Doug Ford's PC's need to step in and end the madness
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In a province that’s added a generous share of race communism and guilt politics to its classrooms and teacher training materials in the past decade, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some teachers are taking kids to protests.
Ontario’s curriculum includes teachings that promote Marxism, Critical Race Theory and the identification and shaming of “dominant” groups in society, all while denigrating colonialism — and white people, by proxy — as a simplistic force of evil.
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So last week, when Toronto public school students were shepherded to a pro-Palestinian protest, some wearing blue to identify themselves as “settlers,” it was hard to feel shocked. This is Ontario’s education system working almost as intended — just with a tad more enthusiasm as required by government.
Take the province’s “equity and social justice” options courses, introduced in 2013 under the previous Liberal government for Grades 11 and 12. The Ontario curriculum specifies that these are to introduce students to the language of gender ideology, social justice theories of racial power and privilege, as well as to the relevant theorists (“Judith Butler, George Dei, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, bell hooks, Karl Marx” are some suggestions).
Course slides and materials for one Durham school’s Grade 12 edition of the course give an idea of how it’s taught. “In groups, identify the dominant group for your assigned categories and then take notes as everyone presents,” goes the instruction for a first-day classroom activity; a corresponding worksheet has students fill in their race and sexual orientation.
And so it continues. The Durham school’s course materials on “The Troubling Legacy of Post-Colonialism” simplify the colonization of North America as a shallow, sadistic, careless process — which would be less concerning if a counterpoint was offered, but one is not. Meanwhile, its lesson on Critical Race Theory tells students that “whiteness,” “masculinity” and “heterosexuality” are all “categories of power” that dominate society. Rather than presenting it as a social theory, it’s presented as a one-dimensional fact.
The class continues by teaching students about systemic racism: the force that, through “apparently neutral institutional policies or practices,” leads to unequal outcomes that nefariously “only serves to reinforce the challenges” that minorities face. One lecture handout nudges students to blame racial crime statistics on supposedly inherent Canadian racism:
“Laws are an integral part of our society. These laws have been written with the foundational principle — respect for all…. Yet what happens when that foundational principle is not upheld? Note the following: Indigenous........