6 Terrace Review — Wednesday, March 23, 1988

The thunder of

Commentary py stephanie Wiebe

a

a

Aerobic exercise classes. Mon-
day, Wednesday, and Friday, 9
to l0.a,m, Babysitting available.

Wednesday, 10 a.m. The ten-
sion mounts at a local fast-food
chain restaurant. Most of the
tables are empty, and business is
slow but steady. The air is thick
with anxiety.

10:07 a.m. A young employee
begins to.tremble, and unable to ©

contain himself any longer,
breaks down in tears. “‘I can’t
stand it. I just can’t deal with it
again.” His co-workers comfort
him, but they too feel the ap-
prehension of the coming
plague.

10:11 a.m. Vehicles stream in
to fill the parking lot. ‘‘Bat-
-tlestations!’? The restaurant
becomes a frenzied combat
zone, as workers prepare for the
attack. The doors open. A man
screams, ‘‘Oh my God!’’, as a
hoard of aerobicised women and
hungry preschool children des-

ener eraaeanes

nena:

cend upon the counters.

‘| wanna orange juice!”

“Mom, I want cookies.’

“Three hash browns, and two
coffees, please. Hey, grab the
Review, will you?’’

_ “Two coffees, four pancakes,
two orange pops, and can I get
four treats-of-the-week? Will
you kids sit down?’’

The swarm gradually moves
to one end of the restaurant, as
the girls at the counter roll their
eyes and sigh. While the food is
distributed, the napkin and
straw dispensers are emptied,
and the crowd settles down to a
low chatter. In the back room,
the clean-up crew gathers damp
cloths, mops and buckets,
preparing for the inevitable.
‘‘What we really need is a whip
and a chair,’’ says one man.

The preschoolers quickly con-
sume their juice, and munching
hash browns and cookies, they
grow restless. They wander

Protection of the

weak and

Letter

To the Editor;

The Supreme Court, well
salted with Liberal justices dur-
ing Pierre Elliot’s stint as prime
minister, havé certainly fuddled
the duddle this time, Ex-health
minister John Turner introduced
cleverly worded abortion legisla-
tion in the early seventies that
was open to just about any local
interpretation. Now the Trudeau
Liberals’ own Charter of Rights
and Freedoms has emerged as
the bugbear that has thrown the
whole issue in limbo once more.
Once again the issue is in the
public forum, one of the most
undecided and contentious
issues in our Canadian society.

Personally I am a reasonable
man, and not given to unseemly
emotionalism. I have listened to
both factions at length. I have a
basic old-fashioned belief that
us humans are supposed to care
and look after our own species,
which is why we generally frown
on murder and mayhem and
other activities that give unfair
advantage to the strong or the
evil at the expense of the weak or
innocent.

I have had the Pro-Choice
view explained to me in great

“detail, That the mother’s
economic circumstances of the
moment, her single or marital

status, her happiness at the time

pregnancy is determined, her

holiday or career plans or her

prospect of becoming an en-

thusiastic and effective parent
for her unborn child are suffi-
_- ¢ient consideration to make the

choice between the abbatoir or
“the maternity ward.

-. All: these evaluations can ap-
_ parently be made quite accurate-
“ly shortly after conception, with
“enough certainty, to justify the
taking of a child’s life. If the
rights of the unborn child and its
- horrible death are brought up,
“the issue is quickly confused
“with a number of stock answers.
“The pregnant rape victim, the
- {4-year-old expectant mother,
‘the backroom butcher, the
welfare mother with 15 kids, or
the mother whose life is in
‘danger through pregnancy.

No doubt we need to deal with .

innocent

these extreme cases, and very

‘agonizing moral decisions may
be necessary in some of these .

cases. But I bélieve the over-
whelming majority of abortions
are being performed on perfectly
healthy, married mothers — or
perhaps the term ‘mother’ is
ill-chosen in this context. Un-
born Canadians are being done
away with for no more serious
reasons thatn that the pregnancy
might interfere with a holiday,
‘or mother’s career, or financial
aspirations. os

In the 15 short years since
John Turner’s legislation we
have come a long way toward
cheapening the life of unborn
children. All the way from life-
threatening health situations to
the mother, to the summer holi-
day, or the Christmas party, or
the bank account.

The argument I hear is that
only planned and wanted babies
stand a chance of growing up in-
to happy children and useful
adults, but many questions re-
main. If someone had made the
“thumbs down’? decision on
behalf of all of us present day
adults whose mother wasn’t ¢x-
actly ecstatic about her pregnan-

cy, or whose mother did not .

have much money, or was
young, or unmarried, how many
of us would be alive and writing
letters today?

Are the mood, or the outlook,
or the financial circumstances of
a mother in her first few weeks

‘of pregnancy just cause to kill

her baby?

Who is qualified in those first
few weeks to make the judge-
ment which baby will be unhap-
py and may be killed, or which
baby may live because it will be
happy?

How many planned and
wanted children are abused and
neglected because the parents’
circumstances or outlook chang-
ed after birth, and should the
baby then be killed later?

There are hundreds of
thousands of eager prospective
parents in Canada who have
waited for up to ten years for the

privilege of adopting a child.

Many never succeed, because
our society is becoming more
and more attuned to killing the
unborn than to facilitate their

. _ continued on page 21

tiny fee
== around the area, noses running, a
jackets dragging along the floor —

through the spilled coffee. Some
of them climb onto the clown
statue, others scale the wide win-
dow ledges. The general popula-
tion does not sit near this crowd,
and a few of the kids walk across
the empty tables nearby.

An innocent woman cautious-
‘ly approaches the area, perhaps
intending to visit the washrooms

along the far wall. As she passes,

a toddler grabs her skirt with a
fat ketchupy hand — pausing,
she turns back, deciding her mis-

‘sion wasn’t so urgent after all.

The rabid confusion continues,
women happily chatting,
oblivious to the climbing and
chasing kids. Occasionally, a
restaurant worker walks
through, with a mop, a bucket,
and a scowl on his face.

The children’s noise level has
risen to a peak, tolerable only to
mothers and other children. A
few customers stare, amazed by
the unruly hubbub at the far end
of the restaurant.

Eventually, a cookie will be
smashed in someone’s hair, or
maybe an adventurous toddler
will try to swing from the clown
statue. A child will start to wail;
a signal that the morning riot
has come to its peak. The

-women sign — their visit is over.

The workers sigh — the war is
over, but now they must clear
the debris.

Children and jackets are
gathered, and the swarm
disperses into the parking lot.
The mops and buckets come
out, and the restaurant is filled
with a joyous relief. ‘‘We surviv-
ed it, you guys!’’ They can now
laugh again. It’s over. :

Until Friday. :

. j

Laura Flynn was one of over 500 Skeena School students who ralsed

* $1,500 In pledges for the B.C. Heart Foundation with thelr Jump Rope for

Heart” program last month. As an added incentive, students were eligible
for prizes ranging from T-shirts to track sults, depending on the amount of

pledges they collected.

Beer garden OK'd

The City of Terrace has deter-
mined there are no conflicting
requests and has decided to ap-
prove a Northwest Oldtimers
Fastball Club request to hold a
beer garden on July 1 providing
they meet all RCMP require-

ments.

The beer garden will be held at
Riverside Park on the Canada
Day weekend in conjunction
with the annual fastball tourna- -
ment, ~ vot

-Child-centered education __
demonstrated in workshop |

A few months after gradu-
ating from medical school, a
young woman addressed the
Berlin Feminist Congress, pro-
posing equal pay for equal
work, Eleven years later, after
studying education and working
with handicapped children, she
opened what would be the first
of many pre-school centers. But
this is not recent history. This
was in Italy at the turn of the
century, and the young doctor’s
name was Maria Montessori.

by Charlynn Toews

Today Montessori ‘‘Chil-
dren’s Houses’’ operate all over
the world, and many of her
methods and materials are still
being used in Holland, India,
and Canada. The Terrace Mon-
tessori Children’s House held a
workshop on March 19 for
parents and teachers of young
children which explored Mon-
tessori philosophy through
demonstration and discussion.

Marga Konig, who has owned
and operated a Montessori pre-
school in Prince George for nine
years, did what Montessori
teachers do best: she taught
through demonstration rather
than lecture, by directing par-
ticipants’ attention to concrete
examples to show a point. In
several role-playing exercises,
she showed the approximately
20 workshop participants how
Montessori works.

For example, she demon-
strated two methods of respond-

ing to a pre-schooler who is cry:
ing becausé of a broken toy..

(With much energy and theatri-
cal flair, Konig played both the
adult and the child in this
demonstration.) In the first
method, observers noted that
the adult asked why the child
was upset, acknowledged the
child’s feelings, and stayed near
while the child picked up the
broken pieces. In the second, we
saw the adult hurriedly shush the
child and clean up the mess
herself.

In this dramatic way,
workshop participants saw how
the Montessori ‘‘child-centered”’

approach can lead the child to.

understanding, responsibility,
and independence, while the se-
cond approach was actually
adult-centered, and teaches the
child only that someone else will
deal with such problems in life.
* When asked why a pre-school
would have fragile, breakable
toys, Konig responded, ‘‘Chil-
dren enjoy being trusted with
things that are breakable. They
enjoy the responsibility. They
learm awareness of their
movements and surroundings.”’

“Montessori provides free-
dom within limits. The children
are encouraged to handle
materials with care and

“respect.” Konig demonstrated

the use of a tray of glass
tumblers, which when filled with
water and food coloring, pro-
duces a correct and attractive
color wheel. For older pre-
schoolers, handling the glasses
and coloring is demonstrated by
the teacher as often as necessary.

_Observers noted that well over a

dozen skills, including fine
motor skills, addition, sequence
memory, and listening, would be
used by the child to produce a
satisfactory color wheel.

‘‘As opposed to television,
this kind of observation leads to
doing. It translates knowledge
into action. TV encourages
children to be verbal, but a child
can come into pre-school able to
count to ten aloud without
knowing what ‘four crackers
each’ means,”’ she said.

Another demonstration used a
number of pink blocks, gradual-
ly diminishing in size, meant to
show the younger pre-schooler
the sensory differences among
the blocks while stacking them
into a tower. Each of these
‘didactic materials’? has a
specific educational purpose and
method of demonstration.

Tracy Leblond, directress of
the Terrace Montessori~Chil-
dren’s House, admitted the ma-
terials can be expensive. ‘‘‘We
order them from Montreal,
where they’re shipped . from
Holland. However, they are of
good quality and are long-
lasting, Some of the materials
can be made — we made our
pink tower.”’

From Dr. Montessori’s pink
tower to her broader political
and philosophical goals to im-
prove society through liberty
within order, her effects on eatly
childhood education continue,
80 years after her first.
Children’s House opened its ~~
doors. - eee