Commentary
In Ontario, the Halton District School Board continues to make news, but for the wrong reasons. Namely, the teacher who is notorious for wearing huge artificial breasts in class at the store.
The teacher’s attire is clearly unprofessional and media outlets around the world are battling to report and publish photos of the teacher’s story. No rational person who has seen these pictures can imagine that this teacher is appropriately dressed for her job.
But in the latest twist, the board’s director of education recently submitted a report concluding that there is nothing the district can do about the situation. Apparently, imposing some sort of dress code on teachers “would expose the board to considerable liability.”
In other words, not only can the school district not do anything about this teacher’s clearly inappropriate attire, it shouldn’t even try to develop a dress code for staff. I just hope that
How did the school board get to the point where it couldn’t impose something as simple as a dress code for staff? I’m here.
Awakened ideology, or arousalism, focuses on being sensitive to social and political injustice. At first glance, this looks like a positive thing. After all, no wise man wants to remain indifferent to injustice in our country and around the world. But the problem is that Awakeningism demands a perfect ideological fit.
For example, former Ottawa high school teacher Chansel Farr was accused of speaking out against critical racial theories on a private teachers Facebook group by the Ontario Teachers College, an organization that grants Ontario teaching certificates. being investigated. Needless to say, Pfahl has not been accused of unprofessional conduct in the classroom or inappropriate behavior with students.
The fact that teachers can risk losing their professional licenses by expressing their political views in closed forums designed for discussion and engagement concerns all Canadians. When awakened activists demand ideological conformity from teachers, they undermine the core purpose of education: helping students become critical thinkers.
Worse, some school boards are so obsessed with individual identities that they try to collect as much data on student identities as possible. The Toronto District School Board recently sent a survey to her students in grades 4 through 8 that included a huge number of questions about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Among other things, the survey asks students if they are bisexual, transgender, queer/extended, intersex, asexual, or pansexual. Also, whether you learned about “binding, packing, tucking, or padding options” in school. Please remember that students receiving this survey are not yet in high school.
Meanwhile, the Waterloo Area School Board recently removed one of its teachers, Carolyn Burjoski, from her position after she questioned the age appropriateness of sexual content found in some elementary school library books. kicked out. Instead of taking Burjoski’s concerns seriously, the school district put her on duty at home until she resigned. Brujoski is now suing her former employer for defamation.
Indulging in all this awakened stupidity is a serious focus on academic performance. Ontario students perform poorly again in the latest math assessments and are declining in reading skills. It concludes that it has replaced the technology with an unproven “whole language” method.
Ironically, schools obsessed with eradicating “white privilege” and “heteronormativity” fail to provide students with the academic guidance they need to succeed in postsecondary education and life. . And when schools fail to provide students with an academic foundation, students from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer the most. Their parents do not have the same resources (such as money for tutoring) that their wealthier parents have at their disposal.
It’s time for public schools to end their obsession with arousal. Students deserve proper education, not nonsense education disguised as knowledge.
Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.
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Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher, Senior Fellow at the Frontier Center for Public Policy, and the author of The Sage on Stage: A Common Sense Reflection on Teaching and Learning.
