Every
year, the Toronto District School Board publishes a Days of Significance
Calendar for students. It includes the holidays of different religions and
various UN mandated observances, such as the International Day of Families (May
15).
The TDSB also included the International Day to End Violence Against Sex
Workers on the Calendar.
Sex Workers’ Day is
celebrated by prostitutes, strippers, porn actors, dominatrixes and, until this school year,
by the Toronto District School Board. The day’s purpose is to “advocate for removal of all laws
that criminalize sex work” and to remove all negative stigma so that prostitution
becomes just one more career path.
Last
March, I wrote a letter to the Board suggesting that they might want to rethink
their endorsement of this day. After all, a school board must be politically neutral;
it shouldn’t be endorsing anyone’s politics – not to mention that a school
board really shouldn’t be helping to make prostitution a respectable career for
young people.
I
followed up with a couple more emails, then a couple phone calls and was at
last assured that the appropriate committee would look into it. And then I
heard nothing.
So
this fall I started sending emails again. An email to Donna Quan, the new Director
of Education, finally produced a two-line reply (not from Ms Quan herself): The
sex workers day had been taken off the Days of Significance Calendar, and the Calendar
itself had been taken off the public website.
In
other words: okay, first, the Board’s noticed it’s not a good idea to endorse prostitution
as a career path, and second, annoying parents can no longer check what the Board
thinks is worth promoting. Now only teachers and TDSB staff get to look at the Days of Significance Calendar.
What
might be on the Calendar? Well the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
has produced a Days of Significance Calendar for schools. OISE trains our most
senior educators and many teachers, and unfortunately, OISE believes the
purpose of schools is to indoctrinate kids into far left activist politics.
OISE
thinks kids ought to be taught to observe the birthday of the founder of the Communist
Party of Canada, that kids need to celebrate the Quebec student protests against
tuition fees becoming almost as high as their cell phone bills, and that kids
should should learn that Stephen Harper is a war criminal and Che Guevara is a
martyr to social justice. And to promote their political perspective, OISE has created a Calendar (see here).
The
Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario – the most radical and politicized
of our teacher unions – has endorsed this Calendar (see here).
Will
the Toronto Board adopt it, too? I doubt it. There are still lots of sane
people working for the Board. But who knows? Unless a teacher rats them out,
the Board can do all sorts of strange things without parents knowing.
*Read my earlier, more detailed posting about the Board’s promotion of International Sex Workers’ Day here.
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