A Canadian Clown Show

 

My previous post dealt with the racism-tinged dismissal of a high school principal in Texas. Today's deals with malfeasance of another kind: the unjust treatment of a co-op student who was threatened with suspension and removed from her hospital placement due to her making the "okay' sign in a selfie group photo taken by her teacher. 

An anonymous complaint to  Hamilton Health Sciences netted this result:

After just a few days in the co-op program, her parents got a call from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board saying she was not to go to the hospital, but should come in to the school for a meeting instead.

Her dad went with her for that meeting. They were told she was being removed from her placement because someone had complained about her hand sign. And she was in jeopardy of being suspended.

“They said it was a racist sign,” says Megan. “I didn’t know.”

Despite her protestations of ignorance, the Board ignored the opportunity for it to be, as they like to say, "a teachable moment." 

An email from school board spokesperson Shawn McKillop says: “A community member noticed an unacceptable symbol in a social media post and reported it to HWDSB and program partner, Hamilton Health Sciences. The symbol, which can be interpreted as promoting hate, does not align with HWDSB’s commitment to equity and inclusion. Symbols of hate that promote racism or white supremacy ideology are not tolerated in HWDSB or anywhere in our community. The image was immediately taken down.”

As you might imagine, the public has reacted with outrage, as a sampling of letters-to-the-editor demonstrate.:

No safety or respect for my daughter

First, I would like to say Susan Clairmont wrote an excellent column on my daughter and it raises a lot of issues (which was the point).

How can someone who is faceless, nameless, hiding behind a computer claim they are offended over something so innocently done invoke such a heavy handed outcome? Just like to point out a couple of more facts here, that neither HHSC or HWDSB spoke to my daughter, and that they said she “purposely” placed the hand sign in the pictures. Wendy Stewart from HHSC claims “everyone behaves in a manner that ensures everyone at HHSC feels respected, safe and welcome.” Yet they had no problem calling my daughter a racist, white supremacist. My daughter and my family sure feel respected and safe from these clowns.

Shawn Breeze, Hamilton

Punishment is over the top

This is completely unfair in my opinion. The student in question said she did not know that the OK sign was now considered offensive. I am a senior citizen, and I had no idea! So I accept that she did not. I thought people were innocent until proven guilty. This was a teachable moment, she was informed that it is considered unacceptable to use this sign, she expressed remorse, and that should have been the end of it. It is also a teachable moment for the HWDSB to make sure that when they assign placements, they should diligently go over the employment policies of the businesses they are sending students to. And also the responsibility of the businesses to clearly outline their HR policies to students (or any new hires) that they have. White supremacy is not something we should ever condone, but this was a very poor way of expressing that.

Sharon McKibbon, Hamilton

Put her back in the program

With regards to your article about the young girl being removed from her co-op, this is the first time that I heard the OK sign meant white power. I have been using it for the past 78 years to mean OK and I still use it to mean OK, and so do most of the people that I know. This young girl should be put back into her co-op program and receive an apology from whom ever removed her from it.

Ian Noble, Hamilton

We need a list of acceptable signs 

 Could The Spectator please provide us, who don’t see hate in a symbol like the “OK” sign, with a list of socially unacceptable signs? I understand the “Hitler salute” as being unacceptable because in our country, it has always been unacceptable, but the OK sign? If the picture had not been included in the article, I still wouldn’t have known how the “OK” sign would be considered racist.

The damage HHS and HWDSB have done to this young student is reprehensible! Instead of taking this opportunity to educate everyone (myself included) in a positive way, you made it punitive and the only one who suffered was the student. Shame on you! Hopefully, HHS and HWDSB will recognize the error of their ways and not only apologize for how you handled the situation but also reinstated the student back into the program; if they still choose to participate.

Kathi Howes-Jones, Hamilton

Am I absolutely positive the girl is innocent in this case? No one can know for certain, but it seems to me that the rush to judgement with no real opportunity for Megan Breeze to defend herself  is at the crux of the matter. Due process, it would seem, exists only when the political winds allow it.

Such are the times in which we live.

 

 

Then They Came For The Educators

As a longtime educator, I have always believed that whatever progress we can make as a species resides within the domain of knowledge and its concomitant, critical thinking. When both fall into societal disrespect, devolution seems to be the inevitable outcome.

Now that education has become one of the right's political footballs, what happened to Colleyville Grapevine principal, Dr. James Whitfield, should surprise few but dismay all fair-minded people.

Please advance to the 9:55 mark for the story:

It would seem that in Amerika, a little knowledge is, indeed, a dangerous thing.

Thought For The Day

Busy as I am these days performing outside maintenance chores before the storms inevitably start to fly, I offer this for today's reflection, as well as gratitude that Aaron Rodgers was not chosen to replace Alex Trebek on Jeopardy:

Apparently, Just An Error In Judgement

I find myself sinking into seemingly irremediable cynicism about the human species. This is but one of the reasons:

From The Land Of Freedom

 It's hard not to be inspired by our southern neigbours, eh?

Business As Usual

I have to confess that I am not following the Cop26 Glasgow Summit very closely. My suspicion is that all the hot air being vented there will only aggravate our climate crisis. 

From my cynical perspective, two editorial cartoons by the redoubtable Michael de Adder capture precisely the tenor of the times:

And post-conference:

Book Crime

A column by The Star's Heather Mallick dredged up memories of my teaching day, memories that are not altogether pleasant.

Many years ago I was teaching a Grade 10 advanced level English course. The thorn in the side of all of us teaching it was a novel Entitled Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. An important book detailing the terrible injustices faced by Japanese Canadians during World War 11, it detailed the personal suffering resulting from the Canadian government's expropriation of their homes and businesses and forced relocation into internment camps. It is a shameful period of our history that we should never forget, and one that prompted Brian Mulroney to issue an apology to survivors and their families in 1988.

The problem was that the novel was far too advanced stylistically for Grade 10 students. Indeed, another school within my board taught it at the Grade 12 level, which was far more appropriate for such a difficult book. After many years of frustrations, we banded together and asked our department head for permission to find a substitute. She agreed, with two major stipulations: the replacement had to be written by a woman, and she had to be Canadian.

While we eventually found another novel, I objected to her selection criterion. In my view, literature cannot be judged by either gender or nationality. It either addresses universal themes or it doesn't. That being said, I am not one of those dinosaurs who insists that only the canon of dead white men is worthy of study. However, it cannot be a reason to exclude such works while at the same time seeking out works works from other cultures and sensibilities. The two are hardly mutually exclusive.

Which brings me back to Heather Mallick, who opines about the decision by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to remove William Golding's Lord of the Flies from the curriculum. This strikes me as an extreme overreaction to a thought-provoking piece by a 17-year-old who describes herself as a Black, Jewish, feminist, and social justice activist advocating for greater diversity in the curriculum.

The author of the piece, Kyla Gibson, writes:

The OCDSB has no right to claim that the education system is inclusive when I spend my time learning about white and male supremacy. I do not need to learn about Lord of the Flies and how these boys cannot act in a civilized manner to protect one another without desiring power, hierarchy and having a thirst for blood. I need to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.

Perhaps a little unfairly, Mallick dismisses her concerns:

I fear for students like her. The novel is at base about bullying. A plane full of children crashes on a tropical island. Their means of survival is a plot that will be re-enacted in every workplace, social justice enclave, airplane flight and Green party meeting she will ever encounter.

What she seeks, she wrote, is “to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.” But this was precisely what “Lord of the Flies” revealed.

 I can’t see how she missed the novel’s slide into group madness led by frat-boy Jack and the killing of Simon and his fat, asthmatic, bullied friend Piggy. But then I frequently finish murder mysteries and have no idea who the killer was.

As she wrote, Golding’s boys were all white so perhaps they seemed much of a muchness, fair enough, but blood is blood and by the end Simon and Piggy were simply covered in it...

Truth be told, as you may have discerned, I feel some ambivalence about this whole issue. On the one hand, as stated earlier, important themes dealing with human nature should have no cultural or racial restrictions placed upon them. On the other hand, all Ms. Gibson seems to be asking for is literature that also accommodates her cultural and racial realities. The two are not incompatible.

Is she really asking for too much, and has the Ottawa-Carleton Board been too hasty in its decision to jettison an important piece of literature?