Why is there an increase of violence in Canadian public libraries?

Story by globalnewsdigital • Apr 22, 2023

Video: The rise of violence in Canada’s public libraries

The random acts of violence that are happening on our streets and in our transit systems in cities across Canada are also making their way into public libraries.

Local branches of all sizes are reporting an increase in verbal and physical violence. And for some, the pandemic made it even worse.

Over the past two years, one person died and six others were injured in a mass stabbing in a public library in North Vancouver. Last December, 28-year-old Tyree Cayer was killed during a visit to Winnipeg’s Millennium Library. Four teenagers were charged in his death. And two branches of the Saskatoon library were closed temporarily because of concerns about staff safety.

Cameron Ray, a supervisor librarian with Toronto Public Library, said he has lived the experience first hand — and several times.

“I did have one year where every three months I was assaulted. This guy chased me around the branch with a pair of hair scissors, like, 'I’m going to stab you,'" he says. "That was terrifying.”

Ray and colleague Eila McLeish met when they worked together at the Toronto Reference Library. McLeish has been screamed at, sworn at, and even stalked by a disgruntled patron.

“I’ve come across overdose victims, people who are unconscious.”

McLeish came across a dead body in a library washroom. “That was pretty horrible,” she adds.

McLeish changed to a smaller branch, but she says it got worse. She has received counselling and was on sick leave for a year before returning to work in April.

Experts say libraries are a reflection of the world around them. And society’s problems are finding their way inside their doors.

“People are coming into the library and they have really significant needs,” says Siobhan Stevenson, a professor with the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.

“There are all kinds of social crises, humanitarian crises, in our cities: homelessness, the opioid epidemic, random acts of violence … a social safety net that’s been so diminished,” she told Global News’ The New Reality.

That’s left many people with complex needs with often nowhere to go for support. Public libraries, by their very nature, are committed to being welcoming and inclusive.

“Individuals come to our locations because they feel that it's a safe place that they can come into," says Brian Daly, chief human resources officer at the Toronto Public Library, the largest library system in North America in terms of branches.

"Because of that, we need to be able to provide the services to them here on site because this is where they come.”

He also points out that only a tiny fraction of visits to Toronto’s library branches turn violent.

“About 20 of our branches have high numbers of violent or disruptive incidents out of our 100. And of nine and a half million visits, there were about 300 that involved a violent incident,” Daly says.

“But having said that, if you're the person who is experiencing that incident as a worker or as a customer of ours, even one incident is too many.”

Toronto trains library staff on how to deal with people who have experienced trauma.

Toronto also spends $3 million a year on security guards who are assigned to 40 of the system's 100 branches.

But Daly believes that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

“It's not a matter of just adding more and more guards. That's not the answer to this. We don't want to create an environment where people feel intimidated coming into our branches.”

Video: Millennium Library reopening Monday with security measures

Related video: Canadian premiers look to address public safety (Global News)

View on Watch

Community Crisis Workers

Libraries across the country are grappling with finding a balance between supporting those with complex needs and keeping all visitors and staff safe.

The Edmonton Public Library recognized early on that there was a gap between the needs of some of its more vulnerable clients and the services the library was providing. So it brought in people who were most equipped to help: social workers. It was the first library in Canada to do so.

The outreach workers are now a vital resource, connecting people with the services they need, such as accessing information on where to find a shelter or a hot meal or how to obtain an I.D. card.

“People started to learn that the library was the place you could come for those supports. They could sit. They could be comfortable. They were welcomed,” says Sharon Day, the executive director of customer experience at the Edmonton Public Library.

Hilary Kirkpatrick is a social worker at the Edmonton Public Library. She says providing these services works because the space is accessible, clients are treated with respect and they don’t feel judged.

“We’re able to really meet clients where they’re at and serve their needs,” Kirkpatrick says.

Social workers have also become an important part of the team at other libraries including Halifax, Calgary, Winnipeg and London.

Toronto is launching its own pilot programs to support vulnerable visitors. In addition to connecting them with resources, they will also help identify and deal with problems on the floor before they escalate.

“These are social workers. These are individuals with mental health backgrounds who can come in and talk to individuals who are in distress,” Daly says.

Toronto is also hiring six library safety specialists who will work not only with clients who need help, but with staff who are often on the receiving end of verbal or physical assaults.

“Most of the time it is someone who has been spit up, chewed up and spit out by society and they’re at the end of their rope,” Ray says.

He and McLeish believe libraries need these kinds of programs because librarians and staff are not always equipped to handle these potentially volatile situations.

“It’s so hard when you can’t actually help someone,” Ray says. “As much as we would love to be able to have relationships with all these people and help them, we can’t because I’m trained on Dewey Decimal.”

Stevenson has studied the use of social workers in libraries and seen firsthand the difference they can make. But she worries they will be seen as an easy solution that will justify the further dismantling of social programs.

“It’s a much bigger policy problem,” she says.

The opioid crisis has also contributed to the rise in violence. The Toronto Public Library found a connection between the location of the branches with the most incidents and suspected opioid overdose hotspots in the city.

“There's a lot of correlation with the kind of challenges we're experiencing more broadly in society,” Daly says.

The Edmonton Public Library also saw an uptick in drug-related incidents. “We saw 99 poisonings in our branches in 2022, which is the biggest difference in what we would see pre-pandemic,” Day says.

Edmonton's library system brought in an opioid response team and added washroom attendants at its most affected branches.

Security Measures

In response to the death of Tyree Cayer, the Millennium Library in Winnipeg installed a metal detector and added a regular police presence. It wasn’t the first time visitors were checked on their way in.

In 2019, handheld detectors were used to screen visitors. But they were removed one year later after community groups protested they kept out the people who needed library services the most.

Tania Cayer, Tyree’s mother, feels the opposition to the extra security measures is misplaced.

“People who do not work at that library, I do not believe should even have an opinion on whether a metal detector is put up or not,” she says. “It is to keep those people safe.”

Tania doesn’t blame the library. She believes there are bigger issues at play.

“Winnipeg is struggling with youth crime. It's struggling with drugs. There are a million and one issues. This is just one of them.” she says.



Tania Cayer’s son, Tyree died from a fatal stabbing at Winnipeg’s Millennium Library in December 2022.© Provided by Global News

Still, many libraries are against the addition of entrance barriers because of the concern it will discourage vulnerable clients from coming through their doors.

“There are always going to be challenges when you’re in a public space dealing with every kind of person,” Day says. “The beautiful thing about it is that everybody’s welcome here, but it’s also one of the hard things about it as everybody’s welcome here.”

The Library of the future: community hub

If you haven’t been to a public library lately, chances are you’ll be surprised by what you see. It’s not just about books anymore.

Libraries are a mirror, reflecting people in communities and their evolving needs. That means big changes at public libraries everywhere.

They are constantly adapting to meet these new challenges, at the same time, taking learning to a whole new level, with 3-D printers, recording studios filled with instruments, community kitchens —even places to try the latest video games. There are wide open spaces to relax and study.

“Think of your community library, your local library … as the community's living room. A third space. It's not work. It's not home. It's this other space,” Stevenson says.

A library of the future that looks nothing like the library of the past.

Almost 90% of N.S. teachers believe school violence on the rise: survey

Story by Alex Cooke • Apr 27, 2023

Police monitor the situation at Charles P. Allen High School, in Halifax, Monday, March 20, 2023. A 15-year-old student accused of stabbing two staff members at a Halifax-area high school earlier this week remains in custody and is to return to court next month.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith

A new survey from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union indicates most of the province's teachers believe school violence is on the rise, and more than half have been the victim of a violent act or threat while at work.

In a release, the union said 87 per cent of teachers and educational specialists who responded to the survey believe school violence increased since 2018, and 92 per cent said they've witnessed violence first-hand at school.

As well, 55 per cent of respondents said they were the victim of a violent act or threat while at work.

“All too often I receive phone calls and emails from teachers who are upset and concerned about a violent event they witnessed or experienced at school,” said NSTU president Ryan Lutes in a statement.

“Incidents between students are becoming more frequent, more severe and alarmingly more dangerous. Teachers and school staff members are often kicked, bit, hit, punched, threatened and verbally abused.

"Unfortunately, these incidents frequently go unaddressed or are characterized as just part of going to school. This is unacceptable.”

The online survey was conducted between March 27 and April 13, and a total of 2,534 NSTU members completed it. There are more than 9,000 total NSTU members in the province.

A further 52 per cent of respondents said they were "very concerned" about the current level of violence in their school, and 38 per cent said they were "somewhat concerned."

In an interview, Lutes said the results of the survey are "absolutely really concerning."

"It's really troubling, and at the same time, it's not a surprise from the conversations that I've had with teachers," he said. "The conversations anecdotally and the evidence we're getting from the survey are matching up."

Of the respondents who witnessed violence in schools, 84 per cent said the incident involved student-toward-student violence, and 79 per cent witnessed violence from students toward teachers or school staff.

Twenty-one per cent said they witnessed violence from other adults -- such as a parent or caregiver -- toward school staff. Respondents were allowed to choose more than one option.

Only 17 of the teachers surveyed -- less than one per cent -- believed that violence levels in schools were on the decline.

More than 13,000 violent incidents last year

According to data from the provincial government, there were 13,776 physical violence incidents in Nova Scotia schools in the 2021-22 school year.

With a total of 125,124 enrolments last year, that represents an incidence rate of 11 per cent – though the report said students are often responsible for more than one incident, so the number of students involved is “much less.”

Physical violence is defined as “using force, gesturing, or inciting others to use force to injure a member of the school community.”

Further provincial data obtained under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act indicates there have been tens of thousands of violent incidents in Nova Scotia schools over the last five years:

13,991 incidents in the 2017-18 school year (representing 11.76 per cent of total enrolment)

14,864 in 2018-19 (12.32 per cent)

10,386 in 2019-20 (8.43 per cent)

11,132 in 2020-21 (9.6 per cent.)

While the numbers were lower in 2019-20 and 2020-21, those years were impacted by school shutdowns during COVID-19.

The issue of violence in schools was pushed further into the spotlight last month, after two staff members were stabbed at Charles P. Allen High School in the community of Bedford.

The 15-year-old student accused in the stabbings was charged with two counts of attempted murder and was recently found to be fit to stand trial.

Lutes said violence in schools has long been an "evolving conversation" among teachers, but the recent incident at Charles P. Allen High "highlighted the issue."

That "made us want to get more data from our members about what they're seeing on the ground in schools every day," he said.

Last month, Global News spoke with a former educational program assistant, who recently quit due to burnout and said staff are ill-equipped to deal with violent incidents involving students.

Data from the Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia indicates that those in the education sector covered by the WCB report a “relatively high” number of workplace injuries caused by violence.

From 2013 to 2022, there were a total of 6,303 injuries reported to the WCB from education administration workers, which includes educational assistants, educational program assistants, administrative assistants, caretakers and custodians. Teachers were excluded from that data as they are covered by another insurer.

Of those 6,303 WCB claims, 787 – or about 12 per cent – were attributed to incidents of violence. And 189 of those cases (24 per cent) were time loss claims, which means the injuries were severe enough to cause the worker to miss three or more days of work.

For comparison, injuries due to incidents of violence accounted for 15 per cent of reported injuries for security and investigation services workers, 14 per cent for covered local police forces, 14 per cent for correctional services, nine per cent for nursing home workers and six per cent for employees at general hospitals.

Video: Halifax police detail ‘traumatic’ school stabbing after student charged with attempted murder

Lutes, the NSTU president, said violence in schools is a "complex issue," and he believes part of it stems from a lack of support for students.

"Our classrooms in schools have become more complex, and staffing in our schools has not kept up with that complexity," he said.

"I've got to believe, as a teacher and as a dad, that most students, if they are being violent in our schools, they don't want to be. They are reaching out for help, they're reaching out for support that they're not getting."

Lutes is calling on the provincial government to do more to address school violence. He said the union has shared the information gathered through the survey with the province and is prepared to work with the government.

"We need a wholesale, provincial-wide, all-hands-on deck approach to this, because we can't have kids learning in schools that aren't safe, and we can't have teachers and school staff working in schools that aren't safe," he said.

'Any violent incident in a school is concerning'

In a statement, Education Minister Becky Druhan said the province is committed to ensuring school safety by "providing foundations to strong relationships, maintaining the code of conduct, and through a commitment to continuous improvement."

She said she met with the NSTU regarding the survey results, and will continue to work with the union, the Nova Scotia Public School Administrators Association, and other organizations.

"Any violent incident in a school is concerning for students, staff, and families. Schools reflect their communities, and the challenges of the communities make their way into schools," she said. "We can’t separate schools from their communities. What we can do is continue to provide programs, resources, and professional supports to help teachers and other staff to help children."

Druhan said the province has added wraparound supports, with more than 1,000 inclusive education programs and positions to the public school system over the last five years, including behaviour and autism specialists, school psychologists, social workers, and mental health clinicians.

"We will continue to support the professional learning of teachers and provide training to respond to complex needs and individual circumstances," Druhan said.

Last month, Druhan told Global News the province has increased the education budget by $122 million from last year, and added 63 teachers and 68 inclusive education positions within HRCE alone.

“We are continuing to add resources and support to the system to grow and to meet our student’s needs,” she said.

Druhan said safety is a “fundamental priority” for the province and there is work underway to help students develop and build better relationships. She noted that there is a provincial code of conduct for all educators and administrators to prepare for the “unfortunate and serious incidents that sometimes do occur.”

She added that there is an emergency response plan in every school.

“Having said all that, we can always do more,” said Druhan.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC CANADA

Most Canadians want universal mental health care. What would that look like?

Story by Katie Dangerfield 

GLOBAL NEWS

May 1, 2023

Teenage girl has psychotherapy session with her therapist via video call. She has a rubber band on her wrist to prevent anxiety.© Getty Images

As Canada continues to grapple with a mental health issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a new poll shows that a vast majority of Canadians want the government to provide universal access to systems such as therapy, medication and support groups.

The survey released Monday by the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) based on an online survey of 1,626 adult Canadians conducted between April 6 and April 10, found that 87 per cent of Canadians want universal mental health care and 69 per cent believe the country is in a mental health crisis.

"If you break your leg, you know that you can go anywhere in the country and you're going to get the same level of treatment and care. But we can't say that about mental health," Margaret Eaton, national CEO for the CMHA told Global News.

The idea of universal mental health care is that services are funded through public health insurance and are free to all Canadians, Eaton said.

"We think it's wonderful that Canadians also want universal mental health care because it's been something we've been talking to the federal government and to provinces about for some time now," she said.

"A great percentage of Canadians, especially vulnerable Canadians, children and youth, the LGBTQ community, and racialized people were really affected by the pandemic and their mental health continues to suffer."

For example, a study published in Jama Pediatrics on Monday found an increase in depression and anxiety symptoms among youth, especially girls after the pandemic.

And a Calgary-based study published in the Lancet in March, said the pandemic increased mental distress for kids, leading to a sharp increase in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents under the age of 19 years old.

"Universal access to mental health care is so important," Sheri Madigan, a professor of clinical psychology based in Calgary, said, noting the influx of mental health issues that arose among youth during the pandemic.

"So we need greater access to mental health care, and that can happen by making it universally accessible," she said.

Nearly 90% of Canadians want universal mental health care survey shows

The CMHA survey found that of the 35 per cent of Canadians who have had a mental health concern in the past year, one-third have not reached out for help, primarily because it is too expensive or because they don’t know where to find it.

A majority of Canadians who receive counselling for mild-to-moderate illnesses pay out of pocket or through private insurance plans through their employer, a 2018 CMHA report found. Even if counselling is covered under insurance, the CMHA reported that it is limited, with coverage ranging from $400 to $1,500 anually.

And then there are individuals with more complex mental illnesses, which can face even greater barriers. These can range from long wait times and a lack of access to a primary physician or psychiatrist making many rely on emergency departments as their source of care, the CMHA said.

"If you don't have an employer plan that offers you some free psychotherapy, or if you live outside of a major urban centre, you're going to really struggle to find care for your mental health," Eaton said.

"So Canada really doesn't do a good job of making sure that whether you live in Nunavut or St. John's, Newfoundland or even downtown Toronto, that you've got the same level of care and access to the same quality of mental health care."

Video: Sounding alarm on mental illness in children & youth

But universal health care access could change this.

Whether it's talk therapy, education in mindfulness or training for mental health first aid, Jean Clinton, a clinical professor in the Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, said the key is that anyone can access it.

She believes that Canada is in a mental health crisis that was exacerbated by the pandemic, and many people are burnt out.

"I think universal mental health care is a very, very good step in the right direction, but it needs to be comprehensive," she said, adding that offering free talk therapy may not be enough.

Talk therapy, although beneficial, can cause huge amounts of wait time, she stressed.

For example, a 2020 report by Children’s Mental Health Ontario found the longest wait for community mental health child and youth services can reach 2.5 years in the province.

"With the numbers we're talking about taking, we will never have enough clinicians to treat ourselves out of this problem," she stressed.

She believes if a universal mental health system was implemented in Canada, it should also involve a public health campaign and more mental health training in schools.

Training teachers, coaches and even peers in mental health first aid could help reach many young Canadians who need immediate support, Clinton stressed.

Funding is one of the biggest barriers to implementing a universal mental health care strategy, Eaton said.

"We really believe that that notion of universal mental health care must become something that all levels of government commit themselves to," she said.

"We were very excited to see the creation of a possible mental health transfer from the federal government, which would be funded just like the Canada Health transfer, but they would be set aside just for mental health."

In 2021, the Trudeau government made an election promise to create a new $4.5 billion Canada Mental Health Transfer that would be sent to provinces and territories over five years. However, there is still no information on when the transfer is happening.

"Making mental health care a full and equal part of our universal health care system is a key priority of ours, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to ensure that Canadians are able to access appropriate and timely care, by the most appropriate provider at the most appropriate place, including virtually, wherever they live," a spokesperson for Carolyn Bennett, Canada's minister of mental health and addictions, told Global News in an email Monday.

Another barrier is mental health stigma, Clinton said.

Global News
Canada election: Trudeau promises to fund mental health supports with nearly $6.5 billion if re-elected 2021 

"I think a huge barrier is a mentality that mental health problems are brought upon by your own deficit thinking," she said.

"But it's an illness, it's not a character defect," she added, arguing that education on destigmatizing mental health issues is key.

Some provinces, like Nova Scotia, have efforted to give their residents better access to mental health resources in the absence of a universal plan.

In 2022, the province announced it was funding an online mental health coaching program aimed at supporting people experiencing mild or moderate depression and anxiety.

The online program offers weekly one-on-one virtual coaching alongside cognitive behavioural therapy resources, which is free for all residents over the age of 16 without a referral.

The province estimated it will cost between $340,000 and $510,000 annually for the service.

Other countries have also implemented similar strategies.

The United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) provides free mental health care services to all residents, including counselling, psychotherapy, and medication management.

The strategy, which was implemented in 2008, proved successful. According to the NHS, after more than a decade of this free service, about 50 per cent of patients with depression or anxiety were reported to recover and an average of seven sessions with a therapist.

Eaton says the influx of mental issues coupled with the high cost of living in Canada makes the need for better access to mental health care more important than ever.

"I feel like Canadians need to have relief from their psychological suffering," she said. "And one way to do that is really by offering universal mental health care, free care for everyone who needs it, where they need it, and when they need it."

MPs ask whether pulp giant's revamped board is Canadian enough

Story by Elizabeth Thompson • CBC

Monday, May 15,2023

Members of Parliament are raising concerns after Canada's new pulp and paper giant dismissed the previous board of directors of Resolute Forest Products and replaced it with a board dominated by longtime Paper Excellence executives.

They are also questioning whether the new board satisfies the commitment Paper Excellence gave the federal government when it approved its takeover of Resolute — that it would "maintain" a Canadian presence on Resolute's board of directors.

"I think Canadians are waking up to the fact that a company that has very unclear ownership, that has ties directly to Shanghai and to Indonesia, may be controlled by a family that has massive control over international pulp and paper markets, is now sitting on top of and in control of 22 million hectares of Canadian forest," said NDP natural resources critic Charlie Angus.

"We need to know who's making the decisions here. They were allowed to take over Resolute, they made promises about the takeover of Resolute, that this was going to remain very much Canadian."

Seth Kursman, spokesperson for Resolute Forest Products, confirmed that the company's previous board of directors is no longer in place. He said two of the three current directors have Canadian citizenship and "all members of the Resolute executive team are also Canadian."

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne won't reveal what the company promised the federal government regarding what percentage of Resolute's board have to be Canadian citizens, saying he has to respect the Investment Canada Act. He said his department will be watching to ensure that the company keeps the promises it made when it acquired Resolute.

"Canadians know me by now. I'm a hawk on these things," Champagne told CBC News. "We have a sophisticated process and we have always made sure that whatever undertakings that people (make) to the government of Canada, we follow up and we make sure that they are respected."

Bloc Québécois Natural Resources critic Mario Simard said he has concerns about the deal to acquire Resolute and wants to know more about the promises the company made to the government.

Simard said he plans to table a motion with the House of Commons natural resources committee calling on the committee to ask Paper Excellence's owner Jackson Wijaya to waive the confidentiality of discussions the company had with the government "regarding the company's ownership structure and business relationships in the Canadian pulp and paper industry."



Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne says the government will hold Paper Excellence to the commitments it made.© Alex Panetta/CBC News

Champagne's comments come after Domtar, owned by Paper Excellence, acquired Resolute Forest Products earlier this year — a deal that consolidated Paper Excellence's dominance of Canada's wood pulp industry.

In March, CBC News took part in a months-long investigation of the global forestry industry with 40 media outlets under the umbrella of the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. That investigation raised questions about who is behind Canada's new pulp and paper powerhouse.

The people behind or associated with Paper Excellence appear to have a pattern of using thickets of corporations — including some in tax havens — effectively shielding transactions and assets from public and government scrutiny.

The company has also been tight-lipped about its past financing, some of which was facilitated by the China Development Bank, which is owned by the Chinese government.

CBC's investigation also found leaked records and insider accounts that show that, at least until a few years ago, Paper Excellence appeared to have been closely and secretly co-ordinating business and strategy decisions with Asia Pulp & Paper.

Asia Pulp & Paper is one of the world's biggest pulp and paper players and has a track record of environmental destruction.

The company maintains that Paper Excellence is independent of Asia Pulp and Paper and is owned by Wijaya.

Related video: Trudeau pitches Canadian manufacturing to influential New York audience (cbc.ca)

The Prime Minister talked up Canada to its southern neighbour.

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In the wake of the investigation, the House of Commons Natural Resources committee voted to call witnesses to testify about the company and its ownership. Those hearings have been plagued by committee meeting cancellations for technical reasons and problems scheduling Paper Excellence representatives to appear.

On Tuesday, committee Chairman John Aldag said Paper Excellence officials are now scheduled to appear May 30.

But the committee is still having difficulty getting Wijaya to testify. In a letter dated May 1 obtained by CBC News, Wijaya told the committee he was unable to appear "due to extensive global business commitments."

Wijaya told the committee that Paper Excellence and its subsidiaries "are owned solely and exclusively by me and are wholly separate and independent from any other company, including Asia Pulp and Paper and the Sinar Mas group."

Asia Pulp and Paper is part of the Sinar Mas group, owned by the Wijaya family.

Wijaya also shed new light on a $1.25 billion US demand debenture from the China Development Bank in 2012.

"Relying in part on connections that I had developed through family and other relationships, Paper Excellence sought financing to make major capital investments in three Canadian mills," Wijaya wrote. "Based on these goals, our team successfully negotiated a loan and credit facility from China Development Bank (CDB), which was actively sourcing international project financings in many parts of the world, including Canada, at that time.

"This was a standard commercial loan and we paid that financing down over the succeeding years and subsequently fully paid it off in 2020. We have no relationship today with CDB or any other Chinese bank."

CBC's investigation found the company subsequently obtained financing from two Indonesian banks which registered mortgages on mill properties in B.C and Saskatchewan.


The Resolute Forest Products' pulp and paper mill in Thunder Bay, Ont.

© Matt Prokopchuk/CBC

The latest questions being raised centre on the deal to acquire Resolute, which provides Paper Excellence with mills, power generating facilities and wood supplies in Ontario, Quebec and the U.S.

When the federal government approved the deal, the company gave assurances it would maintain Canadian participation on the board of directors. Prior to the acquisition, seven of the eight directors on Resolute's board lived in Canada.

However, after the deal to acquire Resolute closed, the previous board was removed, with the exception of company president Remi Lalonde, and two new board members were added — Sugiarto (Awie) Kardiman and Peter (Hardi) Wardana.



Sugiarto (Awie) Kardiman (left), Peter (Hardi) Wardhana (centre) and Remi Lalonde.

© Credit: PaperExcellence.com, PRPeak.com, Resolute Forest Products

Filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for Domtar in 2022 say Wardhana has been with Paper Excellence since its inception and was a director of Paper Excellence B.V. and the company's global head of mergers and acquisitions. They say Wardhana, a former consultant with McKinsey & Co., earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, a master of science in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University and a master in finance from the London Business School.

A 2010 Globe and Mail article said he previously worked with Sinar Mas. As recently as 2017, corporate filings listed an address in Indonesia, although the newest filings for Resolute list his domicile as Paper Excellence's corporate offices in Richmond, B.C.

Kursman said Wardhana is not a Canadian citizen and did not say where he lives.

Kardiman worked for Paper Excellence from 2010 to 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile, then rejoined the company in November 2020 after working for two other companies. Kardiman did his BA in accounting in Indonesia and, in early corporate documents for Paper Excellence companies, listed an address in Indonesia. Kursman said Kardiman has Canadian citizenship and lives in Coquitlam, B.C.

Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May said she doesn't think Resolute's current board satisfies the terms of the assurance the government was given.

"With a board of directors with key players from outside Canada who come from Paper Excellence culture, Paper Excellence background, it's worrying to see people come on the board whose ties are to Indonesia," she said.

Shane Moffatt of Greenpeace said Resolute's board of directors has tended to play an important role in setting the company's direction.

"When it comes to Resolute Forest Products, I have certainly seen their boards be a significant force within the company and I would be surprised if the appointment of new Paper Excellence representatives was not intended to ensure some new perspectives around the direction of the company," he said.

Moffatt, who is among those scheduled to testify before the Natural Resources committee, said it is important for Wijaya to appear before MPs.

"I really think it is so critically important for public trust in what's happening in the forests for Jackson Wijaya to show," Moffatt said. "I can't possibly imagine him not showing up and thinking that's going to be acceptable to anyone."

Brain Work and Manual Work 

PETER KROPOTKIN

First Published: The Nineteenth Century, March 1890, pp. 456-475
Source: Archive.org

Note: Kropotkin was a frequent contributor to The Nineteenth Century. He was their regular correspondent for science news, and used the journal to issue his book Mutual Aid in serial form, as well as many articles on other topics. Brain Work and Manual Work was later published in lightly edited form as Chapter 8 of Fields, Factories, and Workshops

Transcription/Markup/Notes: by Graham Seaman for MIA, Jan 2021.

In olden times, men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments and himself to make the well-known telescope which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to he moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while helping his father — a practical gardener — in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches — it rather favoured them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialised workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated society, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could ‘idle’ at a wheelwright’s shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labour, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine, or a factory, from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the scientists, they despise manual labour. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labour to the height of a theory. ‘The scientist,’ they say, ‘must discover the laws of Nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientist and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry.’

It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young, they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are. such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialisation of labour, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars – the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry — and of science as well, as I am about to prove — that all over the world we hear complaints about the scarcity of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in this country, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaints is this: ‘The worker whose task has been specialised by the permanent division of labour has lost the intellectual interest in his labour, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers — not scientists nor trained engineers — have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionised industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has prevailed, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot? At the outset of modem industry, three generations of workers have invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those ‘nearly to nothings’ of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke recently at Bath[a] are missing in their inventions — those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt’s schemes. None but he who knows the machine — not in its drawings and models only, hut in its breathing and throbbings — who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. Hut in the modem machinery there is no room left for naïve improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together — unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions. Such is the real substance of the present movement in favour of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouthpieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper’s view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.

Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognise the necessity of specialisation of knowledge, but we maintain that specialisation must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of ‘technical education,’ which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the éducation intégrale or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science — such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science — and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manual production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too largo, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes w4iich prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in our miserably organised society.

The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years, with many hundreds of boys; and the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna, and Paris are to the effect that the experiment has been a success.[b] The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections — the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know the former only (it is also the more important in our case), so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical section. Well, after a five or six years’ stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the best European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Peterburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing their knowledge with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry compiled by some students of the technical school for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems; and I came to the conclusion that while we, university students, had more knowledge of a general character (for instance, in mathematical astronomy), they, the students of the school, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the# university, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the school fabricated with their own hands, and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus — all for the trade — and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers — workers with university education — highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honour, while independent research was favoured by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted — according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago – in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the modern universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter’s workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch — the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner’s workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith’s and engineering workshops. Such was the system which English readers will find described in full in a recent work by Mr. Ham,(1) and which has been introduced, in its technical part, in the Chicago Manual Training School. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students, I cannot do better than to refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.

The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school. It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognise that the Moscow experiment — not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments — has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skilled labourer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled labourers is to seize the bull by the horns — to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with some scraps of knowledge in some branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar’s time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar’s mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.

It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of coloured cardboard, will not look at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old, if they arc put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the Kindergarten — German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand — has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children’s minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyse that passion, or do not know how to utilise it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin’s teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the ‘lower classes only.’ They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.

And then come the school years, and time is wasted again to an incredible extent. Take, for instance, mathematics, which everyone ought to know, because it is the basis of all subsequent education, and which so few really learn in our schools. In geometry time is foolishly wasted by using a method which merely consists in committing geometry to memory. In most cases, the boy reads again and again the proof of a theorem till his memory has retained the succession of reasonings. Therefore, nine boys out of ten, if asked to prove an elementary theorem two years after having left the school, will be unable to do it, unless mathematics is their specialty. They will forget which auxiliary lines to draw, and they never have been taught to discover the proofs by themselves. No wonder that later on they find such difficulties in applying geometry to physics, that their progress is despairingly sluggish, and that so few master higher mathematics. There is, however, the other method which permits progress, as a whole, at a much speedier rate, and under which he who once has learned geometry will know it all his life long. Under this system, each theorem is put as a problem; its solution is never given beforehand, and the pupil is induced to find it by himself. Thus, if some preliminary exercises with the rule and the compass have been made, there is not one boy or girl, oat of twenty or more, who will not be able to find the means of drawing an angle which is equal to a given angle, and to prove their equality, after a few suggestions from the teacher; and if the subsequent problems are given in a systematic succession (there are excellent text-books for the purpose), and the teacher does not press his pupils to go faster than they can go at the beginning, they advance from one problem to the next with an astonishing facility, the only difficulty being to bring the pupil to solve the first problem and thus to acquire confidence in his own reasoning. Moreover, each abstract geometrical truth must be impressed on the mind in its concrete form as well. As soon as the pupils have solved a few problems on paper, they must solve them on the playing-ground with a few sticks and a string, and they must apply their knowledge in the workshop. Only then will the geometrical lines acquire a concrete meaning in the childrens minds; only then will they see that the teacher is playing no tricks when he asks them to solve problems with the rule and the compass, without resorting to the protractor; only then will they know geometry. ‘Through the eyes and the hand to the brain’ — that is the true principle of economy of time in teaching. I remember as if it were yesterday, how geometry suddenly acquired for me a new meaning, and how this new meaning facilitated all ulterior studies. It was as we were mastering a Montgolfier balloon, and I remarked that the angles at the summits of each of the twenty strips of paper out of which the balloon was going to be made must cover less than the fifth part of a right angle each. I remember, next, bow the sines and the tangents ceased to be mere cabalistic signs when they permitted us to calculate the length of a stick in a working profile of a fortification; and how geometry in space became plain when we began to make on a small scale a bastion with embrasures and barbettes – an occupation which obviously was soon prohibited on account of the state into which we brought our clothes. ‘You look like navvies,’ was the reproach addressed to us by our intelligent educators, while we were proud precisely of being navvies — and of discovering the use of geometry.

By compelling our children to study real things from mere graphical representations, instead of making those things themselves, we compel them to waste the most precious time; we uselessly worry their minds; we accustom them to the worst methods of learning; we kill independent thought in the bud; and very seldom we succeed in conveying a real knowledge of what we are teaching. Superficiality, parrot-like repetition, slavishness and inertia of mind are the results of our education. We do not teach our children how to learn. The very beginnings of science are taught on the same pernicious system. In most schools, even arithmetic is taught in the abstract way, and mere rules are stuffed into the poor little heads. The idea of a unit, which is arbitrary and can be changed at will in our measurement (the match, the box of matches, the dozen of boxes, or the gross; the metre, the centimetre, the kilometre, and so on), is not impressed on the mind, and therefore, when the children come to the decimal fractions they are at a loss to understand them;, whereas in France, where the decimal system of measures and money is a matter of daily life, even those workers who have received the plainest elementary education are quite familiar with decimals. To represent twenty-five centimes, or twenty-five centimetres, they write ‘ zero twenty-five,’ while most of my readers surely remember how this same zero at the head of a row of figures puzzled them in their boyhood. We do also what we can to render algebra unintelligible, and our children spend one year before they have learned what is not algebra at all, but a mere system of abbreviations, which can be learned by the way, if it is taught together with arithmetic.

The waste of time in physics is merely revolting. While young people very easily understand the principles of chemistry and its formulae, as soon as they themselves make the first experiments with a few glasses and tubes, they mostly find the greatest difficulties in grasping the mechanical introduction into physics, partly because they do not know geometry, and especially because they are merely shown costly machines instead of being induced to make themselves plain apparatus for illustrating the phenomena they study. Instead of learning the laws of force with plain instruments which a boy of ten can easily make, they learn them from mere drawings, in a purely abstract fashion. Instead of making themselves an Atwood’s machine with a broomstick and the wheel of an old clock, or verifying the laws of falling bodies with a key gliding on an inclined string, they are shown a complicated apparatus, and in most cases the teacher himself does not know how to explain to them the principle of the apparatus, and indulges in irrelevant details. And so it goes on from the beginning to the end, with but a few honourable exceptions(2).

If waste of time is characteristic of our methods of teaching science, it is characteristic as well of the methods used for teaching handicraft. We know how years are wasted when a boy serves his apprenticeship in a workshop; but the same reproach can be addressed, to a great extent, to those technical schools which endeavour at once to teach some special handicraft, instead of resorting to the broader and surer methods of systematical teaching. Just as there are in science some notions and methods which are preparatory to the study of all sciences, so there are also some fundamental notions and methods preparatory to the special study of any handicraft. Reuleaux has shown in that delightful book, the Theoretische Kinematik, that there is, so to say, a philosophy of all possible machinery. Each machine, however complicated, can be reduced to a few elements — plates, cylinders, discs, cones, and so on — as well as to a few tools — chisels, saws, rollers, hammers, &c.; and,however complicated its movements, they can be decomposed into a few modifications of motion, such as the transformation of circular motion into a rectilinear, and the like, with a number of intermediate links. So also each handicraft can be decomposed into a number 6f elements. In each trade one must know how to make a plate with parallel surfaces, a cylinder, a disc, a square and a round hole; how to manage a limited number of tools, all tools being mere modifications of less than a dozen types; and how to transform one kind of motion into another. This is the foundation of all mechanical handicrafts; so that the knowledge of how to make in wood those primary elements, how to manage the chief tools in wood-work, and how to transform various kinds of motion, ought to be considered as the very basis for the subsequent teaching of all possible kinds of mechanical handicraft. The pupil who has acquired that skill already knows one good half of all possible trades. Besides, none can be a good worker in science unless he is in possession of good methods of scientific research; unless he has learned to observe, to describe with exactitude, to discover mutual relations between facts seemingly disconnected, to make hypotheses and to verify them, to reason upon cause and effect, and so on. And none can be a good manual worker unless he has been accustomed to the good methods of handicraft altogether. He must grow accustomed to conceive the subject of his thoughts in a concrete form, to draw it, or to model, to hate badly kept tools and bad methods of work, to give to everything a fine touch of finish, to derive artistic enjoyment from the contemplation of gracious forms and combinations of colours, and dissatisfaction from what is ugly. Be it handicraft, science, or art, the chief aim of the school is not to make a specialist from a beginner, but to teach him the elements of knowledge and the good methods of work, and, above all, to give him that general inspiration which will induce him, later on, to put in whatever he does a sincere longing for truth, to like what is beautiful both as to form and contents; to feel the necessity of being a useful unit amidst other human units, and thus to feel his heart at unison with the rest of humanity.

As for avoiding the monotony of work which would result from the pupil always making mere cylinders and discs, and never making machines or other useful things, there are thousands of means for avoiding that want of interest, and one of them, in use at Moscow, is worthy of notice. It is not to give work for mere exercise, but to utilise everything which the pupil makes, from his very first steps. Bo you remember how you were delighted, in your childhood, if your work was utilised, be it only as a part of something useful? So they do at Moscow. Each plank planed by the pupils is utilised as a part of some machine in some of the other workshops. When a pupil comes to the engineering workshop, and he is set to make a quadrangular block of iron with parallel and perpendicular surfaces, the block has an interest in his eyes, because, when he has finished it, verified its angles and surfaces, and corrected its defects, the block is not thrown under the bank — it is given to a more advanced pupil, who makes a handle to it, paints the whole, and sends it to the shop of the school as a presse papier. The systematical teaching thus receives the necessary attractiveness(3).

It is evident that celerity of work is a most important factor in production. So it might be asked if, under the above system, the necessary speed of work could be obtained. But there are two kinds of celerity. There is the celerity which we see in a lace-manufactory; full-grown men, with shivering hands and heads, are feverishly binding together the ends of two threads from the remnants of cotton-yarn in the bobbins; you hardly can follow their movements. But the very fact of requiring such kind of rapid work is the condemnation of the factory system. What has remained of the human being in those shivering bodies? What will be their outcome? Why this waste of human force, when it could produce ten times the value of the odd rests of yarn? This kind of celerity is required exclusively because of the cheapness of the factory slaves; so let us hope that no school will ever aim at this kind of quickness in work. But there is also the time-saving celerity of the well-trained worker, and this is surely achieved best by the kind of education which we advocate. However plain his work, the educated worker makes it better and quicker than the uneducated. Observe, for instance, how a good worker proceeds in cutting anything — say a piece of cardboard — and compare his movements with those of an improperly trained worker. The latter seizes the cardboard, takes the tool as it is, traces a line in a haphazard way, and begins to cut; half-way he is tired, and when he has finished his work is worth nothing; whereas, the former will examine his tool and improve it if necessary; he will trace the line with exactitude, secure both cardboard and rule, keep the tool in the right way, cut quite easily, and give you a piece of good work. That is the true time-saving celerity, the most appropriate for economising human labour; and the best means for attaining it is an education of the most superior kind. The great masters painted with an astonishing rapidity; but their rapid work was the result of a great development of intelligence and imagination, of a keen sense of beauty, of a fine perception of colours. And that is the kind of rapid work which humanity is in need of.

Much more ought to be said as regards the duties of the school but I hasten to say a few words more as to the desirability of the kind of education briefly sketched in the preceding pages. Certainly, I do not cherish the illusion that a thorough reform in education, or in any of the issues indicated in my preceding papers, will be made as long as the civilised nations remain under the present narrowly egotistic system of production and consumption. All we can expect, as long as the present conditions last, is to have some microscopical attempts at reforming here and there on a small scale — attempts which necessarily will prove to be far below the expected results, because of the impossibility of reforming on a small scale when so intimate a connection exists between the manifold functions of a civilised nation. But the energy of the reconstructive genius of society depends precisely upon the depths of its conception as to what ought to be done, and how; and the necessity of recasting education is one of those necessities which are most comprehensible to all, and are most appropriate for inspiring society with those ideals, without which stagnation or even decay are unavoidable. So let us suppose that a community — a city, or a territory which has, at least, a few millions of inhabitants — gives the above-sketched education to all its children, without distinction of birth (and we are rich enough to permit us the luxury of such an education), without asking anything in return from the children but what they will give when they have become producers of wealth. Suppose such an education is given, and analyse its probable consequences. I will not insist upon the increase of wealth which would result from having a young army of educated and well-trained producers; nor shall I insist upon the social benefits which would be derived from erasing the present distinction between the brain workers anti the manual workers, and from thus reaching the concordance of interest and harmony so much wanted in our times of social struggles. I shall not dwell upon the fulness of life which would result for each separate individual, if he were enabled to enjoy the use of both his mental and bodily powers; nor upon the advantages of raising manual labour to the place of honour it ought to occupy in society, instead of being a stamp of inferiority, as it is now. Nor shall I insist upon the disappearance of the present misery and degradation, with all their consequences — vice, crime, prisons, price of blood, denunciation, and the like — which necessarily would follow. In short, I will not touch now the great social question, upon which so much has been written and so much remains to be written yet. I merely intend to point out in these pages the benefits which science itself would derive from the change.

Some will say, of course, that to reduce the scientists to the rôle of manual workers would mean the decay of science and genius. But those who will take into account the following considerations probably will agree that the result ought to be the reverse — namely, such a revival of science and art, and such a progress in industry, as we only can faintly foresee from what we know about the times of the Renaissance. It has become a commonplace to speak with emphasis about the progress of science during the nineteenth century; and it is evident that our century, if compared with centuries past, has much to be proud of. But, if we take into account that most of the problems which our century has solved already had been indicated, and their solutions foreseen, a hundred years ago, we must admit that the progress was not so rapid as might have been expected, and that something hampered it. The mechanical theory of heat was very well foreseen in the last century by Rumford and Humphry Davy, and even in Russia it was advocated by Lomonosoff.(4) However, much more than half a century elapsed before the theory reappeared in science. Lamarck, and even Linnæus, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, and several others were fully aware of the variability of species; they were opening the way for the construction of biology on the principles of variation; but here, again, half a century was wasted before the variability of species was brought again to the front; and we all remember how Darwin’s ideas were carried on and forced on the attention of university people, chiefly by persons who were not professional scientists themselves; and yet in Darwin’s hands the theory of evolution surely was narrowed, owing to the overwhelming importance given to only one factor of evolution. For many years past, astronomy has been needing a careful revision of the Kant and Laplace’s hypothesis; but no theory is yet forthcoming which would compel general acceptance. Geology surely has made wonderful progress in the reconstitution of the palaeontological record, but dynamical geology progresses at a despairingly slow rate; the theory of the igneous origin of granite and other unstratified crystalline rocks is still taught in the universities, although the field geologists cannot reconcile it with the contradictory facts, and they are abandoning it in Germany and Russia; while all future progress in the great question as to the laws of distribution of living organisms on the surface of the earth is hampered by the want of knowledge as to the extension of glaciation during the Quaternary epoch.(5) In short, in each branch of science a revision of the current theories as well as new wide generalisations are wanted. And if the revision requires some of that inspiration of genius which moved Galileo and Newton, and which depends in its appearance upon general causes of human development, it requires also an increase in the number of scientific workers. When facts contradictory to current theories become numerous, the theories must be revised (we saw it in Darwin’s case), and simple intelligent workers in science are required to accumulate them.

Immense regions of the earth still remain unexplored; the study of the geographical distribution of animals and plants meets with stumbling-blocks at every step. Travellers cross continents, and do not know even how to determine the latitude nor how to manage a barometer. Physiology, both of plants and animals, psycho-physiology, and the psychological faculties of man and animals are so many branches of knowledge requiring more data of the simplest description. History remains a fable convenue chiefly because it wants fresh ideas, but also because it wants scientifically thinking workers to reconstitute the life of past centuries in the same way as Thorold Rogers or Augustin Thierry have done it for separate epochs. In short, there is not one single science which does not suffer in its development from a want of men and women endowed with a philosophical conception of the universe, ready to apply their forces of investigation in a given field, however limited, and having leisure for devoting themselves to scientific pursuits. In a community such as we suppose, thousands of workers would be ready to answer any appeal for exploration. Darwin spent almost thirty years in gathering and analysing facts for the elaboration of the theory of the origin of species. Had he lived in such a society as we suppose, he simply would have made an appeal to volunteers for facts and partial exploration, and thousands of explorers would have answered his appeal. Scores of societies would have come to life to debate and to solve each of the partial problems involved in the theory, and in ten years the theory would have been verified; all those factors of evolution which only now begin to receive due attention would have appeared in their full light. The rate of scientific progress would have been tenfold; and if the individual would not have the same claim on posterity’s gratitude as he has now, the unknown mass would have done the work with more speed and with more prospect for ulterior advance than the individual could do in his lifetime. Mr. Murray’s dictionary is an illustration of that kind of work — the work of the future.[c]

However, there is another feature of modern >science which speaks more strongly yet in favour of the change we advocate. While industry, especially by the end of the last century and during the first part of the present, has been investing on such a scale as to revolutionise the very face of the earth, science has been losing its inventive powers. Scientists invent no more, or very little. Is it not striking, indeed, that the steam-engine, even in its leading principles, the railway-engine, the steamboat, the telephone, the phonograph, the weaving-machine, the lace-machine, the lighthouse, the macadamised road, photography in black and in colours, and thousands of less important things, have not been invented by professional scientists, although none of them would have refused to associate his name with any of the named inventions? Men who hardly had received any education at school, who had merely stolen the crumbs of knowledge from the tables of the rich; men who made their experiments with the most primitive means — the attorney-clerk Smeaton, the instrument-maker Watt, the engine-brakesman Stephenson, the jeweller’s apprentice Fulton, the millwright Rennie, the mason Telford, and hundreds of others whose very names remain unknown, were, as Mr. Smiles justly says, ‘the real makers of modern civilisation’; while the professional scientists, provided with all means for acquiring knowledge and experimenting, have invented little in the formidable array of implements, machines, and prime-motors which has shown to humanity how to utilise and to manage the forces of nature.(6) The fact is striking, but its explanation is very simple: those men — the Watts and the Stephenson — knew something which the savants do not know — they knew the use of their hands; their surroundings stimulated their inventive powers; they knew machines, their leading principles, and their work; they had breathed the atmosphere of the workshop and the building-yard.

We know how the scientists will meet the reproach. They will say:– ‘We discover the laws of Nature, let others apply them; it is a simple division of labour.’ But such a rejoinder would be utterly untrue. The march of progress is quite the reverse, because in a hundred cases against one the mechanical invention comes before the discovery of the scientific law. It was not the dynamical theory of heat which came before the steam-engine — it followed it. When thousands of engines already were transforming heat into motion under the eyes of thousands of scientists, and when they had done so for half a century, or more; when thousands of trains, stopped by powerful brakes, were disengaging heat and spreading thousands of sparks on the rails at their approach to the stations; when all over the civilisational world heavy hammers and perforators were rendering burning hot the masses of iron they were hammering and perforating — then, and then only, a doctor, Mayer, ventured to bring out the mechanical theory of heat with all its consequences; and yet the scientists almost drove him to madness by obstinately clinging to their mysterious caloric fluid. When every engine was illustrating the impossibility of utilising all the heat disengaged by a given amount of burnt fuel, then came the law of Clausius. When all over the world industry already was transforming motion into heat, sound, light, and electricity, and each one into each other, then only came Grove’s theory of the ‘correlation of physical forces.’ It was not the theory of electricity which gave us the telegraph. When the telegraph was invented, all we knew about electricity was but a few facts more or less badly arranged in our books; the theory of electricity is not ready yet; if still waits for its Newton, notwithstanding the brilliant attempts of late years. Even the empirical knowledge of the laws of electrical currents was in its infancy when a few hold men laid a cable at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, despite the warnings of the authorised men of science.

The name of ‘applied science’ is quite misleading, because, in the great majority of cases, invention, far from being an application of science, on the contrary creates a new branch of science. The American bridges were no application of the theory of elasticity; they came before the theory, and all we can say in favour of science is, that in this special branch, theory and practice developed in a parallel way, helping one another. It was not the theory of the explosives which led to the discovery of gunpowder; gunpowder was in use for centuries before the action of the gases in a gun was submitted to scientific analysis. And so on. The great processes of metallurgy; the alloys and the properties they acquire from the addition of very small amounts of some metals or metalloids; the recent revival of electric lighting; nay, even the weather forecasts which truly deserved the reproach of being ‘unscientific’ when they were started by an old Jack tar, Fitzroy — all these could be mentioned as instances in point. Of course, we, have a number of cases in which the discovery, or the invention, was a mere application of a scientific law (cases like the discovery of the planet Neptune), but in the immense majority of cases the discovery, or the invention, is unscientific to begin with. It belongs much more to the domain of art — art taking the precedence over science, as Helmholtz has so well shown in one of his popular lectures — and only after the invention has been made, science comes to interpret it. It is obvious that each invention avails itself of the previously accumulated knowledge and modes of thought; but in most cases it makes a start in advance upon what is known; it makes a leap in the unknown, and thus opens a quite new series of facts for investigation. This character of invention, which is to make a start in advance of former knowledge, instead of merely applying a law, makes it identical, as to the processes of mind, with discovery; and, therefore, people who are slow in invention are also slow in discovery.

In most cases, the inventor, however inspired by the general state of science at a given moment, starts with a very few settled facts at his disposal. The scientific facts taken into account for inventing the steam-engine, or the telegraph, or the phonograph were strikingly elementary. So that we can affirm that what we presently know is already sufficient for resolving any of the great problems which stand in the order of the day — prime-motors without the use of steam, the storage of energy, the transmission of force, or the flying-machine. If these problems are not yet solved, it is merely because of the want of inventive genius, the scarcity of educated men endowed with it, and the present divorce between science and industry. On the one side, we have men who are endowed with capacities for invention, but have neither the necessary scientific knowledge nor the means for experimenting during long years; and, on the other side, we have men endowed with knowledge and facilities for experimenting, but devoid of inventive genius, owing to their education and to the surroundings they live in — not to speak of the patent system, which divides and scatters the efforts of the inventors instead of combining them.

The flight of genius which has characterised the workers at the outset of modern industry has been missing in our professional scientists. And they will not recover it as long as they remain strangers to the world, amidst their dusty bookshelves; as long as they are not workers themselves, amidst other workers, at the blaze of the iron furnace, at the machine in the factory, at the turning-lathe in the engineering workshop; sailors amidst sailors on the sea, and fishers in the fishing boat, wood-cutters in the forest, tillers of the soil in the field. Our teachers in art have repeatedly told us of late that we must not expect a revival of art as long as handicraft remains what it is; they have shown how Greek and mediæval art were daughters of handicraft, how one was feeding the other. The same is true with regard to handicraft and science; their separation is the decay of both. As to the grand inspirations which unhappily have been so much neglected in most of the recent discussions about art — and which are missing in science as well — these can be expected only when humanity, breaking its present bonds, shall make a new start in the higher principles of human solidarity, doing away with the present duality of moral sense and philosophy.

It is evident, however, that all men and women cannot equally enjoy the pursuit of scientific work. The variety of inclinations is such that some will find more pleasure in science, some others in art, and others again in some of the numberless branches of the production of wealth. But, whatever the occupations preferred by everyone, everyone will be the more useful in his own branch if he is in possession of a serious scientific knowledge. And, whosoever he might be — scientist or artist, physicist or surgeon, chemist or sociologist, historian or poet — he would be the gainer if he spent a part of his life in the workshop or the farm (the workshop and the farm), if he were in contact with humanity in its daily work, and had the satisfaction of knowing that he himself discharges his duties as an unprivileged producer of wealth. How much better the historian and the sociologist would understand humanity if they knew it, not in books only, not in a few of its representatives, but as a whole, in its daily life, daily work, and daily affairs! How much more medicine would trust to hygiene, and how much less to prescriptions, if the young doctors were the nurses of the sick and the nurses received the education of the doctors of our time! And how would gain the poet in his feeling of the beauties of nature, how much better would he know the human heart, if he met the rising sun amidst the tillers of the soil, himself tiller; if he fought against the storm with the sailors on board ship; if he knew the poetry of labour and rest, sorrow and joy, struggle and conquest! Greift nur hinein in’s volle Menschenleben! Goethe said; Ein jeder lebt’s — nicht vielen ist’s bekannt.[d] But how few poets follow his advice!

The so-called division of labour has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labour. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labour, we must recognise that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a civilised nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin’s times, not to say a word of further progress. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to everyone for the pursuit of art, science, or any hobby he might choose to like; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work — if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organised on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to consider that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age — say, of forty or more — ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth; it would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature. But it is not by resorting to such poor means as some training of the hand in a handicraft school, or some teaching of husbandry under the name of Slöjd,[e] that great things are achieved. Great problems must be faced in their full greatness.

P. KROPOTKIN
POSTSCRIPT

Since the above was written I have had the pleasure of visiting the Gordon College at Aberdeen. There I found the system described in the preceding pages had been applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie. It is the Moscow, or Chicago, system on a limited scale.[f]

While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops — but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenters’ workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades, sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of ‘through the hand to the brain,’ and vice-versa, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys work with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room. Some of their surveys filled with joy my geographer’s heart. It is evident that the Gordon College’s industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I should permit myself to suggest that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.

1. Manual Training as the solution of Social and Industrial Problems, by Ch. H. Ham, London: Blackie & Son. 1886. I can add that like results have been achieved again at the Krasnoufimsk Realschule in the province of Orenburg, especially with regard to agriculture and agricultural machinery. The achievements of the school, however, are so interesting that they deserve more than a short mention.[Back]

2. Take, for instance, the description of Atwood’s machine in any course of elementary physics. You will find great attention to the wheels on which the axle of the pulley is made to lie , hollow boxes, plates and rings, the clock, and other accessories will be mentioned before one word is said upon the leading idea of the machine, which is to slacken the motion of a falling body by making a falling body of small weight move a heavier body which is in the state of inertia, gravity acting on it in two opposite directions. That was the inventor’s idea; and if it is made clear, the pupils see at once that to suspend two bodies of equal weight over a pulley, and to make them move by adding a small weight to one of them, is one of the means (and a good one) for slackening the motion during the falling; they see that the friction of the pulley must be reduced to a minimum, either by using the two pairs of wheels, which so much puzzle the textbook makers, or by any other means; that the clock is a luxury, and the ’plates and rings’ are mere accessories: in short, that Atwood’s idea can be realised with the wheel of a clock fastened, as a pulley, to a wall, or on the top of a broomstick secured in a vertical position. In this case, the pupils will understand the idea of the machine of its inventor, and they will accustom themselves to separate the leading idea from the accessories; while in the other case they merely look with curiosity at the tricks performed by the teacher with a complicated machine, and the few who finally understand it spend a quantity of time in the effort.[Back]

3. The sale of the pupils’ work is not insignificant, especially when they reach the higher classes, and make steam-engines. Therefore the Moscow school, when I knew it, was one of the cheapest in the world. It gave boarding and education at a very low fee. But imagine such a school connected with a farm school, which grows food and exchanges it at its cost price. What will be the cost of education then?[Back]

4. In an otherwise also remarkable memoir on the Arctic Regions.[Back]>

5. The rate of progress in the recently so popular Glacial Period question was strikingly slow. Already Venetz in 1821 and Esmarck in 1823, had explained the erratic phenomenon by the glaciation of Europe. Agassis came forth with the theory of glaciation of the Alps, the Jura mountains, and Scotland, about 1840; and five years later, Guyot had published his maps of the routes followed by Alpine boulders. But forty-two years elapsed after Venetz wrote, before one geologist of mark (Lyell) dared timidly lo accept his theory, even to a limited extent — the most interesting fact being that Guyot’s maps, considered as irrelevant in 1843, were recognised as conclusive after 1863. Even now — half a century after Agassiz’s first work — Agassiz’s views are not yet either refuted or generally accepted. So also Forbes’s views upon the plasticity of ice. Let me add, by the way, that the whole polemics as to the viscosity of ice is a striking instance of how facts, scientific terms, and experimental methods quite familiar to building engineers, were ignored by the scientists who took part in the polemics. If those facts, terms and methods were taken into account, the polemics would not have raged for years with no result. Like instances, to show how science suffers from a want of acquaintance with facts and methods of experimenting well known to engineers, florists, cattle-breeders, and so on, could be produced in numbers.[Back]

6. Chemistry is, to a great extent, an exception to the rule. Is it not because the chemist is so much of the manual worker?[Back]
Additional Notes by MIA

a. Sir Frederick Bramwell, civil engineer and newly appointed President of the British Association, gave a speech in Bath on 5th September 1888 in praise of civil engineering. One of his themes was the importance of the practicing engineer noticing the “next-to-nothing” which had a major effect – such as the doping of conductors with tiny amounts of impurities to improve conductivity. The speech was reported in the Pall Mall Gazette for 6 September 1888 (pp. 11-12).[Back]

b. Kropotkin added a footnote to this essay in Factories, Fields, and Workshops stating: ‘With the reaction which began after 1881, under the reign of Alexander III., this school was “reformed”; that means that all the spirit and the system of the school were destroyed.’ The Institure itself still exists as the Moscow State Technical University, and the original teaching methods developed were influential in the development of in the development of MIT and other American technical schools (see Wikipedia).[Back]

c. James Murray asked the public to submit sample quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary; an early example of crowsourcing, he received up to 1,000 slips a day (see Wikipedia). [Back]

d. Faust, Part 1, Prelude, lines 167-8 “Grasp the life of man complete! Everyone lives, though it seldom is confessed”. [Back]

e. The Slöjd system of education in handicrafts (generally known as ‘Sloyd’ in English) was invented in Finland in 1865 and is still part of the Swedish national curriculum (See: Wikipedia).[Back]

f. Now Robert Gordon University; the original system was based on work done by the local Mechanics’ Institution. Some of the history is available from the university archives.[Back]