StratfordToday received the following letter about schools being allowed to attend a controversial protest.
As a long retired elementary school principal I am astounded at the attendance by pre-adolescent students at a protest which a monkey could predict would go beyond its purported intent.
Fifteen schools have 15 principals and who knows how many involved teachers and more than one superintendent and trustee who were aware, or should have been unless living in a cave in Collingwood, that such a gathering was going to spill over into potentially anything from a protest against changing the captaincy of the Leafs to Holocaust denial.
That all of these 'professionals', these 'experts', gave approval for such an excursion into a psychologically and physically dangerous place is an abdication of responsibility and is punishable by dismissal. These people are operating way beyond the level of involvement in their students lives than that which is granted by the Education Act and its Regulation or standard of "any reasonable person."
There are two more points to make. First, any field trip gets signed off on by the principal after the teacher has agreed to attend what was obviously a general invite. A functioning principal gives permission to go to the zoo or attend a winter camp out by organizations of reputation not to bear witness to support of terrorist groups. Second, parents have to give permission for their children to go on a field trip. Unfortunately, over the last half century, they have allowed their God given right to raise their children to a usurpious movement by progressives in government and NGOs who think they know better and which have an agenda which is socialist in nature; at best.
Parents better get their act in gear before their only purpose in life is to procreate.
Larry Baswick
Stratford
