Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Saturday, April 15, 2023
Teachers bullying kids - Parents it's time to Homeschool your children
This TDSB is run by a bunch of bullies
Run With Life: Truth about Pregnancy Care Centres
CPCs a target for calumny -- they won't refer for abortion
June 26 2018 Open letter to ARCC from a crisis pregnancy centre (Part 2)
June 9, 2017 CPCs are there for the woman - before, during, and after pregnancy
June 2017 - The full report Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada Deceitful on Crisis Pregnancy Centres in PDF format available here.
Report - May 2017 - Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada Deceitful on Crisis Pregnancy Centres
Friday, May 7, 2017 (Post1)
Summary and introduction
Saturday May 8, 2017 (Post 2)
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER
I. Abortion Procedures and Risks
Sunday May 7, 2017 (Post 3)
II Other Erroneous Allegations
Part 4 – Do CPCs pretend they are medical clinics as Arthur states?
And Part 5 - The Christian "problem"
Tuesday May 9, 2017 (Post 5)
Part 6 – Training and Part 7 – General nonsense
Wednesday May 10, 2017 (Post 6)
Part 8 – Arthur’s “high and low” reports
Part 9 - Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in BC
CONCLUSION
Friday, April 14, 2023
Thursday, April 13, 2023
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Radical Left Wing thugs terrorize Chris Elliot again while the cops do nothing
Monday, April 3, 2023
How ‘Progressive Discipline’ Turned Ontario Schools into a Battleground - National Post
A 200-pound Ontario middle schooler was getting ready to pummel his classmate when a group of teachers escorted him to an office where they hoped to calm him down — instead, he proceeded to ram into the two adults, a man and a woman, for the better part of an hour, leaving them shaken and bruised. He never faced any consequences.
“You should have seen their bruises. The guy’s back is totally messed up. The girl still has arm issues,” Margaret, a teacher with over a decade of experience in Ontario’s public schools, told National Review.
Worried about the potential repercussions, the teachers who were assaulted were not able to physically restrain the student, nor did senior school administrators expel him.
“All he got was an in-school suspension. His mom came to pick him up, asked if he wanted dumplings, and they left. There were no consequences,” Margaret said.
The veteran teacher explained that the administration’s indifference to staff members being physically assaulted stemmed from the student’s historical behavior: “That’s his baseline.” Under the school district’s present approach to discipline, if aggressive and dangerous behavior is typical for a student, then only behavior that exceeds the norm is dealt with.
It Wasn’t Always This Way
Just two decades ago, only a fraction of Ontario teachers reported being physically assaulted in school. Thanks largely to Conservative premier Mike Harris’s passing the Safe Schools Act in 2000, administrators adopted a “zero tolerance” policy toward violence. Suspensions and expulsions rose in subsequent years as the message trickled down that disruptive behavior would be deterred by “strict rules and mandatory consequences.”
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Growing pushback that Safe Schools unevenly targeted minority groups led the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) to investigate allegations of discrimination in 2005. Two years later, the OHRC reached an agreement with the succeeding Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty, acknowledging that the “widespread perception” of current policies “can have a disproportionate impact on students from racialized communities” that “can further exacerbate their already disadvantaged position in society.”
The writing was on the wall.
The month the settlement was publicized, the McGuinty government — led by education minister Kathleen Wynne — introduced the Progressive Discipline and School Safety bill in a bid to overhaul Safe Schools. Within two months, Progressive Discipline received royal assent and took effect in February 2008.
The new approach marked a radical departure from the traditional view of school discipline. Henceforth, administrators embraced a “whole-school approach that utilizes a continuum of prevention programs, interventions, supports, and consequences to address inappropriate student behavior,” Ontario’s Ministry of Education announced.
The new model transformed the student-teacher relationship to one in which the ultimate goal was the creation of “safe, equitable and inclusive” learning spaces. Progressive Discipline curtailed the ability of teachers to suspend students and defanged principals of their power to expel. Instead, educators were encouraged to address “root causes” to change student behavior.
The effort to prioritize the emotional experience of students over the need to maintain order had predictable consequences: Whereas only 7 percent of teachers in Ontario schools were the victims of physical abuse in 2005, by 2017 that number had spiked to 54 percent. This academic year is on track to become the most violent in history for the Toronto school district, the largest and most influential in Canada.
The new approach to student discipline, which mirrors the approach adopted in many big-city public schools in the U.S., made schools unequivocally more dangerous. A landmark 2021 academic report surveying thousands of educators found that almost 90 percent reported experiencing some form of violence in the 2018-2019 school year. The overwhelming majority of teachers reported harassment and violence increasing in recent years, in what academics have called an “epidemic of violence.”
Although school safety has reached new lows, students are no more likely to face serious consequences, according to publicly available disciplinary data dating back to 2007. Since the legislative change that year, the school suspension rates virtually halved from 4.32 percent to 2.21 percent for the 2019-2020 academic year. Expulsions have followed the same trend.
Simply put, Progressive Discipline deprioritized school safety, according to over two dozen people from across the province — teachers, principals, trustees, and concerned parents — who described their experiences to National Review for this series on Ontario schools.
Educators pulled back as concerns over violence and misbehavior were systematically disregarded.
“It has progressively become worse and worse,” Robert, an English teacher and former union representative with 20 years of experience, admits. “Older teachers were used to something being done right away. If a student gives you the finger, they’re going home.”
That is no longer the case.
“They basically got licensed to do what they wanted,” Robert said, his exasperation evident.
The group interviewed by NR represents a wide swath befitting the ever-diversifying Canadian landscape: men and women; immigrants and citizens; liberals and conservatives; city and country folk; old and young; religious and nonreligious; gay and straight.
Many wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs. Others who believe Progressive Discipline has unleashed chaos on Ontario schools refused to speak entirely. Only a few defenders of the approach agreed to speak on the record.
‘Discipline’ as a Dirty Word
The specific year escapes Robert, but around “2008 or 2009,” terms such as “restorative justice” began appearing as “discipline” became a dirty word, driven from educators’ vocabularies. The flourishing of progressive euphemisms such as “positive discipline” or “redirection” came into vogue as the traditional model of student behavior, centered on reward and punishment, fell out of favor. Teachers were now encouraged to adopt “relational” approaches with students.
Today, students between junior kindergarten and Grade Three can no longer be suspended even if they threaten to “inflict serious bodily harm on another person,” swear at a teacher, or bully other students. The weight of correcting behavior and tolerating distractions has instead been transferred to overburdened teachers.
Trish, a slender teacher with brown hair and glasses fitting the part, has been punched twice by a young student. The child had a well-known history of assaulting students and faculty members, routinely becoming so enraged that on several occasions Trish was forced to evacuate her classroom to protect other students while the boy was left to vandalize the room at will.
School policy has effectively handcuffed Trish.
“When I’m in my class and he picks up chairs to throw across the room, the only thing I can do is evacuate my students.” Protocol dictates that Trish must call for a teacher with a Crisis Prevention Institute training certification, the only staffers permitted to physically intervene in such cases. The procedure is so constraining that when the student is assaulting another peer, Trish can only use her body as a shield.
If Trish were to defend herself, it could jeopardize her career. She’s been teaching for only a handful of years, so Trish has no desire to “rock the boat” with the administration. “I think nobody wants to do that because no one wants to put themselves on the line. When he hits me, I can’t stop him. I have to let it happen because I can’t hold him or stop him.”
The reports Trish files in the wake of such incidents always fall on deaf ears, she says.
“I was given the impression that it wasn’t worth my time. Because he wasn’t going to be suspended: Nothing was going to come of it,” Trish adds. But she leaves a paper trail anyway “for other teachers in the future” or “in case anything comes from somebody else’s parents.” At the end of the day, “I know that I filed the report. I’ve saved my own butt by filing it. I can only do what I can do.”
The rude awakening has been disheartening for Trish, who entered teaching because she struggled academically as a kid. She went years with an undiagnosed learning disability, but educational mentors along the way steered Trish toward success. She brought this same passion to teaching but now cautions other to pause before going to teachers’ college.
“I already wouldn’t tell someone to go into this profession. I’m going into my job every day stressed. I’m in fight-or-flight every day. I’m going to work, I’m getting hit, I’m being sworn at, and I’m only dealing with Grade Ones,” she says.
Trish is not even 30 years old.
The lessons reinforced to the children and educators at Trish’s school have become increasingly commonplace across Ontario. Rather than creating a virtuous cycle of better understanding between the staff and students, schoolyards are considerably more violent today than in years past.
Courtney, a public-school Francophone teacher with over a decade of experience, has never been personally assaulted by a student but knows of many colleagues who have. “We did have a kid at the school who was physically aggressive. I never taught him; thank God. But we have teachers who were physically assaulted by him,” Courtney said. Much like Margaret’s and Trish’s stories, the student continuously evaded discipline despite a well-known violent past “because he had a history.”
“There were basically no consequences for him. His mom came and picked him up, and that was it.” Asked whether she felt empowered by Progressive Discipline, Courtney dismissed the notion. “The first time it’s maybe a talking to and a warning. The thing is it ‘progresses’ but it never really progresses.”
Removing the Last Guardrail
For all the shortcomings of Progressive Discipline, there was still one guardrail, a holdover from a saner time that teachers could still count on: cops in schools.
Jordan Manners, a black high schooler at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate, became the first ever Toronto student to be shot and killed in school in 2007.
The following year, police in cooperation with the Toronto school board created the School Resource Officer (SRO) program, stationing law-enforcement officers at dozens of schools across the city.
A 2017 survey conducted by the school board revealed that black and indigenous students disproportionately reported feeling “watched or targeted,” making them “uncomfortable or very uncomfortable interacting” with law officers in school.
Nevertheless, the SRO program largely succeeded in preventing shootings and other lethal encounters in Ontario public schools.
The same survey showed an overwhelmingly positive response from a majority of students, parents, and staff members. Of the nearly 16,000 students polled, 57 percent said SROs made them feel safer, with 35 percent unsure. Only 10 percent disagreed. The disparity was even more pronounced among the roughly 500 parents asked: Over three-quarters saw SROs having a positive impact on school safety. Only 8 percent wanted to scrap the program. Likewise, nearly 60 percent of the 1,100-school staffers viewed the police presence favorably.
Despite the widespread public backing, the Toronto school board pulled the plug on the program in 2017. Rather than seeking to reform the relationship between the police and schools, foreshadowing the political climate to come, the board simply dismantled and terminated its relationship.
The decision was largely informed by an “equity lens,” as one local activist group writes. Seeing the world from this perspective, the school board sidestepped the complexity and nuance of school safety and discipline. One was either an anti-racist awakened to a world rigidly structured against racial minorities or a callous racist whose silence was violence. Anyone sympathetic to law enforcement or school safety were on the wrong side of history.
Then–Toronto school board chairwoman Robin Pilkey helped carry the vote by an 18-to-3 margin with the help of fellow trustee Marit Stiles. Both sung the praises of removing SROs in the face of evidence that most students felt safer with cops around. Neither Pilkey nor Stiles responded to requests for comment.
Growing unease compelled Pilkey to defend the move in an op-ed.
“I am also more mindful of the challenges, even the hostility we face as a society and within our public institutions, when equity, inclusiveness and anti-oppression, particularly with respect to racialized and marginalized groups, collide with the perceived sense of entitlement and privilege that some attribute, I think incorrectly, to the majority,” Pilkey wrote in the Toronto Star.
The 2022-2023 academic year is now set to be the most violent since records were first kept over two decades ago.
Thomas, a former public-school teacher, admitted that the SRO program was not perfect. “I have mixed feelings about it.” While the majority of police officers Thomas interacted with were nice, there were times when cops would be rude. On a few occasions, Thomas even asked law-enforcement officers to leave the school premises because of their conduct.
No law-and-order conservative, Thomas says he’s seen firsthand the impact of racism on black students and supports high-school students transitioning their genders. However, the Toronto school board’s abrupt about-face on SROs and the ensuing vilification of police left a bad taste. In hindsight, Thomas argues, the school board “has completely dropped the ball on school safety.”
Absent police and saddled with progressive discipline, Toronto schools descended into violence, though Ryan Bird, a spokesman for the school board, rejected the link between eliminating the SRO program and the rise in violence.
“I’m not aware of any data that suggests that, but I don’t believe there is a single reason that may explain the recent increase. I think it’s fair to say that when communities see increased levels of violence, that is also felt in our schools,” he said in a statement.
“There is currently no plan to re-introduce the program (revised or not) to schools,” the statement continued.
There had not been a fatal shooting in a Toronto school since Manners’s death in 2007, until 2022, when Jahiem Robinson, an 18-year-old black student, became the second student victim. Robinson was shot to death — “execution” style, according to police — at David and Mary Thompson Collegiate Institute by a 14-year-old. The following month, Jefferson Peter Shardeley Guerrier, another 18-year-old black student, died from a gunshot at Woburn Collegiate Institute. In mid February, a 15-year-old was shot at Weston Collegiate Institute, allegedly by two juniors, and was left in critical condition.
The suspects are now facing charges of attempted murder.
Friday, March 31, 2023
Rolling Over in the Grave - John Carlin for The Catholic Thing
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/03/31/rolling-over-in-the-grave/
FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2023
In the old days – that is, in the days prior to Vatican II – it was not uncommon for defenders of the Catholic faith to say that “error has no rights.” When I was a college freshman taking my first theology course, I heard my professor, a priest of the Dominican Order, utter those very words in class.
In those days, the ideal Catholic society would have been one in which secular authorities did not grant anything like full freedom of press or speech or religion; for the ideal society would be opposed to Error. Practically speaking, of course, these restrictions on freedom were quite impossible in countries such as the United States and Britain. And so Catholicism, while noting that these liberal arrangements were far from ideal, had as a practical expedient learned to tolerate freedom of speech, press, and religion in such societies. The government of Franco’s Spain, hewing closer to the ideal, made it far more difficult for Error to show its ugly head.
The direct antithesis of this Catholic point of view was the liberal point of view, whose classic statement was John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (published in 1859 – the same year, by the way, in which that other famous book by an Englishman was published, Darwin’s The Origin of Species). Mill argued for an almost absolute freedom of expression. I say “almost” because he did allow for three exceptions.
Society, acting either by law or by public opinion could legitimately restrict freedom of expression (1) when it amounted to libel or slander, or (2) when it incited a riot or stampede (e.g., yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, as Justice Holmes later put it), or (3) when it amounted to a conspiracy to commit a crime.
Mill’s justification for these restrictions is that the expressions they inhibit will if left uninhibited, cause tangible and needless harm. Mill’s overriding principle in On Liberty is that adults in modernized societies (e.g., the United Kingdom and America) should be free to do or say whatever they like provided these words and deeds do no harm to others.
In recent years many professed liberals – persons who claim to have inherited the pro-liberty mantle of J. S. Mill – have added a fourth category of needless “harm” to Mill’s list: hurt feelings.
To be sure, not all hurt feelings. After all, many hurt feelings are simply the byproduct of ordinary living: for instance, a girl’s hurt feelings when her boyfriend drops her; a child’s hurt feelings when his or her parents' divorce; or a politician’s hurt feelings when he loses an election (I myself, by the way, have had this painful experience many times in my life); or the hurt feelings of a restaurant owner when a new and better restaurant opens a few hundred yards away.
No, the hurt feelings our liberals are concerned about are feelings that get hurt because of “hate speech” or its nonverbal equivalents. What are some examples of hate speech? Speech that is racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic or xenophobic or Islamophobic.
Speech of this kind causes emotional pain, often very severe emotional pain, to persons who fall into any number of minority (or victim or oppressed) categories: blacks, native Americans, other persons of color, women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, undocumented immigrants (one mustn’t say “illegal aliens”), transgenders, non-binary persons, and so on.
“What?” you may ask. “Are these people so fragile that they cannot bear a little emotional pain? Are they snowflakes? Do they melt whenever the sun shines?”
To which our liberals (quoting Shakespeare) will reply: “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” They will remind you that you are a person of “white privilege” and that you are heterosexual and probably male and probably Christian – or rather a nominal Christian; for if you were a real Christian your heart would bleed for these countless victims who have to live in an environment of hate.
The trouble with this idea of “hate speech” – or rather, the advantage of this idea from the point of view of many people who nowadays misname themselves as liberals – is that it can be used as a great weapon of intimidation. It can be used, and very often is used, as a way of silencing those who might otherwise be tempted to make statements that give offense to “liberals.”
If you’re on the verge of saying something bad about black criminals or something good about white cops; or if you think the U.S. government should prevent millions of illegal aliens from flooding into the country; or if you’d like to say that sodomy is a sin and a perversion; or if you’re about to say that transgenderism is sheer madness; or if you’re inclined to say that Muhammad was a false prophet – if you’re tempted to say any of these things, hold your tongue, for all these things will be denounced as hate speech. And you yourself will be denounced as a hater.
If John Mill were alive today, he’d be rolling over in his grave (so to speak).
This “hate speech” weapon is being used to silence Catholic objections to homosexuality. And used with a high degree of success. When is the last time you heard a priest denounce homosexuality? Every parish priest knows that if he does so, he will provoke the ire of more than a few parishioners. They will leave his parish, or they will reduce their financial contributions, or they will write to the bishop complaining of his “hatred” and “bigotry.” And he knows that many a bishop, instead of complimenting him on his courageous defense of the faith, will advise him to be “prudent.”
Soon it will require great courage for a priest to speak against euthanasia. That’s just around the corner.
The Catholic Church, which once held that “error has no rights,” today has little choice but to become a defender of free speech. Otherwise, its own freedom to speak will vanish.
You may also enjoy:
Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger’s True Liberty
Hadley Arkes’ Liberty and the Claims of Truth
Sunday, March 26, 2023
U.S. Bishops Slam ‘Trans’ Surgeries,
CV NEWS FEED // The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued an unequivocal statement condemning transgender interventions and forbidding Catholic hospitals to perform them.
The document lays out principles on the broader issue of attempts to manipulate and customize the human body – such as genetic engineering, “cybernetic enhancement,” and other aspects of transhumanism – which is expected to become of increasing importance as technology advances.
“There is an order in human nature which we are called to respect,” the document states. “Genuine respect for human dignity requires that decisions about the use of technology be guided by genuine respect for this created order.”
The bishops rejected the idea that someone can be born into the wrong body:
The soul does not come into existence on its own and somehow happen to be in this body, as if it could just as well be in a different body. A soul can never be in another body, much less be in the wrong body.
Quoting the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the document says that biological sex “cannot be reduced to a pure and insignificant biological fact, but rather is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love.'”
The document also quotes Pope Francis, who has written:
The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.
The bishops lay out two scenarios in which technological interventions on the human body can be morally justified: to repair a defect in the body, or when the sacrifice of one part is necessary for the welfare of the whole body. These are contrasted with procedures which “aim to alter the fundamental order of the body.”
Transgender interventions, such as “bottom surgery,” mastectomies of healthy breasts, vocal cord surgeries, and other procedures designed to make a person appear more like someone of the opposite sex “are attempts to alter the fundamental order and finality of the body and replace it with something else,” the bishops said. “Such interventions, thus, do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated.”
The document makes a clear statement to Catholic hospitals: “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”
The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), the leading institution on issues of Catholic medical morality and ethics, applauded the document.
“So-called transitioning interventions tear away from reality and reject the dignity of the body,” they said in a statement. “They put patients on the road to heartache, leading to only apparent happiness with deeper suffering and, for many, a lifetime of destructive chemicals and surgeries.”
“Against this tidal wave of transgender activism, authentic care for people with gender dysphoria must be rooted in a proper understanding of the order within creation and an accurate application of Catholic ethical principles,” the NCBC said.
NCBC ethicists Dr. Ted Furton and Dr. John Brehany have discussed the document and its implications for the future of Catholic healthcare in a podcast episode, which readers can find here.
CatholicVote Director of Communications Joshua Mercer also welcomed the statement, saying it will be “imperative” for Catholic healthcare facilities to “follow these ethical guidelines, which offer the best care for people suffering with gender dysphoria.”
“It’s so important for Catholics in the trenches, who often bear the brunt of secular ideological movements like the ‘trans’ movement, to see leadership like this from our bishops,” Mercer added:
With the Biden administration doing everything it can to undermine the religious freedom and conscience rights of Catholics in healthcare, we’ve still got a long battle in front of us. But it means a lot knowing our leaders have our back.