Cops and kids share storytime at east end school

 

By Kevin Wood, News Staff

Stoney Creek News

Dec 22, 2010

  Parents and passers-by could be forgiven for being a little concerned when they saw four police cars parked in front of Hillcrest Public School in the Oriole Crescent- Melvin Avenue neighbourhood in East Hamilton on the morning of Dec. 9.

Inside the school library, five Hamilton police officers planned their next move and checked their gear to be sure that in addition to the usual sidearms, body armor, handcuffs, batons, tasers and radios they had the special equipment needed for that morning’s assignment: Pictures books and candy canes. 

The officers of C squad at the Hamilton Police Service’s Division 2 station weren’t there to read anyone their rights, they were there to read stories to the students.

Since February 2007, subject to the need for their services elsewhere on more serious matters, police officers from the King Street East station have been coming to the school twice a month in groups of up to eight to spend some time reading to students in kindergarten through Grade 3.
Study after study has shown that reading to children at a young age helps them learn to read, but Constable Ryan Clarke says encouraging literacy is secondary; the main point of the program is to build a positive relationship with the children. Clarke organizes the reading program in cooperation with Hillcrest School l e a r n i n g  r e s o u r c e teacher Cynthia Dobrik.
The program was begun by Hillcrest principal Chuck Buttle, who has since retired, and his friend Glen Bullock, staff sergeant for C squad at Division 2. It has proved popular with both students and police officers.
“Ryan always takes the first graders, they’re his buddies,” says Dobrik, discussing class assignments with the officers before morning bell rings.
“We want them to learn that they don’t have to be in trouble to talk to a police officer, that there doesn’t have to be something bad happening for them to talk to a cop,” said Clarke.
Officers usually read to the students in their classrooms for about 20 minutes and then hold a brief question and answer session or talk to the kids about police related topics such as how and when to call 911 and how to stay safe.
Sgt. Lynda Sohal said it’s about establishing a rapport with the kids.
“It’s all about building relationships and breaking down barriers.
This gives the kids a chance to see police in a positive light,” said Sohal.
“It’s good. When you give a presentation later on, they know you and they’re comfortable with you,” said Const. Michelle Kwok.
Several of the officers mentioned having had kids they had read to at the school stop to say hello to them by name on the street.
C l a r k e acknowledges that presenting this kind of program is challenging in a higher crime area like Hamilton’s east end, where contact with the police isn’t always positive, but says that is what makes it so important and rewarding.
“We’re teaching them not to fear cops, that we’re their friends,” said Clarke.

Too much chatter means too little thought, Oe says

From The Daily Yomiuri, March 15, 2004

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

While Japanese cultural exports in the form of pop music, manga and anime may be gaining ground abroad, novelist and Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe says Japan's cultural power is waning as true critical thought drowns in a sea of polite conversation.

Oe argued in a March 5 speech in English at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho, Tokyo, that the relentless growth in the publication of interviews, panel discussions and collections of speeches threatens to supplant written intellectual discourse and is leading to the cultural impoverishment of Japan.

A prolific novelist and noted activist, Oe won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994 and is widely considered to be one of the leading intellectual figures in the nation.

In his speech, Oe referred to the work of U.S. scholars Edward Said and Masao Miyoshi in the early 1990s, when the two theorized that while bubble-era Japan was a dominant economic power, the nation's contemporary verbal culture was "austere, even impoverished, dominated by talk shows, comic books and relentless conferences and panel discussions."

Oe commented that while Japan's economic fortunes had since ebbed, Said and Miyoshi's comments on the state of the nation's culture were an accurate reflection on the present situation. He added that the current recession is casting a further shadow as companies cut back spending on cultural activities.

Japan, more than other nations, faces a crisis of written culture due to the relentless publication of ideas presented in a conversational mode. This conversational style of communication, which seeks compromise, conformity and consensus, is replacing real intellectual critical discourse, Oe said. He pointed out that there are no longer any national magazines catering to an intellectual audience, and that the remaining outlet for criticism--the newspaper book review--has become shorter and seems to include less and less analysis of theme, methodology and style.

"Japanese writing style has been undergoing a radical change lately, and whether the change is a cause or an effect, conversationalism is the dominant mode," Oe said. Where once writers felt the need to back up their assertions with facts and logical argument, he said, conversational writing assumes certain level of persuasive consensus. When confronted with disagreement in a conversation, one can apologize or ignore it, said Oe.

The superficiality and celebrity culture engendered by this conversationalism in publishing is beginning to infect other areas of culture and even politics, Oe contended, citing the "frantic support" enjoyed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi when he first took office on the basis of structural reform slogans that offered little substance.

The result of the "washing away" of Japan's intellectuals by this flood of conversation is that Japanese no longer give serious thought to how the world should be or to the creation of ideas. The kind of serious discourse that dominated Japanese intellectual life in the immediate postwar period has disappeared, Oe said, and it may never return.

Japan today is dependent on the West for cultural input, soaking up Western culture, but exerting little influence in return, he said. Japanese pop culture may be a leading export commodity, but Pokemon and Hikaru Utada are unlikely to change the way people around the world think, in the way Oe said critics such as Said and Noam Chomsky have.

Oe said the nation must nurture an intellectual leadership and an audience that will not circumvent the logicality of written discourse, if the current situation is to be rectified.

Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun

Baker praises Japan's Iraq efforts

News story from the Daily Yomiuri, December 5, 2003

By Kevin Wood 
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker said Thursday the relationship between his country and Japan is "the best it has ever been."
In a luncheon speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, the 78-year-old Baker encouraged Japan to take its "rightful place as a great nation," but warned that with such a role come great responsibilities and implied that a willingness to project a nation's power overseas, including through the dispatch of military personnel, was part of fulfilling those responsibilities.
Beginning his remarks by offering condolences for the deaths of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq, Baker said, "We share the grief of the families and the Japanese people on the loss of these two brave public servants."
He praised the steps the government has taken thus far in support of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism and reconstruction effort in Iraq, and enumerated the U.S. successes in the rebuilding of Iraq.
He also addressed Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, calling Japan "a great superpower" and reaffirming U.S. support for the effort and his personal belief that the prime minister was "up to the challenge" of leading the nation to a major role on the world stage.
Responding to questions about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Tokyo, Baker said, "Terrorism knows no boundaries." He said no nation was safe, but ultimately the best defense was strength and the best course for Japan was to join with other nations to show terrorists their attacks would not go unanswered.
The key political significance of Japan's dispatch of Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, regardless of the number, was that it symbolized the "unity of free peoples to face down terror." He said such a dispatch would demonstrate Japan's sense of responsibility as great nation and would be an expression of national determination for the country to "participate fully and freely in the cause of peace and stability."
The U.S. ambassador and former White House chief of staff under U.S. President Ronald Reagan said the global realignment of U.S. military forces currently being considered could lead to a reduction in U.S. troops in Japan. Whether any changes in the deployment of U.S. forces in Asia would involve reducing the number of personnel stationed in Okinawa prefecture or relocating them elsewhere in Japan was not yet know, he said.
The one thing Baker said he could be sure of was that, "nothing we do will diminish our commitment to the security of Japan. "
Baker reiterated the U.S. contention that evidence prior to the invasion of Iraq strongly indicated the presence of weapons of mass destruction, saying that the failure of the United States to find any WMD was an indication of the skill of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussien's regime at concealing such weapons, not proof the weapons did not exist.
Asked if the United States intended to take any action on WMD possessed by Israel in its efforts to eliminate WMD in the Middle East, Baker said Israel's possession of nuclear weapons was considered an accomplished fact and that his greatest worry was the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of the "politically unstable regime" in North Korea.
"An accident is one thing, but an accident with a pocketful of nuclear bombs is something else," he said. Such an accident could take many forms from an error in orders by a junior officer in the demilitarized zone to a deteriorating political situation prompting a preemptive strike.