Tag Archives: society

No Mercy

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I do not struggle with the idea of people having faith in an almighty being. In fact, I will defend anyone’s right to believe in the God of their choosing. We deserve religious freedoms and a choice to worship any deity we choose… or don’t choose as the case may be. Religion can be a powerful force of good in the world. I know a few very religious people, and they use their faith as a cornerstone for their integrity. They are honourable, respectable, good natured friends, neighbours, and citizens to their core.

I also see religious fanaticism as a significant problem in our world. A problem which fosters hate, and forces people into indoctrinated, evil beliefs. Beliefs which permits them to do unspeakable acts that are not only extremely harmful, but also an embarrassment to humanity.

Both of these can coexist simultaneously, across multiple religious beliefs. It’s not necessarily the religions themselves but misguided humans choosing to blindly follow interpretations of doctrine that bring out the worst in faith and humanity. And so the paradox of intolerance comes into play… we need to have intolerance for bad faith actors, while insuring we are remaining tolerant of good people of all faiths, even if especially if they are different than ours.

And this leaves me with two things for which I find myself less and less tolerant:

1. Uninvited preaching

There have been a few very public examples recently of people preaching their gospel on airplanes. They take advantage of a captive audience and without invitation decide that they will evangelize. I have the utmost tolerance and even acceptance of them believing what they want to believe, and I think they have every right to evangelize inside the confines of their church. But I’m intolerant of this idea of evangelizing to a captive audience who did not choose to listen but are stuck doing so.

Solution: Sing a song like ‘Row-Row-Row Your Boat’. Almost everyone knows the lyrics and people who don’t want to listen to preaching can easily join in and drown out the preacher (who is ultimately being rude). I understand that the singing wasn’t invited either, but I truly believe this is a lesser of two evils. The video examples demonstrate that even trying to complain permits these people to continue to evangelize, and then even claim religious persecution… making themselves out to be the victim rather than the social delinquents that they are. You can’t argue with fanatics, so just drown them out so no one can hear them.

2. Proclamations of God’s work

I’m not going to share the sources of the next examples, because like many of the commenters, (who are the reason these came across my feed), I have nothing kind to say about these posts. A reverend shared the image of a lone green house that withstood the horrific floods in Nepal, caused by the breaking up of a large glacier. His caption with the image said, “This house withstood all the flood challenge in Nepal. It’s all about the mercy of God and not necessarily the ingenuity of the Architectural work.”

What an ignorant and hateful thing to say.

Here is another example, this one came with a video showing the devastation all around the same green house, “I believe God decided to save them. It wasn’t because of the engineer who built the structure or because the structure was strong enough to protect them. I believe it was simply God’s intervention that kept them alive.”

So cruelly insensitive.

Thousands of people dead, many with no opportunity to escape the impending floodwaters. So many lives ended, so many more will continue to suffer in the coming months, and you brag about your god being merciful and saving one family, one house? It’s embarrassing that in a tragedy of this scale, this is where you see your god! The insensitivity is at a scale that can best be described as horrific. Imagine a Nepalese neighbour, who survived the flood, but lost family members, reading that post. I shudder to think of how hurtful it would be to see people praising their god for this.

Solution: I’ve already seen this in the comments. Ridicule anyone who praises the ‘God of the gaps’… call out the hypocrisy of thanking god for a shimmer of compassion in a river of devastation. If your all-powerful god is so selective in his mercy, he is vindictive, mean-spirited, and hateful. And if you are going to spew hurtful ignorance, you deserve the backlash that you get.

I struggle to not sound upset and angry when I share these ideas, but that’s the nature of the paradox of intolerance. We cannot extend tolerance to the intolerant, and religious zealots uninvitedly proselytizing or people seeing the hand of god amongst hurt and devastation is cruelty disguised as mercy. This is unacceptable, and we can’t sit by and let it happen. It’s not contributing to our society in any positive way… and it’s not what any kind, loving god would want.

Parents Today

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It’s a catchy title, ‘Parents Today’, an invite to go on a rant and share how society has changed and how parents are the problem. And, yes, this is a bit of a rant, but I want to start by saying this is a trend, not an issue with every parent… but it is indeed something I’ve seen more and more of.

That said, I’ve shared before, and I still believe that parents are our partners in education, and I believe it really does take a community to raise a child. And when we work together as educators and parents we can do great things. I’ve seen this in action. We had two sisters thrive at our school. One of them was able to train 20+ hours a week at her sport, still had time in Grade 12 to follow her passions, compose, produce, and sing an entire album of songs, and get high enough grades to get into the university program of her choice.

Her younger sister joined us and was quiet, and I wasn’t sure if she was enjoying herself. Then at the second PAC (Parent Advisory Council) meeting, her mom pulled me aside afterwards to have a private conversation. She got teary-eyed and thanked me and asked me to thank the teachers. She said that this was the first time in her younger daughter’s entire school experience that she wanted to go to school. She said school from preschool to grade 8 was joyless for her daughter, it was a chore to get her to school, and like pulling teeth to get her to say anything nice about her schooling.

She told me what a delight it was to see her daughter waking up and wanting to go to school. What a joy it was to have her come home and share what she was learning. How heartwarming it was to see her smile when she spoke about school. Her mom didn’t realize that this was equally heartwarming for me and my staff to hear.

We can get things right.

But in all honesty, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we can have challenges where a kid struggles and we have to work together to make things better. And again, when we approach challenges as a team, we can often make things better. Not always, but frequently… and this is where the rant sneaks in. I’ve noticed that it could be a lot more frequent if it wasn’t for (some) parents today.

We have parents that overshare information and humiliate their children in front of us. They embarrass their kids with private details that makes the kid feel too ashamed to look to educators for support and assistance.

We have parents that blame educators for a student not learning something. Who expect every possible accommodation for their child, and literally expect us to take the challenge out of learning. They fail to see that learning doesn’t stick when there is no effort associated with the process. They’ll watch their kid spend hours on a video game to perfect a level, then the same kid will put zero effort into an assignment and it’s the educator’s fault because he or she doesn’t understand how their kid learns.

We have parents who see themselves as their child’s friend and advocate, and will not parent them when they need a parent. They will let their child have a device in their room so they can play games or socialize until 3am, then claim it’s too hard to get them to school in the morning. ‘Turn off the wifi? Take their device away? We couldn’t do that.’ Make them go to school tired to understand the consequences of their actions? ‘Oh, no. My kid needs his rest, he’d be too upset if we did that.’

We have parents defend their child, claiming they did the work themselves, even when it’s obvious that they cheated or plagiarized. ‘Just so you know, I was sitting next to her when she wrote that.’ Actually lying to protect them like that is some sort of favour. It doesn’t matter that the child can’t define several of the words used, or that all other writing done in a supervised environment is both structurally different, and reads as if it was written by someone with a weaker vocabulary.

In each of these examples, the parent thinks they are doing their child a favour. They believe they are being advocates. Meanwhile, rather than working with educators to help their child, they are adversarial, confrontational, and/or passively harming their child by not being a parent.

The rise in number of parents I saw doing these kind of things in my last decade of education was concerning. Parents will spend more time getting Chat GPT to argue a case for their child’s ‘defence’ than they will actually parenting their child, or listening to a teacher. They will hear only their child’s perspective and come into the school with metaphorical guns blazing to defend them when the issue was minor and could have been resolved with a simple inquiry. They will send a scathing email to a teacher, realize there was a misunderstanding and then send a meek apology or no apology at all when the small concern is cleared up… Then they wonder why a teacher’s future communication to them doesn’t seem warm and caring… and claim that the teacher doesn’t like their kid.

As a principal, no matter how upset a parent was, I always started a meeting thinking, ‘We are on the same team, we both want what’s best for their child/our student.’ I’ve had hard conversations with teachers, students, and parents as a result of those conversations.

But the hardest conversations where with parents who I had to walk on eggshells around because their child, who was not being a good student, was being ruthlessly defended… And anything I said to suggest their kid had work to do was dealt with as evidence that a collective ‘we’, everyone at school, was at fault… Meanwhile I had a team of exasperated educators doing all they could with a supportive lens.

Schools can still work when there is a kid or two with parents like this, but I watched their number rise. I saw the pressure it put on educators… especially after the challenges of Covid. We are at a time when kids need the whole community to support them, and I’m seeing too many parents work against rather than with the school community.

It’s these kinds of parents that are one of the biggest problems in education today.

Human Zoochosis

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The first time I remember seeing zoochosis was with a baby elephant. I was at an elephant rescue sanctuary in Thailand, with my wife and daughters for ‘A day with the elephants experience’. We arrived and were waiting to meet our guides. About 20 meters in front of us there was a small elephant with one leg tied with rope to a post in the ground. This baby elephant was sort of marching on the spot. It took one step forward then one back in a rocking motion that almost looked like an Instagram boomeranm – a short video being played forward and backwards over and over again. It was novel at first but five minutes in, it seemed sadly hypnotic and unsettling.

‘Zoochosis is a psychological condition in captive animals characterized by repetitive, often self-destructive behaviours like pacing, swaying, or over-grooming, caused by the stress of captivity. These behaviors are not typically seen in wild animals and indicate significant emotional distress.’ (AI search definition)

Recently I saw a video clip where a woman was questioning if we were not at a point where we are dealing with human zoochosis? I don’t even think I watched the video to the end, I was just doom scrolling as a 30 minute mental break after work, and it was a video that came and went.

A couple days later this hit me as something very relevant. I saw another video of an American in his car. He was talking about doing food delivery as his second job, wife and baby at home, and how just to make ends meet he was working 14 to 18 hours every day. He said he didn’t know how long he could sustain this, and how hard it was to only see his wife and baby late at night before being the first one up to get to his other job. He wasn’t asking for help, he was questioning life, purpose, and meaning behind doing nothing but working just to barely exist. I realized he was describing what it’s like to be a ‘captive animal characterized by repetitive, often self-destructive behaviours’.

Captive in a system not designed for humans. Stuck in a cycle of living to work, not working to live. Trapped in survival mode and unable to think beyond subsistence and making ends meet. No time for joy, no hope, no sense of purpose or meaning. No place for a human to feel like they belong and can thrive.

I’m reminded of a video of a mouse seeking happiness in a world where he is in both a literal and metaphorical ‘rat race’, seeking happiness, which is either short lived, or out of reach. It is a social commentary about this exact issue. How many people are lost in this race to nowhere? Lost in the stress of captivity, knowing that they cannot escape? Animals, trapped and psychologically damaged, without the resources or means to escape human zoochosis.

School and measuring intelligence

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A few months back I saw a video from a very articulate young girl who goes by Gluten Free Runner on TikTok. I liked the video but didn’t follow her. She just came back on my feed again and her recent video definitely earned her a follow.

She asks, “What if the way we measure intelligence is completely missing the point?” And then she reads a journal entry she wrote about school. I don’t want to say much about it other than please listen to it.

The description shared on the video says this:

“There’s a concept recently learned about called Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.

We’ve optimized what can be measured: grades, test scores, credentials, things like that.

Maybe part of the issue is that we started treating those measurements as the thing itself, instead of just rough indicators of something much more complex.

Maybe the goal of education shouldn’t be to decide who is “smartest,” per se, but to help people understand how they can best contribute.”

Here is her video: https://www.tiktok.com/@gluten.free.runne/video/7649444429090000142

My favourite part is her questioning if we are being educated or schooled? “Education is a process. Schooling is an institution.”

No notes… just go watch her video.

“Don’t Bring a Résumé. Bring Receipts.”

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In the article, ‘The Proof Economy’ Anand Sanwal says, “Don’t Bring a Résumé. Bring Receipts.” Anand starts with two definitions saying that we’ve moved from the Parchment Economy to a Proof Economy,

“We’ve entered the Proof Economy, a world where the most valuable signal isn’t where you went to school, what your GPA was, or which honors you collected, but what you’ve actually done and can do. In this new landscape, demonstrated ability trumps pedigree, and what you’ve built matters more than where you studied.

Meanwhile, the Parchment Economy, that centuries-old system where formal credentials and institutional validation serve as proxies for capability, is losing its monopoly on opportunity. The elaborate dance of transcripts, recommendation letters, diplomas and prestige markers is becoming increasingly irrelevant in field after field.”

This is something I’ve been describing for a while now, without properly defining the difference in the two ‘economies’. Beyond credentialed professionals like doctors, engineers, and lawyers, what now matters most is your portfolio, not your schooling certificates. ‘What is it that you can do better than others to earn you a spot in our organization?’ (Regardless of your credentials.)

Anand says,

“When anyone can access expertise through prompts and build a prototype video, software product or design via AI, the value shifts decisively from knowledge possession to knowledge application.”

But for me the most interesting section in his article is:

What Education Needs to Become

If we accept that we’re entering the Proof Economy, schools can’t just add a few electives or rethink assessment to focus on progress and not perfection..

They need to rewire what they reward.

We should expect:

  • Projects over problem sets: Real-world challenges that apply knowledge, not just recall it.
  • Portfolios over transcripts: A body of work that shows thinking, skill, and growth.
  • Public work over private grading: Output that lives in the world, not a Google Doc.
  • Coaching over compliance: Adults who challenge and support, not just evaluate.
  • Failure as fuel: A system that treats failed attempts as essential steps, not permanent marks.

At Inquiry Hub Secondary our students are still entrenched in the old public education system in that they complete required courses to meet provincial high school graduation requirements, and most of them still head off to university, college, or a technical institute to further their studies. However, along the way they are given the time, space, and credits (towards their graduation), to produce documentation of learning in areas of interest. They have an opportunity to design and build projects, (documented receipts), most other students could only get done on their own time, outside of traditional classrooms.

They also get to live in an environment where they have to cooperate with fellow students in scrum projects with tight timelines and defined roles (not just group projects with everyone having identical outcomes and expectations). They have to do frequent presentations, alone and in groups, with training to give and receive feedback with radical candour. They understand iteration, they pivot based on where their learning takes them, and they embrace failure as learning opportunities because sometimes obstacles become the way. And they are provided with greater and greater autonomy over their time as they progress from Grade 9 to 12.

Essentially, Inquiry Hub students still get their resume of courses, but they are also provided the opportunity to bring receipts too.

Lacking decorum

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I used to think, ‘I don’t understand how we got here?’ But I’m beginning to see a pattern.

Honour, respect, and decency are conventions. They are merely expectations, they are simply the way things are normally done in a caring culture. Decorum is upheld not by the roles of everyone, rather it is upheld by the usual lack of tolerance for people that don’t show decency. A key role for those with power and influence in a decent society is to demonstrate what’s acceptable, and when they don’t, conventions are not enough.

Conventions, decency , and decorum are expectations, not laws. To break them is not illegal, but rather just ugly. And sad.

Our collective tolerance has been too weak. The ‘paradox of intolerance’ is the problem on two fronts. First, in being too tolerant of the intolerant. But secondly and almost more importantly, because the tolerant are held to a higher standard. Those who hold decorum and decency within them expect of themselves to follow these conventions, and are upset but more tolerant of those who do not, in comparison to the expectations they place on themselves.

It’s a slippery slope because bad faith actors are given too much leeway to say and share things unbecoming of themselves and the roles they play in society. And so it takes a lot less effort to lack decency and decorum than it does to uphold it.

Who will get us there?

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Stephen Downes shared the following on LinkedIn:

“I was asked, “Please provide a brief abstract that summarises your views on the impact of AI on higher education.”

As far more than the language models that have captured the attention of the world over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) represents a significant increase in human capability, augmenting and sometimes exceeding our natural capacities to perceive, reason, create and remember. Ubiquitous access to these capabilities changes the definition of what it means to learn and to be educated. Skills once reserved to the domain of experts are now in the hands of everyday people, while most every discipline is devising new models, methods and pragmatics of work alongside, or teaming with, these new tools. This challenges educators along a number of fronts, impacting how they teach, what they teach, and even what it means to teach. Today’s educator in a world of AI is responsible for far more than passing along knowledge (indeed, the machine can do most of that). We will be responsible for challenging students both young and old to find new ways of seeing and creating, leading them through demonstration of dedication, resilience and passion, and modeling for them the best values of civil and social responsibility, contribution and care.

Thoughts?” ~ Stephen Downes

—

Although my thoughts align with K-12 education as well as higher education, these thoughts come to me in the form of a question:

Who is going to get us there?

Who is the ‘We’ that Stephen is talking about when he says, “We will be responsible for challenging students both young and old to find new ways of seeing and creating, leading them through demonstration of dedication, resilience and passion, and modeling for them the best values of civil and social responsibility, contribution and care”?

Because I love this vision of what teaching can become, I just don’t see a clear path to take us there.

‘We’ won’t get there following the guidance of financially lucrative edu-tech business, products, and tools… their locked-in subscriptions will tout measures of success that don’t align with this vision, even when they say that they will.

‘We’ won’t get there like we did with Web2.0 tools in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, on the backs of tech savvy educators leading the charge.

‘We’ won’t get there because of some governmental vision pushing a new AI enhanced curriculum, or even new guidelines that somehow redefine for teachers, “how they teach, what they teach, and even what it means to teach”.

I hope I’m not coming off as a pessimist. I’m excited about what’s possible. I just fear that ‘we’ aren’t going to get ‘there’ any time soon unless ‘We’ align philosophy, policy, and economic support for the transformation of schools into something different.

Short of that, I fear that ‘We’ will be having the same ‘20th century schools in a 21st century world’ conversation in another 10 years… which I’ve heard since getting into education in the late 1900’s.

Robots, robots, everywhere

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In the world of robots two things are happening at lightning speed:

  1. Capabilities – A year ago humanoid robots were clunky, unstable, and for lack of a better word, robotic.
  2. Production – A year ago if a company could produce 5,000 robots in a year, they were industry leaders.

Have a look at this video and you’ll see just how much farther along robots and their production have advanced: ‘China’s New AI Robots Shock Everyone With Impossible Skills’

It might be cliche to say, but the future has arrived. First in factories, then in homes! If one thing is certain about our future it is that humanoid robots will be all around us. We’ll have to wait and see how this impacts work, chores, and even social interactions, because there isn’t going to time to think of long term implications before they arrive… everywhere very quickly.

Tragedy Tourism

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I don’t know how widespread the use of this phrase is, but I heard it and to me it is exactly why I struggle to pay attention to the news. The phrase is ‘tragedy tourism’ and it refers to the constant onslaught of tragedy we ‘visit’ viewing current events in the news. The topics vary and change but message is the same:

Share a tragic event, share the outrage, sadness, and horror, briefly examine the details, discuss them, highlight the anger or controversy, and then move on… find a new tragedy and repeat. You don’t get to live too long with any one tragedy, you merely visit and move on.

Your attention can’t stay on any one thing, because the next tragedy is thrust upon you to provoke further outrage, to keep you distracted, triggered. And a mind that is consumed with tragedy is a controlled and manipulated mind. It’s a mind that is angry and distracted from rational thought, it’s a mind that easily forgets the last reason to be outraged because the new reason, the next distraction, fill your consciousness with yet another and another tragedy.

No time for clarity of thought, no time to examine the issues and nuances of the last tragedy you visited, you just move on to the next tragedy because that’s where the news cycle is now. You visit each new tragedy like you are on a vacation bus tour. In the same way that a bus stops to show you a touristy landmark just long enough to learn a few highlights and minor details, and take a picture, the news peppers you with the lowlights, the sadness of the tragedy before putting you back on the metaphorical bus to be dropped off at the next tragedy.

Tragedy tourism keeps you hopping from one tragedy to the next, filling you with new reasons to be angry and upset, but not leaving you long enough on any one tragedy to allow you to feel immersed. The stay at each tragic event too short to care enough to truly understand the tragedy or to meaningfully interact or think critically about it before moving on to the next one.

An angry mind doesn’t think critically. A divided attention doesn’t promote activism or action. A distracted population doesn’t do anything to upset the status quo… and the news pumps out a new tragedy for us to visit.

Keeping the faith

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Religions around the world are losing followers. But people are seekers, they want to believe in something. And while there are downsides to religion, including fanaticism and blind following of misguided faith leaders, there is also a warmth of community, a comfort of shared values, and a wonderful sense of belonging.

Atheism and often the path it can lead to nihilism don’t fill the voids a loss of religion can leave behind. And I think that’s why we see blind faith emerging that doesn’t seem to make sense to many.

Why on earth would someone in 2026 join a community of flat earthers who have to literally ignore volumes of data in order to believe what they believe? Maybe because the community is so inviting to anyone who believes?

Why would someone defend unnecessary violence, or even terrorism in the name of God or country? Maybe because they feel othered, or fear being othered. Maybe they feel hurt and seek vengeance? Maybe they feel the government is too heavy-handed or not heavy handed enough?

Why would someone follow a leader who does things they would previously have been upset about? Maybe there is one pillar that leader stands on that supports their beliefs more than any other transgression that leader might be accused of? Maybe they feel community, shared values, and a sense of belonging are all missing in their lives because their waning beliefs in a broken religion can no longer fulfill these needs.

When people can’t seem to hold onto their religious faith, where else do they put their faith?

It seems today that it goes to all the wrong places.

We need a new kind of religion, one that is inherent in most faiths already, but often masked by evangelical fervour, threats of secularism, misinterpreted scripture, literal interpretations of metaphors, among other reasons justifiable by the keepers of the faith. That inherent idea common to all faiths, the somehow lost idea, is that we are all the children of God, and that we should be kind, caring, and even loving to all God’s children.

If that was the underlying premise of ‘our belief systems’ (intentionally plural) then the best thing we could do is to keep the faith. But when religions and more specifically religious people, focus on differences, and when charismatic leaders decide that hate, separation, and false prophecies are the goal, well then our belief systems rise only to crumble.

This is the path we are on, not an increase in atheism, because atheism is not a belief system to swap another religion for. A thing to ‘not believing in’ is not a replacement for a faith. And so what we are seeing is a rise in people looking in all the wrong place to feel safe and then blindly, misguidedly keeping the faith.