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>>> Victoria Littman <[log in to unmask]> 05/25/98 03:57pm says: "In Ontario the Conservative Government is restructuring the funding of schools to resemble a US system based in property taxes which might increase present inequities, for one future example. " This isn't what I understand. Ontario has traditionally used property taxes to fund education, but the Harris gov't is moving away from this. Until recently, relatively well-to-do cities like Ottawa had handsomely funded boards of education because of the rich tax base, while poor boards were often found in rural and northern Ontario. The new system, funded more (but not exclusively) by the province will make per capita funding more equal, from what I understand. Cheers, Jamie PS: So far the contributions on affirmative action have all been pro. One of the reasons I have some qualms about affirmative action is that it rests on a foundation of putting people in groups, something that's always given me pause, not to forget the fact that many of the groups are socially (and artificially) constructed (e.g., "visible minority"). An alternative idea that interests me is blind testing and blind interviews (as they do for the symphony). This may be a reasonable form of promoting equality. Perhaps we need to keep examining admission requirements to ensure that they capture what we're looking for. This might be an improvement over the notion that "we need more people from group X as dentists"). J