Saturday, February 6, 1993 & Publisher Scott David Harrison Editor Bob Proctor Marketing Manager Mickey Read Composing Room Foreman Warren Chernoff Accountant Mary Ann Fullerton Circulation Manager Burt Campbell OurVWiEWS A healthy community ( 9 it the catch-phrase of the 90s, but it’s a catch-phrase whose time has come. Preventative health care was introduced Tuesday as the New Democrat government announced a radical new approach to medical services. The approach calls for a shift from institutionalized health care to community-based care. Medical professionals have already reacted to the government move, saying it will undermine health care as we know it. They are right in their assumption, preventative health care will change the medical world forever but it’s a change for the better. British Columbia can’t continue to throw money into a health-care system that has proven to be both costly and ineffective. A shift towards community-based health care and regionalized services is exactly what this province needs. Not only will it force communities to work with instead of against one other, but it will enable the province to!get the most out of its health care dollars. We shouldn’t be misled by the detractors of preventative care. It is not about cutting services or capping salaries. Instead, it is about trimming the fat by ending the duplication of costly services and empowering communities with a medical model that will enable them to provide preventative care for today and tomorrow. Preventative care is the glass that is half full, promoting health as a community-based objective instead of sickness and a_province-wide epidemic. StreetTALK Adrian RAESIDE Ss Year 2000 a Pandora’s Box Last week I opened up strong points is a move to the Pandora’s Box called Year 2000 to take a look at what lies ahead in public education in B.C. Perhaps it isn’t quite fair to call Year 2000 a Pandora’s Box, because the program contains both good - _ organizing subjects into “strands”, or groups of subjects with teaching emphasizing the connections between related subjects. And this makes sense, when you think about it. and bad points — unlike the real Pandora’s Box which held only the world’s evils. For instance, one of the Comments from the Our world isn’t confined to nice compartments with science in one, math in another and reading and Ron NORMAN Year 2000’s strengths is its emphasis on active learning. Children learn best when Crossroads writing in another. Take something as basic as shopping for groceries, they are doing, not when they are being lectured. You see this for yourself when you teach a child to ride a bike. All the explaining and describing about how to ride the bike might help, but the child actually learns by getting on and pedaling. It’s the same with reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Another of the new education program’s where we try to figure out what’s the best buy and read the ingredients on the back of the packages (and even get a little physical exercise as we hoist those bags to the car). Another of the program’s good points is its move to a curriculum tailored to suit individual students. As you recall, I touched on this briefly last week. please see NORMAN page 7 Publisher Emeritus LV. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Julia Langille Genelle “Definitely. They’re looking for too quick an answer.” Sam Stoochnoff Castlegar “No. It will keep hospital costs down.” Angela Moseley Cranbrook “They’re trying to cut costs but it may cost more in the end.” Muriel Wilson Castlegar “No, but are they moving in the right direction?” Question: Is the provincial government moving ahead too quickly with health care reforms? William Kabatoff Thrums “It’s got to change but it’s moving too quickly.” dhe News Other VIEWS Please address all letters to: Letters to the Editor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address and a telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters tol Al E ED ITO Fr Hot under the collar over snow removal As one of those “irate” Castlegar residents, I would like to respond to the article in your newspaper from January 23/93 which reads “Sluggish Snow Removal Questioned”. I, personally, have a difficult time accepting the way in which snow removal is dealt with this winter for a few reasons. As we have had several snowfalls this winter, I will try to address these all together. My tolerance and patience have worn thin over the snow removal issue on our street as I hear has my neighbors’. We have waited up to two days after the snow has stopped, on some occasions, to call city hall to ask when we were going to get plowed out. During my most recent call I was told “I shouldn’t get so hot about it”, meaning the snow removal, that it would be dealt with eventually. When? After more phone calls or after we’ve missed work? We have had to call your office after every snowfall this winter to get someone to open our road. I will start by saying that I was told recently by one of your city officials that my family and I reside on what is classified a “low priority” street. It’s pretty clear to me that streets with hills aren't priorities, as stated in the article, because the one I live on in particular is also a dead end which in other words is considered “low priority”. It has been recognized as such even when it has an obvious hill. The hill I am referring to on 8th Avenue has made it difficult for my husband and my neighbors to get out of our street. I drive a 4x4, but in the most recent snowfall once I had come down the street, I could not get back up the hill because of the foot and a half of snow which was still untouched eight hours after I left for work. I have called city hall with another major concern which has not to this day been addressed. Coming down 6th Street, during any other season, most people are familiar with the fact that there is a sidewalk all the way down this street and up to 7th Avenue, on the courthouse side. Our city. works crews did find this sidewalk up to 11th Avenue but seem to have forgotten that there was any more sidewalk beyond this point. I might add, the sidewalk is only on one side of the street. I initially called the city because I have a seven-year-old who walks home from his babysitter’s on 10th Avenue to our home on the “dead end” of 8th Avenue at the same time as the SHSS school buses and student traffic filter on home. As 6th Street’s sidewalk is nowhere to be found my son has had to initially resort to walking in knee-deep snow rather than on the slippery road. With all the snow accumulation that this sidewalk now has, he has to walk on the street, which I consider unsafe, or now waist deep snow. What should be a five- to 10-minute walk is now at least a half hour struggle. My concern in this area is not only for my son’s safety. A large number of kids walk down this icy, slippery street. This street also has a blind hill, one can’t see if anyone is coming down the road until they start over the top. As slippery as this hill has been all winter, I shudder to think what might happen to any child walking on the street with traffic coming from both directions at once. I realize that when we get a snowfall this winter it is unusually large and therefore your works crews become exceptionally busy for a couple of days. I resent that Coun. Pakula’s article states that hills are priorities when they are not treated as such because they also fall under the cage ang A of “dead end” and are ignored until we raise a ruckus with city hall. I also resent that the rest of 8th Avenue as are our neighboring streets get plowed without having to call and that we’re told not to get hot under the collar when we ask for the same service which are our rights as taxpayers. An “irate” taxpayer Valley reader looking for Vallican School alumni How long has it been since you reminisced with your grade school classmates? For some of the students that attended Vallican Elementary School in the Slocan Valley it could be as long as 50 years. So if you ever attended this school, or taught there, you are invited to ¢ome and recapture a moment of your youth. A reunion will be held at Vallican School on Sat., July 31. The doors will open at 9 a.m. for early risers to come share any school history, anecdotes and photos. Coffee and muffins will be available to help stimulate the planned a day of wholesome outdoor fun and games, lively conversation and much reuniting with old friends. When we have worked up an appetite from all the festivities we will fire up the barbecues for a pot luck picnic. After we have had a chance to sit bak and digest our repast with more reminiscent conversation we’ll turn on the tunes for those inclined to dancing or just toe tapping. We are trying to keep the costs minimal — $5 per adult, children free. The biggest problem is getting the message to everyone. So if you have kept in touch with school not see this article please let them know or send me their address and any comments you have on the reunion. I will be sending out invitations to as many people as I can find addresses for. Everyone’s help in locating past students and teachers will be greatly appreciated. I have contacts for people in Maui, Kamloops, 100 Mile House, Cranbrook, Saskatchewan, Vancouver, Elkford, Alberta, Vancouver Island and of course there are many of us still in the valley. I am looking forward to hearing from one and all! Noni Tedesco memories. Weather permitting we have buddies that have moved away and might Castlegar continued from page 6 In educational jargon it is called “learner-focused” curriculum and it is a major change from the traditional approach to school curriculum. The more traditional method is to provide teachers with a basic curriculum that must be covered during the school year and stu- dents either pass or fail. For some students the curricu- lum is too difficult and they fail or barely struggle through; for others it is too easy and they need to be challenged. Under the Year 2000, the cur- riculum may be much the same as it is now, but it will be tailored to each student. If a child obviously cannot handle Grade 4 Math, they will be taught at the level they can handle until they are ready to move on. Similarly, those that master Grade 4 Math early will progress as far as they can — perhaps to the Grade 6 level. In atypical Grade 4 class, then, you could have students doing Math all the way from Grade 2 level through to the Grade 6 level — each working to the best of their ability. In fact, it won't be that much different than what is happening in my daughter’s Grade 4 class now (that’s because schools have already started to shift away from the old curriculum-based ap- proach.) The most noticeable change will be that students will not fail or skip grades. There won't be any need because each will be learning at their own pace anyway. (At least that’s the theory, but more on that and other possible problems with the new program next week.) One of the most commonly- asked questions when it comes to Year 2000 is: “Why change the system in the first place? It was good enough for me. It should be good enough for my kids.” There are several answers to that question. The first is that the changes are part of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Education that went around the province in the late 1980s taking the pulse of our education system. The Commission found that while the education system was serving the majority of students pretty well, it was failing dismally a lot of others. In fact, one-third of the students who started high school in B.C. didn’t graduate. That’s a large chunk of kids. It probably wasn’t really much different 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. Only in those days students who dropped out of school could get a job at Cominco or Pope and Talbot or any of a large number of re- source-based industries. Not today. Those jobs are no longer avail- able. Just ask the IWA, which has seen its union membership cut in half in the last decade. In 1960, 60 per cent of the jobs in B.C. were resource-based. By 1980 that had fallen to 40 per cent. By the year 2000, it is ex- pected to be under 10 per cent. It is also predicted that 85 per cent of the jobs by the turn of the century will require a Grade 12 education or higher. So by having one-third of our students not complete high school, we are virtually shutting the door for them on 85 per cent of the jobs. The Year 2000 program — per- haps more than anything else — is an attempt to halt that dropout rate and prepare our students for a world vastly different than their parents’. NEXT WEEK: Problems with Year 2000.