Final Reflection

I totally forgot about this one!  All month long I've been thinking about posting something cheeky as a one page reflection: a picture me holding a mirror in front of another mirror so it looks like there are a million different mes all reflected back at one another, or maybe a picture of me holding a mirror in front of my computer screen so that I'm literally reflecting the image of my ISU at the screen.  Alas, I'm still posting things at the last minute, so this pictorial experiment will likely never come to fruition.  The reflection piece?  You're looking at it.

The ISU itself was a hilariously fun exercise for me.  I love being able to pick my own projects, and the ability to compose what is effectively Doctor Who fanfiction for a mark was just about the best thing to happen to me all Teacher's College.  To be honest, my experience at the Faculty of Education has been a mixed one, but this class has always managed to pique my enthusiasm and creativity.  Learning through experience and experimentation has inspired me to be a more creative presence in the classroom, and I think out of all the course I've taken, this history class has been the most rewarding. 

So thank you, Dr. Epp, and thank you, class of Instruction and Curriculum in History, for giving me the opportunity to really be inspired by anything that comes my way, for placing me in a classroom before practicum, and showing me that anywhere I go and anything I do has relevance, historically and educationally speaking.

(Also, if I may reiterate: Doctor Who fiction!  For a grade!  THANK YOU!)

Cox Sure!: The Charlie Cox Musical

Prologue: Charlie Cox's death hits the newspapers.  Chorus sings and dances to a slow, somber version of, "No Other Mayor's As Talked About As Me" which reflect Charlie's sordid, intense life. The narrator appears - a young woman in 50s attire, begins the story at the close of the opening number. 

Act 1: Charlie's birth, youth, and work in Alberta culminating in his move to Port Arthur, Ontario.  The musical number is ten minutes long, has four movements, and is titled, "Port Arthur Bound!"  The main vocals are provided by the musical's narrator and Charlie in his various incarnations.  Supporting vocals are provided by Charlie's mother, father, siblings, and fellow employees. 

Act 2:  Charlie earns notoriety for his sports abilities and tap dancing.  Act begins with Charlie on stage singing and tapping to, "No Other Man's As Talked About As Me!" (a slightly altered rendition of his bigger number, "No Other Mayor's As Talked About As Me!").  The Act ends with Cox borrowing money to buy horses and work with timber in the song, "Getting Off the Stage."

Act 3:  Charlie now owns a timber business and has married Johanna Bengston. During this act, Charlie and Johanna get into a fierce argument about his work, and together they sing the duet, "This'll Be the End of Us."  After they reconcile, Charlie receives word that he has been elected mayor of Port Arthur.  When he takes to the streets as mayor, his wife and neighbours join him in a thrilling rendition of, "No Other Mayor's as Talked About As Me!"

Act 4: Cox is in his office, leaning down with the phone at his ear.  .  Eileen Flanagan, a young schoolteacher, appears in the doorway looking very distraught.  There are tears in her eyes. (Song: The Man With Two Faces).

Eileen: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
I don't want to interfere,
But Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
You've taken my fair share.

It isn't that I want to tell the board just how to act,
Or that I feel that my politics are better than that.

But Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
I'm a woman, don't you care?
Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
How could you even...dare?

Charlie: (to the person on the phone) Just a minute.  (He puts his hand over the receiver.)  I'm sorry, I don't know you, but you'll have to come back some other time.

Eileen: I don't have another moment...

Charlie:  Well, you just can't take up mine. 
Please go out the way you came,
Shut the door, leave you name,
And I'll get back to you.

Eileen:  Oh, no, you won't.

Charlie:  Who are you?

Eileen (spoken): I'm a school teacher.

Charlie: (to the person on the line) I'll call you back.  (He hangs up.)  Oh, I see...
Ms. Teacher, Ms. Teacher,
Your salary has gotten meeker,
And you're eager to confront the man you think made it so meager.

But Ms. Teacher, Ms. Teacher,
Hate to make the outcome bleaker,
But you can't just seek your salary from one man alone!

It was the council and the board!
That saw fit to cause discord.
You'll need to pass a motion,
File a form, and wait your turn!

Eileen:  But this is my livelihood!

Charlie: And this, Ms. Teacher, is mine!

Eileen: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor!
You can't do this!  It's not fair!
I do every bit as much work as you.

Charlie:  And like me, you have to follow bureaucratic procedure.
(Spoken) The forms are on your way out, Ms. Teacher.

(He walks back to his desk and picks up the phone again.  Eileen stands in the door, trying her best not to cry.)

Eileen: (Mournful)  You're so...charming.

Charlie (drops the phone):  What was that?

Eileen:  You're so charming!  You're so sweet!
You've got all the world at your feet.
But of course, we're all the fools:
'Cuz you're a liar and a crook who takes money from our schools!

Charlie:  GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE!

(Eileen storms out of the office.  She can be heard singing off-stage, ruffling through items in her purse.)

Eileen:  There's two sides to you, Mr. Mayor - the one we see and the one you hide,
And I wonder if even your wife knows the monster that's inside you.
If there's one thing that will give me some closure from this occasion,
It's making that monster known that will bring me some gratification!

(Eileen marches back into the office.  There is a jar in her hand.  She throws the contents of the jar - a clear liquid - into Charlie's face.  He recoils and screams in pain.)

Eileen:  You're a man with two faces!
You've got one side that the world can see,
And that's the side you pretend to be.

But now you'll always wear that other half,
Now that's the side that the world will see.
You're a man with two faces, Mr. Mayor,
And I just set the monster face free.

(Eileen leaves Charlie wallowing in pain on stage.  The lights dim.)

Act Six: The narrator informs everyone that Charlie's disfigurement didn't hurt his popularity, but that he actually went on to several political successes. Charlie is the liberal candidate in this act.  He is debating with his opponent, Howe, with the song, "You're Nothing but an Understatement."  Cox finally recognizes that he can't win and he withdraws his nomination. 

Act Seven:  The narrator provides some information about Cox's decline in popularity and health in the coming years.  She also notes that his wife died in 1958.  The final act shows the narrator walking down the street.  She is humming the melody of, "No Other Mayor's as Talked About as Me!"  Charlie can be seen walking down the steps of a building to the basement.  He can be heard banging on a furnace, and then suddenly the banging stops.  The narrator stops by the street corner and sings a final reprise of Charlie's song.

Curtains fall. 

Coyote Columbus

I love Coyote.  There is no other figure in literary history I can appreciate more than one who enters a space just to rain all kinds of chaos down upon it.  The beauty, I think, lies in the complexity of the character's influence.  Tricksters are never evil or malicious, though they may occasionally target the high and the mighty in and attempt to provide a lesson in himility.  Their actions are always simply chaos in its purest form, never good or bad, simply cause and consequence. 

I've always wanted to teach the Trickster figure to a classroom.  I don't know if I want it to be part of a unit, a unit itself, or the subject of an entire class.  I think in any case, the trickster would be an engaging subject for students.  There are tricksters from nearly every culture: Coyote differs depending on which tribe or band is providing the story; Britain had fools and jesters to provide a chaotic element to the storytelling; in Japan, the fox or kitsune champions the lowly and challenges the powerful.  For all our love of order, I have to believe that humans attain just as much pleasure from seeing their systems, structures, and institutions torn asunder. 

I would use King's Coyote Columbus in my classroom in a heartbeat.  It provides such an excellent counterpoint to everything European creation stories teaches, and its main character, just as in King's Green Grass, Running Water, is a trickster.  It's important for students to hear about these alternate narratives to give them perspective on authorship and history.  So often we're told that history is written by the winners, but how often do we adopt that perspective when we learn history?  This story is a disruption of epic proportions, and it's going into my teaching library.

Response: John Ralston Saul

No offense to John Ralston Saul, but I have to disagree with his assessment that Canada has been the longest uninterrupted democracy in the world.  It's not just because I'm a jaded youth either.  The statement is just a mess of signification, because in order to make it, one must first assume that Canada's democracy has never wavered at any time, and second, one must believe that democracy truly exists.  Again, it's not because I'm a jaded youth that I believe that.  It's because I know my Canadian history to even a marginal degree that I know how to complicate both of these very attractive assumptions: Canadian democracy was born in decidedly un-democratic company, we still consider the Queen to be our head-of-state, and democracy itself is, in practice, un-democratic.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines democracy as "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state , typically through elected representatives".  I love this definition because it is simultaneously ideological and oppressive in the same explicit instant.  Democracy is, by definition, not reflective of the whole of society but through the process of election and so-called eligible representatives.  For the sake of simplicity in this response, I'm not going to focus on pre-Confederation Canada, because it was not technically a democracy but a monarchy.  In fact, the argument could even be made that Canada is still a monarchy, because the Queen is still regarded as our head of state.  


Ralston Saul's definition of democracy differs somewhat from the OED.  He sees democracy as a system of government by the people, for the people, of the people, and the people, for him, are a great mix of ethnicities and cultures.  We are Metis, he writes, individuals of both European and Aboriginal descent.  The foundation of our country's government lies in the colonists, not the colonials, and currently, our government is varied and representation of all the people.  I can appreciate Saul's re-reading of history to include a more sympathetic view of our origins, and I also appreciate his ability to redefine power structures in society, recasting Canada as the centre of our national ideology rather than Britain.  However, I can't imagine how he thinks that Canada is a democracy, let alone an uninterrupted one. 


Canada's origins as a democracy begin, as I've stated, at Confederation (unless you believe that Confederation maintained Canada's monarchical links, in which case, stop reading here).  Yet Confederation itself was not a democracy by Saul's definition.  Everyone in the rooms of both the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences were white, upper class men of European descent or nationality.  They aren't elected officials as demanded by the OED.  They weren't even necessarily the most eligible, what with two major groups in the population - women and Aboriginals - completely left out of the proceedings.  Democracy in Canada was therefore born out of an event that was decidedly un-democratic.  


A democracy born in exclusion cannot possibly be a democracy, but let's pretend for a moment that Confederation actually did represent the birth of a democratic government in Canada.  That government spent the next century-and-three-quarters continuously oppressing the people it excluded from Confederation in the beginning.  They even started oppressing other minorities when immigrants began arriving in Canada.  Even today, the government is not representational of all the people in Canada.  


So if Ralston Saul would like to make the assertion that Canada is the longest uninterrupted non-democracy, I would like to agree; I think a lot of countries fall under that category.  But for all its fairness, for all the reasons I am proud to be a Canadian, democracy is such a loaded term that I don't think adequately describes our current political climate. 

Response: Ken Osborne's "Canadian History in Schools"

Ken Osborne, like Penney Clark, makes the assumption that there is a distinct Canadian national identity.  Unlike Clark, he sees this national identity as more varied and complicated than the current curriculum or other historians have postulated before.  I think that's a helpful stance to take on the subject of history, especially when you're arguing for a reevaluation of history in the classroom. 

Again though, there are problems with some of the improvements Osborne suggests be applied to the classroom.  Several of his new teaching methods are antiquated and archaic.  They also would be ineffective for instructing students of the digital age.  Memorization and purely knowledge based examinations need to be reassessed before they are integrated back into the new classroom.  Perhaps the reason why history is such a bore and an effort for teachers and students alike is because we keep referring back to an old system of instruction, one that we cling to idealistically because for whatever reason, we think it's an accurate measure of success.  Osborne wants what Sir Ken Robinson calls reformation, not revolution.  The history curriculum requires the latter. 

Response: Penney Clark's "Historical Context of Social Studies in English Canada"

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Penney Clark begins her article "Historical Context of Social Studies in English Canada" by stating that much of social studies in English Canada borrows, models itself after, or is subject to American models and influences.  She refers to this as receiving "scraps from under the American table", as if those who accept the current system and policies surrounding social sciences have subjugated themselves to an oppressive system.  American influence is a threat to Canadian social studies according to Clark, at least in policy.  Individual classrooms all provide radically different models for the social studies curriculum; hence, Clark chooses to focus only on the policies, textbook, and ministry document. 

I believe that Clark's analysis is an unhelpful one for two reasons.  First, Clark's critical and scathing depiction of American influences seem like pithy attempts to rage against the hegemonic powers-that-be rather than a critical examination of Canadian-American relations.  She notes that Canadian and American cultures have cross-polinated, that they bear elements of each other, no matter how slight, but she writes her article on the premise that Canada should be completely distinct and independent of American culture.  In her fervour, Clark forsakes this cross-polination and sharing of identity, as well as the ways that Canadian schools reject American systems and institutions. In this sense, I find her analysis quite narrow and shallow.

Clark's superficiality accounts for my second point as well.  Though she acknowledges that the classroom is a dynamic and independent space, she chooses instead to focus on Canadian education policies, which, while telling of American influences, are not indicative of Canada's complete embrace of American practices.  In fact, the classroom is, I would argue, a much more interesting focus of study in this regard.  Clark may safely assert that American policies and practices are borrowed heavily from the American education system and she may also harp on the frequent use of American speakers at conferences, but in the classroom, individual teachers may subvert educational practices, adopt different focuses to their research, and utilize different resources.  I would be much more interested to see how different teachers have combated American influences by picking different subject matter and sources for their classes.  I wonder, for instance, about what Clark would say about our class.  We didn't even have a textbook, and the majority of our supplementary resources were Canadian based.

Let's Talk About Sex

Now that I have your attention, let's talk about Lysistrata.

There's already been some excellent analysis done on the Moodle comparing Aristophanes's Lysistrata to The Play by Nellie McClung. I don't know what else I can contribute in that vein. Yes, they're both representative of specific times in history and both examine forms of female power. However, only The Play attempts to examines female power as being human power, free from gender and sexual differences. Lysistrata still constructs male and female power as separate and opposite to one another. 

In terms of women's right, these texts are important to note, but they lack any contemporary critical relevance.  After the publication of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter, both of which owe their existence to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, it was generally understood that it was impossible to consider the disenfranchisement of women as a unified and consistently oppressive force.  Due to the differences of class, race, age, society, culture, ability, sexuality, and gender performance, every individual's particular circumstance had to be read as independent of everyone else's, subject to a cultural context but not defined by it or representative of a whole. 

Despite Butler's influence, society still tends to construct men and women as opposites, similar to the sexual politics displayed in Lysistrata, though for the sake of political correctness, many people would try to purport McClung's belief that everyone is human rather than gendered.  Even contemporary romantic comedies use the plot of Lysistrata to create humour, with women exerting power over the one domain they have power over - their bodies - in order to take charge of men who have power over everything else.  Feminist criticism still notes the delineation between males and females in textual representation  as well, though interpretations have been complicated by the various branches of criticism that are now available. 

Lysistrata and The Play offer two avenues to female empowerment.  Neither of them are perfect.  There's even an argument to be made about whether or not they're successful.  Like everything else, it seems, both plays have to be judged on a basis of personal fulfillment.  McClung's play worked to secure women a place in forums they were previously not allowed to enter.  Lysistrata and its explicitly, unabashed use of sexual imagery, continues to entertain people through recent productions.  Female power remains a matter of individual circumstance.