All Posts Tagged With: "books"
Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course In Getting His Kid Into College
Book by Andrew Ferguson
If the purpose of art is to elicit an emotional response, then this is a book of intense artistry. The reaction from most Canadian parents who read it will be intense, hand-raising, thank-you-God relief they don’t have to participate in the madness that is the U.S. college application process.
Crazy U combines U.S. writer Andrew Ferguson’s first-person account of helping his son get into college with a behind-the-scenes investigation into the American university industry. It is a world of competition, conflict and confusions that can apparently only be solved by generous applications of cash.
Ferguson provides a brief history of the controversial SAT test, its opponents and the various prep courses that cling like remora to its underside. He visits with Kat Cohen, an independent college admission counsellor who charges $40,000 for her “platinum package” of advice on how to get into the school of your choice. As personal essays are now a major component of applications, and since these unfairly favour Type-A boasters, Ferguson finds a “model essay development service” that promises to turn every student into a mouthy extrovert. He spends $199 on an essay and finds “every sentence contained a little stink bomb of braggadocio.”
While fascinating in their own right, Ferguson’s experiences—thankfully—have limited applicability to Canada. Some Canadian schools do require personal essays. But aggressive competition for spots in top schools, driven by what Ferguson calls “that feral look of parental ambition,” is largely absent north of the border. For that we can thank the uniform quality of Canadian universities, a more civilized application process and our muted interest in the provenance of degrees.
Regardless of cross-border differences, however, Ferguson is a witty writer worth reading for his talent alone. Describing the university brochures sent to his son, he says they “were printed on paper so thick and voluptuous they might have been mistaken for the leaves of a rubber plant—you didn’t know whether to read them or slurp them like a giraffe.” There’s plenty to slurp here.
What every student should read
It’s completely free. And it shows up in your email every day.
If I had to choose between a stack of Microbiology readings and a novel that I started during Christmas vacation, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t find myself reading about terrestrial and aquatic microbial habitats. So I don’t let myself make the choice. Between January and April, any books outside of my five textbooks (and lab manuals) are banned.
Two weeks into the new semester, I still haven’t touched any non school-related books. Instead, I’ve started reading my spam before killing it off. It doesn’t exactly compare to reading a good book, but it sure is a lot more lucrative. In the past few days I’ve already won hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash prizes.
My spam is even warning me about problems with my computer. And offering helpful solutions.
“Your computer are virus detected. Download antivirus for protect your computer free!”
It’s disappointing when I turn on my laptop and I don’t have any new spam. Just a bunch of emails that I don’t bother to read anymore. Sorry Academica’s Top Ten, but you’ve never offered me any health advice. Like, “Eat pill once a day and BREAK THROUGH WALL!!!”
I’m even getting investment offers and financial advice from complete strangers.
“Hello good sir. My name is Arthur Fowling and I am searching for an investment partner in my lucrative new business venture…”
By the way Arthur, the only people who say “Good sir” are characters from “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Sherlocke Holmes.” It’s about 200 years out of date.
“Greetings from the Gmail team. We are in the process of deleting inactive accounts due to bandwidth limitations. If you do not want your account to be discontinued, please fill in the form below.”
1) Username
2) Password
3) PIN number
4) Credit card information
5) A photo of yourself, so we can include your picture in our annually published book, “People who actually sent us their credit card information and PIN number.”
There’s nothing like a book
It’s a sailboat, not a phonograph.
This year I’ve had an unusual number of requests by students who want the list of books for courses weeks before classes even begin. I’m not sure why this year is unusual, but I hope it has something to do with the enduring appeal of the book.
With the rise of the electronic book reader and the iPad, there has been renewed talk that the good old fashioned paper-bound book (what we scholars call a codex) will soon be obsolete. Like the phonograph or the stereoscope, the paper book will become a quaint remnant of a less-sophisticated time. Defenses of the book, on the other hand, tend to be based on whimsy (look at this new interactive, low-power, easy to use technology!) or practical (I don’t want to take my Kindle in the bath now, do I?).
But I think books will hang around for a different reason. They are beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPad and my fiancee can’t live without her Sony Reader (an ideal gift for the intellectual who travels a lot). But texts read on such devices have a technological uniformity that belies the uniqueness of every book. The beauty of a well-produced paper book is that, like the series of words that it contains, it is a unique creation. Every book has its own weight and feel and cover design and so on. And book lovers (consciously or not) are aware of the manifold choices the book makers have made in creating it. What kind of paper has been used? What type face? What about illustrations and figures? How is it bound?
I foresee the paper book becoming a kind of specialist item: still produced and known, but purchased and enjoyed mainly by aficionados. People still sail on sailboats not because they are the most modern vessels, but because they have an elegance and beauty that other craft cannot match. I think paper books will be more like sailboats than phonographs.
Professors are sometimes impatient with students who ask about books before classes start. Why can’t they just wait to get the syllabus on the first day of class like everyone else? But I understand the desire to get the books early. I was the same way when I was an undergraduate. I wanted to be in the bookstore and see the books piled high. I wanted to carefully peel the plastic wrappings off, to touch the paper, and arrange them carefully on my shelves. What can I say? I love books.
There is a danger, of course, in buying books early because one might get the wrong one (there are a lot of Introduction to Literature books), so students who do want an early start are wise to inquire. And I am always happy to reply. I hope they enjoy those books as much as I do.
Update. Here is another interesting take on this issue, complete with graph describing how everything in the world ever worked.
Why textbooks are so expensive
Bookstores say textbook prices are artificially inflated by unfair importation laws
The price of textbooks is a constant source of frustration for students. When proposed changes to the Copyright Act were announced earlier this month, the education sector followed the crowd and focused its attention on the protection of digital locks that make it illegal to bypass the locks, even when using copyrighted material would be otherwise permitted. But, at least for students, what isn’t on the table to be changed within the Act could be even more important: a relatively obscure set of provisions, in existence for more than a decade, known as the book import regulations that raise the cost of textbooks by as much as 15 per cent.
A form of cultural protection, the regulations grant Canadian publishers—or the Canadian arms of foreign owned multinationals—exclusive rights to import and distribute titles published abroad, fully protected by copyright laws. Publishers on this side of the border, like Pearson Education Canada and the Canadian branch of Oxford University Press, are permitted to charge a 10 per cent premium for American titles and a 15 per cent premium for titles outside North America, usually from Britain.
Unless Canadian-based-distributors charge more than the prescribed 10 or 15 per cent, or take too long to deliver book orders (in some cases they have up to two months) retailers who try to import titles from other sources could find themselves in court. Even if bookstores are able to secure otherwise legitimate contracts with a third-party foreign exporter, they would be in violation of the Copyright Act.
If you have ever wondered why book prices in Canada often don’t align with exchanges rates—something that has become more evident since the dollar has been hovering around parity—this is one reason why.
Although everyone who buys books sees their costs increased due to the regulations, Chris Tabor, director of the Queen’s campus bookstore, says students are disproportionately impacted. Whereas a typical novel will cost less than $30, it is not uncommon for textbooks to cost $100, with some titles going for nearly $300. “So 10 and 15 per cent doesn’t sound like a big deal on a Harry Potter novel, but for students who are spending $800 to $1,000, for their books, it adds up, it’s significant,” he said.
Controversial when enacted in 1999, the regulations have been largely ignored over the past several years. That is starting to change. Last spring, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) met with several Members of Parliament to solicit support for the repeal of the importation rules. Tina Robichaud, CASA’s national director, said while MPs, from all parties, were generally supportive, many were surprised that the provisions even existed.
CASA estimates that protecting exclusive rights for publishers through the Copyright Act costs students as much as $30 million a year. Removing the regulations, because it can be done without amending the Act itself, “is an easy way of putting money back into students’ pockets,” Robichaud said.
In May, representatives of the Canadian Booksellers Association (CBA) met with Heritage Minister James Moore. Initially the group’s intentions were to lobby against allowing Amazon to set up a bricks and mortar warehouse in Canada. But, because Amazon had already been given the go ahead, CBA shifted its focus to the repeal of the import regulations.
And, earlier this month, Campus Stores Canada, a trade association, appears to have been the only education related group to criticize the government for not addressing the regulations as part of other changes to the Copyright Act. “Rather than see the cost of textbooks reduced by as much as 15 per cent overnight, this act will ensure that Canadian students will . . . continue to overpay millions,” executive director Wayne Amundson, said in a release.
Despite what would seem like an easy way to reduce costs for students, a demographic the Conservative government is often accused of ignoring, there are no immediate plans to revisit the book import regulations. In an email, Matthew Deacon, press secretary for the heritage minister, stated: “There is the potential that removing these provisions may result in lower revenues for authors and book publishers.”
When your course load gets too heavy…
…there’s a solution
Bora Laskin and the obscurity of the Supreme Court
Court judgments are some of the best literature you’ll find in Canada
Does anyone here know much about Bora Laskin? Probably not. And yet he was one of only a handful of people who has left an indelible imprint on Canadian society. If you were to trounce down to Bay Street, or to Osgoode Hall, or to Flavelle House off Queens Park, you would find small communities that worship the man, almost as a saint. But out in the general public? Not a chance.
Laskin was Canada’s Chief Justice from 1973 to 1984. It has been said by many that he was the first great Chief Justice this country knew. In the recent book, The Laskin Legacy: Essays in Commemoration of Chief Justice Bora Laskin, Irwin Law has published an intriguing hagiography of the man. Edited by Neil Finklestein and Constance Backhouse, the collection is based on speeches from a symposium in honour of the great judge held in 2005.
Now, be careful. Though the book has a diverse set of perspectives on Laskin – we learn about his underprivileged upbringing in Thunder Bay, we learn about his impact on the court, we learn about his belief in a strong federal government – it is meant solely for an audience of legal professionals and academics. If you are anything less than comfortable with such terms as “constructive trusts” and “fiduciary duties”, this book is, sadly, not for you.
Perhaps this reveals a greater problem. Anyone exiting one of Canada’s twenty law faculties could probably write a detailed essay (with proper citation, no less) on this great legal mind. But he is, at best, an obscurity to others.
This need not be the case. The writings of our country’s great judges can be as powerful as political tracts and as evocative as great literature. But because lawyers alone read the judgments of our courts, the public is kept ignorant of some truly great writing. True, certain Supreme Court decisions involving tariffs, income tax rates or land use planning can be highly technical and, thus, boring. Yet much of what Laskin wrote (and nearly all of what his successor as Chief Justice, Brian Dickson, wrote) contains flashes of brilliance: prose that can judged alongside the works of Burke, Mill and Arendt.
Look at the Americans. Their Supreme Court has a halloed place within the pantheon of collective myth. Their fourth Chief Justice, John Marshall, is revered as the founder of a truly independent judiciary. Earl Warren, who was Chief Justice throughout the turbulent sixties, is known for his progressive stance on civil rights and desegregation. And, today, the extremist philosophy of the originalist Antonin Scalia is known – and feared – by much of the decidedly “liberal” media.
In Canada, however, the personalities on the court don’t receive the same coverage. Perhaps, with far fewer lawyers per capita, we have less of a legal culture. People here are also much less litigious.
But we need not reserve some of the country’s great writing to its judges and lawyers. Especially not since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms affects everyone equally. The notions of justice, of individual rights and of the collective good should become part of our overall discourse. My challenge to Irwin Law, then, is to publish a book not aimed at law faculties and firms, but rather at the general reading public, to let Canadians know about the rich culture of legal writing that exists on their doorstep.
This post was first published on Open Book: Toronto’s Writers in Residence page on May 10, 2008.
