A few examples of how we have gone totally bonkers
- Abortion Not only the acceptance, but the promotion of the killing of our most vulnerable Canadians and calling it "health care" In 2019, the latest year on record, 83,576 abortions were performed on Canadian women as reported by hospitals and clinics.
- Euthanasia ( our latest death trap ) There were approximately 16,000 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2023 and more than 60,000 since legalization.
- Ontario school union warns teachers against saying ‘boys and girls,’ supporting parental rights In a December email, the union for the Kingston-area Limestone District School Board told staff that they could be disciplined for supporting parental rights, using terms like 'boys and girls,' and holding 'right wing' views.
- Ontario school union warns teachers against saying ‘boys and girls,’ supporting parental rights
- And from Parents as First Educators What is happening in Canadian Schools will make you sick
- From the EPOCH TIMES What Canadian Schools Are Teaching About ‘White Privilege’ and ‘Systemic Racism’
“Anti-racism” is being taught to schoolchildren across Canada, and some parents say their kids have come home distraught. The reason is they feel a wedge between them and their friends driven by an ideology that divides them into two groups: white oppressors and non-white oppressed.
Mr. Brooks said he’s sure the teacher, who he knows cares about Rachel, didn’t intend to hurt her. But the anti-racism content can easily cause anger, guilt, and shame, especially in someone “not mature enough yet to respond to this discussion.”
This was two years ago; she was 13 at the timeMr. Brooks said he has felt anguish at watching his older daughter, as an indigenous person, struggling with her racial identity, but the answer to racism isn’t to then have his white daughter in a similar internal conflict.
“We feel the concepts of white guilt are incredibly toxic,” he said.Some have also raised concerns about the effects of anti-racism teachings on non-white students.
“I’ve had parents of an indigenous student and an Indo-Canadian student reach out to me and talk about how their kid was taught this pedagogy of the oppressed,” Jeff Park, executive director of the Alberta Parents’ Union, told The Epoch Times. “They had never thought of themselves as oppressed before, and it was traumatizing to them to have to think about their classmates as oppressors and think about themselves as oppressed.”
Ideological Foundations of Anti-RacismAnti-racism is essentially the neo-Marxist ideology of critical race theory going by a different name (though it has, at times, openly been called “critical race theory” by some leading anti-racism thinkers in Canada and abroad).
The "Wheel of Privilege and Power"
promoted by the federal government and included in many anti-racism programs.
It also goes by names such as “social-emotional
learning” and “restorative” learning, Mr. Park said. “That’s used to obscure
that they’re actually talking about critical race theory.” It has also been called “culturally responsive”
teaching by some.
Although various definitions of critical race
theory (CRT) exist, it is generally characterized by its assertion that racism
is systemic and that race is an important part of a person’s identity. This
latter point is often contrasted with the idea of a colour-blind society that
treats all people equally as individuals rather than identifying people based
on race.
Although Canadian parents hold varying opinions on
such matters, the anti-racism view is being widely disseminated in schools.
Many consider the ideas presented to be radical, with controversial thinkers
such as Ibram X. Kendi cited in anti-racism materials.
For instance, Peel District School Board in
Ontario has encouraged teachers to read Mr. Kendi’s book “Antiracist Baby” to
kindergarten children, according to documents leaked to Samuel Sey, a Ghanaian
Canadian who is a vocal opponent of critical race theory.
Mr. Sey described the book as the “kids version”
of Mr. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.”
Mr. Kendi says in “How to Be an
Antiracist” that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist
discrimination.” He advocates the creation of a “department of anti-racism” in
the U.S. government that would have non-elected anti-racism experts
“responsible for pre-clearing all local, state, and federal public policies to
ensure they won’t yield racial inequity.” The Constitution would be amended to
make such inequities unconstitutional.
Another prominent CRT advocate is Robin DiAngelo,
who says in her book “White Fragility”: “A positive white identity is an
impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist
outside the system of white supremacy.” An article on anti-racism published by
the Canadian Principals Association
cites Ms. DiAngelo’s writing.
Some U.S. states have banned CRT in the classroom.
This year, many Canadian parents have increasingly voiced concerns over gender
and sexuality teachings in schools, and rumblings over CRT are growing as well,
Mr. Park said.
The Epoch Times has collected examples of how CRT
is manifesting in classrooms from across the country.
British Columbia
Before anti-racism took hold, according to a
former B.C. teacher, schools were already addressing racism, but they were
doing it without CRT. “If there was anything to do with race that was in any
way insulting or pejorative to others, then it would be, of course, banned,”
Jim McMurtry of Abbotsford told The Epoch Times.
“There was a lot of attention for decades to
Martin Luther King, and not to judge people on the colour of their skin, but on
the content of their character,” he said. “And then something happened.”
He was a teacher on call, working for schools all
around the city, when he started to notice the word “privilege” popping up in
classrooms, even at the elementary level. “I started to challenge colleagues
about this.”
Many white children at the schools live in poverty, Mr. McMurtry said. “So how dare you assume that every white child is privileged?” he would say to his colleagues.
They would argue back, he said, and “start to
create the assumption that I was somehow racist.”
Mr. McMurtry was fired earlier this year, after
about 40 years of teaching, for telling a class that the majority of
residential school deaths were due to illnesses, such as tuberculosis. He wrote
his master’s thesis on indigenous education policy and has kept his knowledge on
the subject up to date, so he sought to contextualize reports about residential
school deaths, he said.
Toward the end of his career, he saw phenomena
such as “equity marking” and “equity backpacks” in schools.
“There are many classes now where there’s equity
marking, where teachers have to give more attention to kids who are not
white-skinned,” Mr. McMurtry said.
He noted an “equity backpack” initiative started
by a Grade 6 social studies teacher in Abbotsford who has a master’s degree in
equity. She started it in 2021 and it spread across the province and into
Alberta.
She had children make backpacks out of cardboard
and put anti-racism classwork in them. A video about the initiative shows students including
many positive messages in their backpacks, such as promises to love themselves,
to love others, and to work hard to realize their dreams.
They also include messages steeped in CRT
language. “I promise to challenge my biases,” one student says. “I promise to
stand up for what is right, when the time is right, and become an activist if
needed,” another says.
Engaging teachers and students in “social justice”
activism is often part of anti-racism teachings. The honouring diversity course
taught to Grade 8 students in Vanderhoof, for example, culminated with having
students “make a claim” in front of the class about their new commitment to
diversity and social justice.
A paper published in the UCLA Law
Review last year by Theresa Montaño and Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen praises CRT
in the classroom and says it “engages students in social activism to defy
majoritarian supremacy.” The paper promotes K–12 anti-racism teaching and, while
some try to distance anti-racism from CRT, the authors don’t. “Rather than deny
CRT is being taught in schools, the authors embrace CRT,” the paper says.
Ms. DiAngelo said in an essay she co-authored,
titled “Is Everyone Really Equal,” that “education is a political project.”
British Columbia’s education ministry has an anti-racism guide for teachers,
including suggestions on how to start class discussions on privilege, identity,
and systemic racism. “Be outspoken about anti-racism,” it says. “Recognize that
authentic allyship is not performative, rather it is active work. ... Think about
how you can be vocal about the importance of anti-racism work in every part of
education.”
A father in a small town in B.C.’s interior told
The Epoch Times that his daughter’s Grade 8 class was asked to place themselves
on the “Wheel of Privilege and Power.“ It’s
a common tool in anti-racism programs to show people how much ”privilege” they
have by looking at their identities as an intersection of various identity
groups.
The most “privileged” are at the centre, where
terms such as “rich,” “white,” “settler/colonizer,” “property owner,”
“heterosexual,” and “able-bodied” converge.
The father asked not to be named because he holds
a position in the local school board and could face repercussions for speaking
publicly on the matter. He said that when his daughter objected to being
defined by her skin colour, she was told that being white put her in the
“oppressor” group.
Students had to leave their anti-racism workbook
in the classroom, he said, and he suspects it’s because the teachers didn’t
want the parents to see the material.
“My daughter told me, and other students [told me]
as well, that as this class went on, the First Nations and minority students,
they thought it was hurting their relationship, because they would talk to each
other less in the hallways,” he said. “They just felt like it was dividing the
kids rather than bringing them together.”
Alberta
In Alberta, too, CRT is prevalent, Mr. Park said.
He has had parents come to him after their children were asked to place
themselves on the Wheel of Privilege. He said there’s some denial around how
much of it is presented in the classrooms.
“They tend to say anti-racism training is only
used as training for teachers, we’re not teaching it to the students, but I
just find that a little hard to believe because, first of all, there are lots
of resources being produced to help teachers bring this into their classrooms,”
he said.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) shares
many such resources, Mr. Park said. He noted that the ATA recently invited its
members to participate in an educators’ anti-racism conference
in Toronto on Nov. 30. The keynote speaker, Martin Brokenleg, has cited
Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire in his
writings.
Mr. Park pointed to a 2012 article Mr. Brokenleg
wrote, titled “Transforming Cultural Trauma into Resilience.” In it, he
positively quotes Mr. Friere, saying “it is impossible for the oppressor to
liberate the oppressed.”
Teachers Pay Teachers and other online educator
marketplaces are selling materials to bring CRT pedagogy to the classrooms, Mr.
Park said. “Certainly a company that sells lesson plans as their business model
isn’t going to produce things that people aren’t using.”
He said many teachers feel themselves to be
moderate, but that’s only because the teaching profession today is steeped in
CRT. “They’re moderate—in the teachers’ lounge,” he said. “They don’t realize
the faculties of education have been so captured by critical Marxism.”
Ontario
An Ontario teacher was recently in the spotlight
for a video he posted to X, formerly
known as Twitter, in which he called parents “snowflakes” for disagreeing with
his CRT and other controversial teachings. The video has since been removed.
“I teach about Marxism, I teach about socialism, I
teach about trans rights, I teach about LGBTQ history, I teach about black
history, I teach about the racial history of our country and the genocide that
we have inflicted upon indigenous people,” Frank Domenic Cirinna of Craig
Kielburger Secondary School in Milton said in the video.
He called parents who oppose any of this
“antiquated dinosaurs” whose children will eventually turn away from them and
adopt his worldview. His school board, the Halton District School Board, did
not reply to an Epoch Times request for comment.
In the York Regional District School Board
(YRDSB), teacher trainings for math and for English as a second language (ESL)
have been dominated by CRT, according to former teacher Chanel Pfahl, who
receives many communications from teachers and parents about such things and
posts them on X.
“What is your understanding of your identity and
how your privilege and power shapes the way you experience the world?” a math
consultant’s slide that Ms. Pfahl posted reads.
An ESL training focused on “intersecting social identities” and “forms of
oppression,” as shown in materials from the training.
Also at YRDSB, parents of Grade 8 students were told their children would meet with an external
organization called Black Excellence 365 weekly throughout November to build an
understanding of “anti-racism and anti-oppression.” A parent leaked the
communication to Ms. Pfahl. In October, the board also had a speaker from the
“On Canada Project” speak with students, Ms. Pfahl said. The organization’s
website lists federal Conservative Leader
Pierre Poilievre and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as “far-right/white
supremacists.”
The YRDSB didn’t respond to a request for comment
by press time.
In recent years, Ontario has greatly increased the number of high-level
staff its schools have dedicated solely to equity.
The Peel District School Board (PDSB) and Durham
District School Board (DDSB) are the two boards with the largest number of
high-earning equity staff.
A Grade 5 teacher at PDSB’s Somerset Drive Public
School in Brampton identified books banned in U.S. schools because they promote
CRT, and read them with her class. She posted about it on X in March,
along with a picture of her bulletin board, which has the words “critical race
theory” in the centre. Another teacher, Amanda Long, who teaches at a DDSB
school, replied to that post saying she
will do the same.
Ms. Long has posted a lesson plan for one of these
books, “Ghost Boys,” by Jewell Parker
Rhodes, and teaching materials supporting Black Lives Matter.
A father whose daughter is in an Ottawa Carleton
District School Board school told The Epoch Times about a webinar the board held last year, advertised as being
for all students. He took issue with many parts of it, including its discussion
of “whiteness” as the root of various issues in the world.
It said, for instance, that white British
colonizers are to blame for “homophobia” in the Muslim world.
Although he didn’t actually have his kindergartner
watch the seminar, he was upset it was billed as appropriate for all students.
The parent wished to remain anonymous to protect his daughter’s privacy. He
sent The Epoch Times his communications with school board staff. Superintendent
Shannon Smith told him, “We don’t agree that the term ‘whiteness’ is harmful
language.”
He said he took the matter to the Ontario Human
Rights Commission, which told him white people cannot be considered the target
of racism.
A Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decision (in
the case of Lisikh v. Ontario, 2022) states: “It is important to note in the
Tribunal’s jurisprudence that an allegation of racial discrimination or
discrimination on the grounds of colour is not one that can be or has been
successfully claimed by persons who are white and non-racialized.”
Lindsay, a parent in Waterloo, Ont., who chose to
give only her first name to protect her daughter’s privacy, said her 8-year-old
came home saying she was told not to say “two plus two equals four.” Her young
daughter had a hard time explaining precisely the logic behind it, but Lindsay
said it sounded like it had to do with CRT’s view of Western math as colonial
and oppressive. This view is called critical mathematics pedagogy.
Legislation has been introduced in Ontario in
recent years to embed anti-racism into all aspects of the Ontario curriculum.
Parent advocacy group Parents as First Educators raised the alarm on Bill 16
last year, saying it would also have schools’ and teachers’ performance
assessments include their level of anti-racism awareness.
Prominent psychologist and author Jordan Peterson called an earlier version of the proposed legislation,
Bill 67, “the most pernicious and dangerous piece of legislation that any
Canadian government has ever put forward.” Bill 67 had bipartisan support,
though it lapsed in June 2022 because of the Ontario provincial election. Bill 16, introduced by three NDP
MPPs, has so far not been passed into law in the Legislature.
Farther east, some are pushing for CRT to take
hold in schools.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, an “anti-racism coalition” is seeking to influence K–12
social studies curriculum, getting support from a local Black Lives Matter
group.
The coalition sought to drum up support following an assault at a high
school in Grand Falls-Windsor earlier this month. The father of the victim told
CBC News that he thought the assault was racially motivated. The father of the
youth accused in the assault, however, told the CBC it was not racially
motivated, but rather a teenage altercation that got out of hand.
Federal, Other Institutions
Anti-racism has spread into many Canadian
institutions, including other places meant for youth. Hockey Quebec requires its coaches to undergo
anti-racism training that cites Mr. Kendi. Pediatric surgeons are urged to be anti-racist.
The federal government’s anti-racism strategy has driven and
informed many such initiatives.
A man holds up a sign against critical race theory
at a school board meeting in Temecula, Calif., on Dec. 13, 2022. (The Epoch
Times)
Anti-racism is a big component now in the work of the
Canadian Human Rights Commission. The commission recently said Christmas is rooted
in colonialism and called the celebration of Jesus’s birth “an obvious example”
of “systemic religious discrimination.”
Many Canadians are internalizing the
intersectional identities assigned them through CRT, with some reportedly now including “settler” in their email
signatures alongside pronouns.
The issue came to the fore in July when Toronto
school principal Richard Bilkszto killed himself.
His family said his deteriorating mental health was caused by the fallout from
a mandatory anti-racism training in which he argued with the trainer over the
concept of systemic racism in Canada.
The issue of CRT’s identity politics and the
CRT-derived idea of “decolonization” has also been part of anti-Israel rhetoric
across Canada since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and Israel’s
counterstrikes at the group.
“Most parents still have no idea about what’s
going on, even though I try to spread the word,” the B.C. parent who works in
his local school board said. “They’re not familiar with all the different terms
that are used. ... They sound good, but I believe they’re pretty harmful.”
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