A Case of Silent Indoctrination, Part Five: The Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut History Curriculum and Their Lack of History of Employers and Employees

This post is a continuation of previous posts on the Canadian history curriculum. The background to the post is provided in the first post (see A Case of Silent Indoctrination, Part One: The Manitoba History Curricula and Its Lack of History of Employers and Employees).

But just a reminder: the research question is: Does the history curriculum (or, if not available, the social-studies curriculum) provide much of an opportunity for students to understand how and why employers (and employees arose)?

Given that the Nunavut and Northwest Territories history (social studies) curriculum follows the Alberta curriculum, the following is relevant for Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

The Alberta curriculum has two aspects to the grade 12 social studies curriculum: 30-1 deals with perspectives on ideology and 30-2 deals with understandings of ideologies.

Using the search term “employ,” I came up with zero relevant hits. The same result applies to the grade 11 curriculum: 20-1 is Perspectives on Nationalism and 20-2 is Understandings of Nationalism. In the grade 10 social studies curriculum, which consists of 10-1: Perspectives on Globalization and 10-2 Living in a Global World, there is only one relevant hit: students are to examine the impact of globalization on employment issues; it is unlikely that the issue of why work assumes the form of the employer-employee relation would be addressed given the lack of concern for such an issue in the other provincial curricula.

Using the search term “work” resulted only in one hit in all three curricula—in a negative sense of referring to research skills that prepare students for the world of work—without specifying the existence of employers and employees as aspects of work in modern capitalist relations. The curriculum designers evidently did not consider it necessary to explain the emergence of the employer-employee relation; they presupposed its existence—as do many intellectuals. Both the curriculum designers and many intellectuals lack critical thinking skills.

Using the search term “class,” I found, on pages 20 and 32 of 30-1 and 30-2, respectively, a reference to class in the context of exploring themes of ideology, and class system on pages 21 and 33 of 30-1 and 30-2, but that is all. Although there exists a possibility for exploring the question, such a possibility is very remote since there is no elaboration of what the inquiry would involve. It is doubtful that the authors of the curriculum even thought about it.

Using the search term “capital,” on pages 21 and 33 of 30-1 and 30-2, respectively, there is a reference to laissez-faire and welfare capitalism, but again without elaboration. On page 25 of 30-2, there is a reference to capitalism, but it is conjoined with the term democratic, and claims that they are linked to the values of individualism and liberalism. Many employees, however, have experienced the opposite: the suppression of their individuality as they are required to follow the rules and orders of representatives of employers. As for liberalism—the concentration of wealth indicated above in the Saskatchewan curriculum indicates the extent of liberalism characteristic of modern capitalist relations in Canada (and throughout the world).

These curriculum documents express more the ideology of the capitalist class than they do the working class since they are silent about the experiences of the working class as employees and, indeed, as a class in opposition to the power of the class of employers.

The left in Ontario has not remained silent about Ontario conservative premier Doug Ford’s backwards move of rejecting a revised sex-ed curriculum and the reversion to a 1998 sex-ed curriculum. However, it has remained silent over the indoctrination which occurs in the history curricula of various provinces. Why is that?

A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and its Representatives, Part One

The following may not seem appropriate since it is supposed to be a political blog. However, the personal is sometimes political, and the political is sometimes personal. Political lessons can sometimes, therefore, be drawn from personal experiences. It will also serve as an antidote against the illusions of the social-democratic left, who isolate the various forms of injustices and treat them as independent of each other–a typical methodological trick by the social-democratic left.

Indeed, when I was still a teacher at a school, one union rep implied that certain experiences that I outlined had more to do with purely domestic conflicts. Such an isolation of family relations forms part of the typical methodology of social democracy.

For that reason, I am also including a published essay on Dewey’s conception of language and the human life process on my blog, in the section Publications and Writings. It undoubtedly is limited in many ways and may indeed contain errors, but the idea that the human life process as integrating many elements and hence as comprehensive is relevant for understanding the world.

I will copy, little by little, be, a complaint that I filed against a social worker, Mr. S.W., of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. There was a court-ordered assessment to be performed concerning the relationship between the parents and Francesca Alexandra Harris, their daughter, in the summer of 1998.

I am not including the name of the social worker since it is possible that he would try to take me to court; despite the documentation that I possess against a report he wrote, it is quite possible that a judge would side with him due to joint political bigotry. I am replacing his name with Mr. S.W. (appropriate given the social-reformist nature of most social workers as well as how the Manitoba Institute of Registered Social Workers handled the complaint). The complaint has to do with my daughter, Francesca Alexandra Romani (ne Harris).

I will first provide the first couple of pages of the complaint, which stimulated me to write the complaint, in order to provide the context of what follows. I then may not follow the order of the complaint since I may want to bring out earlier the more directly political aspect of my experience.

The political hostility expressed in the assessment is similar to what I have experienced by many social-democratic leftists here in Toronto. This did surprise me at the time, but it no longer does. I have been called a “condescending prick” (by Wayne Dealy, union rep for local 3902 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)–one of the largest unions in Canada. I have been called delusional on Facebook by one of the Facebook friends of another local union rep, Tina Faibish (president of local 552 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). I was also called insane by Errol Young (a member of the anti-poverty organization Jane and Finch Association Against Poverty) (JFAAP). I have also experienced a condescending attitude towards my criticisms among the left here.

For those who do attempt to engage in criticism of the power of employers as a class, you can expect such hostility. That hostility may even extend to your family, even if it is indirect and subtle.

From the complaint (February 18, 2000):

This is a belated complaint against Mr. S.W., registered social worker. It has been more than a year since the initial court-ordered assessment (document 1) done by Mr. S.W. was completed and provided the court and counsel for Mr. Harris and, Mr. Harris presumes, his ex-wife, Ms. Harris.

What prompts Mr. Harris now to make the complaint is the following: in July of this year his daughter, Francesca Alexandra Harris, complained to him that her mother was using a wooden thing (“paleta” in Spanish) to her on the buttocks. She also complained that her mother used a belt to spank her on the same area.

Mr. Harris confronted Ms. Harris with the allegation when he dropped her of on a Sunday in July. Ms. Harris threatened to call the police (she and Mr. Harris have mutual non-molestation orders against each other). Mr. Harris told his daughter that he would call Child and Family Services and that hopefully someone would put a stop to such forms of punishment. Ms. Harris grabbed his daughter and practically forced her into the apartment block.

The next day Mr. Harris called Child and Family Services; they told Mr. Harris that they would contact Ms. Harris. The following two weeks (Mr. Harris sees his daughter every Wednesday and every alternate weekend) he picked up his daughter on Saturday as usual. His daughter, on Sunday, told him that her mother had grabbed her throat in the elevator the day that Mr. Harris had confronted her mother; the latter told her daughter never to tell Mr. Harris that she had hit her. Ms. Harris’ daughter said that she had cried and that her throat had hurt her.

Mr. Harris informed Child and Family Services once again. In the meantime, when Mr. Harris was talking to his daughter after this, Francesca asked him if he wanted to talk to Ulises (Ulises is Ms. Harris’ boyfriend). Francesca later told Mr. Harris that her mother had shoved her to the floor and told her never to ask that question again. Moreover, his daughter also informed him that her mother had hit her on the head with a book.

Eventually, a social worker, Arla Inglis, interviewed Mr. Harris’ daughter in September at her school. As Mr. Harris understands it, there was no “official” physical abuse in the sense that there were no physical marks. However, there was some apparently verbal confirmation of Mr. Harris’ allegations by Francesca. What exactly Francesca said Mr. Harris does not know, but he did speak to Mr. Orobko, Ms. Inglis’ supervisor, and he led Mr. Harris to understand that although there had been no physical abuse in terms of leaving marks there was nevertheless inappropriate discipline, and Francesca’s mother was advised to desist from punishing Mr. Harris’ daughter in an inappropriate manner.

Since that time, Francesca has told Mr. Harris that her mother had pulled her hair for having dropped some eggs. The weekend of October 9 and 10, when Francesca stayed with Mr. Harris, she told Mr. Harris that her mother once again used a “paleta” (a wooden thing) as well as a belt. On November 6, Francesca told her father that her mother had intentionally scratched her with a comb. There were a few scratch marks just above Francesca’s knee (nothing serious, but the issue was the intent to harm using an implement). Mr. Harris took Francesca to the doctor to verify this after having called Child and Family Services once again because Jacki Davidson, with whom Mr. Harris had been in contact before, in a rather hostile fashion told him that he would have to have physical proof of the allegation. (Arla Inglis more graciously later on told Mr. Harris that he should have taken Francesca to the Child Protection Centre.)

These incidents have led Mr. Harris to open up the question of S.W.’s assessment. Mr. Harris mentioned to Child and Family Services that he had gone to trial, that there had been an assessment, and that Mr. Harris had a copy of the assessment and of the judge’s decision. When requested to provide both, Mr. Harris found himself in the awkward position of not willing to provide the assessment while still wanting to provide the judge’s decision. The reasons will become clear as this complaint proceeds. The social worker accused Mr. Harris, justifiably from her point of view, of wanting to provide a one-sided view of the matter by suppressing relevant documents. Mr. Harris had nothing with which to rebut her objections.

Mr. Harris has spent months compiling this complaint. He finds Mr. S.W’s assessment to be a result of political bigotry because Mr. Harris is a Marxist. Mr. S.W. has done both Mr. Harris and Francesca Harris a disservice. It should be clear that ty the end of this complaint that not only did Mr. S.W let his political prejudices sway his judgement against Mr. Harris but also against Francesca. Francesca is now suffering as a consequence of political persecution perpetrated by Mr. S.W.. She is a victim of his own anti-Marxist proclivities.

The order of the criticism will not be according to Mr. S.W.’s presentation. It has been difficult to provide a complaint because of the large number of lies, distortions, inaccuracies and suppression of relevant facts. The organization will be somewhat logical, but there are many issues that are interrelated.

Socialism, What It May Look Like, or Visions of a Better Kind of Society Without Employers, Part Five

The following is a continuation of previous posts on the possible nature of socialism that excludes the power of employers as a class.

In the following, Tony Smith elaborates on the right of use by workers of the places, machinery and so forth where they work, but with the local community being the owner of local resources (and regional and national communities being the owners of regional and national enterprises of regional or national scope). From Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account (2006. Boston: Brill), page 304:

(iv) Workers in enterprises are granted use rights to facilities and other
means of production. But ultimate ownership rights remain with the local
community. Workers cannot use their enterprise as a cash cow and then walk
away; they have a legal duty to maintain the value of the community’s
investments. If sufficient depreciation funds cannot be appropriated from
revenues to maintain the value of these investments, it is the responsibility
of community banks to shut down an enterprise. Once depreciated funds
have been deducted, the remainder of the revenues from public allocations
or sales in consumer/producer markets (apart from the taxes to be considered
below) are then distributed among the members of the collective according
to formulae set by the democratically accountable management

Since the workers are the trustees of the workplaces and not their owners, each year, the workers in the sector that produces either consumer goods for the market or the raw material, machines and so forth required to produce both themselves and consumer goods, have to set aside a certain amount of the proceeds from sales to purchase worn out means of production. The workers must also include in that depreciation fund a fund for repairs.

Workers have a responsibility to the present community and to future communities to maintain the general conditions for the continued livelihood of the community. This means that any cooperative that fails to maintain the value of the means of production must be closed down, and workers in such cooperatives must find work in another, more viable cooperative.

The sales revenue will be distributed generally into three parts: (1) the depreciation fund, (2) a tax on capital assets (which will be explained in another post), and a residual of what is called profits, to be distributed to the members of the cooperative as their personal income according to distribution rules created by themselves. (There also may be income tax and consumption tax, but I will not address that).

Social Democracy or Social Reformism and Trade Unionism: Their Social Limitations and Methodology, Part Two

In my last post, I referred to the self-righteous attitude of many of the social-democratic left, who consider anyone who tries to broaden the discussion to include wider considerations to be “delusional.” Their methodology, I argued, can be considered mechanistic since they try to isolate incidents from the wider social context and treat them as independent of those wider contexts. In fact, they revel in such isolation, taking pride in their narrow-minded attitude, and self-righteously opposing any who try to broaden the discussion.

For example, as noted in my earlier post, Tina Faibish, president of local 552 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), made the following commentary:

From Tina Robin Faibish “come on are you kidding me, you can not look at these two issues as if the level of unjust is similar or comparable because they are not!”

Note the self-righteous attitude of such a reply. How dare I take into consideration anything else! This is her attitude.

Her social-democratic friend then pipes in, when I try to broaden the discussion:

Liz Seaward Ash Fred Harris one thing has nothing to do with the other…you’re delusional..

Not only is this a self-righteous attitude, but it is a hostile attitude. Calling someone delusional is meant to be an insult, of course.

Let us leave these attitudes to one side, though (although anyone who wants to broaden the discussion these days should expect hostile and self-righteous attitudes from the social democratic left). Let us turn to the issue of methodology by referring to John Dewey’s philosophy of human nature. This philosophy considers human life to encompass physical, biological and social aspects that involve a process. This view of human life as an inclusive process has many implications for social analysis, but I will restrict it to the issue of abortion and the human body.

Dewey considers life in general in the following terms (from Experience and Nature, pages 277-278:

Every “mind” that we are
empirically acquainted with is found in connection with
some organized body. Every such body exists in a
natural medium to which it sustains some adaptive connection:
plants to air, water, sun, and animals to these
things and also to plants. Without such connections,
animals die; the “purest” mind would not continue with out them. An animal can live only as long as it draws
nutriment from its medium, finds there means of defence
and ejects into it waste and superfluous products of its
own making. Since no particular organism lasts forever,
life in general goes on only as an organism reproduces
itself; and the only place where it can reproduce itself is in
the environment. In all higher forms reproduction is
sexual ; that is, it involves the meeting of two forms. The
medium is thus one which contains similar and conjunctive
forms. At every point and stage, accordingly, a
living organism and its life processes involve a world or
nature temporally and spatially “external” to itself but
“internal” to its functions.

The only excuse for reciting such commonplaces is that
traditional theories have separated life from nature, mind
from organic life, and thereby created mysteries.

The idea that life (or the life process) involves something that is physically external to the body but is functionally internal can be easily understood if we try to hold our breath. We need elements from the air–which are physically external to our body–and this need is functionally internal to the continued existence of the body. If you extend this idea to all your needs, whether physical or social, then you can see that your life process extends far beyond your immediate physical body.

What has this to do with abortion and the issue that Ms. Faibish raised concerned the law in Ohio about preventing 11-year-old girls from having an abortion if they are raped? If control over the life process involves control over the immediate human body but does not end there but rather extends to the environmental conditions that are physically external but functionally internal, then control over the body is a necessary but insufficient condition for control over our own human life processes.

From John Dewey, Experience and Nature, page 295:

Those who talk most of
the organism, physiologists and psychologists, are often
just those who display least sense of the intimate, delicate
and subtle interdependence of all organic structures and
processes with one another. The world seems mad in
pre-occupation with what is specific, particular, disconnected
in medicine, politics, science, industry, education.
In terms of a conscious control of inclusive wholes,
search for those links which occupy key positions and
which effect critical connections is indispensable. But
recovery of sanity depends upon seeing and using these
specifiable things as links functionally significant in
a process. To see the organism in nature, the nervous
system in the organism, the brain in the nervous system,
the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which
haunt philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen
to be in, not as marbles are in a box but as events are
in history, in a moving, growing never finished process.

The radical left needs to analyze the connections of the world in terms of something that is physically external but functionally internal. With such knowledge, it needs to criticize persistently the social-democratic left, who in general isolate now one aspect of what is functionally internal, now another aspect.

Such an approach is necessary if we are to both oppose those in power and those who ultimately propose to reform the world without radical restructuring of our lives. Along the way, we can of course expect to receive insults and be oppressed in various ways. That should be expected–but it should not deter us from doing what is necessary to oppose the power of employers as a class and to create a society worthy of our own nature as human beings.

But what does the radical left do in Toronto? Pander after the reformist left’s narrow point of view, refusing to challenge such views at every turn. They are like those who believe that the human life process goes beyond the human body but refuse to criticize those (the social democrats) who believe the human life process does not include the interconnected workplaces in the first instance in a particular country and, ultimately, throughout the world.

The radical left talk a lot about democracy these days, but democracy does not entail tolerance to mistaken ideas. It is the duty of the radical left, among other things, to show that the ideas that social democrats hold are mistaken by challenging them. Why does it not do so?

What do you think?