March 3, 2004

News

e the other press ©

Aboriginal Education Report Card

Kelly Parry News Editor

The Fraser Institute recently released the first ever Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia. Dismal results show that schools must be made accountable for the poor showing of their Aboriginal students.

This new publication reports and compares the results of Aboriginal students at 38 elemen- tary schools and 49 secondary schools—both public and private. The Report Card uses detailed Aboriginal students’ academic results, obtained from the BC Ministry of Education, to assess how well each school is performing with respect to its Aboriginal stu- dents.

“British Columbia's schools are, in general, failing the province's Aboriginal students miserably,” says Peter Cowley, co-author and

China Watchers Raise Alarm about Possible Xinhua Purchase

Matthew Little OP Contributor

Xinhua Financial Network, owner of China’s official news agency, recently announced plans to buy US-based Market News. The deal has many China observers con- cerned that Mainland China is attempting to export its Communist-style information con- trol to the United States and manip- ulate investor opinion.

New York-based Market News International is one of the top providers of real-time market news, with offices throughout the United States and Europe. The purchase gives Xinhua Financial-.control of a well-established and trusted source of market information.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua is the majority stakeholder in Xinhua Financial. Sophie Beach, with the Committee to Protect Journalists, calls Xinhua “the most firmly, centralized controlled media in China. It’s the mouth piece for the Communist party.”

Beach points out that smaller local media are told to follow Xinhua’s lead, particularly on sensi- tive political issues or stories of industrial accidents or government

corruption. Beach says, “SARS is the most recent example. Xinhua was stating the official government line on it, that SARS was under control and that it was mostly an epidemic happening outside of China. And then, through a variety of ways that cover-up was eventually broken apart.”

Xinhua has also faced heavy inter- national criticism for its slander campaign against Falun Gong in China, Many have compared it to Hitler’s propaganda ministry during WWII, which painted Jews as mon- sters that ate Christian babies. Chinese media in the US and Canada have been sued for re- broadcasting Xinhua’s reports which are categorized as hate propaganda with no factual basis.

While China has begun to reform its media system to reduce the num- ber of state-owned media, most China experts agree that this kind of policy change will do little to alter China's history of repressing free speech. It is believed that privately- owned newspapers will simply exer- cise self-censorship. According to Reporters Without Borders, journal-

the Institute’s director of school performance studies.

Aboriginal students take, on average, less than one of the senior level provincially examinable whereas _ their Aboriginal counterparts take near- ly three. This Report Card, like other Fraser Institute school report cards, provides evidence of what can be accomplished. It demon- strates clearly that some elemen- tary and secondary schools have found ways to make their Aboriginal students more success- ful. School choice enables parents to avoid those schools that have been unsuccessful in educating their Aboriginal students.

The report says that all interest- ed parties must have access to easy- to-understand, school-by-school reports of student achievement.

courses non-

ists in China are now required to submit to tests on their knowledge of Communist ideology.

Reporters Without Borders also ranks China 248th on a list of 249 for press freedom and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has declared that “there is so far no press freedom in China.” The Committee to Protect Journalists has also declared China has “the world’s most elaborate system of media control.”

Although Market News is China’s most notable purchase of non- Chinese media, the Chinese govern- ment began an aggressive campaign to dominate Chinese media around the world after Hong Kong was receded in 1997.

The Jamestown Foundation, a non-partisan think-tank, specializ- ing in identifying governments or countries that pose a threat to democracy and freedom, carried out a detailed analysis of China’s influ- ence on overseas Chinese media in 2001. They discovered that three of the four major Chinese newspapers published in the US are, either directly or indirectly, controlled by

The Report Card on Aboriginal Education in British Columbia collects a variety of relevant, objec- tive indicators of school perform- ance into one, easily accessible, public document so that anyone can analyze and compare the per- formance of the Aboriginal stu- dents in individual schools.

Schools that perform well or show consistent improvement are applauded. “Aboriginal students are not doomed to failure. Elementary schools were included in the Report Card if they had at least ten Aboriginal students in each of grades four and seven and generated sufficient results data to be rated. Secondary schools were included if they had at least 15 Aboriginal students in grade 12 and generated sufficient results data to be rated.

the government of Mainland China. The fourth is run out of Taiwan and has increasingly given in to pressure from Mainland China. A similar sit- uation exists within overseas Chinese television stations, which often run CCTV-4 programming that is offered free of charge on an uncoded satellite signal and carries what Jamestown calls Mainland China's “slanted news, or propagan- da.”

The Jamestown report detailed that 80 percent of all Chinese- Americans live in twelve major U.S. cities and said these overseas Chinese “are targeted by the Chinese government with misinfor- mation and propaganda.: The “out- side world” and current events are filtered and presented through a limited number of media, the majority of which are influenced— or even run, by Beijing’s communist government.”

Shiyu Zhou with the Association for Asia Research, a think-tank spe- cializing in Asian affairs, points out that this is yet another way the Peoples’ Republic of China attempts to control Chinese people within and beyond China's borders.

“Overseas Chinese have close communications with Mainland China, so a lot of information will be passed to Mainland China through this communication. So that is why they want to control, or at least heavily influence the opinion of overseas Chinese.”

“For the western media and the

_ British Columbia's Aboriginal students failed more than 40

percent of the province-wide reading tests that they wrote. On every one of the grade four and grade seven test sittings, their failure rate was more than double that of their non- Aboriginal classmates.

The likelihood __ that Aboriginal children enrolling in grade eight will successfully complete their studies and receive their diploma in the usual time is only slightly better than one in five. In contrast, the non-Aboriginal success rate is more than three times higher.

financial news their intention is somehow clear or obvious. They still need a lot of foreign investment to sustain the regime and all the eco- nomic problems they have in China.”

“Over the past few years more and more overseas economists began to realize problems with the Chinese economic system and more and more voices can be heard in the media, talking about the issues. What’s really going on behind the mirage of the economic develop- ment in China. The Chinese gov- ernment is very afraid of this kind of discussion, these opinions, because this would affect foreign investment, which is kind of key now to what they call the “development of the Chinese economy,” which is very unhealthy and has much depend- ence on this kind of investment.” “Tt’s kind of obvious, or at least rea- sonable to think that they will try to control or influence this kind of opinion. The purchase of this news outlet could be part of such an effort.”

Zhou went on to suggest that western countries like the US should be concerned over the purchase and should take a stronger stand on China’s abuse of human rights. He pointed out that Mainland China’s ownership of western media could also be used to hide those abuses from the international community.

Alumni Career Fair

Jessica Ross OP Contributor

The Douglas College Alumni will host a career fair on Monday, March 8 between 9am to 4pm. Booths will be set up in the New Westminster Campus concourse allowing stu- dents to walk around and meet with representatives from various organi- zations.

Participants include; bcjobs.ca, Harrison Hotel, Vancouver Costal

http://www.otherpress.ca_

Health, the Lions Society, Youth

Employment Centre, University College of the Caribou, the Canadian. Army and Canadian Navy, as well as, departments from within Douglas College.

The focus of the career fair will be to help students discover what types of work they would like to pursue, what sorts of skills, knowledge, or

education they will need for their future workplace.

The New Westminster Campus is location at 700 Royal Avenue, New Westminster, one block from the New Westminster SkyTrain station. For more information contact the Douglas College Alumni at 604.777.6171, or visit <www.dou- glas.bc.ca/alumni/careerfair.html>.

Page 5