Books read in September 2022

New:

 

1. Dancing Through the Snow by Jean Little

2. City of Dragons: The Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis & Vivian Truong

3. In the Silhouette of Your Silences by David Groulx

Reread:

1. Celebrity in Death

Books read in August 2022

New:

 

1. How To: Absurd Scientific Solutions for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

2. The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

3. Peter Lee's Notes from the Field by Angela Ahn

Reread:

1. New York to Dallas

2. Chaos in Death

Defining the intersection of walkable and accessible

I keep running up against the problem of not being able to find a good word for the overlap between "walkable" and "accessible". So I'm writing it down in a whole lot of words here, so I can point to it next time I'm trying to articulate the concept.

 

Why won't the word "walkable" do?

 

Some people interpret "walkable" as "accessible only to people who can walk, and therefore inaccessible to people in wheelchairs etc." That is never what I mean, so I clearly need a better word.

Why won't the word "accessible" do?

Some people interpret "accessible" in a way that doesn't necessarily include walkable. For example, they might say the grocery store is accessible if you can drive up, park in the disabled parking spaces right in front of the door, and roll your wheelchair in the door unimpeded - even if the only way to get to the store is by driving on a highway that has no sidewalks.

What concepts does this word need to encompass?

 

- Proximity: Things need to be close enough that walking/wheeling/otherwise going without a vehicle is easy. Your destination is close enough to your point of origin that you don't need a vehicle. (Q: Close enough for whom? A: The end users, whoever they might be.)

- Safety: You aren't going to get hit by a car. You aren't going to slip and fall on the ice. You aren't going to get harassed by creeps on the street.

- Lack of obstacles: There are no cobblestones that would make it difficult to use a wheelchair. You don't have to go out of your way to find a crosswalk. There is a clear, suitable path to wherever you are going.

- The "no-brainer" factor: I walk to the grocery store because it's across the street - using any sort of vehicle (even a bike) would be ridiculous. If you're going to multiple stores in an indoor mall, you aren't going to go outside and get into your car and drive your car to the next store. If you're going to multiple destinations on the same city block, you aren't going to drive between them - even if you drove to the city block, you're going to park your car once and head to all your destinations on foot or in a wheelchair or otherwise without a vehicle.

Anyone know a word that does all this and is clear and common enough for me to use in translations?

How the universe is mocking me

From time to time, charities I've donated to send me a fundraising letter with a small free gift, in an attempt to entice me to donate more. Usually the gift is something I can use, like a pen or address labels. But a while back, a charity sent me this reusable shopping bag.

Somehow, every single aspect of this shopping bag was irritating! It was too big to fit in my purse, while somehow also being too small to carry a package of toilet paper. The handles were simultaneously too short to comfortably put over my shoulder and too long to comfortably hold in my hand. The material had a particularly icky plasticky feeling while also not being properly waterproof. And the design contained butterflies that were unpleasantly realistic and detailed. In short, it had no redeeming qualities and I was rather resentful of the charity for sending me such an unhelpful object.

So I put it at the back of my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and proceeded with life.

Fast-forward to yesterday.

I had a few things that I wanted to take over to the charity box, and they didn't fit in the kind of plastic bag I'd normally put them in. So I dug into my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and came up with this one.

Perfect! I'd put my charity stuff in it, carry it over to the charity box, and dump the whole thing in the box, bag and all!

So I loaded up the bag, irritated once again at how it managed to have such an inconvenient shape and size and such an unpleasant texture. I carried it over to the charity box, irritated once again at how the strap is exactly the wrong length. And I dumped the whole thing into the box, bag and all, and returned home, rejoicing in the fact that I'll never have to deal with these irritants again!

 

On my way back up to my apartment, I detoured into the mailroom to check my mail. It contained a large envelope from a charity I'd recently donated to, likely containing another fundraising letter. But I opened the letter on the off-chance they'd sent me some address labels, and found...

...another reusable shopping bag, identical to the one I'd just gotten rid of!

 

(🎵 The bag came back, the very next day...🎵)

Books read in July 2022

New:

 

1. When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson

2. The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

 

Reread:

 

1. Indulgence in Death

2. Possession in Death 

3. Treachery in Death

How to get people to have more children

Recently in the news: a proposal to tax the childless in order to incentivize people to have children. 

 

That will never work.

 

Here are some things that will work:

1. Fix the formula shortage, and prevent it from ever happening again. Less than 100% of parents can produce enough breast milk to meet 100% of their baby's needs, and you can't be certain that you'll produce enough milk until you're actually doing it. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child won't end up spending their whole short life starving to death.

2.  Stop COVID, and/or cure Long COVID. We're in a pandemic with a novel airborne virus that causes a post-viral syndrome that turns out to be worse than we thought with every study that's released, and public health protections are constantly being removed despite surging case numbers. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident the child will live a healthy and comfortable life, rather than spending their whole life stymied by fatigue and vascular damage.

3. Stop climate change. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the world will remain habitable for the child's entire life.

4. Fix the ratio of salaries to housing costs to education costs. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that they will always be able to provide the child with a suitable home and suitable education - and that the child will be able to afford those themselves when they grow up.

5. Make family life affordable on a single paycheque. If you aren't able to provide a good life for a child on your paycheque alone, then you have to wait to have a child until you find someone who a) would make a compatible lifelong partner for you, b) who is compatible not just as a partner but as a housemate and c) makes enough money to make up for your paycheque shortfall. Each of these alone is a major challenge - it's a wonder anyone in the world can find anyone who meets all three requirements! However, if it's feasible to provide a good life for your child singlehandedly, you can have a child without having to worry about your partner's earning potential, or with a partner who wouldn't make a compatible housemate, or even with someone who wouldn't make a compatible lifelong partner. That would open up a lot more options for people who wouldn't otherwise be willing to bring a child into the world!

6. End hatred. Things like racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are on the rise, with the haters becoming bolder and more influential. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child isn't going to be subjected to hate crimes!

7. Make sure the terms and conditions of existence never get worse. After Roe vs. Wade was overturned in the US, a lot of people were talking about how shocking it is to suddenly live in a world where your children have fewer rights than you did at their age. Many people who chose early in the pandemic to carry a pregnancy to term likely did so on the assumption that those in power would continue doing what was necessary to protect us from COVID. When my parents made the decision to have kids, they had no idea that their children would not be growing up in the same economy they'd lived in their entire life.

   Like many people, I grew up constantly being told that everyone wants a better life for their children, so the idea that the terms and conditions of existence can change for the worse like this is terrifying. If those in power could prioritize preventing the terms and conditions of existence from changing for the worse, a lot more people would be willing to bring children into the world.
   

Books read in June 2022

New: 

1. The Girl Who Speaks Bear by Sophie Anderson

2. The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Jen Gunter

Reread:

 

1. Fantasy in death

Things They Should Invent: kitchen catchers shaped like grocery bags

As I've mentioned before, I routinely use plastic grocery bags as garbage bags. However, as I've been streamlining my shopping during the pandemic, I found myself running perilously low on plastic bags, so I bought some kitchen catchers.

Turns out they're inferior in every way!

They don't fit as nicely in my kitchen garbage can, and it's harder to get the top of the bag to stay hooked over the top of the bin. The absence of handles makes it harder to tie off (even with those thingies at the top that are supposed to be for tying it off) and makes it harder to carry to the garbage chute on days when I have multiple things to carry (which is most days, because my building has a tri-sorter chute). The perforation between the bags on the rolls is imperfect, so sometimes they rip open. Also, there are sometimes manufacturing flaws so a specific bag on the roll won't open up properly, or is cut crookedly and therefore unworkable.

In short, there is nothing that kitchen catchers do that grocery bags don't do better!

Grocery bags are already being manufactured and mass produced and put in boxes and sold to grocery stores. Why not put some of those bags on the shelf for consumers to purchase at retail price as well?

Not that there's anything wrong with that

The other day I saw someone tweet that cis Gen Xers need to talk more about how homophobic society in general was in the 80s and 90s. So my Pride post this year is a story from my small town adolescence in the 90s.

 

This story does not contain any violence, hate crimes, or actual homophobic acts, but it does contain extensive descriptions of my own thoughts and feelings from back when I knew nothing other than that culture and environment, and these thoughts and feelings do not age well.

 

***

 

In the Seinfeld episode "The Outing", Jerry and George are mistaken for a gay couple, and spend the episode flailing about vociferously denying being gay, each time qualifying their denial with "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

 

When I saw this episode at the age of 15, I was super confused: why are they saying "Not that there's anything wrong with that"?? Surely if you suggest that there's nothing wrong with being gay, people will think you're gay, and then Bad Things will happen! Why wouldn't they just say nothing??

That was literally the very first time in my whole entire life that I had ever been exposed to the idea that a person might not want to come across as homophobic. I'm not even getting as far as the fact that there's nothing wrong with being gay - I had never, not even once, been exposed to the fact that there are people in the world who might perceive you negatively if you're homophobic.

 

Absolutely 100% of life experience to date had suggested that the strategic thing to do in any situation would be to come across as homophobic. After all, my life experience suggested, if you don't come across as homophobic, then people would think you're gay! And then Bad Things would happen!

 

(I wasn't clear what these Bad Things were, but the way my classmates talked about the idea of Gay left no room for doubt that it was Very, Very Bad.)

I hadn't even thought as far as deciding whether or not to be homophobic myself. All I knew was that 100% of the empirical evidence to date suggested that it was unsafe to not be homophobic. So I proceeded accordingly.

When the Seinfeld episode ended without anything bad happening to Jerry and George, I was completely baffled. This was completely outside of my experience or frame of reference. The story seemed completely unresolved. I literally could not understand it.

And that's what 90s small town homophobia was like - it left a sheltered 15-year-old unable to comprehend a situation where people can just . . . not be homophobic, and that's okay.

***

 

What's interesting is how 15-year-old me reacted to this after giving the matter a little thought.

 

Jerry and George acted as though there wasn't anything wrong with being gay, and nothing bad happened to them! Furthermore, no discourse about this had reached me - no one was talking about how it was bad or horrible or shocking that nothing bad happened to them for acting as though there wasn't anything wrong with being gay.

This meant that maybe, for some people, in some parts of society . . . it's okay to act as though there isn't anything wrong with being gay? The characters on Seinfeld were clearly cooler than me, so maybe the parts of society where it's okay to act as though there isn't anything wrong with being gay are cooler than me?

Now, if, like 15-year-old me, you're an awkward, dorky, bullied teenager living in a small town, it can be strategic to give the impression that you have hidden depths, aspects of yourself that are way cooler and edgier than even have an opportunity to become apparent in such a limited and uncool environment than school.

This (brand new! unprecedented!) notion that there's nothing wrong with being gay provided this very kind of opportunity. Next time the idea of gay came up, I could proceed as though there's nothing wrong with it, as though it's unremarkable and not worth mentioning! Maybe I could even pretend to be confused about why people think it's a problem! Surely that would be a super edgy thing to do that vastly exceeds the cool potential of our small town!

So I tucked the idea away in my metaphorical toolbox, and proceeded with life.

The opportunity to use it arose a couple of years later.

I was sitting in the library doing my calculus homework and listening to my discman when a classmate sat down across the table from me.

I didn't know this guy very well. The periphery of his social circle overlapped with the periphery of my social circle, but we had very little in common. He had a beard, drove a pickup truck, seemed like he'd know where to buy drugs - way cooler and edgier than me, and the very demographic who is likely to bully me! But, despite these demographic indicators, he had never been unkind to me, and sometimes had been a touch more kind than strictly necessary.

He sat down across from me, pulled out his own homework, and asked me what I was listening to.

"Ani DiFranco," I replied.

"Did you know she's very popular with the gay community?" he asked.

I didn't actually know that. In fact, I hadn't the slightest clue! (My first Ani DiFranco album was Dilate, and I hadn't yet discovered the online fandom.)

I briefly panicked: Oh shit, now he's going to think I'm gay! And if I deny it, he's going to think I'm hiding being gay!!

Then I remembered: when you want to be cool and edgy, act like there's nothing wrong with it.

So I looked him dead-ass in the eye and said, "Yes, she is."

Then, with a level of savvy I didn't even know I possessed, I offered him an earbud. "Would you like to listen?"

He accepted the earbud, and we sat there doing our math homework and listening to Ani DiFranco. And no Bad Things happened.

And, in that small town in the 90s, that was what passed for progress.

The Boy Who Cried "No Wolf!"

I was talking to my doctor about the risk assessment of getting dental care (given that I'd need to remove my mask to do so), and he said that the hygiene and air quality standards for dental offices are actually high enough that it would be a safe environment to be unmasked in.

My immediate, visceral reaction was a shockingly strong "That can't possibly be true!!!"

I had in fact looked up the standards for dental offices and they did seem to have plenty of air changes, I looked up the specs of the hepafilter system the clinic I was considering going to had installed and didn't even know that level of air changes was possible, my doctor is better positioned than I am to determine what ventilation measures are sufficient . . . so why do I feel so strongly that it cannot possibly be safe?

After thinking this over a bit, I realized it's because there have been so many instances where they removed protections when it wasn't safe to do so (including, most recently, when they removed mask mandates and 90% of the people I love in the world promptly contracted COVID) that we have a critical mass of cumulative empirical evidence that "meets requirements" ≠ "safe".

It's like the opposite of Aesop's fable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. 

 

In the fable, a boy repeatedly comes running into his village shouting that there's a wolf when there's really no wolf. Then, eventually, a wolf does come, and no one believes him.

What's happening here in Ontario is they're repeatedly telling us it's safe when it's clearly not. And if, one day, it ever is safe, I will have a very difficult time believing it.

 

 

The thing is, if everyone started doing absolutely everything absolutely perfectly in terms of COVID response, all indoor spaces would be like a dental office, with ventilation that makes it impossible for COVID to spread. And, unless something changes drastically, I don't see how I will ever be able to believe this and feel safe.

Now, you're thinking, if all environments become safe and make it impossible for COVID to spread, COVID numbers will drop! We'll see it in the data!

Except governments are publishing less and less data, even though the data is still necessary! We're left here squinting at the low-precision Y axis of the wastewater signal charts and trying to figure out how flaws in government-issued data might be affecting the results on various automated amateur data-viz websites. 

 

They never even restored PCR testing criteria to where they were pre-Omicron, so official R-value data is a big asterisk with "Currently, R(t) based on cases cannot be estimated accurately"

 

I think what they're trying to do is induce a feeling of "no news is good news!" in the public, but what's actually happening is they're creating a situation where promising numbers are increasingly implausible. Are case counts actually low, or is it just because of restrictions on PCR testing? Are active case numbers actually going down, or was there just not a data drop today?

***

I do realize this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, and that brings up something else:

It's super weird that the existing conspiracy theorists aren't thinking this way!

Long before COVID, there were plenty of conspiracy theorists who thought there was a vast government conspiracy to kill or harm people.

And, somehow, they seem to look at the current situation where the government is changing policies in a way that increases the number of people killed or infected, and . . . don't think this is part of the conspiracy?

 

 

I do see why someone might not believe there's a government conspiracy to harm us. Maybe, from where you're sitting, you don't see any evidence, and it is quite the claim to make without evidence! Maybe you find the idea just too frightening to contemplate! Maybe you look at the people who do think there's a government conspiracy to harm us and think "Those are unpleasant individuals and I don't want to be like them!"

But if you've come into the situation already believing that there's a conspiracy, how do you arrive at "But this current situation where people are being killed and harmed because of government inaction is, of course, unrelated to the government conspiracy to kill or harm people!"

Cause and effect

In 2009, City of Toronto workers, including garbage collectors, went on strike because the employer was trying to take away their sick days and leave them with a much worse arrangement.

 

Media coverage at the time (including, bizarrely, the Toronto Star, whose stated principles explicitly include being pro-labour) villainized these workers, stoking public anger against them.

Rob Ford leveraged this anger to be elected as mayor.

Doug Ford leveraged Rob Ford's apparent popularity to be elected first as city councillor, then as MPP, and eventually as Premier of Ontario.

Where he took sick days away from workers in a pandemic, among many other disastrous policies.

Here in this third year of a pandemic that those in power have no desire to end, I wonder where we as a city and as a province would be if the City of Toronto hadn't tried to take away workers' sick days.

There wouldn't have been a strike. Rob Ford wouldn't have become mayor. Doug Ford would be running a label company (or would be city councillor at worst). Ontario would almost certainly have a government better suited to the task of getting us through a pandemic. (And also, Toronto municipal workers would have a better sick day regime and therefore be better able to avoid spreading COVID.) Toronto would likely have a different municipal government as well, since it was Rob Ford's mayorality that led to John Tory being considered even remotely palatable. (Remember in 2007 when Ontario rejected him for being too far right?)

***

On a personal note, there's one vital thing that would be different:

One change made under Rob Ford's mayorality was to contract out part of Toronto's garbage collection to Green For Life.

On February 17, 2018, at 2:30 in the morning, I was in bed fast asleep when I was frightened awake by a horrific noise.

I jumped out of bed, ran to the window to see what the noise was . . . and woke up on the floor with an enormous lump on the back of my head.

Every aspect of life has been more difficult since.

The source of the noise that frightened me awake? A Green For Life contractor seemed to think 2:30 in the morning is a good time to empty a dumpster into a dump truck.

Butterfly wings.

Books read in May 2022

New:

 

1. The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion by Matt Whyman

2. Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

3. All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny

Reread:

1. Missing in Death

The generic "you" is a useful tool for writing inclusively

With reproductive health in the news lately, I'm seeing a lot of people diligently endeavouring to make their statements about bodies and anatomy as inclusive as possible, including inclusive of trans and non-binary people. This leads to phrases like "birthing parent" and "uterus-havers", which sound awkward, and can make the cause of inclusive language seem less credible to people who aren't already on side.

 

This makes me think of the 90s, when adults around me would often express contempt for inclusive language by performatively making it conspicuously unwieldy. "Firemen? No, wait, that isn't politically correct...firewomen? Firepeople??" Making a big noisy fuss of how inclusive language is OMG SO HARD while completely disregarding the perfectly cromulent word "firefighters". 

I think the attempts to use inclusive language for reproductive health might sometimes come across this way. 

 

In the specific case of recent inclusive reproductive health discourse, I can tell that the speakers' intentions are benign and they genuinely want to be inclusive. Sometimes they're deliberately aiming for conspicuousness, but sometimes they can't think of a less awkward way to phrase it, and the awkwardness might distract from or detract from their important point.

 

In these situations, where you want to be inclusive but can't think of a simple way to do so, a useful tool can be the generic "you".

 

Example:

Original: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Mothers can remove their masks while in labour."

Attempt to make it inclusive: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Birthing parents can remove their masks while in labour."

With the generic "you": "Mask are mandatory in our birth centre. You can remove your mask while you are in labour."

This is clear. It's inconspicuous. And it's inclusive - by which I mean not just that it includes anyone who might be in labour and while not being a woman or a mother, but also it specifically includes the reader (and, thereby, includes everyone). 

 

One objection to gender-inclusive language that I hear, most often from cis women, is that they feel that excluded when women are not specifically mentioned. Using the generic "you" helps mitigate this by addressing the reader directly. How could you feel excluded if I'm talking directly to you?

 

Of course, there are cases where the right communication strategy is to be conspicuously inclusive, even if the phrasing is awkward. Sometimes the situation does in fact call for a big showy show of the fact that not everyone who gives birth is a woman.

And sometimes the right communication strategy is to be inconspicuously inclusive, to make it no big deal that someone who is not a woman might be giving birth. The generic "you" can help you do that.

Read Aloud

In my work life, MVP of all computer tools since my head injury is the Read Aloud function in Word. (Similar functions exist in other software, and comparable tools are also sometimes embedded in the OS or downloadable as apps.)

Since my head injury, I've had to work harder to focus visually, especially on text and especially on a screen. This makes the revision and editing parts of my job much harder! I can easily focus enough to read for comprehension, but the deeper level of focus required to catch the kinds of errors my brain usually autocorrects takes an enormous amount of work - and all too much of that work is going into buckling down and focusing, before I can even start putting effort and energy into the actual work of my job.

My saviour is Read Aloud. When it reads the text to me verbally, the kinds of errors my eyes and my brain usually gloss over come out sounding conspicuous and bizarre. Overly-French structures sound heavy and awkward, and basically anything that needs attention sounds jarring.

Because Read Aloud reads the text at a steady pace, I don't have to keep myself on task - the computer is doing it for me. Depending on the text and my eyesight, I might read along with the text on the screen, or I might look at the French while listening to the English to make sure every concept is present, or I might put a cold compress over my eyes or work on a vision therapy exercise.

Sometimes I correct errors as I go, sometimes I flag things for further attention with the Comments function. Then, once the readthrough is finished, I can put all my effort and energy into actually fixing the things I have flagged for attention, without it all having been drained on finding the things that need attention.

***

I've talked before about how audiobooks don't work for me because they go in one ear and out the other and I don't retain the story, so it seems super counterintuitive that Read Aloud would actually help with my revision and editing. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've come to the realization that this is because I have a lifetime of experience reading for information.

When I read with my eyes, my brain is actively working to glean and assimilate meaning from the text, so it overlooks straightforward typos like public/pubic. When I listen, I'm not using the same mechanism as I've used my whole life to glean and assimilate meaning, so my brain isn't working to make sense of the text, and therefore isn't "helping" it.

I once read a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which helps you learn to draw by using your right brain to see lines and shadows. You learn to think "This line needs to be at this specific angle", rather than the left-brained inclination to think "I am drawing a hand." You think about the structure of the subject rather than what the subject actually is.

 

Using Read Aloud for revision works similarly. It doesn't trigger the functions in my brain that try to make the text make sense, so I can focus on the structure, on whether anything is out of place.

 

This does mean that I don't retain the content when revising. It goes in one ear and out the other just like audiobooks. (If it's my own translation, I assimilated the content during the drafting phase. If it's someone else's translation, I won't retain it.) But that doesn't actually matter! I don't need to learn the content or remember the plot, I just need to make the text work. If I ever need the information, I can look it back up! And if, for some reason, I need to actually assimilate the information, I still have the option of reading with my eyes.

Grade 13

Recently in the news: a plan to bring back Grade 13.

 

We had Grade 13 (then called OAC, which stood for Ontario Academic Credit) when I was in high school, and what I found useful about it is it gave us an opportunity for greater independence within the high-school context.

 

About three quarters of Grade 13 students were 18 years old when the school year started in September, and everyone was 18 by the end of December. This is relevant because 18 is the age of majority, students over the age of 18 weren't subject to the same rules about care and custody (for lack of a better word - I think there's a specific term for this but it escapes me).

In practical terms, this meant that we could sign ourselves out of school rather than needing a note from our parents and we didn't need our parents to sign report cards or permission slips. In fact, our teachers were not legally allowed to meet with our parents without our permission!

 

OAC classes operated on the assumption that all their students were over 18. In practical terms, this meant that if the teacher was absent, class was cancelled rather than having a substitute teacher. There weren't any parent-teacher interviews. We were expected to manage our own education and our own time like adults.

 

At the same time, the societal expectation was that we were still high school students and our parents were still expected to care for and support us as such.

 

If a parent had kicked an 18-year-old high school student out of their home, other parents - even those who would have responded positively to kicking out an 18-year-old high-school graduate - would be just as appalled as if they had kicked out a 17-year-old

 

Young people who would have responded to a peer saying "I'm an 18-year-old first-year university student and I moved out of my parents' house!" with "Cool!" would have responded to "I'm an 18-year-old high-school student and I moved out of my parents' house!" with "Is everything okay?"

This meant that we were empowered like adults to manage our education and our time, without being expected to take on the full suite of adult responsibilities like paying bills and buying groceries and managing a household. It was a sort of training wheels for adulthood.

It also helped train our parents for our adulthood. Our educational structure moved away from parental permission or parental involvement even while we were living in our parents' homes, which prepared our parents for not having direct involvement in our post-secondary education - something that's even more important today when it's even more financially difficult for students and young adults to live independently from their parents!

 

I had an on-campus job in university when Ontario eliminated Grade 13, and I noticed an immediate difference in parental involvement when the first Grade 12 cohort arrived. Parents were contacting us directly or accompanying their kids in person even for mundane things like asking how to configure an email account, seemingly without any attempt by the student to do it independently. I was only a few years older, but that simply wasn't done in my cohort! 

So if they do end up re-introducing Grade 13, I hope they take into consideration that Grade 13 students are going to be legal adults, and create a system and structure that reflects that, rather than a system and structure that has young adults spending their first year as a legal adult being treated like a child.

***

Even though my own actual firsthand experience with Grade 13 is that it was positive and empowering (and even though my own actual firsthand experience is that I felt too young for university in my first year, even though I could handle it perfectly well), I think if I were a student who expected my high school only to go as far as Grade 12, I'd find it insulting that they want to keep me in high school and living with my parents for another year. 

 

Similarly, if I were an adult who had graduated high school after Grade 12, I'd feel insulted on behalf of the youth of today and tomorrow that they'd have their launch delayed another year. 

This is why it kind of surprises me that they'd put this in a platform with the presumed goal of winning votes for an election. I'd imagine there's a significant segment of the population who would see it as completely unnecessary and perhaps even verging on punitive - especially since it has always been possible for students to keep attending high school if they aren't able to graduate or get the courses they need in the allotted number of years (historically this has been called a "victory lap".)

***

A caveat: I've noticed in recent years that teens and young adults (or, at least, a big enough proportion of the teen and young adult voices that reach me for me to notice) seem to perceive being considered/thought of/treated like a child (as opposed to an adult) as more positive than I do. 

 

They seem to feel that if you're treated like a child, you're being protected and cared for. Meanwhile, my experience - even in retrospect - was that being treated like a child meant my agency being disregarded, with no increase in care or protection. (And often, in my experience, "care and protection" was the label given to disregarding my agency.)

 

So, because of this, it's possible that today's young people might not feel liberated by being treated like an adult as opposed to like a child.

However, I am also aware that adults all too often will read or hear something about Young People Today and use that to treat young people with less agency than they should. I can't tell whether I myself am falling into that trap.

So, as with all aspects of life, the important thing is to listen to the people actually involved - today's high school students and recent high school graduates.