Wellsprings of Knowledge: Beyond the CBC Policy Trap

Wellsprings of Knowledge: Beyond the CBC Policy Trap

Catherine Murray (School of Communication, Simon Fraser University)

Abstract: The CBC/Radio Canada is in a policy trap which is endemic to all cultural policy today. A casualty of the 1990s policy focus on the cultural industries, the traditional public interest discourse has failed to gain a toehold in arguments favouring a continued state role in the development of cultural capital. This paper explores a cultural capital perspective and argues for a closer link with and co-ordination between education and culture in policy fields at both the theoretical and operational levels. The paper concludes that the instrumental utility of a cultural capital approach is ultimately too limiting. What is needed is a theoretical shift from public interest rhetoric to a democratic rights-based discourse. Such a shift in the conceptual underpinnings of cultural policy implies radical decentralization and deconcentration of control within the CBC. New models of democratic cultural governance are needed to reclaim public broadcasting.

Résumé: Radio-Canada/CBC s'empêtre dans des politiques communes à toute culture politique aujourd'hui. Le discours traditionnel sur l'intérêt public, victime des politiques des années 90 axées sur les industries culturelles, n'a pas réussi à s'infiltrer dans les arguments favorisant une participation soutenue de l'état dans le développement du capital culturel. Cet article examine une perspective appuyant cette idée de capital culturel et prône un rapport et une coordination plus étroites entre éducation et culture dans les politiques, autant au niveau théorique qu'opérationnel. Cet article conclut qu'une approche prônant l'idée de capital culturel a en fin de compte une utilité instrumentale trop limitée. Il faudrait plutôt changer d'approche, passant d'une rhétorique défendant l'intérêt public à un discours démocratique fondé sur les droits de la personne. Une telle modification dans la conception des politiques culturelles entraînerait l'appui d'une décentralisation et déconcentration radicales à Radio-Canada. En somme, pour reconquérir la radiodiffusion publique, il nous faudrait de nouveaux modèles de gouvernance culturelle démocratique.

The CBC is in a policy trap: controversies over shutting down supper hour news, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) license renewal decisions, and allegations of political editorial tampering during the Gustafson Lake and APEC affairs swirl around the CBC while its television audience share declines. Per capita funding levels have sunk to the bottom half of all public broadcasters, one fifth the level of Ireland or Germany. The political nadir was reached in the 2000 federal election campaign when the leak of the Alliance's plans to privatize CBC-TV failed to generate any sustained public debate, coinciding with an early resignation of Mme. Guylaine Saucier, the CBC's Chair of the Board. The CBC's only supporters are insiders: insider listeners or insider employees. The politics of self-interest, or fragmenting public interest, are rampant. To defend public broadcasting has become politically incorrect in Canada: a call for either the status quo or a return to a dimly remembered or fictitious golden age.

The policy trap

Official broadcasting policy in Canada, like many European nations, has its roots in the doctrine of public service which established a public radio and television monopoly (Rutherford, 1990). For the period of its hegemonic nationalist model, broadcasting policy in Canada was based on a stable division between elites and masses and an effective consensus around the public service principle among elites of all partisan stripes.¹

The Canadian public service doctrine was structured through three axes: Canada versus the U.S.; public versus private ownership; and high versus low culture. These axes have often been collapsed in policy discourses, resulting in a three-way reductionism: that the private sector reproduced American low culture, or its corollary; that the public sector reproduced Canadian high or merit culture (Angus, 1997). Such reductionism has led to a systematic suppression of key issues. The ideological compact between public service broadcasting and the nation masked internal social differences (Raboy, 1996), obscured transnational identity construction and flows (McGuigan, 1992), and avoided questions of democratic accountability. Public broadcasting culture was universal, eurocentric, and uniform. Two solitudes of policy discourse across English and French linguistic communities (de la Garde, Tremblay, Dorland, & Paré, 1994; Fletcher, 1998), a weak overlay of cultural federalism (Beale, 1999), and the privatization and stratification of policies concerning other ethno-linguistic groups (Roth, 1998) marginalized debates over public broadcasting and its relation to cultural, economic, or social policy concerns.²

In the 1990s, for the first time, the non-partisan compact supporting the public interest doctrine failed. The Reform party called for privatization of the CBC, revising that position by 1997 to target only CBC-TV. The call was later picked up by the Alliance, but buried in the 2000 federal election. Early in the decade, the Liberal government enacted cuts totalling $400 million, or 33% of the parliamentary appropriation. On top of a decade of indirect cuts by Conservative governments, achieved by not adjusting appropriations for inflation, the CBC's budget was reduced to half its size in the early 1980s, in constant dollars (Mandate Review Committee, 1996). Coalitions supporting the CBC failed to emerge. The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which claims to represent 40,000 members, escalated its oppositional lobbying tactics in defence of the CBC, targeting backbench MPs in swing ridings, staging protests in the Minister's home riding, and leaking internal memoranda to the press - but failed to bridge to other social movements, artists, or groups active in cultural politics. Independent policy inquiries, by the Parliamentary Committee or the Mandate Review Committee, experimented with new ways to frame the case for a public broadcaster unsuccessfully. Making Our Voices Heard, published almost at the same time as UNESCO's Our Creative Diversity, used a "made in Canada" cultural development frame to make the case for cultural policy and the centrality of a public broadcaster. Easily superseded by furor over the recommendations for an alternative funding structure manipulated by the cable lobby, the changes in conceptual framework were ignored.³

Today, the public service doctrine is in retreat. Policy literature shows an almost complete absence of language promoting Canadian national unity or national consciousness, a premise abandoned in law with the 1990 Broadcasting Act. A decline of deference has become the political characteristic of the times (Nevitte, 1996). There is a backlash against shadowy bureaucrats imposing cultural tastes, or elites defending special public institutions. The CBC now finds itself a public broadcaster in name only: increasingly adrift from political support, unable to justify its existence, and insufficiently distinguished from its private sector competition.

The CBC's policy trap is endemic to all cultural policy today. The strong association between nationalism as a movement, modernism, and public interest in culture has crumbled. The rise of free trade, the forces of economic globalization and digital networks, and the emergence of social movements pressing for recognition of minority groups, combined with postmodern cultural theory, have had a fundamental impact on cultural policy (McFadyen, Hoskins, Finn, & Lorimer, 1994). Nationalism as a defensive cultural stance is being displaced by new forms of cosmopolitan identity or a resurgence of tribalism, or local ethnic identity (Jensen, 1998). Eurocentric cultural elitism is in retreat. Modernist public interest discourse has little resonance in an age of postmodern politics (Mulgan, 1994). Left behind is a fundamental ideological vacuum at the heart of contemporary cultural policies (Bennett & Mercer, 1996).

Yet a public broadcaster still remains one of the primary sites of popular cultural practice in many nations. In a Bourdieu-inspired study of Australians' everyday cultural habits, public broadcasting proved the most open and accessible of cultural forms (Bennett, Emmison, & Frow, 1999). When rate of participation is compared across class structure for those with extensive postsecondary education and income and those with less formal education, public broadcasting has proved the least stratified cultural practice.

All cultural policymakers are struggling with the basic questions: Why do we need cultural policy? What does it represent? What difference does it make? Who should decide? How can political support for culture be mobilized? How can public broadcasting open up access to culture? What is the political opportunity structure for advancing cultural policy?

In cultural policy networks today, the idea of social or human capital is emerging as a legitimate sphere for state intervention and replacing national identity or unity discourse. Investments in healthy social relations are now seen as conducive to innovation in the knowledge economy and to sustainable economic growth. Cities use their cultural resources to attract the highskilled labour they need to establish technopoles. A cultural capital or resource-based frame for cultural policy discourse establishes an instrumental need for culture, at the engine of innovation.

A cultural capital argument

Scholars must rethink the role of public broadcasting in the so-called knowledge economy. A casualty of the 1990s policy focus on the cultural industries, the CBC has failed to gain a toehold in the arguments favouring a continued state role in the development of human capital, or innovation in the globalizing economy.⁴ Federalism bifurcates the obvious convergence between public broadcasting and education in this country, to the detriment of successful repositioning of the CBC.

Article Title

Using Contemporary Psychological Perspectives in Re-Understanding
Taiwanese EFL Development: Observations and
Implications for Tertiary Education

Author

Joseph Anthony Narciso Z. Tiangco, Ph.D.

Bio Data:

Dr. Tiango started his career 12 years ago as an English teacher for elementary school students in the Philippines. Later he joined the Department of Psychology of De La Salle University-Manila, Philippines. Currently, he is affiliated with the Applied Foreign Languages Department of Shu-Te University in Taiwan. His research interests are cognitive psycholinguistics, psychology of learning, philosophical issues concerning language and identity, and cultural postmodernism.

Abstract
The paper argues that EFL teaching and learning in Taiwan can be enriched by integrating contemporary perspectives in psychology that deal with the areas of psychology of learning and language development to help Taiwanese college students in their study of the English language. Specifically, the first part of the paper is a discussion regarding the implications of both the Information-Processing Theory and Social-Behavioral Perspective alongside the author's experience in handling Taiwanese students at the tertiary level. The second part of the paper focuses on the author's recommendations with the hope of improving the plight of EFL teaching in Taiwan and in developing the general English proficiency of college students. As a whole, the paper argues for the consolidation of EFL language policies, the language curriculum, and teaching strategies within an espoused and viable theoretical paradigm other than focusing on the traditional approaches utilized in the country. This is meant to boost efforts to internationalize the human resources in Taiwan towards national and global competitiveness.

Keywords: EFL, Psychology of Learning, Cognitive Psycholinguistics, Taiwanese EFL Students, EFL Teaching

Introduction
Taiwanese society has put much pressure on itself to develop the EFL proficiency within the country in the hope of gaining more access in the global arena of international trade and commerce (Carey, 1998; Thompson, 2003; see also, Mok & Lee, 2001 for a discussion on the higher education reforms in Taiwan as brought about by globalization). To cope with the demands that accompany internationalization, awareness has been growing regarding the importance of English language study for both social and economic mobility. For some, it is a career-related necessity in order to gain prestige and move up the corporate ladder. For others, it is like mining for gold especially in consideration of what Krashen (2003) calls as the English fever that looms over the country. Hence, it is observable that learning English in Taiwan, as a foreign language, has become a fashionable trend and business other than studying it for scholarly purposes (Liu, 2002; Taipei Times, 2003). Alongside the developments in EFL teaching and learning that have been transpiring all over the country, pervasive issues can also be said to continuously persist. Sadly, these issues haunt Taiwan's efforts in internationalizing the potentials of its human resources (see Huang, 2003b; Huang, 2003c; Thompson, 2003; Taipei Times, 2002; Yiu, 2003; Yun-Ping, 2003). These issues pose a concern, not only for the parents and students themselves, but the whole educational system as well (Carey, 1998).

Specifically, the tertiary educational system in Taiwan partly carries the burden in internationalizing the potentials of its human resources (Tiangco, 2004). It plays a crucial role in the sense that it is responsible for preparing undergraduate students for future careers and in providing them with the necessary skills to become productive members of both industry and government. It is also responsible for providing continuing education programs such as courses in English for students with a college degree but would like to study the language further without embarking on a formal graduate or post-graduate EFL/ESL degree program. More importantly, the influence of globalization presents a challenge to higher education for it to provide relevant language training and education to promising Taiwanese in preparing them for global-competitiveness. Subsidies are being provided to those interested in pursuing post- graduate degrees in foreign countries. Obviously, all of these reflect the great importance the Taiwanese place on learning English as a foreign language (Baker, 2003).

Although the responsibility should really fall on the Ministry of Education and its general language program as a whole, but pressure is mostly felt at the tertiary level. Such pressure is evident in the increase in the number of Applied Foreign Languages Department in different tertiary educational institutions (Su, 2004). An increase demand for foreign teachers is also evident (Shu-ling, 2003). Moreover, preparing and taking standardized language tests such as the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) and the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) have definitely become a routine for most college students. To every extent it has now even become a burden wherein teachers teach in order for students to pass the said tests (Chang, 2003)

Amidst efforts to create a national bilingual environment in the next few years to come (see, Oladejo, 2003), most Taiwanese students continuously grapple with the intricacies involved with vocabulary acquisition, the grammatical features of English, and the desire and preoccupation to develop an accent similar to native English speakers. Taiwanese technology, college, and university students are cut-off from the intellectual vibrancy involved in the critical study of the English language. Higher-order language skills are underdeveloped given the predicament that basic skills are not well-formed and largely remain unstable. And yet, high educational demands such as emphasis on tests and the crammed memorization of words are a reality for most students (Thompson, 2003). Little room is provided for intellectual flexibility that allows Taiwanese students to exercise creativity to test their capacity for intellectual reasoning using the English language. Consequently, the prevalent perception remains regarding the disappointing general English proficiency of some Taiwanese college students in spite of the high cost of learning, expensive books, and enrollment at expensive cram schools (Yiu, 2003).

Some of these students will later on become the next generation of teachers who are going to handle English courses in different levels, which Oladejo (2003) regards as not competent enough to teach English using the language itself as a medium of instruction. In connection to this, is it still worth pointing a finger as to who is to blame amidst the problems and issues identified?

The paper argues that perhaps a new outlook should be undertaken in Taiwan given the backdrop of the issues presented. Specifically, this outlook aims at a more theoretically grounded approach to EFL teaching vis-à-vis sensitivity to contemporary developments in psychology. The first part of the paper outlines the theoretical implications of the Information-Processing Theory and the Behavioral and Social Learning Perspectives. Within this context, the specific implications of these theoretical standpoints shall be discussed as it can be applied inside the EFL classroom. The second part of the paper focuses on anecdotal observations and recommendations in improving the plight of Taiwanese EFL development at the tertiary level within the framework of the theoretical standpoints presented.
Contemporary Psychological Perspectives and EFL Learning:
Implications to Taiwanese Learners
Background knowledge of psychology plays an important role in facilitating the processes involved in both language teaching and language learning (Bernardo, 1998; Chomsky, 2000; Clarke & Silberstein, 1987; Krashen, 1987; Krashen, 2003; Taylor, 1990; Williams & Burden, 1997). More importantly, knowledge of both the theoretical and practical applications of cognitive psychology to EFL/ESL learning and teaching can definitely yield fruitful results (Barrow, 1990). Hence, it can be argued that psychology has a clear role in facilitating language development and teaching even within the context of EFL learning in Taiwan.

Taiwanese teachers handling tertiary EFL courses, therefore, should be made aware that the study of any language is not bound by a structural linguistic approach that is limited to syntax, phonology, and the memorization of vocabulary words. From a psycholinguistic perspective, it is equally important to understand how the mind acquires and processes linguistic information for use in communication (Deuchar & Quay, 2000). In relation to this, the study of English should not be detached from understanding how the mind is able to think and process information in the first place (Chomsky, 2000; Deuchar & Quay, 2000; Muter & Johns, 1985; Stemmer, 1999).

Good Client Relations
The Key to Succe$$
by Stuart A. Forsyth

Your phone is ringing. It’s a new client who wants to talk with you about a serious legal problem. Wait. Think before you pick up the phone, because you are about to do something they didn’t teach you in law school: relating to your clients. Studies show that how well lawyers relate to their clients is just as important to their success as all those other things they did teach you in law school. You should be aware of this fact, and take it into account in conducting your practice.

What Clients Think About Lawyers

For years surveys have shown that clients generally like their own lawyer but do not like the other side’s lawyer. Perhaps that is a natural cost of our adversarial system. But a new, disturbing trend is developing. Recent surveys reveal that growing numbers of clients do not like their own lawyer, either. State Bar data indicates that poor relationships with clients are triggering numerous malpractice claims, fee disputes and complaints to the State Bar — adding significantly to lawyers’ costs in time and money.

The public ranks lawyers 56th in honesty and integrity out of a list of 71 professions. Lawyers, for example, rank ahead of real estate agents, local politicians, prostitutes and drug dealers—but behind cab drivers, newspaper reporters, stockbrokers, TV talk show hosts and many, many others. Recall the last time you took a cab; the public trusts the honesty and integrity of that cab driver more than yours as a lawyer. Of all the traditional honored professions, the public perceives lawyers as having the least honesty and integrity.

According to the 1995 Hart survey conducted by the American Bar Association, 56 percent of clients have an unfavorable impression of their own lawyers. Only 38 percent have a favorable impression. And a concurrent poll conducted by the National Law Journal indicated that those clients who use lawyers the most, like them the least.

The ABA survey showed that our clients think we are knowledgeable and able to solve problems. But they do not think that we put them first or that we are dedicated to their rights. They do not view us as honest, ethical, easily understood or compassionate. Indeed, we are perceived as being greedy and making too much money.

Is this because we are failing to deliver competent legal services? No. The studies show that lawyers usually do not fail in the law, i.e., technical competence.

Lawyers fail most often in communicating with clients, reaching agreements about fees and managing their practices — the "business" side of the practice of law. In a way this should not be surprising. How many of us even met a client in law school? Most of us were never taught the business of practicing law, nor how to relate effectively to our clients.

What Clients Really Want From Their Lawyers

So what do clients want? Studies have shown that clients want their lawyers to be dedicated and communicative, and (surprisingly) they want these two things even more than they want their lawyers to be competent or fair with fees.

Of course clients want quality legal services, and they do expect their lawyers to be competent. But we do not get much credit for our legal competence because that is the essence of the definition of a profession: competence. Our clients expect us to be competent precisely because we are members of the legal profession.

Interestingly, what clients really want is good customer service and common business courtesy. They are willing to pay to get it. They are quite able to judge whether or not they have received it and to complain when they haven’t. Many clients use customer service and courtesy — not competency — to evaluate lawyers.

We know from the business world that customers want service, value and respect.

Your clients want quality legal services, reasonable fees, communication from you and your commitment to them and their goals.

Complaints to the State Bar

Clients are complaining in growing numbers. On average, someone contacts the State Bar to complain about the conduct of one out of every four lawyers in Arizona, each and every year.

Many of these complaints involve problems in communication, and two-thirds come from just five areas of practice: domestic relations, torts, criminal law, bankruptcy and wills and estates.

What are clients complaining about? The number one complaint is, "My attorney won’t return my telephone calls!" Failure to respond to written communications is the sixth most frequent complaint.

Have you ever ordered something from a mail-order company, and when the package arrived you discovered they had sent the wrong item? You call the company to straighten out the order, but they will not take the merchandise back without a "return authorization number." The person you are talking with can’t give you one, and the person who can is out to lunch, so they take your number and promise to call back. But they don’t. You call again and ask for the person who can help, but he or she is busy on another call so you leave your number again. After a few days of this you finally get the return authorization number and ship the merchandise back. How do you feel about that mail order company? Will you ever do business with them again? What will you tell your friends about them?

That’s exactly how far too many clients feel about their own lawyers today. They are frustrated because they have retained a lawyer to look out for their best interests and now they can’t get in touch with their own lawyer. The trust which is at the very heart of the attorney-client relationship begins to erode, and clients start to wonder if their lawyer is looking out for his or her own interests more than the client’s interests.

Malpractice Claims

These dissatisfied clients have significant and costly impacts in other areas, too. Lack of competence in communication skills and misunderstandings concerning fees are listed by Oregon’s Professional Liability Fund as two of the five major causes of malpractice losses. One malpractice carrier has estimated that 40 percent of the claims made against its insured lawyers are nothing but client relations problems. They will not pay a single penny in substantive liability, but they sure will pay to defend them; and the cost of defense will show up in your malpractice insurance premiums.

If you talk to those in the industry, they have a very interesting saying: "Clients don’t sue lawyers they like, even when they have committed malpractice; clients do sue lawyers they don’t like, even when they haven’t committed malpractice." We tend to think of malpractice in substantive terms: did we do anything wrong? But that’s not what causes the lawsuit. The lawsuit is triggered by how the client feels about the lawyer.

Fee Disputes

The public’s attitude towards lawyers’ fees has changed dramatically in the past few years. A 1986 poll by the National Law Journal revealed that about 22 percent of the public perceived lawyers’ fees as too high; by 1993 that figure had jumped to 42 percent.

A 1992 California fee arbitration study found that 94 percent of fee disputes could have been avoided entirely if the lawyer had done just two things: (1) improved communication with the client and (2) furnished a written fee agreement.

What Can We Do as a Profession?

The most important thing we can do is to recognize that we have a problem and take responsibility for solving it.

As Joan D. Johnson, Director of Loss Prevention/Underwriting for the Oregon Professional Liability Fund, has observed: "The real problems are human, common sense problems. For example, lawyers don’t know how to talk to their clients, especially about fees."

Lawyers are wonderful problem solvers, and we need to use those skills for our own benefit. We need to realize that this problem is not just about image; it is about our conduct. The many clients who have experienced poor business relations with their own lawyers are a major reason for public dissatisfaction with the legal profession as a whole.

The most powerful influence shaping the image of Arizona lawyers is the day-to-day conduct of each of us as lawyers with our clients and colleagues. That’s why the ABA suggests that this problem be addressed one client at a time.

What can you do to be part of the solution? Begin to see your clients as customers and as sources of referrals. Studies show that most clients retain and relate to individual lawyers, not law firms. As much as 80 percent of your future clients will come from word-of-mouth referrals by your current and former clients. Practice common business courtesy in dealing with your clients. Try to see things from their perspective and treat them as you would like to be treated if you were in their situation.

What Can You Do to Create and Maintain Good Client Relations?

Take responsibility for creating and maintaining good client relations in your own law practice. The practice of law is not just a profession; it is a service profession. Broaden the definition of your own job: go beyond just solving legal problems and encompass how well you and your office relate to your clients (and others) while solving them. Furnish quality legal services and good customer service. Creating and maintaining good client relations is your responsibility.

Establish a comfortable setting for meeting with your clients. Some lawyers like to meet with their clients around a conference table (particularly a round one) rather than from behind a desk to create a more cooperative, less imposing atmosphere. The area should be free of clutter (especially other client files!) so that your clients can feel that they have your complete and undivided attention. For the same reason, you should hold all telephone calls during client conferences; if you do need to take a call, let your clients know in advance that your meeting may be interrupted. Items which reflect your hobbies or personal interests can be icebreakers and help you appear more personable. You should also take note of your clients’ personal interests to show that you are interested in them as people as well as sources of business.