One of the valuable lessons that the atheist community has learned in the last little while is that it is possible to provoke a controversy where one didn’t exist before. The formula is pretty simple – make some largely innocuous public statement about atheism, wait for the predictable overreaction from a group of religious folks …
Category Archive: education
Apr 27 2012
Movie Friday: All About Vaccines
So last weekend you may recall that I was in Kelowna, acting as a guest moderator for a panel on vaccines, hosted by the Centre for Inquiry. I had a great time there, and the panel was very informative. It ran loooong though. I’m not sure what it is about having a PhD and/or MD …
Apr 25 2012
First things first
One of the great truths about religion, at least contemporary religion in North America, is that it has largely shed the fundamentalism of its past and has evolved (perhaps a poor choice of words) into a much more tolerant and forward-thinking practice. Gone are the days of slavish adherence to obscure and backward dogmatic beliefs …
Apr 24 2012
God keeps our land glorious and… strange
Alternative title: God dammit, Canada! A few weeks back I highlighted one of those quirky ‘statistical finding turned news story’ articles that showed how very secular Canada is (despite stupidly forgetting to analyse it from a racial perspective). I would never want anyone to get the impression that somehow religion doesn’t crop up in our public …
Mar 21 2012
Good for the goose, bad for the gander
So this morning we looked at the ways in which our judicial system is seemingly set up to disappoint those in greatest need of justice, particularly black people. Our racist biases (which, I believe, we are all subject to regardless of how “non-racist” we like to fancy ourselves) find the cracks in our institutional frameworks, causing …
Mar 14 2012
Oh frabjous day!
Two kinda cool things happened recently. First, remember that sex show in Abbottsford that got canceled a while back? I mean really, I almost feel lazy writing about this story because it requires so little effort on my part. What could I possibly add to this story? Abbotsford was going to actually have some fun, until the religious folks …
Mar 07 2012
Yesterday, tomorrow, today
The central thesis of my series on black history this year was focussed on the importance of understanding the whole truth of our history as a nation. This is not only relevant to Canada, mind you – it is universally true that understanding where we came from tells us how we got where we are. …
Mar 01 2012
Can you spell ‘shackles’? I knew you could…
I am not a teacher in the scholastic sense. While I aim to make this blog an instructive environment (for you as much as it is for me), what I do is a far cry from the responsibility that is given to actual teachers at actual schools. For one, I deal almost exclusively with adults, …
Feb 21 2012
Parents lose ‘right’ to shield children from facts
One of the most irritating bromides I hear from parents (predominantly conservative parents, but not exclusively) is that they don’t want things taught in their children’s schools that contradict their (the parents’) beliefs. I suppose the fear is that teaching children that not everyone thinks identically will so confuse them that their poor little heads …
Dec 15 2011
They took ‘ur jaaaeerrrbs!
An all-too common complaint about assertive anti-racism; that is, taking steps to correct for injustices borne of systemic racism – like affirmative action programs or race-based scholarships – is that it ends up putting white people at a disadvantage. After all, if there are two people going for the same spot, whether it be a …
About the Author
Recent Comments