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Humanities

Core

Curriculum

IC 5219 R4 1987 V.1

Readings in

Critical Thought and Cultural Literacy

a humanities core curriculum linking knowledge, understanding,

judgement and choice

Edited by Stephen Duguid

Volume One

Introduction and Introductory Lesson

S2,

90 v• 1

Readings in

Critical Thought and Cultural Literacy7

A Humanities Core Curriculum Linking Knowledge, Understanding, Judgement, and Choice

Volume One: Introduction and Introductory Lesson

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Edited by Stephen Duguid Institute for the Humanities Simon Fraser University .

----- Copyright of this document does not belong to the Crown.

Proper authorization must be obtained f rom the author for

any intended use

Les droits d'auteur du présent document n'appartiennent

oas à l'État. Toute utilisation du contenu du présent

, document doit être approuvée préalablement par l'auteur.

© 1987 Institute for the Humanities

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 ISBN 0-86491-073-8

I welcome the publication of this volume of readings by Dr. Duguid and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University. I hope that it will be widely used by educators in prison and elsewhere.

Dr. D. K. Griffin Correctional Service of Canada

111

Stephen Duguid is Director of Extension Credit Programs and Assoc. Prof. of Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He has a PhD from SFU in Middle Eastern History and directed and taught in a university-level prison education program in British Columbia from 1974 to 1980. As part of his duties at SFU he directs the SFU Prison Education Program which offers a university Liberal Arts program to about 200 students in four federal prisons in B.C. Dr. Duguid has published widely in the field of prison education, the humanities and higher education, and adult education.

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Preface

This Humanities Curriculum is a collection of edited readings from classic and contemporary sources, accompanied by discussion guides. It is directed toward adult students whose formal education has been interrupted or cut short, whether by choice or circumstance. The readings comprise an introduction to a wide range of topics and themes central to both the humanities and to living in contemporary society which, taken together, can serve to enhance critical thinking abilities and make one more literate with the culture. The focus is on the reading of primary sources, ranging in time and topic from Socrates to Skinner, to provoke discussion, writing, and reasoned analysis under the direction of a tutor/instructor.

The Curriculum was developed through the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University on behalf of the Education and Personal Development Division of the Correctional Service of Canada. Mr. William Cosman and Dr. Douglas Griffin of the Correctional Service were central contributors to both the conceptualizing and facilitating of the project. The Readings are intended for use as: (1) a supplementary humanities "core" to an existing secondary school program for adults; (2) a college or university "prep" program with a focus on critical analysis and writing; or (3) a general interest course for adult learners.

This is the 3rd edition of the Humanities Core Curriculum, the first appearing in 1983. The materials have been field tested in prison and community centre classrooms in British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and in parts of the United States. The revisions in this edition owe much to the suggestions made by these teachers and their students and to the work of David Wallace, Avril 01liver, Jane Harris, Ian Wright, Carol LaBar, Henry Hoekema, James Melendez, Keith Whetstone, and John Wilcox.

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Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize - because they set so little store by them - the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished. If men have always been concerned with only one task - how to create a society fit to live in - the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again.

Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

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CURRICULUM TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE: INTRODUCTION AND INTRODUCTORY LESSON

INTRODUCTION: The Humanities, Critical Thinking, and Cultural Literacy

The Humanities Core Curriculum: Definitions and Structure 4 Why a "Humanities" Core? 6 Pedagogy 7 References 10

INTRODUCTORY LESSON: The Tradition of the Humanities 11

Understanding and Judgement 13 Introduction 13

Critical Reading: Understanding 15 Language 15 Style and World View 16

Critical Reading: Judgement 18

Exercise 1: On Nuclear War 22 Exercise 2: "Baby Fae: The Ethical Issue" 24 Exercise 3: "The Criminal Child as Different" 26 Exercise 4: Logical Deductions 31 Exercise 5: "Gazing on Jerusalem" 33 Exercise 6: The Keegstra Case 36

Conclusion 45

VOLUME TWO: READINGS

INTRODUCTION: The Humanities, Critical Thinking, and Cultural Literacy 1

The Humanities Core Curriculum: Definitions and Structure 4 Why a "Humanities" Core? 6 Pedagogy 7 References 10

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57

58

66

143

144

158

162

183

UNIT ONE: On Being Human 11

SECTION A: The Issue of Human Distinctiveness 14

White, Leslie. "The Origin and Basis of Human Behaviour." From The Science of Culture. 15

Sagan, Carl. From The Dragons of Eden. 22

Farb, Peter. "Man at the Mercy of His Language." From Coming to Terms with Language. 33

Bronowski, Jacob. "The Reach of the Imagination." 40

Dubos, René. "The Humanness of the Human Species." From Beast or Angel? 48

SECTION B: Gradations of Humanity: Savages, Slaves and Females

Conrad, Joseph. From Heart of Darkness.

Jung, Carl. "The Role of Symbols." From Man and His Symbols.

Mayhew, Henry. "Those That Will Not Work." From London Labour and the London Poor. 76

Huxley, Thomas. "Emancipation: Black and White." From Science and Education.

Austen, Jane. From Pride and Prejudice. 114

Weldon, Fay. From Letters to Alice On First Reading Jane Austen. 132

SECTION C: The Human as Individual: Oualities of Isolation

Defoe, Daniel. "I Am Very Ill and Flighted." From Robinson Crusoe.

Kierkegaard, Soren. "That Individual."

Sartre, Jean Paul. From The Wall.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. From Notes from Underground.

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SECTION D: The Human and Humanity: The Social/Cultural Context 190

Steinbeck, John. From The Grapes of Wrath. 192

Carr, Edward. "Society and the Individual." From What is History? 203

Pirsig, Robert. From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 211

Jung, Carl. "The Soul of Man." From Man and His Symbols. 241

UNIT TWO: The Individual and Society 251

SECTION A: The State as Leviathan 253

Orwell, George. From 1984. 256

Berkman, Alexander. From Prison Memoirs. 274

Huxley, Aldous. From Brave New World. 285

Gross, Bertrand. "Monitoring as the Message." From Friendly Fascism. 309

Dickens, Charles. "Murdering the Innocents." From Hard Times. 318

SECTION B: Individual Conscience and the State 325

Plato. The Crito. 327

Thoreau, Henry David. From Civil Disobedience. 341

Wiesel, Elie. "What then is there left for us to do?" From Issues in Education and Culture: Teaching Peace. 348

SECTION C: An Option: Rebellion & Revolution 352

Serge, Victor. From Birth of Our Power. 354

Michel, Louise. "The Malcing of a Revolutionary." From Memoirs of Louise Michel. 360

Brecht, Bertolt. Selected Poems. 370

Lenin, V. I. From "Left-Wing' Communism--An Infantile Disorder" 376

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SECTION D: An Option: Alienation. Romanticism, Ecstasy and Isolation 382

Fromm, Erich. From Escape From Freedom. 384

Roszak, Theodore. "Romantic Perversity." From Where the Wasteland Ends. 402

Shapiro, Karl. "Introduction" to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. 424

Eliot, George. "A Voice from the Past." From The Mill on the Floss. 430

Burgess, Anthony. From A Clockwork Orange. 447

UNIT THREE: The Social Possibility: Utopia and Dystopia 459

SECTION A: A Proletarian Utopia 461

Carr, Edward. "The Bolshevik Utopia." From 1917: Before and After. 464

Marcuse, Herbert. "The End of Utopia." From Five Lectures. 474

Marx, Karl. "Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." From On Historical Materialism. 484

SECTION B: The Engineered Human Community 491

Skinner, B.F. From Walden II. 492

Plato. From The Republic. 514

Calder, Nigel. "Chemistry versus Individuality." From Technopolis: Social Control and the Uses of Science. 522

Platt, Anthony. "The National Criminal." From The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. 528

SECTION C: The Tribal Çommunity 543

Hitler, Adolf. "Personality and the Conception of the Folkish State." From Mein Kampf. 544

Kogon, Eugene. "The Aims and Organizations of the SS Super State." From The Theory and Practice of Hell. 558

Orwell, George. "The Principles of Newspeak." From 1984. 562

Cogley, John. "Words." From Coming to Terms with Language. 576

Kephardt, William. "The Hutterites." From Extraordinary Groups: The Sociology of Unconventional Lifestyles. 581

Introduction

The Humanities, Critical Thinking and Cultural Literacy

The Humanities, Critical Thinking and Cultural Literacy

The traditional goal of a humanistic education was to develop the ability to think critically, to make rational, informed, and responsible judgements. Thus the Greek concept of education (paideia) meant the cultural formation and preparation of individuals for active political life. However, in modern society knowledge all too often means the mere accumulation of information with the result that students do not develop a general critical disposition. The intention of this Curriculum is to assist students in integrating a knowledge of the humanities with improved ability to think critically, with the hope that the combination will lead through judgements to the realm of action.

By knowledge of the humanities we mean an understanding of those moral, ethical, cultural, and political issues by which Western intellectual traditions have characterized the human condition. The Humanities Core Curriculum was designed to provide students with a general overview of these traditions through a series of readings organized around an Introductory Lesson entitled The Tradition of the Humanities and three thematic Units: (1) On Being Human (2) The Individual and Society and (3) The Social Possibility: Utopia and Dystopia. The nature of the reading and the accompanying writing assignments suggest a direct link with the enhancement of common sense notions of literacy, i.e. reading and writing, but the Curriculum has a wider objective -- the imparting of cultural literacy to students who have rejected or been denied access to elements of our common cultural heritage.

The Critical Thinking component of this Curriculum is on the one hand inherent in the issues and topics raised in materials used throughout. Socrates' decision to drink the hemlock, 'Thoreau's rationale for civil disobedience, George Eliot's ruminations about duty, George Orwell's dark visions of the future, Hitler's racial rantings, and Pirsig's mystic motorcycle travels all demand a stretching of the mind to understand, judge, and value. The readings are critical thinking par excellence and without fully realizing it, the reader imbibes and integrates the essential process.

On the other hand, some direct instruction in the craft of critical thinlcing is included in the Curriculum. In this endeavour, we rely heavily on the notion of Practical Reasoning developed by Ian Wright, Carol LaBar, and Jerrold Coombs at the University of British Columbia. They mean by Practical Reasoning the arriving at a judgement about what oneself or others ought to do. In its simplest form, this involves reaching a decision on the basis of two distinct kinds of reasons: (1) motivating reasons in the forrn of value standards which the reasoner accepts, and (2) beliefs about what actions will fulfill the value standards. Both kinds of reasons require justification and thus a variety of abilities, knowledge, and dispositions. Ideally, this Curriculum should be accompanied by a full course on Practical Reasoning.

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The Humanities Core Curriculum: Definitions and Structure

Given the confusion which reigns in the study of curriculum, it is appropriate to begin with a few definitions, thereby establishing what this Curriculum is and what it is not. The word "core" is used here in the sense of 'a central part of different character from that which surrounds it.' This is an important point since it establishes that no replacement of an existing curriculum is intended, only a supplementing of that which already exists. By using the word "core", however, the supplement is not a mere accretion, something added at the extremities of a teaching program. The intent here is more ambitious, the core being regarded as "...that which is surrounded by that which sustains it and also that which provides the raison d'etre for that which surrounds it..." (Reid, p. 97). The relationship of these materials, then, to an existing curriculum is deliberately dialectical.

A glance at the materials used in this Curriculum shows that while they are loosely related to subject areas or disciplines, they do not constitute a core of required subjects taught independently -- one common notion of a core curriculum. Neither are they formless, amorphous guidelines meant only to assist the teacher and students to grope for a curriculum which meets the students' stated wishes and desires. On this latter point the Curriculum follows Sidney Hook's view that "The notion that the generality of students...can make an informed and intelligent decision about their abiding educational needs before being exposed to the great subject matters and disciplines of the liberal tradition is highly questionable." (p.29)

On one level, then, the HCC is, to cite Raymond Williams, "A selection from the culture...", a wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary program of study utilizing some of the greatest writers and thinkers in the Western tradition. In this sense it has an intrinsic educational value, a value based on the validity we have assigned to the works being taught. On another level the Curriculum addresses directly the tasks of critical thinking, the assumption being that the ability to think rationally, critically, and independently is basic to good citizenship. It is thus a major objective of this Curriculum that students develop the skills not only to analyze texts critically, but also to make sound, defensible judgements about both public and personal concerns.

That the materials are directed toward students who, because of age, early rejection of education, or current predicament would not normally encounter such materials only serves to enhance the intrinsic worth of the project. Too often we reserve cunicula of this nature for the elite of our students and merely accommodate the less able, less vocal, and the disadvantaged, preparing them for careers without knowledge and choices without insight. It is, of course, more difficult to teach these materials to the less able, but Bruner's hypothesis that "...any subject can be

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taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development..." must also hold true for adults.

In the broadest sense this Curriculum is concerned with the nature of the individual human and his/her relations with other individuals and with collectivities of individuals organized in societies and organized by States. In each of the thematic Units these topics are dealt with directly in terms of analyzing who and what we are, examining our cultural and political realities, and probing our personal and social potential. These are "large" issues and the range of discussion is complex. Yet the issues are of central concern to each of us. It is by involving ourselves with these issues that we create an accommodation with society and with our selves, however tenuous that may be. By not addressing these issues we create the possibility of confrontation with our selves or society, the result of which can only be to diminish both.

This Curriculum does not enshrine a specific set of learning objectives but it does have a concern with outcomes. Citing Sidney Hook again, these would include:

(1) Every student has an objective need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively with his fellows, to grasp with comprehension and accuracy the meaning of different types of discourse, and to express himself in a literate way.

(2) He must have an appreciation of the impact of science and technology on nature and society.

(3) There must be a focus on the conflict of values and ideals of our time, the presence of values in every policy, the relation of values to causes and consequences and the difference between arbitrary and reasonable value judgements.

(4)Every student should acquire some methodological sophistication that should sharpen his sense for evidence, relevance and canons of validity.

(5)Students should be aware of how society functions, of the great historical, economic and social forces shaping its future.

(6) Every student needs to be inducted into the cultural legacies of his civilization. (p.32)

Hook lists these objectives in an essay entitled "The Minimum Indispensables" and it would be hard to argue against the case.

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Why a "Humanities" Core?

Given the approach to curriculum, the issues being addressed and the broad objectives outlined above, it still may be questioned whether the humanities are the best means by which to address these issues and objectives. Traditionally elitist, highly literacy- dependent, and wedded to historical rather than contemporary matters, the humanities may seem better suited to a university environment than the audience sought for this Curriculum. In fact, the humanities broadly defined and linked closely with the social sciences can offer an accessible and challenging approach for both teacher and student.

The humanities in the narrowest sense are a collection of academic disciplines, namely history, literature, philosophy, languages, and the fine arts. In the broadest sense, a humanities program in Great Britain used the following as as working definition: "The Humanities are understood as any subject, or aspect of a subject which contributes to the rational or imaginative understanding of the human situation." (Shipman, p.8) Yet another secondary school humanities program in Great Britain put the case this way:

The problem is to give every man some access to a complex cultural inheritance, some hold on his personal life and on his relationships with the various communities to which he belongs, some extension of his understanding of, and sensitivity towards, other human beings. The aim is to forward understanding, discrimination and judgement in the human field -- it will involve reliable factual knowledge, where this is appropriate, direct experience, imaginative experience, some appreciation of the dilemmas of the human condition, of the rough-hewn nature of many of our institutions, and some rational thought about them. (Adams, p.17)

These goals and sentiments provide an accurate guideline for both the humanities and the critical thinking components of this Curriculum. A key assumption here is that one role of education, perhaps the fundamental role, is to impart 'humanness' -- in other words, that being human is not a natural condition but rather is an historic, created condition. The humanities, with their central concern with the individual human being, critical and rational thought, communication, perception and feeling, and values are thus the essential 'civilizing agent', that which must come prior to our concern with more technical, functional, and practical matters.

Seen in this light the humanities are, in Ralph Perry's words, all that is "conducive to freedom", and by freedom he means "enlightened choice", the overriding of habit, reflex, or suggestion by an individual's fundamental judgements of good and evil, the making explicit of premises for action, and the involvement of personal reflection and integration in decision-making. (Perry in

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Greene, p.4) To be human is to make choices --not just choices of a career but fundamental choices which collectively make up our personalities and govern our lives. The humanities more than any other area of knowledge address this issue of choice, indeed they are obsessed with it.

The concern with choices leads to a second major aspect of the humanities, the focus on critical thinking or the ability to step beyond common sense assumptions and be able to evaluate them in terms of their genesis, development, and purpose. (Giroux, p. 282) In the right context such critical insight should enable individuals to literally 'escape' from the confines of their own history -- that which society has made of them -- and participate in malcing a new history. This is a lofty goal but throughout this curriculum students are encouraged to question assumptions, re-think arguments, discuss evidence, and participate in reaching new conclusions.

Finally, the humanities are the logical vehicle for addressing issues of value. Value questions permeate our society and provide us with daily individual dilemmas. There is perhaps no longer a 'right' morality, but there are certainly better or more correct ways to reason one's way through these dilemmas. Again, the basic assumption of the humanities is that individuals are 'choosing' beings, capable of deciding on alternative courses of action in any given situation. These choices are inevitably linked to values, to notions of right and wrong, self-interest and group-interest, and to judgements concerning the desireability or understanding of the consequences of actions.

To this degree the potentially 'free man' of the humanistic tradition is set apart from the sociologist's "man as an element of nature", immersed in and subject to an environment, or the psychologist's "elastic adaptive man" who transforms reality into congenial forms in order to increase chances for survival or satisfaction. For the humanist, man is more than a product of physiology or social conditioning, more than the sum of his behaviour. The humanities offers no easy escape into determinism to excuse or rationalize acts or failures. It teaches that we are responsible within the bounds of our experience and environment and that the exercise of that responsibility (or the failure to do so) is the fundamental problem of the human condition.

Pedagogy

This is a discussion-based Curriculum. A simple enough statement but one which places great demands on the teacher, the materials, and the students. It means that the real focus of learning is on the verbal interactions in the classroom rather than on validation of content absorbtion or sldll development. Discussion in this sense is not, however, merely talk or chatter about current events, personal opinions, or true confessions. It is discussion based rather strictly on the

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curriculum materials and within standards of discourse established by the teacher. The readings and exercises, then, serve as an excuse or a base for interactions among students and between students and teacher, interactions which should result in cognitive conflict, in a dissonance between common-sense assumptions and new perspectives which should in turn lead to maturation of thought. This Curriculum, then, is devoted to "joint inquiry" in order that controversy may flourish, arguments ensue, proofs be demanded, terms be defined, and some modicum of reason or rational argument be applied.

This Curriculum owes much to several humanities experiments in Great Britain in the 1970's, particularly the Humanities Curriculum Project developed by Laurence Stenhouse. In Stenhouse's view, curricula were "hypothetical strategies for realizing ideas in practice...the media through which teachers develop their own insights and learn to translate them into practice." (Elliott, p.110) Thus in a very real sense the teachers are the creators of the curriculum, not mere agents or spectators. In this Curriculum, as in the Stenhouse project, it is recommended that the teacher cultivate a position of neutrality in the classroom, i.e. that the teacher neither formally instruct nor regard it as part of his/her responsibility to put forward a personal point of view on the issues being discussed. On the other hand,_ as "chair" of the discussion, the teacher does have the responsibility for the quality and standard of discourse.

This focus on the teacher is in line with a general pessimism in educational circles about the viability of the 'teacher-proof approach, the idea that a curriculum can be designed in such a way that the teacher need only oversee its consumption. The most controversial and difficult aspect of this Curriculum is the concept of the neutral teacher. As Stenhouse explains it:

The teacher, though he be neutral on controversial issues, has as an educator a responsibility to foster rationality rather than irrationality, sensitivity rather than insensitivity, imaginativeness rather than unimaginativeness, tolerance rather than intolerance. He must also help the students to see that standards of critical judgement are important. It is important that he learn to do this through thoughtful questioning which does not direct students to particular conclusions in controversial areas. (p.11)

For this to work, the teacher must explain to the students the basis for the neutrality, that he/she is not value neutral, not personally uncommitted to a position on a particular controversy, but rather is attempting to be procedurally neutral, not using the usual authority of the teacher to promote a personal commitment as if it were the only one that could be rationally justified.

Because the objectives of the Curriculum are tied so closely to discussion, conflict, and resolution, the teacher and the students must work to establish an atmosphere in the classroom conducive to the productive resolution of intellectual

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debate. There are some freedoms which seem essential for the student to have, such as:

1) To disagree, propose alternatives, or change their minds. 2) To express points of view which may be extreme without fear of

immediate rebuke. 3) To demand or expect of the teacher that his or her opinion on a particular

point can be altered in the face of solid argument or evidence.

While the students have these freedoms, the teacher must at the same time force them to defend their positions, challenge their justifications for certain arguments, confront them with standards and points of view that counter their perspectives, and see to it that they deal with problems that have no single solution.

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eferences

ADAMS, Anthony (1971). "Review of the Humanities Project Materials", Uses of English, v.22:3.

BRUNER, Jerome (1960). The Process of Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

ELLIOTT, John (1971). "The Concept of the Neutral Teacher", Cambridge Journal of Education, No.2.

GIROUX, Henry (1980). "Schooling and the Culture of Positivism: Notes on the Death of History", Educational Theory, v.29:4.

GREENE, Theodore, ed. (1938). The Meaning of the Humanities, New York: Kinnikat Press.

HOOK, Sidney (1975). The Philosophy of the Curriculum, New York: Prometheus Books.

REID, Margaret (1978). "The Common Core Curriculum: Reflection on the Current Debate", Educational Research, v.21:2.

SHIPMAN, M.D. (1974). Inside A Curriculum Project, London: Methuen.

STENHOUSE, Laurence (1970)."Pupils Into Students", Dialogue, 5 February.

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Introductory Lesson

The Tradition of the Humanities

The Tradition of the Humanities: Understanding & Judgement

Introduction What are the humanities? What is an Argument? These questions cannot be

very easily separated from each other. In ancient Greece--the world of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle and the birthplace of the Western tradition of the humanities—art, poetry, drama, philosophy, religion, and history formed a single whole. They all sought answers to the same questions:

--What is Human Nature?

--Where do we come from?

--How do we deal vvith death?

--What is our relationship to nature?

--What is the relationship between reason & imagination

--To what extent can we talk about universal human

values and to what extent are we social beings whose

values are relative to our societies and their cultural

traditions?

--What are the limits of political authority?

--What is the relationship of the State to society?

The Greeks gave their own answers to these questions but the questions themselves have continued to be asked by succeeding generations. The Humanities Core Curriculum can be understood as a kind of documentary record of how these questions have been asked throughout the history of western society.

The tradition of the humanities, however, does not only consist in the ldnd of questions asked about human experience. Equally important is how the questions have been answered from Plato to Rousseau to Freud. The tradition of the humanities is a tradition of rational and imaginative inquiry. Each answer to a question is an argument about human experience or human nature. The diversity

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of the answers, furthermore, demonstrates that there is no single, correct answer. Nor could there be because the questions themselves are intended to open up rational and imaginative inquiry.

The very act of asking the question is to begin a process of self-discovery, to undertake a journey or odyssey into the intangible world of the human. At its best, it is a journey in which the traveller completes the journey not only with greater knowledge and understanding of human experience, but recognizes that he or she has become changed, and has become a different person.

Each reader must try to participate in these journeys, must remain open to change, but without ever forgetting to bring along his or her experiences, perspectives, beliefs. Nonetheless, not all journeys are equally interesting and not all answers are equally convincing. To understand and pass judgements on the answers, each reader must try to understand not only WHAT the writer is arguing, but also HOW:

--What are the writer's assumptions and values?

--How does the writer use language?

--What makes an argument valid or invalid?

--Is the argument convincing?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the intellectual journey that the reader has undertaken worthwhile at all?

The tradition of the humanities can thus be understood not only as the willingness to ask fundamental questions about human experience but to provide answers which lead to further questions.

To become educated in the humanistic tradition is to be able to critically understand and judge what we read. Since we only come into contact with this tradition through the printed word, the primary element of this tradition must remain the printed word, its nuances and meanings. And yet language itself is dependent upon certain values and assumptions; it is only a means for presenting and representing a world view. Finally, it is necessary to present a world view in a way that makes sense: as an argument. We have to know how to evaluate someone's argument, how to judge its logical validity. In what follows we have tried to indicate some general guidelines for understanding and judgement, the two poles of humanistic inquiry.

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KEY WORDS AND CONCEPTS:

Humanities

Western Tradition

Human Nature

Reason

Imagin.ation

Values

Being 'relative to'

State

Nuance

Rational and Imaginative Inquiry

Argument

Self- discovery

Perspectives

Judgement

Assumptions

Critically understand

World View

Logical Validity

CRITICAL READING: UNDERSTANDING

Language Many of the readings collected in the Humanities Core Curriculum may

initially seem difficult or obscure, especially since they have been taken out of their social and political contexts. Nonetheless, they can become accessible through critical reading when the kind of language used by the author is taken into account as an active element in the creation of meaning.

Language is not transparent. It carries the colouration of the author's individual personality as well as the predominant world view of his culture. And since the relationship of reader to text is active rather than passive, critical reading involves taking into account our personal and cultural assumptions. The critical reader must learn the discipline of suspending, as much as possible, the biases which might inadvertently obscure the author's intended meaning.

Definition of the key terms of an argument is essential to understanding what the author intends to convey. However, words have both LITERAL meanings (denotational meanings ) and EMOTIONAL or VALUE LADEN meanings (connotational meanings ). Both need to be considered in the process of determining exactly what the author means by the words he uses. Remember, in most good writing words are chosen very carefully by the author in order to

15

express his meaning and possibly affect your understanding.

The denotation or literal meaning of a key term can be determined simply by looldng the word up in the dictionary. The author, however, may have a highly specific meaning in mind which can only be deduced fi-om the context in which the word appears. A vvriter may or may not explicitly define a key term, but usually he will give examples that serve to clarify his particular meaning. He may also use synonyms which will narrow the range of possible meanings.

The use of connotative or value laden words in a text can be unconscious or entirely intentional on the author's part. He may be unaware of the cultural and/or personal biases in his viewpoint and use a vocabulary that reflects his unconscious assumptions about the subject, Or, the author may use connotation-laden words in order to persuade the reader through an appeal to emotions or popularly held beliefs. In either case, the author's choice of words reveals as much about his attitudes, assumptions, and utlimately world view as the explicit content of his argument and therefore becomes an essential part of the information. Language, word choice, argument form, and presentation, then, are as important as content in reading prose.

Style and World View Once the reader has succeeded in "decoding" a text, i.e. has grasped its

literal meaning, more substantial problems arise:

--What lies beneath the language?

--What is the writer's perspective?

--Why does a writer choose a particular style?

A writer's style should not be restricted to formal conventions -- the clever turn of phrase, the use of metaphors, similes, literary allusions, etc. --but rather is the means for expressing and organizing thought and feeling. Style is the way a piece of writing takes on a kind of personality: it predisposes the reader to think of a theme or subject -- whether an attitude about human nature or a theory of the State -- in a particular way.

Obviously scientists and novelists do not write in the same style. The scientist appeals to the reader's rationality and, by relying on empirical evidence or proofs, seeks to be free of subjective values. Objectivity is the goal of scientific writing. The novelist, on the other hand, appeals to the reader's imagination and, far fi-om wishing to be free of subjective values, seeks to create new ones.

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Any style presupposes certain values and attitudes; it presupposes a WorldView. The scientist assumes that the physical world can be understood by adopting the methods of rational and empirical inquiry, but these methods are not absolute and scientists are always revising them. Facts, however, do not speak for themselves and therefore scientists always have to interpret the results of their experiments. While this interpretation allows for creative invention to take place, because scientists value objectivity so highly, they sometimes try to disguise their subjectivity in a rationalistic style.

For literature, and the humanities in general, writers cannot disguise their subjectivity. It would be impossible to separate the goal of the humanities--to understand human experience—from the ideals and values of the writer. For the humanities the problem is always: how does a given world view enable the writer to make sense of the varieties and complexities of human experience?

Hence, to understand any substantial piece of writing within the humanities tradition, the reader must try to discover the world view of the writer: the "network" of emotionally charged values, attitudes and beliefs by which a writer makes sense of the human experience. This "network" speaks through the writer's style; it is the source of the writer's particular blend of imagination and reason.

Over the course of history there has been a considerable variety of world views. For example, ancient and so-called "primitive" societies tended to understand human experience in religious terms. Because these societies considered the world controlled by a deity or group of deities, an individual's life was necessarily predetermined. Similarly, in such societies, the individual had no existence or being separate from his or her community or society.

Modern societies, on the other hand, tend to regard the world as within the potential control of human beings: to make or to re-make the world according to a conscious human design is a modern attitude. Further, in modern societies individuals tend to regard themselves as unique and thus not as closely bound to community or society.

These general types of world views do not exclude each other. In spite of obvious differences, the modern scientific and individualistic world view can co-exist with a religious one. Daniel DeFoe's character Robinson Crusoe, for example, believed that his religious salvation would come about through his ability to make a "civilized" world out of a "state of nature". Indeed, he thought that the only reason he had survived a series of shipwrecks and disasters was due to the will of God. Nonetheless, what is important is to learn to recognize a writer's world view and to understand how it enables a writer to give form or structure to human experience.

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KEY WORDS AND CONCEPTS

Culture Objectivity

Denotational Empirical

Con.n.otational Primitive

Synonyms Modern

Bias Deity

Style Civilized

Subjective State of Nature

CRITICAL READING: JUDGEMENT

Only when the reader has understood a text, i.e. has adequately determined the writer's intentions and explicit or implicit world view, can the process of Judgement or evaluation begin. Judgement could be understood as the opposite of under- standing. When trying to understand a text, the reader must try, as much as possible, to suppress his or her personal values and expectations in order to establish what the text means and how the writer organizes ands structures an argument.

Understanding a text, therefore, requires considerable self- discipline on the part of the reader and is, perhaps, the most demanding aspect of critical reading. And yet, the humanities requires the reader to engage the text actively, to decide on its contemporary significance. That is, the reader must ultimately ask of the text: does it contribute to an understanding of rily experience and my values? Judgement is how we answer this question and therefore explicitly involves what we had to suppress in Understanding: our personal values and expectations. In short, *ud• ement is the erocess b which we decide on the si . nificance or im 9 ortance of a text.

In everyday life, these values and expectations are largely unconscious; we learn to adapt to and function within society and are only rarely required to question our basic assumptions. But to critically judge intellectually demanding texts, readers must strive to become aware of their own basic political, cultural, and moral values: they are the very basis of any critical judgement.

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Indeed, to foster and develop a critical self-consciousness is one of the fundamental goals of a humanities education and is certainly the orimarv objective of this Curriculum. As a consequence, in judging any text, readers must ask themselves: what do I believe that makes me accept or reject a particular argument?

In judging a text, two other factors (besides the writer's values, assumptions or biases) must be taken into account: the nature of the evidence which a writer uses to support or defend an argument and the logical validity of an argument.

Generally speaking, an author's personal experience is not sufficient evidence to support an argument. For example, to claim that people are naturally selfish or greedy cannot be defended on the evidence of the people you know. Rather, one would have to examine historical or psychological studies in order to determine the truth or falsity of the claim. Additionally, one might want to consider different types of societies in order to determine whether greed is a natural human attribute or only specific to a certain type of society.

The basic principle of evidence is to establish criteria of support which do not depend on an individual's intuitive and personal response to a given phenomenon. The nature of the phenomenon or, more generally, the subject of an argument, will determine the type of evidence required.

In some cases, and this is generally true of scientific knowledge, direct observation furnishes the basis of evidence. In evaluating this evidence, however, it is necessary to distinguish between a direct observation, an empirical "fact", and an inference, an interpretation of an empirical fact. Additionally, it is important to decide on the credibility of empirical evidence by taking into account who made the observation, how it was made, and under what conditions.

Judgement in the humanities tradition, however, does not typically depend on empirical evidence but rather on the use of authoritative sources such as history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. In passing judgement on a given writer or text, the critical reader must try to take into account not only the credibility of the authoritative source--some historical sources, for example, are obviously more credible than others--the relevance of the evidence to the argument, and finally the assumptions of the sources themselves. To take a particularly notorious instance: Nazi defences of anti-Semitism tended to rely on historical and psychological evidence which took for granted what it was supposed to demonstrate, namely, that Jews were responsible for the economic, political, and moral collapse of post World War I Germany.

Closely related to the question of evidence is the question of Logical Validity. Although logic is a specialized concern within philosophy, the critical reader should try to develop a general logical sense, an ability to recognize when conclusions are justified on the basis of the preceding argument.

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Philosophy distinguishes between what are called Premises and Conclusions as the basic elements of logical reasoning or arguments. In this sense, an argument can be understood as a statement or group of statements which provide evidence or support for another statement. The Statements used as Evidence are Premises which, in turn , provide support for Conclusions.

There are two basic types of arguments: Inductive and Deductive. Deductive arguments deduce conclusions from premises known to be true while Inductive arguments gather evidence to support or refute a belief. In a sound and valid deductive argument, the conclusion is necessarily true because it is implicit within the premises. That is, in a sound and valid deductive argument, the premises must be true and the conclusion must logically follow from them. Inductive arguments, on the other hand, are not as self-contained and presuppose an element of probability. The following two examples illustrate the difference between the two types of logical reasoning:

1.Deductive Argument

Premise 1 All Canadian Prime Ministers have been men.

Premise 2 P. Trudeau was a Canadian Prime Minister.

Conclusion P. Trudeau was a man.

2. Inductive Argument

Premise 1 Diane found her first history course challenging and interesting.

Premise 2 Diane found her second history course challenging and interesting.

Premise 3 Diane found her third history course challenging and interesting.

Conclusion Diane will probably find her next history course challenging and interesting.

As these examples show, there is a clear difference between deductive and inductive arguments. In a deductive argument, the truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the premises. In an inductive argument, however, the conclusion is

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not so certain. There is at least a chance that Diane will not find her fourth history course challenging and interesting.

From the point of view of the humanities tradition what matters is that readers become sensitive to the logical consistency of argument and that they learn to evaluate adequately the evidence provided as support for an argument. Finally, they must learn to make the same demands on themselves when they discuss the issues raised through the readings in this Curriculum.

KEY WORDS AND CONCEPTS

Explicit Premises

Implicit Conclusions

Actively Engage Inductive

Significance Deductive

Evidence Probability

Logical Validity Logical Consisten.cy

I rxf erence

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EXERCISE I: On Nuclear War

The possibility of nuclear war is a major concern of the post- World War II era. While the entire era has been faced with the potential for immediate mass destruction resulting from World War III or a nuclear accident, some parts of that era have seemed more dangerous than others. The "fall" of China in 1948 coupled with the "crisis" over the Berlin Blockade in 1949 was one such period as were the intervention of China in the Korean War in 1950, the French defeat in Vietnam in 1954, the Suez and Hungarian Crises of 1956, the American frustration in Vietnam in the 1960's and 1970's, and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Most recently, the renewed hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1970's led many to speak of the "inevitability" of nuclear war in this decade. The following newspaper account is typical of that period.

--What Idnd of argument does the author employ?

--What is wrong with his use of Evidence?

--What Idnds of emotion or value-laden words are used and what is their effect?

--What do you think the author would argue now?

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Storm clouds of war gathering on horizon Some ominous signs

as history repeats mistakes of past

NEW YORK — Some Western military thinkers feel a war with the Soviet Union is almost inevitable in the next decade and there are forebocling historical p'arallels which seem to validate that view.

For instance, the world appears embarked on a major

By JOHN WARD The Canadian Press

rearmament program, as occurred in the last years of peace before the Second World War.

The Soviet Union has improved its military capacity markedly in recent years, including construction of a world-class navy. The West seems to be in a mood to increase its military clout to catch up, with France testing neutron warheads and the United States worrying about its conven-

' tional forces.

The United States is also pushing development of a rapid deployment force, intended to move military units to potential troublespots. it is designed primarily to give the Americans a better positioh in the volatile Persian Gulf area, where the Soviet Union and the West are already deploying sizeable sea forces.

The world .'political situation is bad. Relations between the : . United Statesand the Soviet Union are at their lowest point in recent years, 'with the U.S. grain embargo and the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics. The second U.S-Soviet strategic arms limitation treaty appears dead and there is a growing conservative bent in American politics.

Even relations among NATO allies seem poor. About the only thing Western democracies can agree on is that more military strength is needed to confront the Russians.

The United Nations, once seen as the best hope for peace in the future, looks to be following its predecessor, the League of Nations, down the road of political impotence. Like the L,eague, the UN has shown itself to be unable to settle major international crises such as are occurring in the Middle East, Afghanistan or Southeast Asia. Handcuffed by a strident Third World and by Super Power vetoes, the world body is playing a less important role in preserving 'world peace as years go by.

The econoinic picture is equally disturbing. The West's crippling dependence on Middle East oil and the resulting vast shift in wealth is playing havoc with traditional economic thought. The spectre of energy shot/ages is becoming real for everyone and, without concerted effort, could produce the spark t,o set off an international conflagration.

In 1941, for example, fear of an oil drought caused by a U.S. embargo helped spur Japan into the Pacific war. •

A new militarism has become fashionable in the United States. Election-year sabre-rattling has taken on a new dimension as C,ongress beefs up the defence budget and orders a registration for draft-age men.

While the arms stockpiles grow, world trouble spots continue to heat up. Afghanistan, the horn of Africa, southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central America and 'southern Africa all offer potential for proxy and, perhaps, even direct conflicts between East and West.

A school of thought popular among American conservatives holds that Soviet intervention in Africa and Afghanistan is analogotis to Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland .in 1936 and his seizure of the Sudentenland in 1938. If that pessimistic view is right, war may indeed be inveitable in this decade.

Burnaby Columbian 10 July 1980 23

EXERCISE 2: Baby Fae: The Ethical Issue

Advances in western medicine have made possible treatments which only ten years ago would have been considered in the realm of science fiction. However, while medical research has greatly aided the control of disease and suffering, the methods and applications have given rise to ethical questions that heretofore have not required attention. The writer of the column on Baby Fae provides several scenarios to be considered in the issue of organ transplants.

Discuss any or all of the situations he cites as possible sources of organs for transplanting. Try to formulate the argument that would be brought to bear in support of each scenario and evaluate that argument in relation to your own sense of ethics.

24

z. he un MON., NOV. 26, 1984 * **

#k Baby Fae: The ethical issue U NTIL Baby Fae made

the headlines I, had never heard of Loma

Linda or its medical centre. According to the news, Dr. Bailey and his team in Cali-fornia are planning more trans-species transplants How long they'll continue to hold press conferences is anyone's guess.

More importantly, however, is why are they seeking all the public-ity.

The operation and its conse-quences should have been written up in some obscure cardiovascular surgery journal.

But would that have been an ethi-cal way to report an operation, which according to Dr. Bailey "opened up new vistas for all chil-dren?"

Maybe he figured that no journal, no matter how obscure, would pub-hsh the experiment. Or perhaps he was concerned that it might take a few months for the journal report to appear.

This would have been catastro-phic since countless lives could have been lost because other sur-geons wouldn't have been aware of the technique. And maybe if you accept these reasons I can sell you a swamp in Florida.

Let's be realistic. If, like me, you had never heard of Loma Linda until Baby Fae, you know why the sideshow was staged.

Heart transplant surgery isn't technically complicated. Every major Canadian hospital could be performing baboon transplants today. We're not, and the reason has little to do with the availability of great apes.

Heart transplants aren't routine because they're considered experi-mental. The surgery is a snap, but the real killer, rejection of the transplanted organ, remains a major risk factor even when care-fully matched human donors are used.

It's also difficult on moral and ethical grounds to routinely per-form the operations when any other treatment with a better track rec-ord is available.

Even when it's the only option, the phenomenal post-operative costs are hardly an efficient way to spend health care dollars consider-ing the generally bleak long-term prognosis.

Of course, we all know that with-out experimentation the rejection problem may not be solved. As to cost efficiency, patients requiring new hearts usually require sophis-ticated hospital care anyway.

Using the right logic and num-bers, anything is possible to justify what Dr. Bailey has called the "quest to enrich our quality of life."

Now that the moral problems have been "solved," the availabil-ity of donors becomes Important.

There's a shortage of human ca-daver donors. Baboons are expen-sive and can't be bred like rats. Aside from the problem of avail-ability, animal rights groups don't feel it's ethical to sacrifice apes to save people.

Maybe pigs are the answer. No one seems to picket supermarkets that sell bacon.

Here's an ethics problem for you. A starving Ethiopian man is flown to Canada and put up in a hotel suite with his family. After a month of living in luxury he's anesthetized and sacrificed. His organs are transplanted into ailing Canadians in exchange for a substantial trust fund to aid his family.

Had the offer not been made and accepted, both he and his family would have suffered slow painful starvation. As it stands he lived better during the month of prepa-ration that he ever had.

He's as much a hero as il he had sacrificed his life in the name of war, on top of which he's ensured the survival of his family.

Wohld you convict the doctors of murder and the organ recipients as accessories?

Or what if people were bred to be-come transplant donors? In the U.S. it's legal to buy a surrogate child for $20,000 to 30,000. In coun-tries where life is cheap and star-vation common, a child could be "adopted" for a few hundred dol-lars. Your child needs a liver or a kidney or a heart. The right people are paid off and the "sacrifice" takes place overseas.

A jet whisks the donor organ to Canada for transplantation. You'd have little trouble justifying the deed. You might even be able to so-licit donations to finance it.

The donor whom you've never met would have starved to death anyway. Would a properly chosen jury all with children of their own convict you of a crime — law or no law?

Consider that Henry Morgan-taler has successfully used the de-fence of necessity after admitting that he broke the abortion law be-fore you answer.

Morgantaler has taught us that what the lawmakers consider im-moral, and hence illegal, has little to do with what a jury or society in general decides is acceptable.

Justice has nothing to do with law. It's simply a word that you can find in the dictionary somewhere between jackass and juvenile.

Sorry to be so cynical. Please read the following:

The opinions expressed todayare not necessarily those of the author, a practising physician. They are,- tended to make you think. If 'lieu are feeling any form of emotion OW will have been accomplished, t-ters to the editor or author (c/o Sun) will be welcomed.

25

EXERCISE 3: The Criminal Child as Different

In the following excerpt from a very long work entitled The Criminal Personality (2 volumes, over 1000 pages), the authors Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow build a case (or make an argument) for the "criminal" being substantively different from other persons. Those other persons are referred to as "responsible persons" throughout the text. In this excerpt the authors introduce the idea that this criminal personality is present since childhood, hence the notion of the "criminal child".

Yochelson and Samenow's "theory" has proven to be quite controversial in the field of criminology and corrections. Many, perhaps most people from academic backgrounds tend to be critical of their use of evidence, their generalization, etc., while many people who work in corrections find the argument and the descriptions quite 'useful' and accurate.

--What kind of argument is being made here?

--How does use of language or word choice affect the argument?

--Is it fair to come to any judgements about the argument on the basis of such a limited excerpt?

--What can one deduce about the authors' World Views on the basis of the material presented here?

--Why would there be controversy associated with this argument?

26

From Yochelson & Samenow, The Criminal Personality

THE CRIMINAL CHILD AS DIFFERENT

An important commonality among most family members is that they live responsibly. Where there is parental irresponsibility, some children seem de-termined to be responsible, despite it.

C and Mary had a criminal father. C followed the same path. In contrast, Mary saw her objective in life as being different from her father. She utilized her contempt for what she saw as a stimulus to function differently. The result was that C wound up behind bars, and Mary is responsible and has worked hard in government, gaining several promotions.

From a very early age, the criminal-to-be is observed by his parents as "different." His behavior is extreme, either swinging from being an "angel" at five or six to a "hellion" by ten or alternating between the two right along. His energy never seems to be depleted, and he is chronically restless, irritable, and dissatisfied. He seems never to outgrow the period of the brief attention span. He has to have things his way; he will not take "no" for an answer.

C needed a pair of sneakers and wanted a specific type. When his mother bought him another brand, he asked whether he could have them re-turned for the brand he originally wanted. She said that he would have to wait until these wore out. C promptly cut the soles and heels out of those she had just bought. They were then paper thin and quickly wore out, thus allowing him to achieve his objective.

Th « criminal child stems not to do anything right around the house. His parents çaansta.n.tly tell him to "put your mind on what you are doing," because he has his mind on things far more exciting than the task at hand. Mowing the lawn cannot compete with thoughts about "hanging around wit,h the guys" at the nearest shopping mall and doing some shoplifting! The endless reply to his parents' reprimands is "I forgot." He forgets what his parents told him five minutes earlier, forgets what the teacher told him, forgets what the class did in Sunday school. This is not a learning or memory problem. His mind is on exciting things, and his interests are centered on the forbidden. He does not consider himself obliged to fulfill the mundane require-ments of school and home. He thinks others should fall into line with whatever he wants to do. Rather than being appreciative when a parent or someone else gives him something or does him a favor, he generally takes it for granted and expects more the next time. Doing chores, coming in on time for dinner, keeping appointments, running an errand—the criminal child often reacts to these as though tley are serious impositions. He uses any excuse at hand to put off what he is required to do. He usually does what he wants to when he wants to and is remarkably insensitive to others' needs and desires.

The criminal child is distressingly different in still another waY. His parents find that, unlike most children, he shies away from affection, neither giving it nor receiving it. As one mother sadly said in describing her son as a young child, "He didn't need me." The adult criminal might say that his parents

27

did not love him and that is why he turned out as he did. Actually, he

rejected the love that was offered, viewing it as "sissy" or "weak."

There is a mantle of secrecy surrounding the criminal child. Parents slowly begin to sense that they do not knovb- their own youngster. They are uneasy, especially- those having another child, with whom they can compare him. The

secret life is established early. Lying is a major ingredient. The child says he

is going one place, but goes another. His accounts of what he does are vague

and superficial. He is hard to pin down, with lies of omission being far more

frequent than lies of commission. He may even lie when there is seemingly-

no point to it—for example, saying he is going to the A & 13 , when he knows

he is going to the Grand Union. What seems to matter to him is getting away with things.

The criminal child sets himself apart. He does not confide in his family, and he conceals ideas and emotional reactions. Because he lies so often and engages in forbidden activity, he is ever distrustful and suspicious of other flunily members. This keeping to himself is a self-imposed isolation. He simply- does not want other members of the fa.mily to be privy to vvhat he is doing. This may take the extreme form of the child's virtually refusing to participate in any family affairs. When he goes to a function with his family, it is likely to be grudgingly. The family may be having fun, but inevitably the criminal child does something to spoil it. At a picnic, he shoves other children. He is the one who plays with the barbecue fire. In playing ball, he starts a fight over an umpire's call. If he attends a family activity or a school function because he is required to, he wanders off, and others do not know where he is. When he is older, he refuses to go at all.

With so much lying, sneaking, and concealment, there is clearly a "com-munication gap" in a home with a criminal child. Usually, the parents are faulted for not understanding the younger generation. But it is the child himself who imposes the secrecy and sets himself apart. He wants to keep his activities secret, so that others will not interfere with him. There is indeed a communication breakdown, but the child has been the determining factor. Sometimes, he pulls away entirely and gives his family the "silent treatment" for months.at a tinie, erecting a barrier that his parents cannot penetrate and becoming even more of a stranger and a mystery to his own family. His more customary mode of operating, however, is to go through the motions of doing what is expected, so that his family will have less reason for suspicion; communication is at best superficial, because the parents think they know more than they do. When the parents become aware that their child has been leading a secret life, it is usually they who frantically search for ways to "restore" communication, which either never existed or existed only when the child was much younger. But the parents cannot establish

28

communication that the criminal child does not want. Of course, if the crimi-

nal youngster wants something from his parents, he "communicates" quite

well. The criminal child gets his way in one fashion or another. Sometimes it

is through secrecy and slickness. Perhaps even more frequently, he engages

in constant battles with his parents, wearing them down until they capitulate. The youngster makes a contest out of anything, no matter how minor. He

looks for a victory in a dispute about whether he will clean up his room, hang up a wet towel, take out the trash, or be in at a specified hour. Winning

the fight overrides the significance of the issue at hand. It results in attrition

of parental morale; eventually, his parents decide to ignore certain behavior. Another technique the child utilizes to get his way is to be "legalistic." He makes so many requests and contests so many things that the parents cannot

keep track of them. Inevitably, the child will catch mother or father in a contradiction. In doing this, he may play one off against the other. His memory is adequate, when it comes to reminding a parent of something said earlier. A favorite tactic is to dredge up something said long before and apply it in a different context. It is practically impossible for his parents to avoid being tripped up by his maneuvers. When the criminal child -is blocked from doing as he wants, he tries to circumvent the barrier.

When C was 7 years old, he wanted to take a girl to the movies, but his family thought it improper. He went to the corner store and informed the man, with whom the family had credit, that his mother told him to borrow a dollar. With this, he took the girl at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was a double feature, and they got out at 8:30 p.m., only to meet both families waiting outside.

When the parents tighten up their restrictions, the criminal child has to be more ingenious and more careful, or else he becomes sullen, angry, or wi thdrawn.

The criminal child turns on "being good" when it suits his purpose. We have seen more than one set of parents become more hopeful when there was harmony in the house or on a family outing. Some of their fears and pessimism melt away as they point out that "he was so good while we were all in New York; really, we had no trouble at all.' Then they are chagrined when they recognize that the reason they had such a good time was that they did everything the youngster wanted and thus avoided any altercations. It is not long until the old patterns are resumed, the first time the parents say "no." When a criminal child seeks a specific privilege or wants his parents to get him something, he can be endearing.

C had created continual turmoil in the family by his neglect of chores, his sullen and sometimes antagonistic attitude toward participating in family activities, and his activities in the community, which included stealing and threatening a girl with a knife. His parents, at a loss as to what to do, took him to a counseling agency. As Christmas approached, C told the counselor he would be "good." For 5 weeks, he did his chores, maintained a pleasant, cooperative attitude around the house, and did not get into trouble. He presented his parents with a list of more than $100 worth of gifts, which he wanted them to purchase. A week after Christmas, he resumed old patterns.

29

This illustration contains all the essentials of a "con job." Many parents will do almost anything, if they think it is for the good of the child and will contribute to family harmony. They pay for special schools, counseling, gifts, and so on, all to no avail. The criminal child exploits this and "blackmails" his parents to give him what he wants. They know that life will be miserable for them if they do not accommodate their child.

The basic stance of the criminal is that he wants to hold on to the comforts of home, as well as do the things he wants to do. The criminal child expects his family to meet his needs. Rarely does he consider anyone else's rights. He thinks that he should be able to do as he wants, but that others should be limited in interfering with him. He plays with a sibling's toys and breaks them, but he beats up a brother whom he finds using something of his without his explicit consent. He invades the privacy of others, but becomes furious when anyone asks him what he is doing. Emotional blackmail is an effective way for the youngster to get what he wants. His presence in the house be-comes negotiable. His parents, already alarmed at his estrangement from them, may be fearful of his running away. Only a small minority actually leave the house. However, the criminal may keep running away a live issue to frighten his family into doing what he wants. A more menacing type of coercion occurs when the criminal warns his parents, "If you don't you'll be sorry," with an implied threat of retaliation in the form of violation.

C wanted an air rifle, but his family thought it was dangerous. His attitude was that, if they would not give it to him, he would steal $5. Alter all, it would be "their fault" for not giving it to him. The only way to avoid the theft would be for his parents to give him what he wanted.

The tactics may become extreme, as in the case of the youngster who threatens suicide and inflicts some superficial cuts on himself. When the criniinal youngster creates some "emergency," he does his utmost to see that his parents are embarrassed and faulted. For example, if the neighbors find that he is using the family house for drinking, drugs, and sex in the parents' absence, it is seen as a case of parental neglect or permissiveness.

The criminal youngster engages in crimes against his family—unauthorized use of the family car, stealing money from mother's purse, misusing parental charge accounts, keeping weapons in the house. The list is endless, but the worst crimes are those which cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The broken hearts and disrupted lives are the most costly of all. His violations frighten his parents, so they curtail their own activities to stay home and supervise him. He does not hesitate to misrepresent his parents and give them a bad name in the community. Because of his conduct, the entire family lives with constant stress and uncertainty. These patterns at home are a microcosm of the child's functioning everywhere. Within them are contained all the essentials of a street crime, as will be seen later.

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EXERCISE 4: Logical Deductions

Are the conclusions reached in each of the following arguments probable? Why? Why not?

1. In order to resolve a long-standing controversy about whether or not to allow Sunday shopping, a referendum was held. Twenty-siH per cent of the eligible voters uoted. R vast majority of these voted against Sunday shopping. R local newspaper concluded that the vast majority of residents were opposed to Sunday shopping.

2. fl poll was conducted to ascertain whether or not residents of a certain community felt that more day care centres were needed. Pollsters selected every tenth household from the telephone book and interviewers then canvassed these households ouer a period of fiue days for their views. If no one was at home, one callback was made. Residents in 48% of the households selected were interviewed during the fiue days and 75% of them did not feel that more day care centres were needed.

3. The high degree of intellectualization of the modern American college campus is shown by our study of general conditions. According to the National Education Association, the national median salary of full professors in $10,327, whereas that for head football coaches is only $8,554. In most colleges the contents of the library cost more than athletic equipment. Attendance at class and adequate performance on eHaminations is still considered indispensable to remaining at college, and fraternities are not generally allowed to practice the kind of disruptive hazing that used to be widespread. The number of goldfish swallowed and panties raided has declined, and the number of paperbound books purchased in college bookstores has increased.

4. Why, then, should the education of apes be impossible? Why might not the ape, by dint of great pains, at last imilate after the manner of deaf mutes, the motions necessary for pronunciation? I do not

31

dare decide whether the ape's organs of speech, however trained, would be incapable of articulation. But because of the great analogy between ope and man and because there is no known animal whose eliternal organs so strikingly resemble man's, it would surprise me if speech were absolutely impossible to the ape.

La Mettrie, Man A Machine (18th cen.)

5. "Do you think"' said Candide, "that men have always

massacred each other, as they do today, that they have always been false, . cozening, faithless, ungrateful, thieving, weak, inconstant, mean- spirited, envious, greedy, drunken, miserly, ambitious, bloody, slanderous, debauched, fanatic, hypocritical, and stupid?"

"Do you think", said Martin. "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they find them?"

"Of course I do", said Candide. "Well", said Martin, "if hawks have always had the

same character, why should you suppose that men have changed theirsr

Voltaire, Candide

32

EXERCISE 5: Gazing on Jerusalem

One of the great "arguments" of the modern era is centered on the existence or nature of God(s). More particularly, in contemporary, industrialized, secularized societies we are obsessed with either the search for a secular grounding for morality and moral action or, more recently, with reaching out for a re-newed religious vision which can provide that grounding. If the universe is godless and nature silent, then it becomes the responsibility of 'man' to provide meaning for existence. As George Orwell put it, "The real problem of our time is to restore the sense of absolute right and wrong when the belief that it used to rest on -- that is, the belief in personal immortality -- has been destroyed." The following editorial in a British magazine is concerned with this issue.

-- What is George Eliot's argument for goodness despite the absence of god?

-- What does the author say has "happened" to religion in last century?

-- What is the author's attitude toward secular alternatives to religion, i.e. 'progress'

-- What is the author's attitude toward the 'new evangelical Christianity'?

33

HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPL—EMENT ( Priory House, St John's Lane, London EC1M 4BX. Telephone 01-253 3000

Gazing on Jerusalem Frederic Myers, a Fellow of Trinity, recalled a visit by George Eliot to Cambridge-in May 1873 in these much quoted words:

She, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words that have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men - the words, God, Immortal-ity, Duty - pronounced, with terri-ble earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third Wêvêr, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of imper-sonal and unrecompensing Law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned to-wards me like a sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates. And when we stood at length and parted, amid that columnar circuit of the forest-trees, beneath the last twilight of starless skies, I seemed to be gazing, like Titus at Jerusalem, on vacant seats and empty halls - on a sanctuary with no Presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a God. For George Eliot, her secular moral-

ity built on the unshakable if unack-nowledged foundations of the Evange-lical Christianity of her youth in Coventry in the 1830s, the stem law of Duty may not have seemed unrecom-

: pensing. But for Myers, and many since, the insecurity of a moral code without. benefit of religion was a great trouble. tNiot surprisingly they clung to God, of to some deified mist similarly animating ànd validating. In his Auto- «

biogrehy Bertrand Russell recalled being shown the spot in the Fellows' Garden where this celebrated con-versation took_ place. He was told:

"This is where George Eliot told F. W. H.Myers that there is no God and yet we must be good; and Myers decided there is a God and yet we need not be good."

Religion has been privatized for so lone in England (not so long and so decisively maybe in Scotland and Wales) that today .it is impossible to imagine how close once was its identi-fication with public affairs. This identi-fication was not only at the level of grand ideology, the mutually suppor-tive establishments of church and state, but perhaps more crucially at that of personal psychology. From Cromwell to Gladstone the great men (and women) of England were moved by religious convictions; their faith offered a point around which their other more selfish and secular ambi-tions could rally, a moral context in which and against which all other human goals could be judged.

Of such feelings little trace is left in 1986. Religion of course is not dead Many people, perhaps most, continue to be moved by that sense of mystery, of other powers, of human decay, which social scientists with their func-tional perspective may call alienation but which just as reasonably can be regarded as the primitive . sources of religious belief. Reason may have undermined the literal truths of reli-gion, but the amoral inadequacy of the rationalist world has left more and more room for the growth of a kind of religious counter-culture. - But too often such religion is un-

reasonable. Because it no longer works with the grain of established society but against it, it is condemned to the reactionary margin. It stands against the spirit of the modern aee. The examples of its attempted in-terventions in public affairs offer un-ambiguous proof of this, whether it is a

ban on contraception or the spon-sorship of "creation science" as a godly alternative to evolution. In parts of the non-Christian world, of course, such religious fundamentalism may be reac-tionary but it is certainly not marginal. As events in Iran have demonstrated, religious tradition can serve as a more effective focus for opposition than ideologies imported from the west. On more than one occasion the Russians have run up against the constraint of being of the west and against the west at the same time.

Over the past century a variety of strategies has been adopted to cope with the decline of faith, and in particular with the dislocation of reli-gion from duty, the issue reflected upon by Myers in that Cambridge garden. The first has been to privatize morality as well, to abandon public affairs to the government of a utilita-rian ethic and to reserve the applica-tion of a morality inspired by religion to the private world. So codes of correct behaviour have come to be confined more and more to private conduct and less and less to public duty. The latter no longer appears to us as peremptory and absolute as it did to George Eliot.

This strategy is flawed for several reasons. First, the contrast between private morality and public amorality (or even in morality), the spectacle of a plunderer or pornographer with a blameless family life, have become in an open society repugnant. Second, the boundary between public and private , worlds cannot be imperme-able. . The working of an advancêd econ6my depends as much on the sobriety of saving and investment as on the chaos of consumption and spend-ing, and the working of a modern society relies on public altruism more

34

than individual gratification. These tensions between private virtues and public attitudes are well described by Professor Daniel Bell in his book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. So the good, the true and the beautiful cannot be left at home; they have to be put to work. Third, many issues of public policy are hopelessly hybrid, combining aspects capable of rational manipulation with others that are only

' open -to more , interogation. The dileriunas created by the- Spread of - AIDS are a good example.

The good, the true and the beautiful cannot be left at home; they have to be put

to work 9

A second strategy has been to create ersatz religions that attempted to re-produce the moral and emotional commitment formerly devoted to Christianity. Post-Christianity has taken many forms. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century Humanity it-self came close to being deified and a belief in the inevitability of human progress seemed a substitute for the solace of immortality. At first such ersatz religions appeared more sacred than secular, retaining pseudo-Christ-ian rites to celebrate their new faith.

This attachment to old religious forms persisted for a long time, although the almost pagan ceremonies of the French Revolution soon went out of fashion. Positivism in its original Comteian form came close to being an attempt to elevate the organizing power of Science into a new religion. And a century ago Duty (the initial capital is not simply a typographical characteristic) was for many a focus of personal loyalty that also verged on worship. This stern, austere, maybe even unrecompensing cast of mind and code of behaviour were typical both of those, like George Eliot, who had lost their Christian faith and of those, like Matthew Arnold, who clung to it.

In the present century the cause of the People has become the mbst powerful post-Christian religion. The fierce loyalty to Communism after 1917 is perhaps the best example, a loyalty that survived until Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin's purges in his secret speech to the 1956 party con-gress and subsequent revelation of the dreary bureaucratic centralism of the modern Soviet Union. This almost

religious commitment to the left was an important ingredient in much of the best intellectual and artistic. produc-tion of the 20th century. The left's secret weapon in its war with the right has not just been an ideology that is more intellectually convincing but an eschatology that is emotionally, and even spintually, more satisfying.

That satisfaction has become &itch weaker. Post-Auschwitz, post-Gulag, post-Hiroshima, post-Chernobyl maybe, it has become much more difficult to give such full-hearted alle-giance to these ersatz religions of Humanity, Progress, Science, Tech-nology, People. But unofficial reli-gion, the fundamentalist faiths, fac-tions and sects that still command a vigorous loyalty, is unreasonable and ànti-modern. No intelligent person can find much satisfaction in systems of belief which require them to deny both the truth of science and the liberal values of modern civilization. So the most powerful objects of emotional commitment, and so arguably the most significant sources of spirituality, are dishonest and flawed. Empty halls are surely better than false gods.

Official religion, certainly the Christianity of the west, is a thin anaemic affair in its public manifesta-tions however pure the private faith of believers. It is too cerebral a business, a semi-secular morality that fully accepts a rationalist world and con-fines religious feeling to the quiet and private corners of our lives. It seems perilously close to the weary pragmat-ism which seeks to segregate the private from the public, in the vague hope that a post-Christian morality will continue to guide the former and with a passive resignation that in the public arena a self-correcting utilitar-ianism will rule.

So maybe Myers' gloomy reflections in that Cambridge garden long ago were right after all. Maybe George Eliot's claim that a strict morality and attention to duty could be maintained without the benefit of religion was a self-deception. It was only possible for the Victorians bécause they still pos-sessed all the equipment of religion, its habits, its codes, its me'ntality, even if

- many of them had come to ban don their Christian faith. But a century later this equipment has rusted into uselessness.

Maybe George Eliot herself was not deceived. In a famous passage in Adam Bede after Dinah Morris' preaching in Hayslope, she discusses

Methodis-m in these words that perhaps recall her own abandoned Evangelical faith:

The after-glow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hilg, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thouehts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with a sense of a pitying, loving, infiriite -Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables in dingy streets, sleek groc-ers, sponging preachers and hypocri-tical jargon. Maybe there is an intriguing parallel

between this decay of religious enthu-siasm and the attrition of our civic religion. Of course the phrase is more commonly associated with America than Britain. Here the public values that guide and dominate our society have remained largely unexpressed. Our civic religion consists of implicit knowledge and unacknowledged values that are inherited and absorbed rather than understood. It is much easier to feel than to explain that post-Christian mentality, George Eliot's religion of duty, that strange conjunction of aristocratic obligation, bourgeois virtue and working-class aspiration with its deeply rooted national standards and common codes.

Perhaps the past tense is more appropriate than the present. That mentality had its finest but maybe its final hour in the 1940s. Dunkirk, Bletchley Park, the Beveridge report and the 1944 Education Act, the atomic bomb, the National Health Service — these were its triumphs. Forty years later we may be living only in the after-glow of that secular enthu-siasm. Maybe only now are we truly gazing, like Titus at Jerusalem, on vacant seats and empty halls.

35

EXERCISE 6: The Keegstra Case

The trials of Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra in Canada raised important issues of free speech and the power of the written word. The following newspaper accounts of the Keegstra trial in 1985 illustrate the use of evidence by Keegstra and the court, the role of the press and the role of facts in this complex case.

-- What evidence did Keegstra rely on in reaching his conclusions?

-- 'What evidence did the State use to convict Keegstra?

-- Was there, in your judgement sufficient danger to warrant a limitation on free expression of opinion?

36

Keegstra stories

made up: student By LINDA HOSSIE

Globe and Mall Reporter RED DEER, Alta. — James

Keegstra's students invented wild stories about his theories in order to antagonize the teacher who rep-laced him, a former student said yesterday.

Testifying at Mr. Keegstra's hate promotion trial, Cain Ramstead told the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench that students made up the idea that Hitler was a hero, and that the world would be a better place if he had won the Second World War.

"It seemed that Mr. (Dick) Hoeksema was not in control of his classroom," Mr. Ramstead said. "We were just saying these things to get even because ... when we read in the papers that he was to re-educate us regarding the Jewish question, that's when we got up on our high horse."

Testifying about Mr. Keegstra's actual teachings, the former stu-dent described a rapacious form of capitalism distinct from free enter-prise.

"Big C capitalists are only after power and wealth and they will use any means to get it," he said.

Choosing his answers carefully in response to questions from Crown attorney Bruce Fraser, Mr. Ram-stead said the ranks of big C capi-talists "could possibly be made up of a large number of people who have adopted the Jewish religion."

Mr. Keegstra also taught that Karl Marx was "a Jew by reli-gion," that "he probably plagia-rized a good deal" of the Commu-nist Manifesto, and that "he was very likely a member of the con-spiracy" by Jews to take over the world, Mr. Ramstead said.

Reading from notes he took in Mr. Keegstra's class, the 20-year-old former student reported hear-ing that the establishment of the first Bank of England gave Jews "absolute power over the banking system," that Jesus was not a Jew, that Jewish law appeals to the greedy and materialistic and that Jesus called Jews "hypocrites, liars, vipers and serpents."

Defence lawyer Douglas Christie had argued against admitting stu-dents' notes as evidence, insisting they were only "an approximation of Mr. Keegstra's teachings."

Mr. Rarnstead said Mr. Keegstra did not emphasize the Jewish mat-ter in all his teachings, and that the

subject of Jews did not come up until well into the first term.

Earlier, another student gave an account of Mr. Keegstra's « class that dramatically contradicted Mr. Ramstead's version.

Maria Scott testified that in Mr. Keegstra's Grade 12 social studies class, "the whole course was about the Jews," and Mr. Keegstra "talked about the Jews every day" that she attended class.

But under cross-examination by Mr. Christie, Ms Scott, who ap-peared to be near tears, admitted that she was often absent from class, and backed away from some of her earlier testimony.

When shown a pamphlet used in class, and asked if it specifically said Jesus was not a Jew, Ms Scott said no.

Mr. Christie then suggested that what Mr. Keegstra taught was that Jesus called himself a Judean rath-er than a Jew because the word Jew was not used in Biblical times.

"So to tell the world that Mr. Keegstra said that Jesus (was) not a Jew is a misrepresentation of what he said a little bit, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Ms Scott said. "So you're not really concerned

about accuracy, are you?" Mr. Christie asked.

"Yes, I am," Ms Scott replied. "Some of what you've said here,

you've also read in the media," Mr. Christie said.

"No," Ms Scott replied, arguing that she remembered the course as "being about how the Jews were going to take over the world."

After the court session was over, Mr. Christie accompanied Mr. Keegstra to the Canada Customs office in Red Deer while the former teacher picked up three copies of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a book that claims the Holocaust did not happen.

The book had been denied entry into Canada under a section of the 117-year-old Customs Tariff Act as obscene and immoral material.

The Federal Court of Appeal, in a decision on March 14, struck down the section of the act as an infringe-ment of the Charter of Rights guar-antee to freedom of expression. A Court of Queen's Bench judge ruled the decision applied to the book.

"Let's go see the nice man about the books they seized," said Mr. Christie as he strode into the Cus-toms office. "Let's see if they burned them vet."

Toronto Globe and Mail 16 April 1985

37

Keegstra version of history

clashes with accepted view RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — Since

James Keegstra's trial began on April 9, testimony (rom his former students has regularly clashed with accepted views of history.

Mr. Keegstra is being tried for wilfully promoting hatred against Jews. The charge stems from his classroom lectures between 1978 and 1982, when he was fired from the high school in nearby Eckville.

The trial is to continue today with more testimony from the 23 former pupils being called as Crown wit-nesses. '

If convicted by the Court of Queen's Bench jury, Mr. Keegstra could face up to two years in jail.

Although the degree of emphasis has differed, witnesses to date have repeatedly brought up several ref-erences and allegations involving Jewish history.

One assertion has been that far fewer Jews died in mass persecu-tions during the Second World War than the approximately six million most historians accept as the most likely number.

Another has been that Jews are not direct descendents of the Heb-rews, children of Abraham.

Instead, Mr. Keegstra's classes were told, most Jews are descend-ed from Khazars who converted to Judaism in the seventh century A.D.

The Khazar empire, located in the southeastern part of European Russia, flourished in the ninth cen-tury and had close links with the Byzantine emperors.

The Khazar ruling classes con-verted to Judaism in the middle of the eighth century, but widely ac-cepted histories do not have them becoming the major part of the Jewish population.

Evidence has also shown that Mr. Keegstra taught his students that an organization called the Illu-minati was playing a key role in a Jewish plot to take control of the world.

The Illuminati gets brief mention in the Encyclopedia Americana as an eighteenth century intellectual movement aimed at abolishing whatever seemed inconsistent with man's enlightened reason.

The philosophy had its origins in early Christian history with groups alleging they had special wisdom, either from mystic illumination by divine power or through the use of human intelligence.

The Jewish Talmud and Cabala were said by Mr. Keegstra to be important sources of beliefs for those involved in the Jewish con-spiracy.

Witnesses have said Mr. Keeg-stra told them the Talmud con-doned the robbing, cheating and killing of Christians by Jews.

The Encyclopedia Britannica does not contain such references. It defines the Talmud as a compila-tion of scholarly interpretations and annotations on Jewish oral la ws.

The Talmud is primarily a legal compilation, although it covers matters from all areas of human interest.

Each piece of Talmudic text is dissected, minutely reviewed and the interpretations recorded. Codi-fied versions emerged over the centuries; one was eventually ac-cepted as standard.

The Talmud has always been important to.Orthodox Jews, while other sects have taken a renewed interest in Talmudic studies.

There has been little time spent during the Keegstra trial on the . significance of the Cabala, although it has been mentioned on more than one occasion.

The word, which has various spellings, refers to a type of Jewish mysticism that allows adherents to approach God directly.

The major text of early Cabala was the Book of Brightness.

Toronto Globe and Mail 22 April 1985

38

Keegstra tried to spread

dislike of Jews, trial told RED DEER (CP) — Former teacher Jim

Keegstra tried to get his pupils to dislike Jews, one of his former Grade 12 students testified Monday.

The assertion by Lorriene Bogdane, 24, was the strongest testimony since the Keeg-stra's trial began April 9 that he taught that Jews were a malevolent influence in history.

"He didn't like them very much and he more or less taught us we shouldn't like them either," she said. "He believed totally in what he was teaching. He would . . . preach Billy Graham style." ,Graham, an internationally known Ameri-

can evangelist, is noted for the fervor of his sermons. •Keegstra. 50 was fired from Eckville ju-nior and senior secondary school in Decem-ber 1982, after 14 years as a teacher there, when parents complained about anti-Semitic teaching. '

Last year he was charged with wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group. The charge carries a maximum sen-tence of two years.

Bogdane, who took Grade 12 social studies in 1978-79, was the seventh student to testify in the Crown's case against Keegstra. Prose-cutor Bruce Fraser plans to call 23 students out of 27 witnesses in all.

Earlier, one of Bogdane's classmates, Trudi Roth, 23, broke down and cried when defence lawyer Doug Christie attacked the accuracy of her class notes and personal rec-ollections.

"If I'm not absolutely sure that Mr. Keeg-stra said that at one time or another I would not tell you that he did," Roth said shortly be-fore bursting into tears.

Court was recessed for about 30 minutes by Justice John MacKenzie to give Roth, mar-ried and expecting a baby, time to compose herself.

Afterward Christie's questioning was low-key, at one point alluding to the pressure Roth may have felt.

"You'd probably rather not be here, right?" he asked, getting an affirmative reply.

In cross-examination, Christie has con-tended that students' notes and recollections

don't tell the whole story of what went on in class.

He has gotten other witnesses to admit Keegstra urged students to consider other viewpoints and do research before deciding on the truth.

Roth, red-eyed after the break, agreed she heard other views in Keegstra's class and it was often hard to distinguish between Keeg-stra's opinions and those of thinkers he was discussing.

"I don't think he ever specifically said my view is this or I believe this," she said.

She also reinforced her earlier testimony that Keegstra wanted his views regurgitated on examinations and essays.

Students could make up their own minas about what Keegstra taught. But "when it came to tests and stuff we had to write down what he had taught us," she said.

Bogdane testified that Keegstra's class in-struction was mainly about wars and con-spiracies, "nothing ever good."

Jews figured prominently in the lectures, blamed by Keegstra for starting wars and triggering depressions, she said.

"I recall that he called them gutter rats and gutter snipes," said Bogdane.

Keegstra had a way of putting his point, across that "sucked you in," she said.

But Bogdane failed the course. She beget!: skipping class near the end of term becatise-"I was being ignored in his class."

39 Vancouver Sun 23 April 1985

Had to parrot what Keegstra

taught: pupil

RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — Corinna Andrew said yesterday she did not always agree with what James Keegstra taught in his social studies class, but to get good marks she felt she had to use the material in tests.

"I learned a lot of things I'd never heard be-fore," Ms Andrew told Court of Queen's Bench.

She said she wrote an essay on the Bolshevik Revolution, based on information garnered from an encyclopedia, and Mr. Keegstra gave her 55 per cent.

"He challenged us to find other sources of information, and that's what 1 did," Ms Andrew said.

The essay contained a passage blaming Czar Nicholas II for involving Russia in war with Japan. Beside it, Mr. Keegstra wrote: "Where did you get this garbage? What about British and Jewish perfidy?"

Ms Andrew said she then realized the only way to pass Mr. Keegstra's class would be to recite in her essays his classroom teachings.

Another essay she wrote on Judaism and Zio-nism in the modern world, drawn from class notes, earned her 70 per cent.

In it she concluded: "Evetywhere the Jews have been involved we have had nothing but chaos."

Mr. Keegstra is being tried by a jury on a charge of promoting hatred against Jews. He was dismissed by the high school in nearby Eckville after parents raised questions about his lessons.

Ms Andrew took Mr. Keegstra's Grade 12 social studies program during the 1980-81 school year. She was the 12th of 23 students to be called by the Crown.

She became the third witness to break down under cross-examination by defence lawyer Doug Christie, who pressed her on the use of the term Jews in her notes.

Ms Andrew insisted she copied down what was said, inserting a qualifying word, such as Bolshevik, only when Mr. Keegstra used it.

Why was Ms Andrew so sure she had not made mistakes? Mr. Christie asked.

"Because I was sitting in the class and I was listening and I wrote it down," she said.

Mr. Christie challenged her to give precise recollections.

"That was four years ago; give me a break," she shot back.

Mr. Justice John MacKenzie intervened, tel-ling Ms Andrew cross-examination was not a personal attack and she must answer the ques-tions.

But by then the petite 22-year-old was fighting back tears. Moments later Judge MacKenzie called a 10-minute recess.

Last week, Trudi Roth forced a 30-minute recess when she buckled under Mr. Christie's questions. Another student, Marla Scott, sniffled quietly during her cross-examination but pressed on.

Ms Andrew said Mr. Keegstra was friendly and patient in class, but she did not agree with a lot of the things she put down in her notes.

Toronto Globe and Mail 23 April 1985

40

'Jews pulled strings,' class notes said RED DEER, Alta. (CP) —

Notes taken in James Keeg-stra's high school social studies class indicated that Jews, working behind the scenes, led uprisings, started wars and dominated govern-ments around the world, a Court of Queen's Bench jury was told yesterday.

Charles Daniel read from his class notes while testify-ing at the hate-promotion trial of his former teacher.

"Jews were always behind the scenes and pulled the strings," Mr. Daniel read from his class notes. "Their puppets did all the work."

The former Grade 12 hon-ors student at Eckville High School said Mr. Keegstra told the class that Jews are not a race but a religous sect, unconnected to biblical Heb-rews.

"About 99 per cent of Jews ' today could not trace their ' bloodlines back to Abra-ham," Mr. Daniel's notes read.

• Mr. Keegstra, fired from his position at the high school, is being tried on a charge of wilfully promoting hatred against Jews.

Mr. Daniel said the class was told most modern Jews are descended from Mongol Turks who lived in southern Russia. Others adopted Ju-daism in order to participate in an alleged Jewish conspir-acy to rule the world.

In one test, Mr. Daniel wrote that Jews became the real rulers of Europe after 1815.

In answer to another ques-tion, he wrote that Jews wanted to "live off the sweat

of others" by lending money at exorbitant rates.

Mr. Daniel, now 22, took Mr. Keegstra's social studies course in 1980-81, earning a final mark of 83 per cent.

He said Mr. Keegstra told the class that Hitler's rise was fostered by the Jews so he would deport German Jews to Palestine. But Hitler was forced to put them in concentration camps after the Zionists declared war on him.

The massacre of six mil-lion Jews was a propaganda hoax designed to gain sym-pathy for Jews, Mr. Daniel quoted his former teacher as saying.

As well, he said, students were told the Palestine Lib-eration Organization was not a terrorist organization, simply a group fighting to regain its land.

Mr. Daniel was sometimes at odds with his teacher.

In an essay on Bolshevism, Mr. Daniel used a Grade 11 textbook for information. Although Mr. Keegstra gave a mark of 75 per cent, he peppered the paper with comments, mostly about the source material.

Mr. Keegstra wrote that the October Manifesto of 1905, which demanded re-forms from the Czarist goy-ernment, was "the work of Bolshevik Jews," and he questioned Mr. Daniel's account of the Black Sunday massacre of Russian demon-strators.

"According to first-hand witnesses, all were Jews and intellectuals," Mr. Keegstra wrote.

Toronto Globe and Mail 2 May 1985

41

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1985 NATIONAL

Lawyer decries restriction of speech By KEVIN COX

Globe and Mail Reporter

CALGARY — The fans are humming, the sole is steaming and the prawns are being taken out of the fridge as Douglas Christie sets out to shake every-one in the Calgary seafood res-taurant out of their comfortable dinnertime mood.

"Canada has become one great big internment camp — a country that prosecutes people for their opinions," says the lawyer who represented Ernst Zundel and is now defending former school teacher James Keegstra on a charge of promoting hatred against Jews.

He tu rns to two reporters tak-ing notes at the back of the res-taurant and decries the press, which widely reported the trial and conviction of Mr. Zundel on charges of inciting racial hatred.

It is one of Mr. Christie's few

speaking engagements while defending Mr. Keegstra.

The media, he says, "have the attitude of piranhas; they have crucified so many people in this country before they ever came to trial."

Mr. Christie then turns on his audience of about 30 people, who have paid $20 for the meal and another $1 to join the King Fisher Adventurers Society. •

He says he is angry that people won't spe,ak out to protect free speech. Without a public outcry ,. he says, people will continue to be prosecuted for their views.

He tells the diners they could all afford to contribute $1,000 for a freedom-of-speech fund to lobby for changes to the laws.

"But what will you do? You will go home from here and you will do nothing."

Calgary civil liberties lawyer Sheldon Chumir asks Mr. Christie if he believes there were gas

chambers to exterminate Jews in concentration camps in Nazi Gerrnany.

"I don't get into debates about my personal opinions," Mr. Christie says, "because we don't live in a society that is sufficient-ly free to accept expression of opinions."

He cites the case of Duncan McKillop, former head of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, who left the organization after saying he didn't believe six mil-lion Jews were killed in the Holo-caust.

"I also do not intend to give my views so that they might be twist-ed, distorted and intended to defame me for uttering them by the gentleman to your right (a Globe and Mail reporter)."

Mr. Chumir then asks Mr. Christie why he stayed with Mr. Zundel, sang songs around his piano and socialized with him if he didn't share his views.

Douglas Christie "I have a great deal more tole-

rance than most people," Mr. Christie replies, staring coldly at Mr. Chumir. "I sing and eat with many people. That doesn't mean I have to like them."

42

Invasion scenario scared' student, Keegstra trial told

RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — Lo-rene Baxter said yesterday she was not sure whether James Keegstra actually predicted a Soviet invasion of Canada in a lecture to her Grade 9 social studies class.

"I can't remember if he said it could happen or it would happen," Miss Baxter said under cross-examination from defence lawyer Douglas Christie.

But the poised 21-year-old said she did remember that Mr. Keeg-stra's comments frightened her.

Miss Baxter was testifying at Mr. Keegstra's trial on a charge of wil-fully promoting hatred against Jews. The charge covers several years of his career as a teacher at a high school in Eckville, 60 kilo-metres west of Red Deer, to the time he was fired in late 1982.

Miss Baxter had told the Court of Queen's Bench on Thursday that Mr. Keegstra told her class that Russian invaders would establish a 9 p.m. curfew and shoot anyone caught out after that hour. Miss Baxter said she understood that invasion was imminent and, crying, told her mother.

But Mr. Christie suggested yes-terday that she had misunderstood, and that Mr. Keegstra was actually speculating on what could happen under Russian occupation.

He asked why she did not seek an explanation from Mr. Keegstra at the time.

"I was scared," She replied. Miss Baxter, who also took

Grade 12 social studies from Mr. Keegstra in 1981-82, remained composed as Mr. Christie picked holes in her testimony. Three other women have burst into tears under his questioning.

Mr. Christie pointed out that Miss Baxter told the preliminary hearing last June that the curfew incident occurred in Grade 10, not Grade 9.

The young woman replied she was mistaken at the hearing and had since had time to think.

Mr. Christie pointed out other• inconsistencies with her earlier

testimony, including when she told the hearing in June that her Grade 12 notes made up only about 20 per cent of what Mr. Keegstra had said in class.

The Crown has called 16 witness-es so far. Mr. Christie has contend-ed with all of them that their class

notes do not tell the whole story of what Mr. Keegstra taught. The prosecution considers the notes a written record of the former teach-er's lectures about an alleged Je-wish conspiracy to control the world.

Miss Baxter said yesterday she tried to copy down everything Mr. Keegstra said, but she agreed that she may have missed some points.

She would not admit, however, that her notes might include mis-takes that changed the meaning of what Mr. Keegstra said. If it is written in the notes, then Mr. Keeg-stra said it, Miss Baxter said.

"I'm suggesting that lots might be in your notes that changed Mr. Keegstra's meaning drastically," Mr. Christie said.

"You'll have to find some," Miss Baxter said.

"I will," Mr. Christie said. The trial also heard from Miss

Baxter's classmate, David Acker-man, who said: Mr. Keegstra stopped him fronn esing a history book for an essay on Judaism, then commented in a note on the essay that he should read other histori-ans.

Mr. Ackerman, who. failed Mr. Keegstra's course, said he planned to use a library book that contra-dicted some of Mr. Keegstra's classroom teachings.

But he said Mr. Keegstra shot down the idea, saying the author was Jewish and the book would therefore be an inappropriate source for an essay on the jewish conspiracy.

So Mr. Ackerman, now 21, decid-ed to use his class notes.

"It was a lot easier and probably would receive a better mark," he said.

The essay earned a grade of 75 per cent. Mr. Ackerman read it in court in a halting voice, often strug-gling over pronunciations.

Among other things, it traced a leading rote for Jews in the French and Russian revolutions and stated that the goal of Judaism was. to destroy Christianity and create a single world government.

In comments on the essay, Mr. Keegstra said that "leading histori-ans" do not recognize this view. He said Mr. Ackerman should read some of them to see what they had to say.

Toronto Globe

and Mail 4 May 1985

43

Firing Keegstra a good thing, ex-student says

RED DEER, Alta. (CP) — David Ackerman did some back-pedalling under crass-examina-tion yesterday, but insisted it was a good thing former teacher Jamés Keegstra was fired.

The former Keegstra student, testifying be-fore a Court of Queen's Bench jury, denied a suggestion by the defence that he was motivated by his father's dislike for Mr. Keegstra.

Lawyer Doug Christie said the young man's father became angry after his son showed him an essay on Judaism, which suggested the reli-gion was the source of a conspiracy to control the world.

Mr. Ackerman, however, said he recalled lit-tle about his father's complaint to the board of education.

Mr. Keegstra, 50, is being tried on a charge of wilfully promoting hatred against Jews. He was fired by the nearby Eckville High School in late 1982, after parents complained about the content of some of his lectures.

"Do you feel it was right Mr. Keegstra was fired?" Mr. Christie asked Mr. Ackerrnan as the trial entered its fifth week.

"Yes," Mr. Ackerman replied. Several students who testified previously, and

another who took the stand after Mr. Ackerman, have referred to Mr. Keegstra as a good teach-er.

"You feel obliged to prove Mr. Keegstra's guilt, don't you?" Mr. Christie asked Mr. Acker-man after another exchange.

Mr. Ackerman told the 10-man, two-woman jury he could not remember when Mr. Keeg-stra's Grade 12 social studies course ended or whether he passed.

But he stuck to his recollection that Mr. Keeg-stra warned him against using a particular book as source material for an essay on Judaism, because the author was Jewish and therefore biased.

The former Keegstra pupil, now studying architecture in Calgary, was questioned repeat-edly by Mr. Christie on the accuracy of his remembrances and notes.

Mr. Ackerman said he recalled handing in the contentious essay on Judaism near the end of the course, either April or May of 1982.

But Mr. Christie said the course had been taught on a semester basis that year and actual-ly ended in January, 1982.

"I'm not too sure," admitted Mr. Ackertnan. Mr. Christie, whose voice rarely rose above a

whisper in the almost empty 110-seat courtroom, then asked Mr. Ackerman about a statement he made earlier to the Crown that he had failed Mr. Keegstra's class.

The defence lawyer asserted that in fact Mr. Ackerrnan had passed with a 58-per-cent aver-age.

Mr. Christie suggested Mr. Ackerman, in his testimony Friday, wanted to leave the impres-sion he had failed because he couldn't absorb Mr. Keegstra's teachings.

But Mr. Ackerman said he genuinely had not remembered he had passed.

He said he had not found Mr. Keegstra's class difficult.

"It was just confusing."

Toronto Globe and Mail 7 May 1985

44

\e

Conclusion

This concludes the Introductory Lesson. In Volume Two of the Curriculum are the readings which comprise the substance of the course. As the Table of Contents indicates, the readings are organized in three (3) main Units, which in turn are sub-divided into three or four Sections with more specific themes.

Each main Unit has an "implicit internal integrity", meaning it holds together in terms of its theme and in terms of the order or sequence in which the readings appear. It is recommended, therefore, that one should proceed from beginning to end within each of the three main Units. Having noted this, it is still possible, perhaps even more enjoyable, to skip around within the Units and work on those readings which seem most interesting.

While there is also a certain implicit sequence to the ordering of the three main Units, it is perfectly reasonable to start with either Units One, Two, or Three after completion of this Introductory Lesson. Unit One, On Being Human, is the most general of the three, covering as it does the fundamentals of the issues addressed in the Curriculum. As such, it would seem to make the most sense to begin with the readings in Unit One and proceed through to the end.

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,LC Readings in critical thought 5219 and cultural literacy. R4 1987 v.1

Readings in Critical Thought and Cultural Literacy

This Humanities Curriculum is a collection of edited readings from classic and contemporary sources for adult students whose formal education has been interrupted or cut short. The readings comprise an introduction to a wide range of topics and themes central to both the humanities and to living in contemporary society which, taken together, can serve to enhance critical thinking abilities and cultural literacy. The focus is on reading primary sources, ranging in time and topic from Socrates to Skinner, to provoke discussion, writing and reasoned analysis, under the direction of a tutor/instructor.

Institute for the Humanities Simon Fraser University

ISBN 0-86491-073-8