Politic?

This is a blog dedicated to a personal interpretation of political news of the day. I attempt to be as knowledgeable as possible before commenting and committing my thoughts to a day's communication.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Elementary: Social Justice in Action

It has a nice ring to it; "social justice". Who could contest it? Canada's various school boards across the country demonstrating how given Canadian society is to bringing children of elementary school age and high school teens the opportunity to be exposed through their primary academic setting to social justice.

Seen through the prism of the liberal-left, but then that's to be expected; those who espouse a conservative vision are not held to embrace social justice.

To those involved in enhancing the school experience by adding the so-timely subject of social justice to students' experience, gently guiding them to recognize political correctness in all its forms and subterfuges, along with genuine instances of social justice, leavened with short-cuts that find details expendable in the interests of getting to the core subject with few distractions, parents are failing in that duty.

Malleable minds who trust what they hear and witness in the school setting bring home their tales of recognizable justice as opposed to malign social forces to be exposed and rejected. And that is when, for example, parents of Jewish children discover how upset their children are to discover that Jews, and Israel, are racist, Israel an apartheid country.

The experience of a 17-year-old Israeli youth who migrated with his mother to Toronto, a case in point. When he was enrolled in the academically free-wheeling Student School in Toronto he returned home after the first day in a bit of shock, to inform his mother of the "Apartheid State" posters in the school halls.

His mother now teaches at the Harvard Divinity School, but in recounting her son's experience in Toronto, she is understandably critical. Describing the first all-school assembly as showing the controversial Occupation 101, which portrays Israel as South Africa's Apartheid-era equivalent.

When she protested to the school administrator, he defended the school policy permitting students to give vent to their ideological adherence. Amazingly, her son lasted two months there, before finally making the decision to switch his studies to another school.

Social justice education cuts a wide swath in the country. School administrators feel justified in advancing the agenda within their school curricula of "progressive" social justice affirmation and exposure. As far as the B.C. Department of Education is concerned, social justice "extends beyond the protection of rights", aiming for a "just and equitable society".

One school in Toronto gave Grade 1 students day-planners sophisticated enough to highlight an "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People", along with "International Day of Zero-Tolerance on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting". A superintendent on that school board claimed the focus was to "promote conversation between our students".

In Quebec an elementary school took the profoundly disturbing step of excluding a six-year-old student from a teddy-bear contest. His sin was to have brought a plastic bag along in his lunch box, holding his sandwich, instead of a washable, re-usable container. According to British sociologist Frank Furedi: "That's an illegitimate use of the school's authority".

Look at the world's arbiter and defender of human rights and dignity, the United Nations; even it hesitates to "name and shame" member-countries who default on the human rights scale, preferring subtle nudges encouraging them to do better, while allowing at the same time, the world's worst human-rights violators to take their proud place on human rights fora.

Ms. Adelman, the Israeli-born parent of that Israeli 17-year-old who attended Toronto's Student School for two months, expressed her feelings about the "diversity" honoured at the school: "I was upset that the principal didn't see that [the portrayal] of the Arab-Israeli conflict] needs to be more balanced, and he and the school had clearly taken a side on the issue."

In fact, the school board did take steps to investigate the principal's academic theories, and he is no longer listed on the school's website as part of the school's staff.

No one would argue that the education system should be taking a totally neutral stand on all of the environmental, political and social issues of our times. And individual teachers are infused with their own ideological bents. The issue calls for a little more sensitivity, inclusiveness and intelligent discretion.

In rural schools in Ontario it isn't unknown that a science teacher will inform her high school class that although she is a firm believer in the Darwinian 'ascent of man', to spare the sensibilities of many of her religious-background students, she will avoid teaching scientific evolution, and sidestep the issues involved in creationism or "intelligent design".

Now that's a zinger on the opposite direction.

And there is also the issue surrounding the Education Act in Ontario which states explicitly that it is a teacher's duty to instill in children a respect for "the principles of Judeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues."

Rather Victorian, is it not? Yet here's the 21st Century building and improving on the 19th Century dictates to social awareness, acceptance and justice. Neither credible nor creditable.

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

() Follow @rheytah Tweet