A Teacher Blogs

A particular Catholic blog that has caught my eye over the last couple of years is Everyday for Life Canada , written by veteran educator  Lou Iacobelli . There are two reasons I read it: Unlike many blogs in this arena, which simply link out other materials with a bit pithy commentary, Mr Iacobelli's entries are original essays. These range from personal reflections on faith to thoughtful explanations of the inner workings of the vast complex that is the Roman Catholic Church. The other reason I read it is that Mr Iacobelli was my eleventh-grade English teacher in 1976, just shy of forty years ago, at De La Salle College in Toronto. Mr Iacobelli was among a handful of teachers who provided me with an arena in which I could thrive. Having little interest in hockey or football in a school that excelled in both; being among the very few non-Catholics in the all-boys collegiate; and showing absolutely no talent for maths or sciences, to which the school's curricular scale...

Ben Levin at his plea hearing. Source: The National Post newspaper. This past week brought news of former Deputy Education Minister Ben Levin's guilty plea  in connection with a series of charges related to child pornography. The details of his case had not been known, apart from charges of making and distributing child pornography, as well as counselling an undercover officer online to perform sex acts on a child. The actual statement of facts heard in court on the day of the hearing is vile beyond description -- from the sharing of imagery depicting a child victim to the jaw-dropping revelation that Mr Levin told an undercover officer (posing as a mother seeking stories of sex with children) that he had used his own daughters for gratification with his wife's support. If there is any saving grace, police found no basis for this latter fiction; however, Levin's closest family are left to suffer in the knowledge that they were used as background characters in his play...

Back in April 2010, most Ontarians probably didn't know the name Benjamin Levin, who had been the Provincial Deputy Minister of Education during the development of the 2010 Health curriculum. Before that, Dr Levin served as Deputy Minister of Advanced Education and also of Education, Training and Youth from 1999 through 2002 in Manitoba. The OISE -- University of Toronto professor would go on to work on Kathleen Wynne's transition team when she became Premier. That changed in July of 2013, when Levin was arrested by Toronto Police Services, following investigations in London, Ontario and New Zealand. All tolled, Mr Levin was finally charged with seven counts of child exploitation, including charges of possessing and accessing child pornography. Before I proceed, let's be clear. There is indeed a place for moral outrage in this story, and that has to do with Ben Levin's conduct. The charges against Mr Levin are serious and disturbing to anyone with a grain of dece...