LETTER ONE

Two Letters
March 12, 2007
Philip N.

Dear Mr. Nardi,

I was at your Saturday, March 10 performance and I must say it was riveting and encouraged discussion well after your reading. As I listened to the members of the audience banter about the risk you took in penning these letters, I was making connections to my own profession and the realities that exist within it. I was wanting to be a participant in the discussion, however, I could not voice that night what has cultivated in my mind over the last couple of days. So if you would allow me the opportunity, I would like to express my observations with this email.

What you have highlighted within your performance is synonymous with the state of our society. This is the debate of choice versus selection. Today, like at no other time before, we are subjected to a plethora of selections that are supposed to satisfy. The problem is that they are pre-determined selections, made by people who do not understand the society who are exercising those options. Very few of us choose. We simply select from a long list of choices and are made to believe that we are fortunate that we have these options.

I currently teach at an inner city school in downtown Toronto. Although this is what my day job is, my passion falls within the realm of writing. I am and will continue to be a poet battling in a sea of an unappreciative market of the genre. However, I digress, as this is another topic entirely.

Ever since our former conservative government handed down a top heavy curriculum, we as educators have subjected our students to an unrealistic curriculum and unfair standardized tests. Essentially, our programs are prescribed. We must cover certain topics within an allotted space of time or otherwise suffer the wrath of administrators who are simply puppets of the people in the higher order of the chain. I am fortunate to work with colleagues who are veterans as well as rookies (I myself am only 5 years into the profession) and we all echo the same sentiment that we are speed walking our children through the day to cover our own asses. In that time, there is no room for free thinking. There is little opportunity to implement what we deem as important for the students to learn as it does not fall within our curriculum. Again, our selections are made for us and we must follow through with them. Most will suggest that we are fortunate to have the positions we do have and point towards our pensions and breaks as reasons not to complain. Coming from an Italo-Canadese background, my parents would concur with this line of thought. Although they were raised in this country it would be unthinkable for me to leave that nice pension that awaits me over principles such as these. Think of the security you would loose, my father would say! I am certain this is the same line of thinking in your industry as you struggle to make ends meet, many actors will take the job ripe with stereotype to pay the rent or even better make a sustainable living. However, in my world, lost in this argument are the children. The curriculum written for them by ministry cronies assumes prior knowledge that many of my students and students in like minded neighborhoods don't have. The writers probably have never set foot in a classroom to realize whether their programs are workable in today's environment. To top it all off, we subject them to standardized tests that are publicized in national mediums. Although some of the testing has improved, when first implemented there was a tremendous amount of bias in the way the questions were written and the stories that were included. My children, many of whom English is not the first language spoken at home, could not identify with the characters and situations many of the reading tests asked them to consider. In all this, we are training our students to constantly be assessed and aware that they are being evaluated. Talk about an Orwellian state. There is no time to think. No time to question. The bottom line is do it because we say so. I can't even justify it to my children why they are having to be tested. So we create a culture of worker bees scurrying from task to task with little regard to the authenticity of the job. All the while, because they have selections available to them, they are supposed to find happiness.

Many have yet to realize that our selections influence others around the world. We have lost our sense of appreciation for the little things because now it our right to acquire whatever we want regardless of the repercussions of our decisions. The sad part is the script writers or this world are having a chuckle at our expense. I am supposed to be satisfied because I can select an SUV that is a gas guzzler that forges wars in parts of the world that I don't even know about to impress my family or women or acquire more of what I don't need and won't solve my own problems because my line of credit has been extended further. Sad really for those who have yet to take the blindfolds off. But Mr. Nardi, I sense the tide is turning because mother nature cannot sustain the abuse we have been subjecting it to over these years and human beings cannot continue to abuse relationships as we have. Performances like yours encourage me further to witness the voices that will no longer remain inaudible. In time, I predict that a Darwinian survival of the fittest will occur on this earth, and we will all start back from as close to zero as possible. Then, unless people can adapt to the honest methods that have made the Natives such an honorable society to respect nature and each other, they will no longer grace this earth.

Regards,
Philip N.