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Rants

On occasion--OK, on too many occasions--I have been known to break into a "rant" about the world around me.

The focus of my rants might range from the changing role of the professor as teacher, to the ongoing vestiges of colonialism. They may focus on pop culture such as Jerry Springer and the explosion of lotteries and casinos, to extremely serious societal issues such as young males engaging in violence and the roots of terrorism.

Click on the links below to read some of these thoughts.

  • A Not So Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Class

    By Donald M. Taylor

    It’s all over the news these days to the point that it hangs over the city like an invisible smog. The most recent was a lone gunman entering a junior college in my city on a shooting spree; two dead, several wounded, friends and families in grieving disbelief, and a city, province and country in quiet panic, constantly looking over their shoulder. And for some reason, outsiders point to my city as being particularly prone to such tragedies. We have certainly had our infamous share involving school contexts, but no one seriously believes that my city is tragedy prone in this way.
      

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  • Affirming the Meaning of Routine Tasks

    By Donald M. Taylor

    Almost six months following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, I walked into my class of two hundred sophomore students, carrying a large empty box. Essays were due today and my brown cardboard box was the receptacle for their creative endeavors.
     

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  • Hockey is our Game

    By Donald M. Taylor

    Ice hockey is Canada’s game, it is our game, it is my game. That was true in the day, but not any more. Oh ya, we win our share of Olympic gold medals and world championships in ice hockey, but these days every team in the best league in the world is populated with Canadians, Americans, Russians, Swedes, Checks, Fins, and on and on. Still, ask any true-blooded Canadian and you would think these other countries are “posers” who simply stole the game we own. Ask me about the game and I will bore you with tales of honing my skills as a child for hours on an outdoor rink in minus twenty degree weather. I will droan on with hockey anecdotes involving on-ice fights, getting hit with pucks and being stitched up in the dressing room so as to resume playing, and endless bus rides throughout the vast Canadian hinterland to play against rival towns and cities. And I will finally, like all Canadians, end up elevating the game to the ultimate symbol of Canadian identity. It is a fast, tough, team game played in the dead of winter, across a vast desolate landscape—what could be more Canadian than that eh?
     

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  • Lessons from a Weekend of Video Watching

    By Donald M. Taylor

    I was beginning to feel my age. Here I was coaching these 45 teenage men in the fine art of licensed violence that is the essence of modern-day football, but with each practice the generation gap was becoming more obvious. Every session ended with the entire team, coaches included, taking the traditional twenty-minute slow jog around the football field as a form of warm-down.  It was here that one really had an opportunity to understand the preoccupations of these young men. At times I wondered if any topic other than women was taboo, but surprisingly these young men would, in the course of so many practices, cover everything from the mundane to the profound.

     

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  • Roland’s Castle

    By Donald M. Taylor

    None of this can be appreciated without knowing the context. Never mind the distal context involving travels exactly half way round the world and exactly the inverse of my hemisphere, and 180 degree difference in temperature. It is the proximal context that counts here. The course began in below zero weather at remote Inuit Village A on Day 1. On Day 3, I left that course in full swing and boarded an Air Inuit, Twin Otter, plane to way below zero Village B, via Villages V, W, X, Y and Z. A day of presentations in Village B and the plan is to awake the next morning and plane back to Village A where the course can be picked up and continued as if there had been no break in the action.
     

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  • Social Comparison Theory, Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer: No Redeeming Social Value

    By Donald M. Taylor

    Everybody watches them, everybody quotes them. It’s all in fun they say, nobody takes them seriously. I say they need to be taken seriously, they are not benignly banal, they are extremely dangerous. I know, I know, Oprah has changed the format of her show. No more weirdoes, only eating right, staying fit, and reading. But she started it all and it is her legacy that has led to Jerry Springer. And, in case I am not clear about how I really feel: every one of these shows is a societal menace. 

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  • Teen Violence: Beyond Copycat Atrocities

    By Donald M. Taylor

    The headlines are becoming all too familiar: a young man enters his high school dressed in clothes that serve to make a social statement and all too often allow for the concealment of weapons, and then proceeds to kill fellow students at point blank. Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; Thornton, Alberta; and Montreal, Quebec; have all become famous for the wrong reason. What the families, and indeed the entire communities, have faced confronting their own shock and grief cannot be repaid, and much has been lost when because of media attention, their towns are renown. Like many others, I have been bewildered about what these towns have experienced. In particular I puzzle over two issues: first, the violent nature of the acts perpetrated by young men, who, on the surface at least, appear to be relatively normal, living in communities not known for their history of violence. Second, the avalanche of media attention that extends beyond reason in terms of depth and breadth of coverage.

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  • University Teaching: Let's Not Destroy the Student-Teacher Relationship

    By Donald M. Taylor

    I remember that first day with a dream-like vividness —give me a break, that was thirty years ago. So there I was, a twenty-five year old with a Ph.D. not 48 hours old, walking tentatively through the main gates of McGill University, my new academic home. I had no idea where the psychology department was, let alone thoughts of laboratories, committee meetings and the most intimidating of all, tenure. I veered right through the gates and was confronted with what to me was some medieval excuse for a building. Later I would learn to appreciate the historical elegance and uniqueness of where physics calls home, but at that moment my eyes were drawn to a plaque on a corner stone of the building. Against a deep red background the gold lettering described the remarkable accomplishments of Ernest Rutherford whose original research on the atom was conducted in that very building. Upon reading, this renowned scientist came to life. Having no clue about him as a person, I fantasized a bespectacled very ordinary guy poking around a laboratory, mind racing a mile a minute, and filled with a passion to understand the universe he was a part of. Those thoughts inspired me. My complete intimidation at the prospect of being the new social psychologist at McGill was replaced with a sense that if little Ernie could thrive here, hey why can't I?
     

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  • Writing Essays in School: A Bizarre Implicit Culture

    By Donald M. Taylor

    From early on in the education process, students are confronted with the panic of having to produce an essay. In elementary school it takes the form of a single paragraph, which, in the mind of the young student, requires them to muster up every single word they know. But by high school four and five pages of text might be required, culminating at university where fifteen and twenty page essays are common. Writing essays then is central to the educational experience.

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