Category — responsibility

I recently read an article on Forbes by Brett Nelson entitled, Why You Should Postpone College.

I know that it takes no effort to agree with people who share your opinions, but I think Mr. Nelson is exactly right: we need to give high school graduates more time and opportunity to figure out what they want for the rest of their lives.

I only wish this article had been around when I finished high school.

Let’s travel back in time, shall we?

It’s the summer of 1996. I’m 19 years old, and I’ve just graduated from high school with honours (though, I had to redo my Ontario Academic Credit (OAC) year to get those honours). As I clear out my locker, I feel the same way I did when I was a small child: giddy with excitement at the prospect of endless summer days. Days that I could I spend reading, and swimming in my boyfriend’s parent’s backyard pool; all the carefree parties, BBQ’s, keggers, and general teenage mayhem that I could find and enjoy would be mine.

Then, a little part of my brain, the one struggling up through my childish (and, frankly, rather awesome) ideas, imposed with some sobering and unwelcome adult news: “You’re going to have to get a job. University isn’t free – and you don’t even know if you got into one yet.”

I walk home from school with a heavy backpack, and even heavier heart.

I’ve applied to several universities. My parents are pushing for McMaster University or, failing that, Mohawk College (where, so far as I can tell, they hope I will take a nursing degree). I try to think about where I might find work for the summer, I’m already working at the A&P, but I’ll need more hours if I’m going to pay tuition. The images of reading in the shade, are replaced by images of ringing in produce and flipping burgers. I’m not a child anymore, but I want to cry. I hate that even at 19 years old, the tears of a frustrated and unhappy child are still very close to the surface, so I push them down as I walk home.

I unpack my bag while having questions and statements fired at me: “Have you got a job lined up?”, “If you go to McMaster or Mohawk, you could live here – but you’ll have to pay rent.”, “What are you going to take in school?”, “I think you should try nursing, we need more nurses in Canada.” And on and on. Now I really want to cry and throw a temper tantrum too. I do neither.

But later that night, while walking down by the river, and throwing stones at the few panes of glass not yet broken in the old abandoned factories down there, I admit it to myself: I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. No idea at all.

Sitting here, in 2012, I wish I could go back in time and give 19 year old me a hug. I wish I could tell her that things did work out – eventually. But at the time…well, I signed on at the University of Ottawa for an English Literature degree because the only thing I knew I had any talent for, was reading. I knew enough to know that a degree would be an important bit of paper to have later. That future employers might not care what my degree was in so long as I had one. To employers, a degree meant a certain amount of intelligence and seriousness: I could be considered capable of learning new things – like a Rhesus monkey in a lab – if I had one.

Four years later, I graduated. By then I’d read Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Tolkien, Whitman and pretty much every other author considered “important”. And while I’d found new literary things to fall in love with, I still had no idea how to apply that love to anything practical that might help me pay off my considerable student loans.

I worked in a series of jobs completely unrelated to my degree: deli counter clerk, SGML coder, low man on the totem pole at the British High Commission, cashier at HMV, shipper and receiver at SportMart, purveyor of deep fried foods at Fast Eddie’s and, for a time, I was an unemployed and unemployable 20-something.

So I could recite Romeo’s speech to Juliet, that fair sun, as she appeared on her balcony…big deal. I still had no idea what I wanted to be.

Knowing what I do now, I wish that we had had the “grownup” training that Mr. Nelson talks about. I think it would have benefit me greatly as a clueless 19 year old. I was unfocused, unfinished, young, scared, stupid, and woefully unprepared to be an adult. An internship, or a minimum wage position, at various places to get a feel for the nine-to-five world would have been just the thing for me. If nothing else, I would have learned what I didn’t want for myself. I believe that it is just as important to figure out what you don’t want as it is what you do want.

I’m 36 now, and only in the past few years have I discovered that the nine-to-five world is a place I can only visit for short periods of time. I also discovered that I despise working in retail. Imagine if I had figured that out sooner! What if I’d known that at age 21, or even at 25? How much more diligently might I have pursued the things I really love? How much harder would I have worked to make them into things I could do to support myself? How much happier would I have been? How much more confident, and secure in myself might I have been?

I think that sending a teenager, especially one with no focus, into debt for an education that may never do them any good once they sort themselves out as a person, is stupid and foolhardy. What are they gaining from an academic setting when they don’t even know what they want to learn? The only really useful things I learned in my four years were, how to be more tolerant of people I despised living with, how to split a phone bill, and how to shotgun a beer without barfing. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a teeny bit (though not that much, really), but for the young people who have no idea what they want for themselves for the rest of their lives, university is a frightening moment.

Think of it like this: most people in my family live to be about 90. So, doesn’t it seem stupid to ask me, at 19 years old, to decide on a course of action that will shape the next 71 years of my life?

Thought of in that way, what’s another two years delay? It couldn’t hurt to explore all the options a little before taking on the debt and work of a degree – could it? Wouldn’t it create the opportunity to explore different career paths while managing to get some of that partying stuff out of the way on weekends? And wouldn’t getting that partying and uncertainty out of the way allow for greater focus on studying and learning? And wouldn’t greater focus mean money well spent – rather than wasted? I think it would.

I know that some work places have “bring your kid to work” days, so they can see what you do to earn the family’s bread and butter, but how useful are those? Imagine this: being dragged to work by a parent, at a stage in your life when you find them most intolerable and embarrassing (and that’s often a two-way street), so you can watch them (sort of) do something that’s not the tiniest bit interesting to you, while you count down the seconds before you can leave.

Not terribly useful. But, working with adults who haven’t seen you flip out on a sibling, or get grounded for lying, or seen the state of your bedroom at home? That’s a fresh slate within a structured environment. It’s easier to learn from, and really pay attention to, someone who hasn’t got any dirt on you. Someone you don’t both love and loathe. It’s a chance to learn what a professional relationship is.

In addition to “grownup training”, I’d also suggest mandatory, weekly psychiatric sessions for at least the second year. A time to work through the crap-storm of being a teenager, to sort out the stuff that’s screwing you up so it doesn’t screw you over. A chance to start really becoming who you are without having to wait until your late 30′s to get there. A place where you can speak your mind without some adult grounding you for “being mouthy” because your opinion differed from theirs. A place to learn how to function in the “real” world.

We need to reevaluate how and when we send teenagers out into the world, and to university or college. Are they really prepared? Do they really know what they want for themselves? Do they know anything about who they are? Are we doing them any favours by forcing them to choose a life so early?

The education system needs to take a good hard look at what they’re really offering high school graduates these days because, from my own experience, it’s seems to be mostly shackles of debt, doubt and unhappiness.

I recently read an article about two parents who complained that Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved was of no value in the curriculum, and they wanted it – along with Waterland by Grahame Smith – banned. Their complaints centre around the sex, violence and crude language in Beloved,  and that the novel has a Lexile score of 870 (apparently, if a book is simple to read, it must not be very educational or mature – I have no doubt that the authors of  Brave New World, The Hunt For Red October,  To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Sound and the Fury – to name a few – would agree. They all have the same Lexile score as Beloved).

Protests like this never fail to sadden me. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of banning books for the supposed audacity of showing all facets of human life and behaviour – as though not reading about the bad parts of ourselves will somehow insulate us from those bad parts in real life. It astonishes me that we are so eager to ensure that kids, even the college bound ones, never encounter anything bad or upsetting.

I was thinking (and fuming) over this whole book banning nonsense last night as I was getting ready to sleep. I loaded up my toothbrush with some Colgate and grabbed the copy of Fahrenheit 451 ( amusingly, this Bradbury classic has a Lexile rating of 451), from the toilet tank, and opened it to a random page (though now, it hardly feels random at all).

This is what I read (Faber to Guy Montag):

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless…”

A little further on, Guy and Faber have the following exchange:

 “That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”
“There, you’ve said an interesting thing,” laughed Faber, “without having read it!”
“Are things like that in books? But it came off the top of my mind!”
“All the better. You didn’t fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself.”

Faber hits it right on the head.

I think this is why people hate and fear books like Beloved, and all the other books they ban; these books show us as we really are. A good book doesn’t “fancy up” human behaviour or thought, it shows it, warts and all. As humans, we are capable of acts of great kindness, empathy, sympathy, bravery and outright heroism. But, we are also capable of being miserable, selfish, petty, murderous and cowardly – and these traits, these bad things about ourselves, about us a species, are mixed in with the good and finer things about us, and they cannot, and should not, be separated.

It is my belief that when we ban books, we are trying to cast out the worst parts of ourselves, and it’s a strange and wasted effort. I don’t suggest we fully embrace the darker aspects of ourselves by murdering and stealing with wild abandon, but I do think that when we try to deny these parts of our human nature via book banning, we’re just giving into another bad thing within ourselves: we’re refusing to learn anything about what it means to be human, we’re being stubborn and denying that the bad things depicted in books often come from the good lives we endeavour to lead.

Beloved, for example, is based on a true story, and I feel that whatever embellishments or liberties Tony Morrison might have made or taken with the actual story, her telling is a window into that first story, a piece of our history – actual, emotional, and spiritual – demanding to be seen and heard. I’ll never have to go through the things that Sethe goes through. I’ll never flee slavery with my children, and I’ll never be driven by despair and fear to kill my own child rather than see her taken back into slavery. But through Tony Morrison’s words, I can read about it. And because she writes so well, because her writing is so accessible, I can feel it – the anger and fear that might drive a mother to keep her child out of the hands of slave owners, anger toward the very foundations of thought that allowed slavery to happen in the first place, the way in which such a life and desperate act must alter the mind and degrade the soul; how open it leaves a person to being haunted – actually or mentally – by their deeds.

When I read the book for the first time in university, these were some of the thoughts I had: the character of Sethe was driven to terrible things by her circumstances. I believe that she is essentially a good person, an innocent person who was stripped of her rights and freedom as a human being, and in being denied the same rights as her “masters”, she gave her child the only freedom she could provide, in the only way she could think of in that moment. Do I agree with her actions? Hard to say from the safety and freedom of the 21st century. But whether I agree with her actions or not isn’t the only point of the story. Do I feel for her? Do I sympathize and empathize, and wish that I could reach through the pages and rescue her? Did the story make me think about the darker moments of our history? Did it make me examine my own beliefs, and poke around in the deep and dusty corners of myself rather than ignoring them? Yes. Very much so; and that is the point of reading any good book.

Books should not be banned on the basis of being difficult, or because of the awful and uncomfortable truths they may contain. Books are about us, about our lives, about our history, about how high we can rise, and how far we can fall. We need to read these things, we need the experience of being human in all circumstances – and especially those which we are unlikely to encounter. We need to think critically while we imagine ourselves in the character’s shoes. Books are a safe way to experience everything, they are a great way to learn about ourselves and others. The experiences we read about may even better prepare us for having to go through them ourselves.

We must all be allowed to read without restrictions so that we can develop emotionally, morally and creatively. These are worthy goals that reading can help us accomplish.

This is what books are for. This is why we cannot ban them.

On June 15, 2011, just as it was becoming clear that the Vancouver Canucks had lost the Stanley Cup final, a car was overturned and set ablaze. Very soon afterwards, the crowds that had gathered peacefully in the Fan Zones downtown – crowds that had been generally well-behaved and respectful so far – turned violent and ugly; a riot broke out.

News of the riot has spread far and wide – an international embarrassment for Vancouver – and nearly everyone has an opinion on the matter ranging from, “Let’s not be hasty – let’s allow the law to deal with these hooligans properly.” to, “String them all up by their toenails and let the firing squad have them.”

I sit closer to the “let the law deal with them” side myself – though I’d like to see some creativity in the punishments (and not the sort that involves bamboo slivers or waterboarding – but I will get to that).

While the riots were (and are) shocking and awful, what I am amazed by now is the use of cellphones and social media to record and “out” the villains who partook in the rioting. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of pictures of the riot, and nearly all of the pictures show other people taking pictures or video recordings at the same time. The rioters have been caught from every angle as have a brave few who tried (and sometimes succeeded) in stopping some of the mayhem and violence.

I know that cellphone cameras and other personal devices capable of recording are legion; everyone has one. Even my cheap little cellphone will take a picture or a video – and these devices are often used to upload status updates to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs of every kind, wikis, YouTube, and dozens of others. The use of social media is so prevalent that it has become a part of everyday life for most people, and nearly all of the rioters allowed their faces to be photographed as they cheered on the destruction or participated in it. They didn’t just get caught running out of stores with loot – many of them stopped and posed as though it were a photo op on the red carpet, as though they were celebrities!

Some of that mindset can be chalked up to feeling anonymous in such a huge crowd – especially when fueled by liquor and the collective adrenaline rush of so many people running amok. Some of this, I think, can also be attributed to being very used to having the things you do recorded for posterity and posted on Facebook, Flickr and the like – being photographed while looting a store, or setting a police car on fire was probably just another photograph to many. A few misguided idiots used these social platforms to brag that they were helping to make history! They were excited, and even proud it seems, to be able to say, “Yeah, I was there – I got hurt; I smashed some stuff up.” It’s a good story to tell, a wild anecdote to share with friends and – I guess – admirers.

These same photos and videos are now being used to “name and shame” the rioters on the Internet in just about every way conceivable – with absolutely no thought other than hunting them down and making them pay. Worse, it’s not just the rioters themselves who are being vilified – their parents, friends, employers and schools are also being raked across the coals. Names and addresses have been published with no regard for the safety of the people who live or work at those addresses. Families have received death threats – it must be the parent’s fault. These young adults, these educated men and women with jobs and rent to pay and ties to the community, would never have done these things if their parents hadn’t been so slack in their duty! Employers have been soundly told off and assured that their business will no longer be frequented – after all, who would shop at a store where the employer was so foolish as to hire a person without first posing interview questions regarding their behaviour in a hypothetical riot?

I’m not saying these rioters aren’t guilty – they are. They are guilty as hell, no question. I firmly believe they should be punished for their stupidity. However, I don’t agree with all the racist comments and threats the rioters have received – even the ones I think have made rather insincere apologies. They will be punished under the law – but I have a feeling no punishment outside of a public whipping and deportation of some kind is going to satisfy the people calling for blood out there.

I don’t recall where I read this (and if anyone finds the source, please point me to it so I can credit them properly) but, one person pointed out that even when the courts have meted out punishment to the instigators and participants of this riot, even when the law says they have paid their debt to society (whatever form that may take), they will continue to be punished online. The photos, the videos, the hateful comments and threats will be there forever, cached somewhere for all time. They will always be “that dude who lit the truck on fire” or “that woman who stole purses from the Coach store” – easy to find by simply Googling their names. That’s a punishment that keeps on giving.

Future employers, friends, lovers etc. will be able to Google a name and see the terrible things these people did. The punishment will be ongoing, probably for the rest of their lives. In conjunction with whatever punishment the courts give out, is that not enough?

Over the last couple of days, I’ve read a few apology letters from the rioters themselves (rioters who turned themselves in to police), and while I am impressed that they owned up to their misdeeds and will be appropriately punished by the law, I found the apologies themselves a little lacking – particularly in the case of one young lady who started out with a very thorough apology to absolutely everyone, and then followed it up with a lengthy justification of her actions.

Here are few excerpts (original spelling, grammar and formatting has been left intact):

Why don’t I think I deserve all this treatment?

Because for one, I’ve admitted to my mistakes, two, I am ready to deal with the consequences in a judicial manner, and three, because (may I remind you that) I am responsible for theft – a fairly minor action compared to vandalism and arson. Please remember and understand that I am not responsible for the riot.

I did not vandalize any buildings.
I did not set fire on anything.
I did not break any glass.
I did not instigate the riot.
I did not physically harm anybody.
I did not jump on any cop cars.
I did not even plan on being in the riot.

On any regular day I would not condone looting.

However, at the time of the riot everything just seemed so right.

At the time, being a part of the riot was simply to fulfill the adrenaline rush I was looking and hoping for – an adrenaline rush that I previously got from post-winning games: hugging randoms, dancing on the streets, honking car horns non-stop, and high-fiving just about everybody.  In the same way that everybody enjoyed collectively showing pride in our team, it was enjoyable to express my disappointment in a collective manor.

I had no intentions of defiling the city.  I love Vancouver as much as you do – I’ve lived here since I was 7 months old.  But in my immature, intoxicated perspective all I saw was that the riot was happening, and would continue happening with or without me, so I might as well get my adrenaline fix.

She also says that stealing a pair of men’s size 42 dress pants from Black & Lee was “purely fun” and justifies that too:

…My train of thought at this point was that “the place is already broken into, most of the contents of the store have already been stolen, so what difference does it make if I take a couple things?”

She uses the riots as a very misguided way to show her “feminist” side and roundly castigates all those misogynists out there:

Here’s another thing that bothers me: why is everybody so surprised that a female partook in the riot?  What is with this attitude that females are incapable of doing what men can do?  Maybe it takes an event like this to show you misogynists that woman are fully capable of anything you can do.  And if my actions lead to that revelation in your obscure little heads, then maybe it’s a good thing that I partook in this event.

This part really got to me. I agree that her actions in the riot were equally stupid to the actions of the men taking part in the riot – but that hardly makes her a feminist. A public apology for participating in a riot is not the right time to call yourself a feminist for participating in said riot. It was most certainly not a good idea that she partook in that travesty – her involvement doesn’t send any kind of good message to anyone whatsoever.

On the bright side, she did try to rescue some trees:

I am majoring in Conservation Biology at [redacted].  I strongly belirve in ecological conservation and sustainability.  That night, I saw a few  people that were trying to knock trees down.  So what did I do?  I yelled at them, saying “Pleaaseee, not the treees!!!!”  And what did they do?  They stopped.  And I felt like a hero.

A hero who participated in a riot, looted a store and laughed about it on film. Brilliant.

Her attempts to explain her actions (I still think it reads like a justification) gives me little reason to believe in the sincerity of her apology – but she’s made it. So, now we wait for the courts to punish those caught red-handed and those who turned themselves in – and I hope that punishment is more than a mere slap on the wrist and a fine, but more creative than jail time. Here’s what I would like to see:

Community service

And not just picking up garbage downtown or serving food at a shelter either. I’d like to see these fools working with the businesses they destroyed. A couple of unpaid retail shifts a week to help pay for the damage and insurance deductibles, along with a direct apology to the store owners and staff. I would also like to see them clean up after other major events in Vancouver – the Festival of Lights, any parades,  and any other large gatherings of any kind where people litter copiously. It might give them some small idea of how awful it is to clean up other people’s messes.

Counseling

I know, there are psychologists who say that it wasn’t entirely the rioters fault – that there is such a thing as mob mentality, and it is possible to get caught up in it and do something really stupid. I’m not even necessarily disagreeing (I haven’t got a psych degree, what do I know?) but I still think the people who are charged should have to undergo a year of counseling by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist and learn to truly accept their actions (no excuses of any kind!) and learn proper empathy and compassion for other people and other people’s belongings. I also believe that they should have to refrain from drinking during this time. If alcohol was that much of a factor, then clearly, these people do not understand what “drink responsibly” actually means. Until they do, no alcohol. Period.

Making reparations

Financially, some of this can be covered with community service as I stated above, but I would also like for those caught and punished to spend some time visiting with those injured or affected by the riots. This includes in person apologies to law enforcement, medical staff and all the individuals negatively hurt by this incident. Perhaps looking into the eyes of the man who was beaten outside of the Bay, or at the four year old girl whose father was punched in the face trying to protect her and get her out of the riot area, or at the people in hospital with cuts, bruises, stab wounds, burns and broken limbs would help them understand the true extent of their participation. It wasn’t just a pair of pants you stole (or a purse, or a mannequin leg, or anything else) – you took away people’s sense of safety and community. You contributed to their injuries and fear. If your excuse is, “Everyone else was doing it.”, remember that someone saw you doing it too, and used you as their excuse.

A proper thank you

I would also like to see all those punished for being part of the riot work together to help plan, and put on, a proper and public thank you for those who deserve it: law enforcement, medical staff, city workers, firefighters, the volunteer clean up crew, the brave few who stood up and said, “You can’t do this – not in my city.” to the looters and rioters, the TransLink drivers who did their best to ferry people out of danger, the security staff from various buildings downtown who helped the injured and protected property, the lovely people who helped others get out and helped attend to injuries when paramedics couldn’t get through the crowds, the people who jumped in to defend those being beaten, and even for the police dogs who braved streets of broken glass to help their handlers get things under control.

I think a big, alcohol free, thank you to all these people is in order – put on by those who made it necessary for the aforementioned to put themselves in harm’s way. And, of course, these party planners would also be responsible for the clean up afterwards.

That is what I would like to see – a meaningful punishment that puts them smack in the middle of the community they so recklessly ruined. Let’s not clog up prison cells with these people, or debate for months and maybe even years, over this. Let’s not spend taxpayer money on endless and dreary court hearings – let’s put things back together, hold those responsible personally accountable and ensure that this sort of disgraceful display of juvenile idiocy never happens again.