StratfordToday received the following Letter to the Editor from Larry Baswick.
I read of the principal of a school in the Barrie area who allowed a yearbook to be published and distributed to students which contained a full page of flags and other identifiers of various sexually oriented organizations from LGBTQ to BDSM. There were about a dozen. This principal was infected, and I use the word purposefully, with 'woke' ideology. She and the Board began an immediate retreat but too late to have children unsee what they have seen (and, I can only assume, learned, under her tutelage). It wasn't a complete back up, however, as she justified this bit of irresponsibility by hiding behind the DIE mantra and its screech for inclusivity.
I will reference a couple of other recent outrageous indicators of how 'woke' has matasticized into our schools: The playing of a Hamass/Palestinian song during a Remembrance Day Ceremony in an Ottawa school, the request for military attendees to a Nova Scotian school Remembrance Day event to not wear 'triggering' uniforms, the encouraged and condoned attendance of Toronto DSB students at a protest against Israeli 'genocide' which exposed those students to radicalism, racism, and potential physical danger.
Now, closer to home. I have had occasion this fall to read the Avon Mailand DSB Strategic Plan. I would encourage your readers to do the same. There are several requirements of schools and, therefore, administrations to pursue, in my opinion, objectionable goals. I zeroed in on one. Schools are required to have students "unlearn" their racist dispositions and oppressive practices. One concludes, of course, that a new 'learn' must follow. One speculates that the new 'learns' would be rooted in woke ideology. One wonders what the lesson plans for these processes to develop must include. One muses, as well, that during this exercise questions about where and by who these students were taught any racist inclinations they may have.
Are parents' teachings to be questioned? Is China's re-education of its Muslim citizenry a model? Is Jordan Peterson's experience an exemplar. I may seem to be dramatizing this entire scenario but, at one level or another, it is happening and saying sorry after the fact is too easy and too late.
In ending, I never experienced in my career in education any semblance of systemic racism by teachers, parents, or students. There were, no doubt, some teachers who carried debatable opinions on topics of race but they were not, I repeat, not permitted to express their persuasions in the classroom. Today it seems all teachers, administrators and trustees are mandated to express cultural ideology if it is woke. Just wrong!
Larry Baswick
Stratford
