On the recent budget the Conservative Government announced that they are giving funding to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which gives scholarships to graduate students. This is great—except that they put a stipulation on the funds: it must go towards students who are doing research in business related fields, which really puts Arts students like me at a disadvantage. SSHRC funding is a valuable resource for current and potential graduate students. Funding for the Humanities is very limited as it is so there is a huge outcry across the country against Harper’s stipulation on this money. This means that students will no longer get SSHRC funding based on merit, but on what program s/he is in, which is not right. The business-orientation of the SSHRC violates academic freedom. Research in the Arts is equally essential to the success of our society as is business related research. The study of the Arts teaches students how to think critically, write persuasively, as well as critique and understand society and humanity—all skills that benefit the business, political, and economic sectors of the workforce.
Below you will see the letter template from the Canadian Federation of Students that is being circulated among universities on online. Students and professors are urging people to send this letter or a version of it to James Flaherty, the Minister of Finance, as well as their local Members of Parliament.
MP Niki Ashton has an online petition against Harper’s stipulation on SSHRC funding. I’ve included the link below. I encourage you to sign this petition and either email or mail the letter below to Minister Flaherty and your local MP. Let your friends and family know about this. Send the letter as it is or feel free to adjust it so that you can let Flaherty know what SSHRC funding means to you or to someone you know.
Address for Minister of Finance: The Honourable James Flaherty, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Finance
Minister\'s Office - House of Commons
Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
CFS Letter Template:
Dear Minister:
The federal budget presented on January 27, 2009 proposes to increase graduate student funding through the Canada Graduate Scholarship program by $87.5 million over three years. While I am pleased this government appears to be making graduate students and our contribution to the future economy a priority, it is completely inappropriate to intervene in the awarding process by directing social science and humanities scholarships exclusively to a small number of graduate students in business-related degrees.
I am writing today to call on you to withdraw the targeting of Canada Graduate Scholarships. Simply put, it is not the government's role to direct the granting agencies as to what research projects it may or may not fund. This is precisely the reason why such bodies are independent from the government. Each of the granting councils allocates funding based on peer-review of applications. As such, each proposal is judged according to its merits. There is no good reason to discontinue this practice.
In light of the American economic stimulus package—which includes not only billions of dollars for research, but also for student debt relief—there is good reason to believe that the Government of Canada's weak investment in university research will not only hamper Canada’s ability to effectively manage the global economic crisis, but will also precipitate the emigration of some of our best young researchers to the United States.
In closing, withdrawing the business-related stipulation on new scholarship funding is a small but important step that you can take to restore some good faith with the university research community.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
YOUR SIGNATURE
YOUR NAME
cc. COPY YOUR LOCAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
Writing and grammar isn’t something that has always come naturally to me. Learning how to write has been a learning process that began in kindergarten and continues to this day, fostered by my love of reading.
My parents never read much to me as a child. Don’t get me wrong—there were the usual bedtime stories, not every night, but most nights before I started school and while I was in kindergarten. But I don’t remember my parents ever reading to me during the day, and once I began learning the alphabet and how to read on my own the bedtime stories stopped. So I stopped taking an interest in reading. I can’t criticize my parents too harshly here. They were both in the military at the time and each had to learn how to cope as a single parent when the other was on a military course or exercise and had to leave for days or weeks at a time. They fought a lot. Then came the two-year separation when I was in grade one. Shortly after my Dad moved out, he got posted to Baden Baden, Germany, and Mom’s short-lived boyfriends started moving in.
The first time I began to understand the power of words was during the Gulf War. I was eight years old and my Dad was sent to Qatar. I was bombarded with TV images of men wearing gas masks and seeing strange looking fireworks shoot across the night sky. At first I didn’t know that these beautiful lights were actually bullets and missiles on their way to kill. All I knew was that my Dad was there and that my Mom and I were going to send him a Christmas package. I bet you’re thinking that I learned the power of words though newspaper articles and propaganda. What eight year old girl reads newspapers? I was too preoccupied playing with Barbie dolls and stuffed animals. No, I first learned of the power of words through the letters my parents sent back and forth. I was never allowed to read them, of course—they were private words between my Mom and Dad—but they were the words that brought our family back together. My mother signed her release from the military and we moved to Germany to be with him when the Gulf War was over.
While living in Germany I would occasionally find my mother reading a book. It used to puzzle me because I couldn’t understand why she would spend hours reading. She would get totally engrossed in the book to the point that she tuned everything else out. To me, reading was tantamount to school work and why would you want to do that in your spare time? My two years living in Germany certainly didn’t cultivate my love of reading, but it did teach me that language is in everything that we do, not just in everything that we say. I went to an English school on the military base where, surprisingly, we were never given German lessons so I never learned the language except for a few catch phrases. But I found that I didn’t really need to learn the language to get by. Movement is a language all on its own, which is why it’s called body language. By pointing, touching, nodding, and even just a smile or a look people could understand me, and I them. Language goes beyond the verbal and the written. How we dress, do our hair, decorate our house, what we buy, what we eat, etc., says something about us. An old boyfriend of mine once jokingly said: “A picture is worth one thousand words, unless it’s a picture of one word.” But I have to disagree with him. That one word can spark one thousand images and associations in your head, all of which, like a book with thousands of words, tell a story.
My love of reading really sparked in Junior High. I’m almost embarrassed to say it but I became addicted to the Goosebumps series. I devoured each book with almost as much intensity as the monsters in the books devoured their victims. This new passion of mine evolved into reading other books over the years—books with more mature themes and more mature language. Words brought me to wonderful new worlds. They helped me escape into my imagination when my parents started fighting and separated again when I was twelve, after which my mother went wild, staying out all hours of the night with different men, not eating, wearing clothes way too small for her (my clothes to be exact), and stealing my babysitting money so she could go partying. Words also brought me knowledge, like when I found out that my Dad wasn’t my real father, and that my mother had had a teenage pregnancy and given the baby up for adoption long before I was ever born. Although words had the power to tear my family and my identity apart, they were the only things that remained stable in my life.
The purpose of this blog is not to spout off my unstable childhood or to blame my parents for the way I turned out. I no longer regret any part of my childhood because I know that every event has shaped me in becoming who I am today. My parents are back together now and have never seemed happier. I met and keep in touch with my biological father so the part of my personality that I felt was missing is explained. And I now have a great relationship with my beautiful half-sister and am a “ma tante” (aunt) to two amazing and fun kids who remind me way too much of myself. Rather, the purpose of this blog is to essentially teach what I have learned about the finer points of grammar and essay writing.
During my first year of my undergraduate degree I had to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for my Into to Literature class. I immediately loved it, so I couldn’t understand the other people in my class when they said they hated it. Either they couldn’t get passed the language or they thought it was a stupid book. They didn’t see the finer points of the story behind the language Austen uses the same way that I did. Maybe it’s because I just have an innate sense of language and understanding—but I highly doubt it. I firmly believe that my love of reading has been an advantage to me in leaning the finer points of grammar and essay writing. But that’s not all. Good writing comes from hard work and practice, but that hard work and practice pays off when you get an A grade on your English, History, or Business assignment, or that job you really wanted because you wrote a fantastic and persuasive cover letter, or that acceptance into a university program or scholarship you got because you wrote a kick-ass letter of intent or essay. When I was doing my undergraduate degree I worked in the Admissions Office one summer processing people applications. I was astounded at how many people had grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and computer MSN language (like LoL) in their letters of intent, application forms, or on their resumes. Some of these students were applying for Masters programs and I thought “how did they ever get through their undergraduate degree”? MSN Speak is fun and fast and has its place in language... on the computer, but not in every day writing.
Most people I encountered in University thought that English class was a waste of time--they were only in it because, depending on their program, one or two credits of English was mandatory for graduation. What most people don't realize is that language is the backbone of every profession. You can be a business person, but unless you know how to write an effective and persuasive proposal or presentation, you won't be a very good one. You can be a scientist, but unless you can clearly write about your research findings you won't get very far in the scientific world.
For all those people who have difficulty writing, I will use this blog to post common grammatical mistakes people use in writing and give tips on how to write an essay. I will teach you how to form an argument and thesis statement, and how to follow through with your argument until you conclude your paper. For the English student, or fellow bookworm like me, I plan on starting a “book club” of sorts or reading list where I will comment on the books that I read and will post ideas for thought or potential essay topics.
I should state that I do not—and will never—sell student essays. Plagiarism is morally and academically wrong. My purpose is to help those who have difficulty with grammar and/or with writing essays so that they can learn and get better grades, not to give them a free pass to, well, failure because that is what plagairism ultimately results in. If anyone has any comments or suggestions of what they would like to see here please let me know.
