During this week’s International Day of Pink – held to show solidarity against bullying and homophobia – teachers at one Toronto District School Board (TDSB) high school were asked to go the extra mile.
I’m not talking about stepping up their teaching of the basics to ensure their students fare far better on EQAO standardized tests.
No. A memo sent out to teachers the afternoon before the day – during which students and teachers are urged to wear pink shirts – asked them to “practice a pronoun refresher.”
That meant that teachers were to take time to reintroduce themselves to their classes using both their names and their preferred pronouns.
Students should also be asked to do the same, says the memo obtained by True North. That can either be done orally or by using name tags or providing an “exit ticket” before they depart the classroom that includes their names and pronouns.
No pressure there.
The memo, from an unnamed school, outrageously claims that if a student refuses to engage in this exercise in advanced wokeness, they “may hold homophobic or transphobic beliefs or may also be showing internalized homophobia/transphobia.”
What if they happen to have common sense and want no part of this inane exercise?
At least the memo writers (a staff advisor and the principal I’m told) say if students pass “respectfully,” that’s okay.
Geesh. That’s so kind of them.
I have watched the International Day of Pink receive a kind of cult following at the TDSB and other dangerously woke school boards like the Waterloo Region District School Board and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
All of these school boards, plus various unions, tweeted out appropriate virtue signaling messages the day before and on the morning of the Pink Shirt Day.
Some teachers – who pride themselves as social justice warriors – tweeted messages that came dangerously close to pressuring students to wear the solidarity t-shirt, also inappropriate.
But this memo really crosses the line from education to indoctrination.
It is not the job of school officials to demand their students discuss how they identify, particularly in front of an entire class.
Frankly, this borders on gender-shaming.
It is also downright out of line for whoever wrote the memo to suggest those students who do not want to be part of the gender cult are transphobic or homophobic.
It borders on abuse.
Trouble is, woke school boards like the TDSB, dominated by activist bureaucrats and trustees, have so overstepped their boundaries that they can no longer perceive the harm of their woke edicts.
Clearly, they have signed on to the gender cult and have become absolutely intolerant of anyone who has not.
Sadly, many teachers go along with it for fear of being reprimanded by the board’s gender police.
