Evening Star

Really? I imagined those ON and BC seats would mostly be in urban areas that tend to go NDP or Liberal?

Uh, no, it's pretty clear to anyone who reads this board or even this thread that Smallc is capable of more than that.

I went here: http://www.termiumplus.gc.ca/tcdnstyl-chap?lang=eng&lettr=chapsect3&info0=3#zz3 I was kind of hoping it gave an official Canadian government position on whether to use "organize" or "organise" but it mostly just concludes that you should check the dictionaries I mentioned after listing those distinctions. A totally sensible position, mind you, but much less exciting. (And, yeah, I'm aware of all those distinctions after living in the US and generally being a nerd.) I will continue to use both "harmonize" and "analyse", RCM style.

Totally disappointing. All it says about spelling is to check Gage or Canadian Oxford. I was all eager too.

I wondered that too, ha.

Well, if "political correctness" means "being excessively uptight about potentially offending anyone", then championing the BQ as an Ontarian and writing feminist dystopian literature are probably not politically correct. If it just means "a put down for anyone who is left of centre", then yes, Atwood probably is PC.

Lol. Well, my mind is simultaneously blown by all of these ideas: i) Margaret Atwood has some kind of powerful, broad-based influence over the hearts and minds of modern English Canadians, presumably because of English Canada's profound and widespread love for contemporary poetry and literary novels. ii) She uses this influence to incite the unruly English Canadian mob to commit radical acts that can be sensibly compared to book burnings. iii) Margaret Atwood is politically correct.

You guys have actually pretty much sold me on this, if not so much on a willingness to accept growing inequality within our own society.

These statements are so incredible I don't know where to begin...

I said the purpose of colleges is workforce training but that this is not the primary purpose of universities and was never their original purpose. That doesn't mean that they don't or shouldn't train people in valuable skills or that there is no economic benefit that comes from them. However, the teaching of less profitable fields of study has always been a core part of the university. I'll acknowledge Wikipedia isn't the greatest source but at least I've given sources. You keep stating something and stating that it's obvious or basic. Fwiw, I actually think that admission to many non-pragmatic disciplines, especially graduate programmes, should be more limited and rigorous than it is now, for reasons that are similar to ones that Bonam and Smallc gave, because I think it would actually improve the quality of education and scholarship, and lastly because it would make it more feasible for graduates to actually have a chance at an academic career. (I also think post-secondary education should be less expensive though. I doubt many on this thread agree with me.)

It's long overdue tbh.

Ha, I loved scouring the second-hand shops for prog rock gold on LP when I lived in Montreal. The Musical Box was still doing pretty well for themselves last I checked!

I and many of the left-leaning people I know, and certainly people in the arts, do see Quebec in some of these terms, as a progressive society.

Thanks. That's much more precise.

You're right, we only have a 'Constitution' in the 'organic, living tree' sense that includes unwritten conventions, etc, not a specific document like the French and Americans have. So in that sense, I suppose it's hard for Quebec's representatives to sign it. They did sign on to the BNAA though, didn't they? I think we agree on some of the main points in this thread, btw.

We have a constitution that predates 1982. Unless I'm mistaken, Quebec's representatives did sign that.

Link? Speaking as a lecturer, we're living through a serious chill right now: strictly speaking, I can't photocopy a handout from any published source or even leave a copy on reserve in the library; I can't show film clips in class unless the uni library owns a copy of the film; I can't burn songs to a CD for students to listen to, even just leave one copy on reserve. If things are going to get worse, I'm actually terrified. Things were much better in the US, at least when I was there a few years ago.

Cybercoma, what you're describing is still "viewing Quebec as a part of Canada". Is there any constitutional basis for this?: "Quebec is not just another province..."

I don't get this at all. How would giving Quebec extra seats help francophones in Nova Scotia? Are we supposed to assume they would vote the same way because they're all francophones??

Cybercoma, you're a good dude but please don't speak for the entire ROC. Not all of us are like the OP. And yeah, I do agree that Quebec's current representation isn't bad and think it would be unfair for Quebec to become underrepresented.

Basically, you guys want to see universities replaced by more extensive colleges and polytechnics.

This sounds false to me. I know that this is one reason why we fund universities but this has never been the primary purpose of universities, as far as I know. Universities, at least in principle, are and have always been dedicated to scholarly inquiry and academic freedom more than to workforce training or financial or commercial considerations. (Colleges - community colleges for Americans - on the other hand, are explicitly geared towards workforce training.) Academic freedom - probably the most cherished principle of the university - is not a sound financial strategy. Just looking at the Wikipedia entry for "university", this principle dates back to the very first university that ever existed. Neither medieval scholasticism nor Renaissance humanism - which were the guiding principles behind universities through their earliest phases - were primarily concerned with making money. Non-'practical' disciplines such as philosophy and literature were a core part of the university from the beginning. In the contemporary era, quoting Wiki: In 1963, the Robbins Report on universities in the United Kingdom concluded that such institutions should have four main "objectives essential to any properly balanced system: instruction in skills; the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women; to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship." If anything, the very facts that so many of these non-workforce-oriented disciplines exist and that they attract students should themselves demonstrate that universities are not what you claim them to be. Compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_college

And as Alan Bloom would have been happy to tell you, historically, they were heavily promoted and peopled by those on the political right.

When has university ever primarily been about practical workforce training/'economic benefit'? Disciplines such as philosophy, history, and literature have surely been a part of higher education for as long as there has been such a thing. If we withdrew all public funding for higher education, women's studies and black studies are not the only disciplines that would begin to starve, btw.

This isn't necessarily an entirely false narrative when it comes to, say, African-American studies, though, is it? (Actually agree about Zinn, at least as far as People's History... goes. Fwiw, he taught in a dept of political science, a field that goes back to at least the 19th century, if not to Machiavelli.)