The largest school board in the country shouldn’t be a training ground for radical political causes, but that’s what the Toronto District School Board has become. That’s why the Ford Government needs to place the school board under supervision.
Now is the time for this to happen, with Director of Education Colleen Russell-Rawlins retiring in just over a month and TDSB Chair Rachel Chernos Lin currently off running what will hopefully be a losing campaign for a city council seat that’s up for grabs in a Nov. 4 byelection.
The TDSB is a dysfunctional board, one that hasn’t just allowed politics to seep into the classroom but thrust it there. The latest example, the one my colleague Bryan Passifiume has been documenting, should force Education Minister Jill Dunlop to step in.
Children from several elementary and middle schools in the core of Toronto were taking part in a political protest. Cleverly disguised as a call for clean water for the people of the First Nations community of Grassy Narrows, it turned out to be a radical protest that also called into question the very existence of Canada and had students engage in anti-Semitism.
No right-thinking person would think that the mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows was acceptable. Neither should any right-thinking person believe that what students were asked to engage in as part of this protest was acceptable.
Permission slips sent to parents clearly stated that “students will not be participating in the rally itself; they will observe and learn from the presentations and discussions.”
Students were active participants in this protest, though, which went well beyond calling for clean water for a northern Ontario reserve.
“From Turtle Island for Palestine, occupation is a crime,” was a chant one of the organizers had students join in on.
That cheer, pushed on students as young as eight years old in Grade 3, is a radical expression of left-wing ideology that has no place in our school system. That chant is not an outgrowth of taking Truth and Reconciliation into the classroom, it is cultural Marxism shoved into the school system by activist teachers with an agenda.
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Taken at face value, the chant calls Canada’s existence into question, as well as Israel’s, and tells the students that anyone in Canada is an occupier except those who are indigenous.
What are occupiers?
Criminals.
Those words, and the philosophy they express, cannot be tolerated in our school system. Yet, it is so embedded in the Toronto District School Board that teachers didn’t blink an eye, some are defending it and the acting board chair doesn’t see a problem with what happened.
“We apologize for the harm that some students may have experienced,” the statement from Neethan Shan said.
Is this non-apology for putting students in the position of having radical, far-left politics foisted on them under the guise of Truth and Reconciliation?
Or is Shan apologizing for the students who were told to wear blue shirts to show they are colonizers?
Or is this a non apology to the Jewish students who were handed stickers that read “Zionism Kills?”
Students shouldn’t have been exposed to any of this.
One Jewish student in Grade 8 who expressed unease at the anti-Israel chants to her teacher was told, “You’ll get over it.”
This is a board sorely in need of adult supervision, which is why Dunlop should announce at the earliest possible time that the leadership of the TDSB is suspended. The board should be relieved of their duties.
The position of director of education should be left vacant until the supervisor has investigated the culture at the TDSB and reported back to the Ford government.
That report should detail what next steps should be taken to take politics out of the classroom at TDSB and how the board should be restructured to put student learning and not politics at the forefront.
To do nothing in the face of what we have witnessed is not an option.