I'm observing here in Quebec. Perhaps one clue to the difference is in that baby carriage you see in the picture above. Children here grow up being exposed to the idea that participation in the political process is a right and a privilege - and one that has an effect. Demonstrations, public meetings, and membership in civic organizations are not grim affairs, but seem to include an element of humor that prevents officials from taking themselves too seriously, and therefore the separation between employees of "the state" - whether police, bureaucrats, or elected officials - and ordinary citizens is much thinner and much less hostile and aggressive.

Is it too late to change this in the U.S. and other industrialized countries?  I wonder. But I can guarantee you one thing: it won't happen from the top down.

"Je ne comprends pas grand chose aux États et aux frontières.
Je sais seulement que la Terre est ronde, et contrairement aux arbres
qui ont des racines, les humains ont des pieds pour marcher."

("I don't understand the big thing about states or borders. I only know that the earth is round, and unlike trees which have roots, humans have feet for walking.")

--Quotation for tomorrow's "No One is Illegal" march

I also liked this one:

"Any Wall Turned on Its Side Becomes a Bridge"

Lunch and a Letter

“OK,” I said. “We’ll see what we can do… Now would you like some lunch? I made kibbeh.”

“What?”

“I brought you some kibbeh, you said you wanted some.”

“No. Food is the last thing on my mind!” He shook his head vigorously. “I refused breakfast.”

“Yes, we heard you did. OK, J., would you like some lunch?”

“Sure,” he said, and I went out to the kitchen. The caregiver stared at me through the pass-through.

“Are you a psychologist or something?” she asked.

“No, not at all,” I said, turning on the stove. “Why?”

“Because you seem to know how to talk to him.”

“I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing,” I said, “but really I just know him very well. We’ll get it sorted out, don’t worry. Would you like some lunch? It’s a special Lebanese dish.”

She came into the kitchen, cautiously, and looked at the pan I had uncovered with its rather odd contents of browned beef, scored into lozenge-shaped pieces. “OK,” she said. “It smells delicious! I’ll try some.”

I fixed three plates of warm kibbeh, rice pilaf, and yogurt, gave her one, and took the other two into the bedroom. I offered it again to my father-in-law, who was lying flat in the bed; he waved me off. I put the plate on the table and went back out to get some water. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hand reach up from the bed toward my husband’s plate, take a chunk of kibbeh, and retreat. “Hey!” I heard my husband say. When I reached the bedroom door my father-in-law had the entire piece of kibbeh in his mouth, his eyes shut tight, and my husband was staring at him in amazement.

My father-in-law’s eyes opened and he looked up at me. “This is good!” he said.

“I’m glad!” I said, standing with my hand on my hips. “I put lots of salt and onions in it, just for you.” I handed the other plate to my husband. “Would you like some more?”

“No, this is just fine.”

J. and I looked at each other; we were getting to the point where nothing surprised us. We all finished our lunch, the caregiver pronounced the food delicious, and we assured her that we’d straighten out the medications and call the doctor. My father-in-law got up and went to the bathroom, and then headed for the living room where he sat in a chair while J. went to the nursing station and I read him a letter from his brother and sister-in-law in Florida.

“Don’t waste your time on me,” he said when I finished, after reacting with pleasure to his younger brother’s unique voice and humor coming across in print. He reached over and patted my hand – an unusual affectionate gesture. “Go home and work while you’re still young.”

“I’m not wasting my time,” I said, but knowing that he meant, “I’m tired now, time for you to go away.” His head leaned against the side of the chair and his eyes were shut. “OK,” I said. “When J. gets back we’ll go home and let you sleep.”

His eyes fluttered open once more. “You know that story about the children? I have no basis for it, none at all. I was just going along with the nurse. I think she made it up.”

“OK,” I said, shooting a look at the caregiver over my shoulder; she smiled and shrugged. The bouquet of forsythia was glowing behind her. “Get some rest,” I said, touching his arm, and stood up to leave.

Missing Children

When we arrived a day or two later my hands were full with a tray of kibbeh and a bouquet of forsythia from our bush at home, just beginning to bloom. The caregiver said he was fast asleep. They had been having a bit of a crisis, she said, her voice betraying her agitation though she tried to speak calmly. She was young, and obviously worried whether she’d done the right thing during an unexpected situation. He’d had another episode of confusion in the middle of the night, she said, when he insisted two children had been entrusted to his care but they had become lost and were somewhere in the apartment. At one point he even wanted to call the police. When the nurses tried to dissuade him he’d become angry and belligerent, ordering them out of his sight. (“It’s so ironic,” J. said to me later, “for someone who never seemed aware of his own children.”) In the morning, after initially refusing to take any medication at all, an additional sedative had been given and he’d calmed down and gone to sleep. We felt responsible; in discussion with two of the caregivers and J.’s brother, plus listening to my father-in-law’s complaints about his inability to do anything but sleep, we’d decided the previous day to ask for less daytime sedation in the hope that he could function better, with less drowsiness and more focus, during the day. They had cut out two doses of the usual tranquilizer and this, possibly, had been the result.

But at the time, I sat and listened to the caregiver, who was clearly upset, recounting what had happened and how she had dealt with it, while J. sat by his sleeping father’s bed. When I heard my father-in-law’s voice I excused myself and went in. “Hello!” he said. “How good to see you!”

“How are you?”

“I’ve been confused,” he immediately admitted. “There’s been this story about two children…but now I can’t figure out if I made it up, or if the nurse made it up and I went along with it. I don’t know where it came from.”

“Do you think it was a dream?”

“It seems like it must have been, but it felt very real.”

“Do you think they’re here now? Are you still worried about them?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He smiled faintly. “I’m afraid I got quite angry. But these people who stay here were driving me crazy! They watch me like hawks. The minute I move, they pop up out of nowhere and want to help me – it’s maddening! So I told them, ‘Get out!! If I need you I’ll call you!’” His face softened: “They are all very nice people, kind and decent. But they’re stupid, and fat. And now I think they’ve been out there talking on the phone all day – probably about me – but I can’t make out what they’re saying.”

The caregiver had indeed been on the phone a lot, and he was able to hear more than he let on. “It’s got to be really frustrating for you. Do you feel trapped?”

“Yes!”

“We know you’d rather be on your own – anybody would - but if you want to stay here, the place requires this kind of care if they feel you’re at risk for falling.”

“I just don’t want them to hover over me this way.” He mimed a woman’s voice: “‘Can I get you a glass of water? Can I help you go to the bathroom?’” and then thundered, “Leave me alone!” His face, angry and mournful, turned to look up at us. “Well, never mind. But it’s not fun.”

“I know, Dad. I’m sorry,” said J.

“C’est la vie. And I haven’t seen a doctor in weeks. She’s made three appointments and canceled them all.”

We didn’t realize the doctor had canceled. “Has your nurse been in to see you, you know, the black woman who you like?”

“Yes, she comes regularly, she takes my blood pressure and listens to my heart and massages my back, but she doesn’t tell me anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t tell me what’s wrong, or suggest anything they can do about it.” This same hospice nurse had told us on the phone that when she came he had seemed to be sleeping, and she didn’t want to wake him, so she hadn’t said anything to him.

‘You’d like someone to give you more information.”

“Yes! And I’m suspicious of the medications. The night nurse gives them to me in yogurt, which is awful – and I don’t trust her.” (She was the one who had sent him the hospital, the event he considers to have precipitated this whole crisis.) “So last night and this morning I refused to take them.”

“I thought you said you could swallow the pills better in yogurt,” said J. His father made a face.

“So you’d feel better if you could talk it over with your doctor.”

“Definitely.” He lowered his voice, just slightly. “I don’t think they know what they’re doing here, really. They mean well, and they are awfully kind, but…they are not the same as a doctor. And I also want something for my digestion.”

“OK,” we said. “We’ll see what we can do…

(to be continued tomorrow)

"Think of them in Spain"

A few weeks ago we were talking about memory and remembering, when I asked him what the word for “remember” was in Arabic.

“Thakr means to remember,” he explained. “That is, to remember by thinking. In Arabic we have a number of words for different aspects of memory…thakira is the storage of memory – as in, ‘I have no memory of it.’ Thakkirini means ‘remind me.’” He thought for a minute and then announced, “Strangely, thakr is also the word for male…tadakirru is to exchange memories, tathkira is an identity card.”

“It’s an incredibly rich language – you can play around with it and say a great deal…and still be vague if you wish! It’s terribly imaginative and yet unreal. I came to love Arabic not so much because of my teachers but because it stimulated my thinking. It’s beautiful, romantic, picturesque… “ He shut his eyes and smiled while pictures of gardens and fig trees laden with ripe fruit, no doubt, played in his mind.

“Can you remember any lines of poetry with these words for memory in them?” I asked.

He said, “Oh yes, we have a poem… just a minute…“ and began reciting. Then he translated, as usual:

“'If you want to think of the Arabs, think of them in Spain’…and the second line I recited was ‘Remember me every time the sun sets in Andalucia.’ Spain, you see, became the paradise of the Arabs, it was the height of Arab artistic and creative achievement. “

“Did you ever go there?”

“Oh yes. I loved it. But when I stood and looked at the Alhambra I felt like a tourist.  I mean –it’s magnificent – but I didn’t connect with it as if it had anything to do with me. “ He paused.

“I’d like to see it myself.”

“Yes, you should go. Actually, if I were younger and had time left, I’d want to do a study of the Arabs in Spain.” He lay there and thought for a few minutes, and then opened his eyes wide, looking mischievous. “Sometimes I have secret doubts about the creativity of the Arabs. But they were great borrowers! Look even at the Dome of the Rock – copied! Whatever they found, they said ‘give it to me!’ Even taboulleh, probably!”

Beauty and Truth

This is a continuation of an exchange begun several months ago with New Zealand photographer Tony Bridge. Tony has been waiting for a response from me all this time, while I've been snowed under by work and by family crises. So here is a letter, and I hope to be able to post his response soon. Please feel free to comment on this post in the interim.

Tony, I'd like to continue talking about beauty in art. In our last exchange you wrote:

Those moths dancing in the moonlight was a moment that can be laid down in an image, yet require a novel to convey.  Small wonder then that imagery is increasingly replacing text.  I suspect however that is a topic for a future letter!

Re-reading this passage made me reflect: are we, as artists who depict nature in words or images, trying to show and share the beauty we discover there, or do we find in nature an expression of an abstract ideal of beauty that already lives in our souls? What did your moths represent on that night? Didn't they stir something in you that was already present, just as a landscape may, or the flocks of snow geese I stopped and watched a few weeks ago, and this is what moves us to try to create, to try to express the emotions that arise? In other words, I think there is an interplay between the human being and the natural environment which is, itself, natural: we are meant to be part of each other, and to feel something - but we realize that a lot of people are much less in touch with this aspect of themselves.

Like you, I also made a choice: to try to write more about positive aspects of life and less about argument and politics and what is wrong. Some of that choice is based on self-preservation, some on personality and temperament, but some of it is simply an artistic decision: I want to try to share what moves me, and to express something about my own journey through life, a journey which is a search for meaning, connection, and truth. The longer I live, the more sure I am that the sages are right: that truth and light are within each of us - and that everything is connected. But it is also true that everything has its opposite: for the light, there is the opposite side of darkness; for truth, falsehood; for beauty, ugliness; for order, chaos.

In the assisted-living home where my father-in-law lives, the walls of the hallways are hung with beautiful pictures: bouquets of flowers, children playing, lovely landscapes, pastoral meadows, calm pictures of houses and seashores and gardens. I go by them often, and think about why people choose these sort of images: when I was a young painter I painted my fair share of them too. But now, at mid life, they all feel like cliches to me, except for the occasional image, often a watercolor, where instead of a frozen perfect moment, the sky indicates change and movement and a more complex emotional state than calm-happiness-that-once-was.

The truest art, for me, does this: it tries to hold the dark and the light together. There is a sense of edginess or uneasiness, as Pete and Dave and Miguel mentioned before, which may not mean literally showing the garbage on the side of the trail, but does indicate an awareness of the change that is ever-present in life. (I feel this in some of your landscapes but it's hard to describe or point to what does it.) The beautiful moment passes, a cloud obscures the sun, calmness and upheaval alternate in our lives, death follows birth. As humans we know this, while we may we try forever to deny it. While we may be drawn to beauty for its own sake, and need it very much, it is the poignancy of this deep knowledge of passage and change that stirs me as an artist and writer. Frankly, I find it much easier to express in words than in pictures, but you may disagree!

With best wishes from Montreal --
Beth

(related article from today's NY Times: "What (Ansel) Adams Saw Through His Lens")

What's at Risk?

My morning began (after checking email, of course!) with reading several articles about education. An editorial in the New York Times commemorates the 25th anniversary of the publication of "A Nation at Risk", the report of a national commission in response to “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” I had forgotten about the report and what it found, except that - contrary to what the administration expected - it corroborated the public perception. What was interesting about today's article was the before/after discussion of one of the report's conclusions: that a strong educational system focussed on "the basics" would result in greater economic competitiveness. American educators back in 1981 were very concerned about being outstripped by the much higher-performing, rigorous Japanese and Korean school systems. But then the American economy improved, while the Asian economies began to falter:

With the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear that the link between educational excellence and economic security is not as simple as “A Nation at Risk” made it seem. By the mid-1980s, policymakers in Japan, South Korea and Singapore were already beginning to complain that their educational systems focused too much on rote learning and memorization. They continue to envy American schools because they teach creativity and the problem-solving skills critical to prospering in the global economy.

Indeed, a consensus seems to be emerging among educational experts around the world that American schools operate within the context of an enabling environment — an open economy, strong legal and banking systems, an entrepreneurial culture — conducive to economic progress.

To put it bluntly, American students may not know as much as their counterparts around the Pacific Rim, but our society allows them to make better use of what they do know. The question now is whether this historic advantage will suffice at a time when knowledge of math, science and technology is becoming increasingly critical. Maybe we need both the enabling environment and more rigor in these areas.

My question, on reading this, is much broader: should the purpose of an educational system even be economic competitiveness? Does it distress anyone besides me that this is stated so bluntly as a given fact? First, who benefits from such a goal, and how? Are we raising children who are capable of thinking about the effect of globalization, for instance, or children whose primary goal is to make as much money as possible; i.e., are we raising yet another generation of capitalist consumers, or world citizens? On the other hand, I know that many young people today are quite idealistic - where are those values coming from? And is it only my perception that, 25 years later, an even greater percentage of kids are falling through the cracks, both in terms of secondary education and access to higher education, due to racial inequality, poverty, troubled family environments and many other factors?

What do you think? And I wonder if Canadian readers see differences between the stated goals of education between the two countries. In Quebec, at least, the values of the society are quite different, and it's hard for me not to think some of this comes from the focus of education, as well as what children learn at home.