Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta: The Alberta Aspiration

One of the most exciting projects we are involved with at Cambridge Strategies Inc. is the Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta.  Part of this project is a rethinking of public education principles, practices and progress measurements.  It is aided abetted by the work of Alberta Education in the Inspiring Education initiative lead by Minister Dave Hancock.


RETHINKING EDUCATION AND LEARNING
We have to rethink the concepts of education and learning beyond the paradigms of the industrial complex of the past.  We have to think and adapt to the consequence of the networked horizontal information economy.  We have to develop skills and capacities to prepare our children, and ourselves, for the conceptual age economy that is emerging.  This is the way forward for developed societies and for continued prosperity in places like Alberta. Alberta has an excellent public education system that is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this new way forward.  However we must redefine success and rethink what we mean by progress.  It is about a new sense of being literate that includes the traditional concepts but move beyond them into a 21st century context.


CHANGING THE PARADIGMS:
Sir Ken Robinson puts all this in context in this RSA video. It is 11 minutes long but worth every minute of it.
(H/T to Alberta Education's Inspiring Education site for the link) 

This new way of thinking, learning and of being an educated person is going to be realized through unconventional partnerships, relationships and new collaborative models of meaning making. We are all in this together and alone as we develop our personal gifts in ways that also contribute positively to the greater good.     

We are capable of  imagining, creating and even adapting to new measures and meanings of progress and prosperity.  These new models must promote social cohesion through inclusion and a savouring our social diversity, not fearing the differences.  New thinking must require that we work within the realities of the environmental limits of the planet.  We need an economic model that develops new technologies and assets that promote sustainability and innovation from the creativity of Albertans.

THE ALBERTA ASPIRATIONS:
This next Alberta is all about our finding and fostering our Aspirations in ways that align with our values.  Now that we in Alberta can become anything we we want to be, what is it that we want to be?  My answer is simple and complex.  It is not just about the old Alberta Advantage mentality of competing in the old industrial   marketplace model with a shallow goal to be the best IN the world.  It is more about leading, seeing and achieving our potential to aspire to be the best FOR the world.

We have all the ingredients and the infrastructure necessary to achieve this Aspiration.  We just need the attitude shift necessary to actually do it. In short, the Alberta Aspiration mindset has to trump the old race to the bottom paradigm inherent in the Alberta Advantage mindset.  We need to adapt from the Alberta Advantage mindset but not eliminate it as we work through to realizing the Alberta Aspiration model.  In doing so, we transform ourselves and our province into a trail blazing example of a 21st century integrated society, economy and ecology.

JOIN IN AND BE A CO-CREATOR OF THE NEXT ALBERTA:
You can join in the co-creation collaboration of Learning Our Way to the Next Alberta in a number of ways.  Sir Ken Robinson will be in Red Deer February 9th for a reception 6-7 pm and public lecture and discussion from 7-9:30 pm where he will speak about this opportunity to transform public education.  This is an event in collaboration with the Alberta Teachers' Association locals in Red Deer, Creative Alberta, the Red Deer Advocate and Red Deer College.  The cost is $10 and for tickets contact Jennifer Bahler at jbahler@rdpsd.ab.ca or 403-505-5889  Ticket proceeds to the the Central Alberta Women's Shelter.

As a Citizen - Who Can You Trust to Tell the Truth?

I rarely do this, run an entire text of another source in full in this blog.  Links are my usual relationship device to content I find interesting and worth sharing.  This piece is an exception, partly due to copyright issues.  Just as important is the content itself.  The emergence of Fox News North makes this piece relevant to Canada.  The American government-journalist relationship and the symbiotic news "reporting" actions that dumbs down and mislead the public is pathetic politics, scary governance and dangerous to democracy.

Most interesting is the extensive quoting of JFK on the proper role of the media in a free and democratic society.  Much of the tone and activities referenced about the US government in the Bush years should be looked at through a Canadian lens.  Ask yourself how many times can you say or see the same things about Canada under not so Prime Minister Harper?  Just askin' - "Who can you, as a citizen, trust to tell you the truth and provide objective reporting these days?  Who can you trust to protect you and your rights as a citizen."  Not the American or Canadian federal governments...that is for sure.

America Has Gone Away

by Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research (December 29 2010)

Anyone who doesn't believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic).

Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com, December 28) that Fox News (sic) "no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state", turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making "anti-American comments".

The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W Bush set the scene when he declared: "you are with us or against us".

Bush's words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government's respect for dissent since the presidency of John F Kennedy. In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:

    No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary ... Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.

That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.

The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse "and sometimes even anger public opinion".

In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers:

    I'm not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

The America of Kennedy's day and the America of today are two different worlds. In America today the media are expected to lie for the government in order to prevent the people from finding out what the government is up to. If polls can be believed, Americans brainwashed and programmed by O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh want Bradley Manning and Julian Assange torn limb from limb for informing Americans of the criminal acts of their government. Politicians and journalists are screeching for their execution.

President Kennedy told the Newspaper Publishers Association that "it is to the printing press, the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to

be: Free and Independent." Who can imagine a Bill Clinton, a George W Bush, or a Barack Obama saying such a thing today?

Today the press is a propaganda ministry for the government. Any member who departs from his duty to lie and spin the news is expelled from the fraternity. A public increasingly unemployed, broke and homeless is told that they have vast enemies plotting to destroy them in the absence of annual trillion dollar expenditures for the military/security complex, wars lasting decades, no-fly lists, unlimited spying and collecting of dossiers on citizens supplemented by neighbors reporting on neighbors, full body scanners at airports, shopping centers, metro and train stations, traffic checks, and the equivalence of treason with the uttering of a truth.

Two years ago when he came into office President Obama admitted that no one knew what the military mission was in Afghanistan, including the president himself, but that he would find a mission and define it. On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Obama came up with the mission: to make the families of the troops safe in America, his version of Bush's "we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here".

No one snorted with derision or even mildly giggled. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News (sic) dared to wonder if perhaps, maybe, murdering and displacing large numbers of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and US support for Israel's similar treatment of Lebanese and Palestinians might be creating a hostile environment that could breed terrorists. If there still is such a thing as the Newspaper Publishers Association, its members are incapable of such an unpatriotic thought.

Today no one believes that our country's success depends on an informed public and a free press. America's success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people's god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.

Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington's assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks' demise, we are cheering for our own.

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A Musical Reflection We Can Use as a We Return to Citizenship

The lyrics are as current and applicable today as they were when first written. (H/T to @HurtinAlbertan)

Is Alberta Tired of Being Taken For Granted by Harper?

Susan Riley writes an interesting take on Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff's possibilities in a forthcoming by-election in Calgary.  With the sudden and unexpected departure of Jim Prentice, the last progressive voice in the Harper government, there is a need for a by-election by May 2011.  There may be a general election before then but I doubt it will happen until the fall of 2011.  The Liberals should wait for Canadians to see the continuing failure of integrity the hardcore Harper Cons to live up to their fundamental political ideology. Harper's hypocritical character flaws will show again as he will retreat even further from what he touts as sound and conservative fiscal management in their upcoming budget.

Could Calgary send a message for the rest of Alberta in this by-election and elect a Liberal in protest to the indifference and disdain Harper has shown for his home province and his home city?  Harper has been increasingly estranged from Albertans ever since he got all that personal political power and his iron-fist control over everything that happens in the federal government.

Nenshi's election as Mayor last October give us hope.  He won handily over two variations conventional Conservatism. One rejected candidate was run by the Harper machine and the other had her strings pulled by the old Klein crowd.  Provincially there are now more Liberals elected in Calgary than in Edmonton and they used to call us Redmonton back in the day when that was reversed.  Stranger things have happened is all I am saying.

I am not making any political predictions but we know from our conjoint research last May that only 17% of Albertans are in any way satisfied with the way Alberta's federal MPs protect and promote our interests in Ottawa. That indicates changes could happen and a by-election that elects a Liberal is just the ticket to send Harper a much overdue "we are not amused" political message.

When Premier Klein was kicked out by the PC rank and file his "safe" seat was lost to a Liberal in a by-election.  Klein was a lot more popular in Alberta then than Harper can ever hope to be.  When Deputy Premier Stevens quit provincial politics, as quickly and mysteriously as Prentice, the by election that followed went to the Wildrose Alliance as a way to send Premier Stelmach a "we are not amused" political message.  The Liberal vote stayed the same but the protest vote went to the Wildrose Alliance in that by-election.

So stay tuned Alberta and consider the strategic opportunity to send a wake up call to the Harper-Cons in the   soon to be announced by-election.  And if there is a general election beforehand, the opportunity is even greater to ensure Alberta is not taken for granted by the presumptive arrogance of the Harper political machine that we are all mindless sheep without voting or political options.

Welcome to one small piece of the new narrative that is being written about the next Alberta by a revived sense of citizenship that is happening all over the province.

CalgaryGrit: 2010 in Pictures: Let's Get Municipal

Good morning and welcome to 2011. The Calgary Grit has put together a great compilation of photos that will remind you of where we have been in the past year.

CalgaryGrit: 2010 in Pictures: Let's Get Municipal

As for the coming year, we will have to create some of those memorable moments ourselves. In other cases circumstances will create them for us and to us. Welcome to 2011 the year of emergent possibilities.