I've re-posted the open letter below from the Eye on a Crazy Planet blog:
Dear Trustee Bolton and Director
Spence:
I am the Co-Chair of the
Parents’/School Council at Central Technical School in Toronto, which as you
know is one of the largest high schools in the city with a student population
of over 1900.
Regarding the current consultations
conducted by the TDSB for the K-12 Strategy for the coming years, there is an
issue of very serious concern about which I would like to offer my comments.
The so-called social justice aspects
of the curriculum frequently reflect a subjective and highly politicized
interpretation of the word “justice”. As such, the way it is approached needs a
very serious review, and in my opinion a complete overhaul.
There are inappropriate attempts in
the TDSB to integrate so-called social justice aspects into subjects like Math,
where questions such as “Calculate how 5 global social issues could be
solved if the US military budget were applied to them” are posed to
children in their mid-teens. The obvious implication is that military budgets
and the military in democratic countries like the US and Canada somehow detract
from the resolution of social problems.
What are not addressed are the
catastrophic results that would occur if democracies did not have the means to
protect themselves. Anyone who is familiar with European history between the
World Wars understands the horrendous consequences of Britain and France’s
decision to decommission most of its naval capabilities after WW1.
One can have reasonable debates about
such matters, but the clear purpose of questions of the nature in the example
provided is to indoctrinate to a particular type of thinking. And frankly, the
people at OISE (The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) who have designed
such questions have nowhere near the knowledge in geo-political affairs or
history required to understand them thoroughly.
That is reflected further in the way
the TDSB teaches about such issues as the internment of Japanese-Canadians
during World War 2. It is right and proper this be taught. But it is
taught in middle school to students who are not instructed about the causes and
history of the Second World War. Nor are they yet provided with reasonable
context, such as the treatment of minorities by Imperial Japan prior to and
during the war. The result is an implication that Canada is and was a
particularly and unusually racist country for its time when that is
historically untrue.
In fact, the TDSB’s providing
politicized indoctrination under the guise of social justice is becoming
pervasive through the system. I was at the TDSB Futures conference earlier this
year where Director Spence delivered an address. One of the keynote speakers
was Tim Wise, who blamed the inequities in the education system on “white
privilege.” (More on Tim Wise here.)
That fatuous reasoning left absent
the fact that inequities in education in Canada transcend racial divisions and
far more often than not are independent of them. More alarming, Mr. Wise, with
the apparent approbation of the TDSB, said that education needs to focus less
on the individual and more on the collective, including collective racial
identities.
This flouts everything opponents of
racism have been fighting for many years. As a society, we have been working
towards achieving a color-blind world that deals with individuals as individuals
and not as part of collectives differentiated by ‘race’ or ‘color.’
It is deeply disturbing that, while
with the best of motives, the TDSB, has been working to counter such progress
through its use of ill-advised trends put forward by politicized activists in
the education system and in politicized programs in institutions like OISE.
These are but a very few of many examples
currently occurring within the TDSB.
These questions are designed through
programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which has programs
that specifically teach teachers to be activists against neo-liberalism (i.e.
free-market, liberal democracies) in schools. These same people frequently
advocate for solidarity with Communist Cuba.
It should not be necessary to point
out how disturbing it is that our children’s’ curriculum are in many instances
designed by people who advocate against a system that has produced the
freest, most prosperous societies in the world’s history in favor of a
repressive, totalitarian society that imprisons dissenters. Yet because of its
recurrence in the TDSB, such admonitions are regrettably necessary and will be
for the foreseeable future.
Honest people can disagree about
ideas and we should always strive for improvement. People have a right to hold
different opinions on how to approach the matters discussed above.
Unfortunately, the term “critical thinking” which is so often used by TDSB
personnel in describing the approach they want to instil actually means trying
to create a “group think.” Specifically, “critical thinking” is a doctrine that
criticizes of our democratic foundations while promoting ideologies that are
antithetical to them.
Social justice for someone who admires Che Guevara has a very different meaning
for those of us who believe in free speech and parliamentary democracy.
People have the right to share their views with their children on their own
time, but not to attempt to indoctrinate the children in Toronto’s public
school system with them.
Some of the fault for the concerns I
have delineated rests squarely with the Ontario Ministry of Education, which is
responsible for the Province’s curriculum. But much of it also rests with the
TDSB.
With the challenges facing our
children, who will grow up in a world undergoing a technological revolution,
the limited time they spend in schools should focus on giving them the tools
they need for success in such a world. This is the focus on which I hope the
TDSB will concentrate going forward.
Sincerely,
Richard Klagsbrun
Read another excellent piece on the meaning of "social justice" in our kids' schools here.
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