Something on my Mind: Of Greyhounds and Plastic Straws

Two newsworthy tidbits in the last couple of months have intrigued me, and I'm sure they have intrigued you, too. Believe it or not, I will show an actual link between them.

Greyhounds (as in the bus, not the dog): The Greyhound bus line that has serviced hamlets, villages, towns , cities, and points in between, all over Canada for years, is shutting down permanently within months. That will create a difficult situation for those who work for Greyhound and for those who make use of Greyhound.

This shift has been in the works for years, so it's not like no one saw it coming.

The situation is serious, when I think of those "employed" by Greyhound and those who have "enjoyed" Greyhound. Losing one's job is no joke; I have experienced it myself. And losing one's access to a necessary transportation service is nothing short of a disaster, especially when there is no obvious replacement in the works.

There are replacement ideas floating around, but nothing is in concrete yet. Ideas are necessary, but these ideas need wheels. The opportunity is there, to be sure, but someone needs to rise to the occasion.

Greyhound had noticed that there are changing ridership patterns over the years, and thus they were losing money, big time. That makes sense to me, in a free enterprise context. After all, it's a business, not a charity. I suggest they should have cut down the routes, just not cut them out.

Plastic Straws. This commodity is very different from the Greyhound dilemma. In short, there is a groundswell movement to ban plastic straws from eateries.

I get it that plastic straws are the latest environmental demon, just like plastic bags were before them. I get it that they don't break down like, say, paper, and that they have filled both landfills and waterways for years. This is pretty clear-cut evidence to the damage hat throwaway plastic can do.

That move appears to be responsible stewardship, though it may not be more than trendy environmentalism. I don't know for sure and maybe no one does. Surely there can be some use for plastic straws than to just simply ban them.

As for Greyhound, there will be some serious layoffs somewhere, including those manufacturing, marketing, and maintaining the buses, in addition to the front line workers. But with those associated with plastic straws, not quite so much.

In either instance, I humbly suggest that, in the true entrepreneurial spirit, here are two gift horses (Maurice: there is no "horse" in the meaning, and "gift" really means "opportunity").

Greyhound is a Canadian institution, with an established client base and proven routes. Some enterprising person could easily move in and re-connect with communities scattered across the nation. Maybe changing the schedule (not so frequent) and the bus style itself (not so huge) would help.

And as for the straws, if the peer pressure is to get rid of all straws over the next few years succeeds, I suggest we consider creative recycling. Surely someone can come up with a product that has plastic straws as a component. Dropping them off at the local recycling depot and getting them converted them into something productive would be a good place to start.

If used tires can be converted into playground padding, surely straws can be transformed into insulation, piping, siding, window frames, and such. Plastic has so many positive uses.

Either way, the death of one vision can be the birth of a new one. That's the spirit of free enterprise and that's how we need to react to these latest challenges

Something on my Mind: If I were the Education Minister (4)

They say that Canadian history is very bland and boring. Maybe the teachers were bland and boring, or the sources (books, magazines, DVDs, the press, course work) were.

But, I assure you, history,Canadian or otherwise, is neither bland nor boring

And that may be the reason why history, having been an erstwhile core subject, is being relegated to the sideline of school curriculum. I am not completely aware of what has replaced it, but I fear the worst: facts slip into feelings, dates are minimalized, present cultural norms are used to re-interpret (then re-invent) the past--a past which is no longer taught as vital to our present and certainly not to the future.

Is that too broad a brush?

A legitimate history course in any school setting—be it public, private, or home—should be characterized by the following core content:

--the history of political movements, trends, and philosophies; this would include seeing how the current ebbs and flows are rooted in the past;

--the history of nations, which would include the origins of race, language, culture, and overall ethnicity; this would end up being a celebration of our differences, though it would also show why multiculturalism does not work;

-- the history of different economic systems, both good and bad; this course would show why certain systems succeed (like free markets) and why others fail, and will always fail, no matter how dressed up they get as socialists markets;

--the history of religion and the quest for philosop;hy this could also include a thorough study on character, morality, and ethics, and how it is related to foundational natural law;

--the history of our legal system, as well as other legal systems, including the discovery the intriguing basis for them all; it would be a revelation, if you dared (and cared), to pursue the ultimate source of a just legal system.

The above is only a starting point. Granted, there are reams of books, and, by extension, curricula, that are out there, but too many of the good ones have been shut out of the public square. I'm not sure why, but I have my suspicions.

(Note: that's why Critical Thinking [as a course] must be introduced as soon as possible; it allows the ability to analyze all sources of information. It really should form the foundation of all new courses.)

Over forty-five years ago, I finished grade 12 (class of '72, for those who like precise dates). I recall very little of what I learned, although I do remember that my History 12 teacher, Mrs. G, did not like my wisecracks from the back of the class.

As a former teacher myself, I get it now, though back then I thought I was funny, and so did many of my peers (and some of them were pretty cute).

I have have had to fill in the missing gaps over the years, thanks to many different writer-historians. You can draw from many sources through many mediums. I just happen to like the book option.

They say that if we don't learn from the past we're bound to repeat it. That sounds ominous, particularly when we don't even know (and may not even care) what happened in the past.

Something ion my Mind: If I Were the Education Minister (3)

I may be a year or two or ten years off with this latest idea. That is, this column marks the third of four school subjects that I think should be introduced in some form of schooling, be it public, private, or home.

It takes years, not weeks, to get everything ready for the new school year. There are books to write, courses to develop, material to test. I get that; I write this knowing things won't turn around right away.

I wanted to call it "Use Yours Brains 101," or "Think, Man, Think." or "The Science of Common Sense for Dummies." But I'll stick simply with "Critical Thinking."

Why this has to be a core or even a non-core subject, I'll never know. And why it has to be limited to school, again, I don't know. In other words, shouldn't this thinking be part of our daily lives?It should be an exercise like eating, laughing, or breathing, do we?

What I do know is that there is a dearth of bonafide critical thinking in the world today. We have "critics" and we have "thinkers," but those are not the same as "critical thinkers." No, those folks who are critical are usually destructive (rather than constructive), though there is a place for the latter. And most people who think fall more along the academic lines (which we need, to be sure); they're just not necessarily life thinkers, or out-of-the-box thinkers or common sense thinkers.

The art of critical thinking is made up of many elements, including resistance to not being swayed by the peer pressure of popular culture. It also means it pulls its information from various sources, not solely from its own bias pool or social media impulses.

Critical thinking goes well beyond the superficial information sources and gets to the bottom of things. It analyzes and dissects information and comes to a rational conclusion.

There is an element of trust required of every critical thinker. One needs to know which sources can be trusted and which ones can't. Then there is the matter of so-called fake news/information, and how to discern truth from error, rather than accept everything at face value.

I love theology and would love to show how it fits in here, but I shan't. That's a shame, of course, because there is so little critical thinking when it comes to the study of anything to do with God, with so much consequent misinformation.

Among the usual academic disciplines, we all need to apply these critical thinking skills to biology, philosophy, anthropology, cosmology, sociology, among others. And it likewise needs to be applied to practical matters: finances, nutrition, agriculture, and the list goes on. If we dug deeper, we would all be shocked at what lies we have bought into and what truth we're missing.

Critical thinking in any context (that is, schooling and beyond) would likely turn many of our assumptions on their respective heads. And "assumption" is likely the key word here: We just assume certain things are true. Perhaps we have not taken time out to think things through. Or perhaps our sources are from popular figures that we admire.

My suggestion for any schooling environment would be to always have a critical thinking component to each subject. There could be two forms: a. it would be part and parcel of most classes in the shape of analysis, criticism, even debate; and/or b. it would be an actual course, or at least the greater part of one.

Within such a course, the lives of great critical thinkers would be examined, the principles and skills to critical thinking would be employed, with real life examples.

We will be a better, safer society if we could pause and think through ALL information we receive on a daily basis—not just in a classroom setting.

I can see it now: Critical Thinking 101, class of 2023.