Finishing Touches, or How to Treat Your Customers Like Idiots

My company, Vision Critical, recently held a management conference at the new Vancouver Convention Centre. The interior struck me as somewhat cold and spare but functional and nicely designed. However, there were a couple of things I encountered in the men’s washrooms that made me (and my colleagues) laugh out loud, and marvel at how a couple of ill-considered finishing touches can degrade the experience of being in a building. (It reminded me of visiting the Terasen building in Surrey a few years back: a nice design pretty much wrecked by the liberal use of the Tekton font throughout the interior.)

First, a sign posted above the urinals informs us that we shouldn’t drink from the toilets:

nonpotable

Of course, what they really meant to say was that they are being environmentally conscious by not wasting drinking water in the urinals and toilets. Poor writing results in raw material for a running joke in session presentations.

Then I noticed a sign by the sinks, “How To Wash Your Hands:”

howtowashyourhands

I assume the intention here was to convey the importance of washing one’s hands, rather than condescend to the users of your washroom. Add to this that if someone really needed this much hand-holding, the sequence isn’t even correct: we’re told in Step 6 to turn off the tap, but Step 1 is “Wet Hands,” not “Turn On Tap.” Of course, they were motion-activated taps, so Step 6 was unnecessary. But so were the others, really. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve seen suggested elsewhere is the length of time to rub in the soap.

At least there wasn’t a “How To Use The Toilet” sign in the stalls.

YVR Plans and Global Warming

There was a front page article in the Sun on Friday, “YVR considers building $1.2-billion runway across fish habitat.” Nowhere in the article are environmental factors beyond the local debated; even a spokesperson for the David Suzuki Foundation focuses on the fish. It is alarming to see plans for the airport into the 2040s and beyond discussed without mention of global warming (never mind that we now know there will be few fish by that decade if current trends are not reversed). It should be obvious that airline travel will be one of the activities we will have to curtail drastically in the near term; this will arguably have a significant impact on flight volume. In addition, it would seem the entire airport—never mind just the new “foreshore runway”—is at risk of being submerged with rising sea levels. When will we begin to make these connections, and begin to take action, including realistic adjustments in our planning activities?

Homeschooling in Vancouver

I wrote the following a year or two ago, with the intention of posting it to the HS-Van mailing list. I never did, mostly because the group is so defensive and belligerent that real debate on the issues I raise here would have been difficult or impossible, and the ill will created would have made it even more difficult than it has been for my family. I post it here in the hope that anyone considering home schooling in Vancouver (or elsewhere) will be very careful to find out what is happening in their community before proceeding.


I have not been subscribed to this mailing list before; my wife has forwarded me relevant and interesting e-mails. We’re going through a difficult time with our daughter right now, and while I cannot solely attribute the situation to home schooling in general or the Vancouver home schooling group specifically, it’s prompted me to think a lot about our experiences since we moved back to the city in the fall of 1999. We have home schooled in Victoria, the UK, and California as well as in Vancouver, but never experienced anything like what I have seen here.

As a father I’ve been somewhat on the periphery, partly out of necessity as I am the “earner” in our family, and partly because this is something of a pattern, here and elsewhere, in home schooling communities. Us dads tend to be quiet and in the background much of the time. This doesn’t mean that we don’t support home schooling, at least in most cases and certainly in mine.

I’ve always considered our family to be in the “unschooling” category. We have tried to follow interests and topics as they arise and as our daughter expressed interest. However, I would have to class many of the families I’ve encountered in Vancouver as non-schoolers. There seems to be strong resistance to pursuing sustained, in-depth work across a reasonable spectrum of subjects. One parent has even said, “we don’t learn from books”! From what I have seen there is a lack of rigour and depth in the approach to learning; a significant bias against any kind of co-operative study; and a particular prejudice against—or at least exclusion of—science.

More than this, there seems among some parents to be an encouragement of activity and experimentation that, in concert with academic activity, might be acceptable (depending on your bent); but in its absence I see as very unhealthy. There is nothing necessarily wrong with experiencing “altered states of consciousness,” as long as one has properly developed and secured the normal state.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that most of the home schooled children I know within a couple of years of my daughter’s age (16) could be considered dropouts. I mean that in the sense of learning and progress towards adult behaviour, responsibility, and independence. I sincerely doubt that any of them could pass a Grade 10 level general knowledge or standardized test. Before I’m attacked on that one, I will qualify it by saying that I believe the home schooling substitute for an arbitrarily imposed curriculum should be your own, and probably of higher standard, rather than virtually nothing at all. (It is also worth reflecting on how the Ministry of Education might change their stance on home schooling if they had a chance to assess some of these children.) The goal of home schooling has always been to do better than school. And in fact, many—perhaps most—home schooling communities produce a greater percentage of learners who continue their studies; they feed the post-secondary system with children who are better prepared, more academically advanced and inclined, and more mature than those who have gone through the compulsory schooling system.

If any of these kids actually do get around to considering university study, it will likely require significant remedial work. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but the purpose of specifically choosing to start at a significant deficit is lost on me. One of the potential benefits of home schooling is to bypass the socially artificial “teenage” stage and get real experience pursuing a passion—for instance, via an apprenticeship with a mentor in the community.

I perceive a strong “hands off” philosophy from many of the parents. However, allowing someone to figure out their own life doesn’t preclude adult involvement and guidance. Guidance is not equivalent to control. “Doing what you feel like” without being aware of the consequences is not maturity.

Sometimes I wonder how many of the families we’ve encountered are familiar with the home schooling literature, such as John Holt. I have seen from some of the adults in the community the kind of cliquish, mean-spirited, exclusionary behaviour I have encountered nowhere else in my life except during my own days at public school. One of the results appears to be a group of children who are anti-adult, peer-attached, and often dishonest.

All of this is just my perspective; I know there is a lot of variety and dedication out there. However, I see this as a serious crisis, and can’t help but wonder what has gone wrong. We have some work ahead to turn our daughter’s life around, and the social and educational context is going to make this quite challenging. If new parents were to ask me whether to home school in this city, I would strongly recommend that they find other like-minded people before committing.

Vancouver Panhandlers

What is the difference between someone begging for money, and another shoving towards us a “newspaper” such as 24 Hours or Metro? Why is one considered more annoying and unacceptable than the other? Some might say that the former is asking for something, while the latter is giving us something else. They’re almost certainly both out there in an effort to survive. But the commuter rags are panhandling as well. They’re not asking for our money, but for our attention: the “news” gathered almost verbatim from wire services is simply a carrier for advertising. (Sometimes these papers don’t even pretend to be news-oriented, printing full-page ads on the front page.) And my attention is far more valuable than my money. In fact, I get paid for it.

Victoria’s British Schtick

What is it with Victoria‘s conceit that it is “British”? I find it preposterous, laughable, and annoying. As someone who has lived in both the provincial capital and in the UK, I have to wonder whether those who promote the city as somehow English have either never been to the British Isles, or are simply homesick. Maybe it’s just a tourism ploy. But there’s virtually nothing about the city that recalls for me anything of the architecture, people, or culture of England. Unless it’s in comparison to, say, San Jose, California. Give us a break.

Yes is always (eventually) the answer

It seems that, whenever a significant construction or infrastructure project (dare I say “megaproject”?) is proposed to government, city planners, or (occasionally) the public, it is only a matter of time before it is approved. Such ideas never seem to be rejected once and for all. I’ve seen it happen many times: from the SkyDome in Toronto, which everyone knew was going to be a white elephant, to the RAV Line, the “Gateway Project,” the soccer stadium, and now the “big box store on Marine Drive” issues in Vancouver. Despite often solid evidence against, debates and votes are held on these issues until a “yes” result is obtained, and then voting stops and the project goes ahead. Those who stand to profit appear simply to bide their time until the political situation aligns in their favour, or else everyone tires of the repeated debates and changes their mind simply to get on to the next issue. Why is it that we always stop at “yes,” even after repeated “no” results? Is it that we have a fixation on “positive thinking”? Couldn’t we at least have a best-of-seven vote-off? In our society, we seemed doomed to go ahead with a project once it has been proposed.

[After I wrote this entry I thought it would make a nifty letter to the editor; I submitted it to the Vancouver Sun and it was published in slightly edited form on Thursday, July 27.]

Most Overrated Restaurant in Vancouver?

I’ve never fully understood the appeal of The Naam. Sure, it’s a funky sort of place, and it’s always open. But the food is mediocre at best; the service is terrible; and the place is dirty. And as a vegan, it is incredibly frustrating to see it voted “Best Vegetarian Restaurant in Vancouver” year after year. My theory is that when a paper like The Straight holds a reader survey, all the non-vegetarians (obviously the vast majority), when it comes time to vote for a vegetarian restaurant, ponder for half an instant until the first joint that fits the bill pops into their head. The Naam, of course.

Come to think of it, Vancouver desperately needs better vegetarian/vegan restaurants. It’s supposedly one of the most vegetarian-friendly cities, but what we’re really missing is a fine dining experience. I don’t mind eating at, say, Greens and Gourmet. But it’s essentially a cafeteria. We don’t have anything like San Francisco’s Millennium, Herbivore, or the late, great, Now and Zen. Even Roberts Creek is doing better than we are, with their wonderful Gumboot.

Disappearing Corner Stores of Vancouver

Every week or so, on and off for a few years, I’ve walked past this abandoned store. Heong Grocery. It’s been closed for years, and in recent weeks it appears it’s being prepared for demolition. What is its story? How long was it open? Why did it close? Who is or was Heong?

Several years ago the Sun had a feature story about ‘disappearing corner stores of Vancouver.’ I think there was a book published. A quick Web search turned up nothing; I wish I could find it. Every one of these stores has a story, and at the risk of sounding old and sentimental, perhaps a more interesting one than the franchise joint that probably put them out of business.

Legacies

We’re still almost four years out from the 2010 Olympics, and significant budget concerns have started to emerge (cf. some of Vaughan Palmer‘s recent columns in the Sun). But I’m not going to write another “I told you so” rant.

My perception of the whole affair is coloured by my involvement in designing the original bid Web site (now replaced). I did this partly against my better judgement, and I can’t say much about the experience because I’m probably under some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Suffice to say that my better judgement was increasingly skewed towards the “no” camp as the project progressed.

But there was one experience that stands out for me, and it was apart from my professional activities. The night of the referendum, February 22 2003, I was picking up my daughter from a choir rehearsal in Kerrisdale. Of course this part of town is probably one of those in which many people actually stand to benefit from the games. I overheard a fellow emoting to his friend about the referendum and questioning how anyone could possibly vote against. I immediately stepped in and said that I’d voted “no.” He was aghast. But when I tried to engage him in substantive debate on the issue, all he could really come up with was a tag line from the Olympic campaign. Not even a tag line, a word. “Think of the legacies,” he insisted, gesturing wide with his arms, his tone evoking a world in which, after February 2010, we Vancouverites might awake each morning to find a glass of chocolate milk on a fluffy white pillow waiting on our doorsteps (rather than an abandoned luge track somewhere up Howe Sound for which we are still paying).

Marketing puzzles me, because so much of it seems to be counterintuitive, if not just plain stupid. But the application of this one word was brilliant. It worked. And so “legacies” we will have: besides mounting debt, we’re not quite sure yet what they might be.