Archives for February 2010

Universal daycare isn’t a good idea. Specific programs to help children and families in lower-income brackets, or people with various life challenges (self-inflicted or not), I can see. There is research that shows daycare helps those children, at least a little. But your average kid from the average middle-income family? Not so much.

“It’s also the best anti-poverty program. I want every single child in Canada to have the opportunity to get a square meal when they come to daycare; to get loving care and tender care,” Mr. Ignatieff added. “A lot of children in our country, we don’t like to admit it, start in a very turbulent difficult environment at home. The great thing about these programs is they give kids an equal start.”

Mr. Ignatieff is correct in one sense: Studies show that, on average, child care moderately improves the cognitive performance of children from low-income families — and the benefits last into adulthood. On the other hand, the same studies generally have shown no such lifelong benefits for children from middle- and high-income families.

Oh, and in the average normal family, “loving care and tender care” is something kids get at home, not in a government institution. When’s the last time you felt loved by a government bureaucrat?

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Thanks for posting about this, Brigitte: I try to keep my day job, in which I research child care, and my after-hours life, PWPL, separate. But on a day when a politician follows up an announcement about daycare with one about abortion that becomes difficult, to say the least.

Do these people even hear themselves talk?

Michael Ignatieff warned Stephen Harper today not to play “ideological games” with women’s health, suggesting the Prime Minister’s new commitment should extend to abortion programs.

“Let’s keep the ideology out of this and move forward,” said the Liberal leader at an afternoon press conference.

Mr. Ignatieff says he supports Mr. Harper’s initiative to make maternal health a key plank at this year’s G8 summit in Muskoka but cautioned that women must “have a full range of contraceptive options and have control of their fertility.”

I like this column by Suzanne Fortin over at No Apologies:

A recent occurrence sums it up nicely for me. I decided to sign up for a publicly funded poetry workshop. The lady who ran it was very sweet, but even though she was very nice, you know when you walk into room full of writers, the liberal worldview predominates. The exercises consisted of free writing that would be shared with the class – because that’s the whole point. Being Catholic and a pro-life activist, the things I think about are worlds away from what other people do. I didn’t want to sow division when I read my stuff because that would just ruin the atmosphere, so I didn’t write what I really thought. Now everyone in the room probably also engaged in a measure of self-censorship. But there’s more to censor when you don’t share the predominant worldview. It was very stifling. I didn’t write what I really wanted to say, which made the material inauthentic. Which is to say, not very good.

For me, this speaks to the notion that pro-lifers ought to be really great at what they do best, be it as artists, writers, doctors, lawyers. But the journey is uphill, because oftentimes in order to get to be the best in your field–whatever that field may be–you have to conceal your own convictions. Those who are imbued with tremendous talent can probably be as public as they like from the get go. For the rest of us, though, we have to plug along and do our best, working and waiting and strategically wondering when and how we can reveal who we truly are. Be it Christian, or pro-life, or gasp and good luck to you–both.

P.S. I don’t know how this happened, but I ran recently into this fellow who competes in “poetry slams” here in Ottawa. He broke out into a poem right there on the spot, which I very much enjoyed, if in part because it was so unexpected. Anyway, he shares in this particular poem (listen carefully) the struggle of being a Catholic Christian in a hostile culture.

A follow up post to the maternal health saga of last week. This week I will be writing Mr. Dave Toycen of World Vision a letter, because this press release says World Vision is partnering with Action Canada Population and Development. I’ll ask why they chose to do so. Does World Vision believe abortion is part of maternal health? If not, how did Action Canada wheedle their way in to this otherwise good group of charities? I need to hear a concrete answer. This press release doesn’t look good.

At this post, you’ll find a YouTube summary of coverage of the March for Life in the US. It gets old to keep hearing about the inaccurate coverage, but this clip is at least a bit humourous, in particular when the narrator points out the inability of CNN to count. Yes, count. Math is hard! Still, I believe it is a skill we can all learn.