6 - Friday, July 15, 1994 - North Shore News ) RES isi? AN ay SAS x ORS WSEAS ih EEE LET Le ELE LIES Making the grade S OF September children attending public schoo! in Grades 4 through 12 will receive mandatory letter grades on their report cards. Students in kindergarten to Grade 7 will also receive structured written reports, which must follow specific requirements out- lined in the School Act for each grade level. Education Minister Art Charbonneau announced the return to a system that had served schoel children, their parents and teachers well until competition and the notion of making the grade took on nasty connotations. Inevitably when it came to the reality of the anecdotal report card, parents and stu- dents found them next to useless in providing @ progress report on attainments made and future challenges yet to be met. - Assessments were cloaked in spongy ter- minology and failed to provide an indication of how a child was progressing in terms of the larger context of grade standards. The so-called progressive nature of anec- dotal assessment actually fet down students who went on to face the harder reaiities of post-secondary education where percentages and marks are the hard-earned rules of mea- sure. Charbonneau has been trumpeting the return to a former standard of clarity in school report cards as an indication of inspired educational reform. That’s a bit dishonest. Many parents have been consistently critical of the anecdotal report cards from the time of their inception. The government is simply responding to public demand. The Education Ministry, however, deserves an A for having the will to act. AirCare should rid road of real polluters Dear Editor: Can someone explain to me why newer automobiles (three to five years old) require AirCare testing, while trucks and buses don’t? The AirCare program is an excellent, progressive, responsible means of combating pollution, and T support it wholeheartedly. However, I strongly suspect that newer-model cars are required to be tested, solely to pay for the lished each Wednesday, Friday North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mall Salas Product Agreement No. 0087238. Mailing rates je on request. Submi are but we cannot accept responsibility tor unsolicited lucing manuscripts and pictures which be accompaniad by a stampad, addressed matozat incl should and AirCare program. I drive a 1988 (Canadian-built) family van, and had it tested by AirCare a couple of months ago. The test results indicated extremely low readings, signifi- cantly lower than AirCare stan- dards. I now must bring our second family car in for testing, a 1993 model, and I’m certain that the possibility of not meeting AirCare’s requirements is nil. Display Advertising 980-0511 Distribution Hf sAirCare's mandate is to reduce pollution in the Lower Mainland, why waste time and money (mine) testing newer model automobiles, and allowing large trucks and buses to continue spew- ing vast quantities of pollutants into the air? Why penalize the innocent and allow the real polluters to continue polluting? James Prunty West Vancouver 986-1337 Real Estate Advertising 985-6982 Subscriptions Classified Advertising 986-6222 Fax Newsroom 1139 Lonsdale Avenue North Vancouver B.C. V7M 2H4 North Shore Managed 985-2131 Administration MEMBER cn, SINS VAN SDA DIVISION 61,582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) Fa Sah de_.Rene ect ataAS A As usenrseniaes LI Entire contents © 1994 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. Pondering the question of SITTING THRCUGH West Vancouver's public hearing this week on the deal cut with BC Rail over the Seaview Welk property, I thought of Tolstoy. Sure you did, you pretentious owl, you sneer. What's Tolstoy got to do with our quaint tte town? Well, such a well-educated audi- ence will quickly make the connec- ton when they read these words: How Much Land Does a Man Need? But let's assume that some read- ers from a less literate place, like North Vancouver, who have strayed into this cotumn by mis- take, perhaps have never even heard the name Count Leo Tolstoy, let alone know that he was a great 19th-century Russian writer or that he wrote a short story with that title: How Much Land Does a Man Need? So | will briefly sum up this story, leaving out the nuances, which I've forgotten anyway, hav- ing first read it in my early teens. It is about a man who is told by a land-owner: You can have as much of my land as you can walk around between sunrise and sunset. But you must end up where you 66 ... who would deny that parkland — how much, where, what kind of use — is always a matter of compromise, never Satisfying everyone, and restrained by the corset of budgets ?9? eam et Started from before the sun sets. Eagerly, the man sets forth at sunrise. He walks briskly. The land — land that will soon be his — is beautiful and inviting. He presses on. A meadow to his side is irre- sistible; he must have it. He detours to encompass it. His circle keeps widening. The sun is hot. But he must have more, more. The sun moves toward the western horizon. Now he is panting with the exertion. How quickly the sun seems to be setting. At last he sees the starting-point. The sun has almost set. Ahead, he sees triends cheering him on. He is tunning now, as fast as he can, exhausted. Just as the sun disappears, he reaches his goal. He pitches for- ward and sprawls on the ground. He is dead. He is buried in six feet of earth. He has answered the question: How Much Land Does a Man Need? I have told the story clumsily. Take my word. It is one of the most powerful metaphors — of human aspiration, greed, transience — that you may ever wish to read. It is a long way down from that high to the issue of the BC Rail lands. Yet I thought about it as so many of the speakers Monday night Lautens complained about the agreement — hammered out, | would guess, far cheaper, more quickly and more favorably for West Vancouver than if the issue had gone to court -— grumbling that this bit and that bit should be included, and so forth. After the meeting —- council unanimously endorsed the deal, which gives the municipality 72% of the disputed laad (and, as Mayor Mark Sager emphasized, doesn’t preclude the municipality from buying more) — a woman who had _ entertainingly knocked the deal - said, referring to a dispute over a garden shed on Ross Crescent: : “They (council) spent more time..----~ discussing the shed than they did the Seaview property.” A.zd, to be fnir, who would deny that parkland —- how much, where, . what kind of use — is always a matter of compromise, never satis- fying everyone, and restrained by the corset of budgets? How Much Parkland Does Municipality Need? eee The strike of North Shore, Burnaby, ichmond end Vancouver community-care nurses — perkaps over by the time these words appear — somehow hasn't penetrated pub- lic consciousness (and conscience?) as much as it deserves. But lately the nurses, 31 months without a contract and on strike since May 26, got pretty trade-union-toughi. The strike’s existence certainly has been driven home to North Vancouver City Mayor Jack Loucks, whose office, by midweek, had been occupied for several days by nurses. Of course in West Vancouver we're ali more civilized. About a dozen showed up at couacil Monday. But the Seaview Walk issue pushed council into overtime, and their hope of speaking out dur- ing question period was frustrated. Nurses Pat Lilly, Jaquie Ciayton, Diane Scrivener and Susan Holtom gave the nurses’ case, with which I have much sym- pathy, in an interview over my din- ing room table Tuesday. ‘The nurses are royally caught between the jurisdictions of the province, the municipalities, and The Blob That Walks Like a Blob -— the Greater Vancouver Regional District. ; A story that needs further exploring: who’s picking up their vital home-care work? Answer: doctors, apparently, and at a much higher cost to the public than the $20-to-$24-an-hour pay range of the marses.