Morning Brew: June 17th, 2008
Photo: "tree & sky" by Bonnequin, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Your Toronto morning news roundup for Tuesday June 17th, 2008:
Everyone knows that feeding a cute and cuddly Mogwai after midnight results in the spawning of an ugly and ill-behaved Gremlin. Whether or not feeding breakfast to teens at high school will prevent them from going Gremlin is yet to be seen.
Not everyone knows, or perhaps cares, that parents smoking cigarettes in confined spaces like cars is bad for the health of their children (who are only guilty of breathing, but pay the price). Ontario has banned the practice of smoking in cars with kids present, and decided that a maximum $250 fine is a good start. One problem with the law? If a 19 year old is cruising and smoking with his 16 year old friend in the car, is that like... "statutory smoking" or something?
Another road-related law passed yesterday makes speed limiters on trucks mandatory in Ontario. Most large trucks, regardless of where they come from, will be required to be fitted with a device that caps their maximum speed at 105km/hr, which will reduce emissions and make the roads safer. More importantly, to many non-truck drivers, it'll make blowing by them in the fast lane at 140km/hr so much easier.
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Yesterday areas north and east of Toronto saw the coming of the locusts. Well, not quite. But the GTA did see some crazy hail and a giant pot of gold. Well, not quite. But a complete rainbow was observed.
Toronto is half way through Bike Month. What better/worse a time for police to be cracking down on bad cyclists, eh?
Oshawa is still dealing with the fallout of losing auto jobs, but there's some good news about new jobs in the future. Two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated at Darlington will create an estimated 3500 jobs, and zero trucks that nobody wants.
Comments (14)
I really wish it wouldn't take a police crackdown on cyclists in order to get bad ones to smarten up their act. It's just going to reinforce the idea with drivers that all cyclists are wreckless.
I had to double check I wasn't reading the onion... that breakfast article crazy...
...in response to the shooting death of 15-year-old... When asked what could be done for the area after that traumatic event, teachers and principals pleaded for food.
Please... anyone who can put out enough of an effort to get a gun, surely can get themselves some food.
Ryan L. > I believe that anyone thinks cyclists have never had a wreck. Although, certainly a good way to prevent wrecks is to prevent reckless behaviour.
(sorry, I'm an educator/grammar nazi)
Alex, believe it or not, a good number of reasons why kids don't do well in school is because they didn't have breakfast. Almost every kid in the special education program I worked in did not have breakfast in the morning (the teacher had to bring in food for the kids).
The rational for having breakfast programs is that in order to learn, kids have to focus on what's being taught - not that they are starving. In order to get ahead in life and have opportunities they need to learn. The main need goes back to food.
A lack of education means a lack of opportunity. That lack of opportunity results in frustration and hopelessness. This then results in acting out. It gets worse as the kids get older and see everyone else achieving success. This is the current philosophy in teaching.
Dave, for an educator/grammar nazi, there are at least 4 outright errors and/or awkward constructions in that post. And a spelling mistake.
While I'm all for making sure kids eat properly in the morning so they can concentrate on school, we should ask ourselves why we have to have a breakfast program at all. I'm guessing because the parents of these children can't afford to feed them. Maybe if we help the parents with jobs, etc, we won't need a breakfast program.
Some children don't get breakfast because their parents are poor. Many others don't get breakfast because their parents simply don't care to make sure that their kids are provided for. We can make excuses, but there are many many selfish, terrible parents out there.
I'm the one who submitted the first comment. :P GH> I reread what I wrote and quite frankly I'm horrified by all of those grammatical errors (I blame the hour, lack of coffee, and lack of time to proof what I wrote). I'm more of a homophone grammar nazi. This doesn't mean that I don't make errors myself. Besides, I'm into primary/junior grades, they don't know any better. ;)
Uhmmm Hi, other Dave???
Anyways, yeah, there are lots of selfish parents out there. However, I truly believe that most kids who go to school without breakfast are more victims of unfortunate circumstances rather than negligent parents.
I'm an elementary school teacher and unfortunately, imo, the percentage of negligent parents has increased. Parents parent less and many parental responsiblities get diverted to the education system. We see it in the classroom, we see it at recess, we see it in the breakfast club room. There has been a paradigm shift slowly occurring since the 80's where both parents are now employed, and the nuclear family structure only exists in just over 50% of the population.
Dave: this is at the high school level. We're not talking about small children who can't handle themselves in a kitchen. Irresponsible parenting doesn't readily fly here. Is there no food in the house? Or does the kid just want an extra 20 mins of sleep? Lord knows for me it was always the latter and remains so to this day. If it's the former, then there is nothing for the parents to eat either, so they obviously aren't even taking care of themselves and someone should look into why.
I will testify that I always skipped breakfast when in high school. Hell, I only started eating it once I got a job that made me get up at 4:30 AM.
There are many social conditions that contribute to this, many of which are often ignored or even considered offensive or faux pas.
Most problem kids can be traced to bad parenting, which is often the cause of a few pretty consistent things. Whether it's the parents or parent having a kid too early, or the parents getting married too young, or having kids before they can afford it, it can also be neglectful parents (whether intentional or not).
Getting married or having kids are -not- accomplishments, and need to stop being treated as such. Even the most socially inept person can be married (afterall, it's just a piece of paper) and any man and woman with functioning parts can pump out a kid.
Having a healthy and lasting marriage, and raising a (mentally) healthy and successful kid, -those- are the accomplishments.
More people fail at these then we are willing to accept. A bad or irresponsible teenager at 16 may be beyond the influence of their parents, but it was their parents screwing up when that teen was a kid (or by those people even having a kid) that set it in motion.
When I was in high school, I was way too cool to eat breakfast, and so were all of my friends. It would surprise me very much if there wasn't a lot of that happening now too.
Oh, and if all these teens are too hungry to focus on schoolwork, how is it that so many of them are overweight? Agreed, skipping breakfast is no way to try and lose the weight one put on by scarfing down Big Macs and fries at lunch, after school and in the evening before going home... but that's another practice teens are infamous for.
Mark Dowling, good call. The bimonthly "police crackdowns" on bad motorists certainly lead people to believe the worst of all motorists. Maybe police should start performing their duties (with respect to motorists and cyclists both) EVERY DAY.
Perhaps the Police shouldn't insist on flexing their muscles after a blitz. The usual routine is to post a list of all the things they've caught people doing and exaggerate on the percentage of people caught.
They always claim to catch so many people on long weekends making it seem like cottage-goers are intent on breaking road laws, but what they don't tell you is how many more people are out on the roads. Being a long weekend, and going to the cottage doesn't cause speeding. It causes more people to be on the road and the potential for police to catch more speeders.
There is no good reason to advertise all the people they managed to pull over except for them to validate their spending on the blitz.
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