Just because elementary and secondary school officially ends next week in Ontario does not mean that all the problems associated with an infestation of woke ideology in the province’s school boards will magically disappear.
The issues will merely be held in abeyance until school returns in the fall – the violence, the obsession with queer activism and gender ideology and a curriculum steeped in critical race theory dressed in the guise of anti-black racism.
The province’s weak education minister Stephen Lecce has stood by and allowed the most ridiculous of issues to escalate without saying enough is enough.
For example, violence is out of control in Toronto District School Board (TDSB) schools, and, at boards like the Waterloo Region District School Board, a cabal of woke trustees and the radical education director Jeewan Chanicka have done their best to cancel and intimidate parents who come to the board pleading for less woke ideology and more academics.
It has led to open letters from frustrated teachers sick and tired of trying to manage the violence with little help from their administrators, who spend their time trying to indoctrinate staff.
These letters are a first.
Recently a Grade 7 teacher at a MIssissauga middle school wrote exclusively to me about how “disillusioned” he has become with the education system.
He says student behaviour has been getting “progressively worse” in the past five years.
“The more difficult students in the school you will see consistently wandering the halls during instructional time,” the 22-year teacher wrote.
He reported that wokism has completely infiltrated the teacher evaluation and training process.
In the past teachers would be evaluated on how they teach reading, writing and math. Classroom management skills would be discussed and they’d be asked how they deal with parents and student behaviour.
Now, says the teacher, the focus is on buzzwords like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and how teachers incorporate anti-black and anti-Indigenous racism into their classroom lessons.
In Peel, he says CRT stands for Culturally Responsive Teaching, which is really just a buzz word for Critical Race Theory.
Failing evaluations are possible if teachers don’t show that they deliver “culturally responsive lessons” and studies about “dismantling racism.”
“There is zero interest now from the administration and the board on teaching the 3 Rs or classroom management when we are evaluated,” he wrote. “It’s all about implementing woke, progressive policies and theories.”
He says staff meetings have become personal development sessions on progressive theories and wokism.
Staff sit though an hour or so session every month on anti-black this, anti-Indigenous that, and are lectured about “unconscious bias” and white privilege, he said.
“We leave our staff meetings feeling as though we are all racist teachers that, if we do not teach a ‘culturally responsive’ pedagogy, then we are horrible, racist, white supremacist educators,” he said.
In a move bordering on absurd, he says these PD sessions are now led by a special, full-time “modern learning resource teacher” whose job it is to travel from school to school to enlighten staff about the need to teach kids about CRT and to lecture them about “educator bias.”
Not surprisingly, he says the union is absolutely no help. While complaining to the media about school violence they still support and implement progressive, woke ideologies that just contribute to the problem, he contends.
The union also continues to protect inept teachers. Far too often, he’s observed teachers playing on their phones in the halls and during duties or even talking on their cellphones in class in front of students.
“We need to be setting an example, not acting like the students,” he says, noting that these habits tend to be seen with the younger educators.
He wonders why the Ford government does nothing to deal with this.
It remains to be seen whether their new Bill 98 The Better Schools and Outcomes Act will do anything to right the ship.
From what I’ve observed writing about these issues for the past year, unless the Ford government is prepared to monitor school boards and introduce penalties for those who don’t get back to basics, their legislation isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.
The Grade 7 teacher observes, quite rightly, that kids are not being prepared for the real world.
“When assignments can be handed in whenever they feel like it, when teachers have to ask permission to give kids a D or failing mark, when teachers are not permitted to put any negative comments on report cards, and when disciplining a student amounts to no disciplinary action actually being taken, then as an educator I fear for the future,” says the teacher.
“Students will not be able to handle the demands and stresses of the real world of deadlines and expectations. We are failing our students and teachers’ hands are tied.”
