Three Area Public Schools on the Chopping Block

ARC Meeting; Two Local Public Schools May Soon Close

By John Taylor

Submitted to the Dunnville Free Press, June 07, 2015

When the time comes to shut down a school, who decides? The answer to that question was laid open to public view in Grandview Central Public School's gymnasium at 7 PM on June 4th, 2015. The decision makers are the "Accommodation Review Committee (ARC)" an open committee (that is, they never meet behind closed doors) of seventeen principals and school trustees, seated in two semi-circles, ten on the left and seven on the right. A packed audience showed how great the concern is among the public as well, especially from parents and other supporters of the two schools on the chopping block. Signs are popping up all over Dunnville declaring, "Save Fairview School," "Save Grandview School" and, outside town, "Save Anna Melick Memorial School."

The ARC Chair, Brian Doyle, opened the meeting with a brief history of what made further closures necessary so soon after Dunnville Central Public School was shut down in 2011, less than one "cycle" of five years ago. Ultimately, the need to cut is caused by the shrinking family (fertility is much smaller than it was in the 1970's), an aging population and the slumping economy of Dunnville. Even construction of new housing developments and the re-opening of the former Bicks plant by Original Foods in this period has not been enough to reverse the trend. With only .32 students per dwelling, the growth adds up to only enough to fill two classrooms.

In order to deal with redundancy, the Ontario government has instituted a "ten kilometre rule" across the province. Any school below capacity that is closer than that distance from another facility will not qualify for full funding and is subject to closure. Only ten schools in our area qualify for such immunity. No matter what, at least one public school will have to close by the first of September, 2016.

Doyle declared that their purpose this time was not to make final decisions but to review recommendations and gain input from committee members and the public. Trustees were confronted with a bewildering array of five complex options of closing one or a combination of small schools and redistributing their students among one or more larger schools of two or three hundred students, such as Thompson's Creek in Dunnville, or J.L. Mitchener in Cayuga (which is far below capacity). As discussions continued, the list soon grew to six, seven and then eight, then shrunk down to six again. Members raised several further questions. Should they consider expanding the larger institutions with portable classrooms? Should the students of any closed schools be kept together or distributed among several larger schools?

At least one creative suggestion was brought forward, to combine J.L. Mitchener school's building with the new library that is planned for Cayuga, a merger of two institutions with the compatible purpose of learning. Others pointed out that their decision could have unforeseen consequences. For example, closing Anna Melick Public School is likely to provoke an exodus of students to a closer school in Winger, which is part of the Niagara Board of Education. The chair declared that this is unthinkable because it would mean a further loss of funding for the Grand Erie Board. Competition with the Catholic Board of Education for a diminishing talent pool further complicates the situation.

The chair declared that he had not seen before so much discussion as had just taken place, and promised that they would come up with the best solution. He then offered the microphone to an eager public. Bob Lake expanded further on the history of schools, going back as far as the 1960's, concluding, "We need to maintain our rural heritage." Another questioner asked, "What are we doing to attract more parents and jobs to the area?" Another felt that we should close the rural schools and stop "picking on Dunnville."

I was impressed by the openness of the process, the non-confrontational attitude of the participants and the concern expressed by the general public. The tone of the discussion was truly exemplary. My only criticism is that technology seemed underused. Only a display of the agenda was projected on a screen, though I am told that maps and graphs have been shown in the past. The process may have been sped up with an electronic meeting system, and decision-making simplified with consultative software designed for facilitating such meetings.

Full resolution versions of all photos I took are at: https://plus.google.com/photos/107843294990779682579/albums/6157474923681330849

For more information about the ARC process, see their site:

http://www.granderie.ca/school/accommodationreviews/pages/haldimand-east-elementary-arc.aspx#.VXOatFxVhHx

Former teacher Bob Lake addresses the ARC review committee.

2 minute video about the 5k Run for Dunnville's Youth Centre

Three Why's Game at the May Philosopher's Cafe

Philosopher’s Cafe Meeting, Thursday, May 14 at 6:30 p.m., at the Wainfleet Library

This month we will be playing a Philosophy board game “The Three Why’s,” a variation of the game “Scruples. Here is how it came about.

We had a successful game night at last month's cafe get together, playing Scruples, but, often, in considering the ethical problems posed by the game, we wanted to delve deeper into the problem. I had just been reading about the Brazilian philosopher CEO, Ricardo Semler, and his habit of imitating a three year old, why? why? why?. Only he does it in practical situations, with his family business at stake. Amazingly, it works. His meetings take longer, and go over things endlessly, but they avoid the stupid mistakes that have filled the Dilbert comics for decades. Here is some more from the net on Semler's three why's:

"Ricardo Semler suggests that one way to get to our greater wisdom is to simply ask three “Whys?” in a row about everything you are doing. He says, “The first ‘Why?’ you always have a good answer for. Then the second ‘Why?’ starts getting difficult [to answer]. By the third ‘Why?’ you realize that, in fact, you really don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing.” Semler says that by asking “Why?” three times, you start to get clearer about who you are and why you are here. In other words, you start to find your own wisdom." 

"Always ask “Why?”—and then ask it again, and again. If Semco has any signal strategy, it’s to simply ask “Why?” Semler calls it the “Three Whys.” In just about any situation, “we simply ask ‘Why?’ three times in a row. ‘Why do you do things the way you do? Why is it important for people to come in at the same time? Why is it important for meetings to happen in a certain way?’ You keep asking why and you generally get to the answer, ‘it is what it is.’ And when people realize they’re stuck in a mode they really can’t explain, this works wonders in breaking down resistance and opening up new possibilities.” 

So, I thought we could try that on the questions in the game next time. We will be the first in the world to play this "Three Why's Game", then, since we just made it up.

All welcome! No philosophy training required, real life experience desired!

Where Religions Meet

Here is Anne Pearson's description of the topic of her upcoming talk at Haldimand's Monthly Fireside, in the Disher Room of the Dunnville Branch of the Haldimand Public Library, 7:30 PM:

"It is a common view that religion has been a major cause of violence and dissension, if not outright war for the primary reason that followers of each religion think theirs holds the truth and that some believers will go to any length to prove this, even if it means hurting and killing others.  It is also a common view that religions are fundamentally different with little in common with one another. This talk will explore the validity of these views, examine what common ground, if any, lies among the religions, and consider what the Baha’i teachings have to offer on this topic."

Dr. Anne Pearson, granddaughter of former prime minister of Canada Lester B. Pearson, is also a member of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Hamilton.

Thinking about "Thauma"

I have been thinking about the Greek word Thauma lately. Often translated as "wonder," originally it referred to the puppets that magicians or miracle workers carried about to overawe children. Youth culture is no new thing. Plato used a form of thauma in his uber-analogy of the cave, as discussed below. 

Of course Baha'is remember the puppet show that Baha'u'llah saw at a relative's wedding, which launched His mission of spiritual, rather than material, glory. The speed with which the puppet show was put away made worldly glory seem too ephemeral. 

The connection to the Persian magi below is interesting. Evidently the show that Baha'u'llah saw had very ancient precedents. Lately, I've been reading and thinking about Thauma in Pythagoras's philosophy, which is oriented around threes. Three dimensions, three strings pulling our fate, three sides to a right angled triangle. Thaumaturgy is the way that fate, or providence, pulls the three strings of life to give meaning to the otherwise random events in our lives. This in turn fits into Comenius's way of teaching teachers to teach, by consciously balancing the three factors of life, intellectual, physical and spiritual in every student.

"While Plato’s “puppets of the gods” metaphor represents fundamental features of his philosophy, it also entails numerous layers of complexity not readily accessible to the modern reader. In order to better appreciate this metaphor, firstly, some insights into ancient puppetry, contemporary with Plato’s era, are essential. Ancient Greek puppets appear to have come in at least four types: shadow puppets, stick puppets, marionettes on strings, and more complex marionettes, also controlled by a puppeteer using strings or cords. All of these have Near Eastern origins apart, perhaps, for the last one which may have been a wholly Greek invention, albeit derived in part out of earlier, foreign traditions. In the 6th century bc, Persian magi came into Greece and used puppets in their rituals, which soon began to resemble those of the indigenous mystery cults.11 It is difficult to tell which tradition most influenced the other in this respect; it may have been wholly mutual. Greek puppetry may also have been influenced by other Near Eastern mystical practices. Herodotus refers to Egyptian women engaging in orgiastic fertility rituals with what he calls “Dionysiac” puppets (thauma). He describes these as “two feet long, moved by strings, which are carried about the villages by the women, with the male member moving and nearly as big as the rest of the body.”12 We also have evidence from the Classical period of sorcerers using shadow puppets for public performances of their magic.13 These varied from harmless spectacles or “marvels” (the name often used for puppets, thauma, pl. thaumata) to blessings and curses. Greek puppets were not exclusively for ritualistic operations but no less still bore mystical significance inasmuch as they often represented individual gods and heroes who were sacred.14 Shadow puppets and marionettes were both used in dramatized scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey. Though these shows would have been aimed largely at an audience of children..."

Kenneth Royce Moore 113 Moore_29Sep2014_Layout 1 9/29/14 10:14 AM Page 113

http://tees.openrepository.com/tees/bitstream/10149/333434/5/333434.pdf

The LSA of Haldimand's monthly fireside in the Disher Room of the Dunnville Library, 8 April, 2015.

This Month's Fireside in Dunnville: Introduction to the Baha'i Faith

Mini History of Dunnville

Here's my article for the Free Press about a recent meeting of the Dunnville Heritage Association. It is a mini history of Dunnville.

Feb 25th - Dunnville 100 years ago.

A STROLL AROUND DUNNVILLE 100 YEARS AGO

By John Taylor

The Dunnville District Heritage Association presented a guided tour through the town’s photographic archives called "Dunnville 100 Years Ago," on Wednesday, February 25th at 7 p.m., at Grandview Lodge Auditorium.

Their researcher, Judy, showed in-depth knowledge of the lives of early Dunnvillians, including a prominent opera singer and a successful businessman whose enterprises marked the skyline of our town for almost a century.

Dunnville came into its own when in 1829 a feeder canal was built right through Main Street. Around this time, three millponds were excavated by the canal to give hydraulic power to two mills and a factory. In 1850 some five hundred vessels sailed through Dunnville and continued on upriver to Brantford. A dam was built across the Grand River here in 1837, along with a toll bridge. It cost one penny for a pedestrian to walk across the bridge to Bing. 

Judy gave us a taste of an upcoming lecture in this series when she showed a British gunboat, which was sent here to defend against the Fenian Raids. The railway came to town in 1852 with the Grand Trunk Railroad, which built a large and very beautiful terminal, which, like many of the large buildings here, eventually burned down. In 1884 the Dunnville Electric Light Company was founded, making us about the third town in Canada to be electrified.

A second railway, the TH&B line, was built in 1914 and made it possible to go by rail to Hamilton. One of its first jobs was to carry local young men off to fight as soldiers in the First World War. In 1920, the feeder canal within town was filled in, to be replaced by the present Main Street.

At the turn of the Twentieth Century the village reached a population of two thousand people and transitioned from a village to a town. It turned out to be a baptism by fire and water, however, as several major structures burned down and the entire town was inundated several times between 1910 and 1920. The entire bridge was wiped out by ice in 1918. Impressive photographs taken at the time show women in long dresses and parasols walking in raging waters on top of a stone structure at the corner of Broad and Chestnut Streets.

For many years the showpiece structure in town was the original Victoria Hotel, which gained international publicity when it was lost in yet another conflagration.

Judy told the story of several local businesses, which included the Monarch Knitting Mill, which started in 1903 and grew at one point to be the largest such business in Canada. When the wool market collapsed it was finally torn down in 1973. Other businesses included a hammock factory, a large ice collection facility, the Lalor Canning Factory (Grand River Brand canned fruits), the CanAm engine company, which built tractors, and a mill on the site of the present Optimist Hall. One of the oldest buildings still standing is the Queen’s Hotel, erected in 1840.

For me, the most impressive part was the story of Central Park. Sold to the town for 400 dollars, it had its finest hour when it was renovated for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. The two cannons in our park, I was surprised to learn, were moved there then, surplus from the Crimean War. If I had known that, I would have told my children, who loved to crawl all over these cannon, the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade and the pioneering work of Florence Nightingale, both of which took place in that war.

The next presentation by the Dunnville Heritage Association will be “World War One, The 114th Battalion, The Battle of Vimy Ridge,” on Wednesday, 25 March, 7PM, at Grandview Lodge, 657 Lock Street West, Dunnville.