I want to echo Tara Houle’s letter saying that British Columbia classrooms are becoming a battleground for identity politics, and add my comments on what we are seeing in our school system, particularly when parents’ rights are being disregarded. Like so many families, we have seen a disturbing decline in student achievement as our overcrowded, understaffed schools push children into higher grades despite not having the basic literacy and math skills to advance. Just because we are moving into an AI-dependent world in no way justifies ignoring the competency of generations of children.
I agree with the letter writer, the focus needs to be on learning and not political posturing. Our changing world uses “sensitivities” and “racism” to ban books like Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird for 16-17 year old students, but approves books about sexuality at the tender age of five. With no online experience, I read To Kill a Mockingbird in 10th grade in the 70’s and don’t remember it being racially discriminatory, if anything we learned about society’s injustices against a people. Only in recent years are students finally learning about Canada’s injustices, discrimination and treatment of Indigenous people in Canada. After less than a decade, some school districts are removing this “sensitivity” material from the classroom. Many of Canada’s traditions are changing due to ideology and politics with our changing landscape and not always for the better.
Our education system is replacing best practices like report card grades, dress codes, and codes of conduct with freedom of expression at the expense of respect for society as a whole. The government may be able to shirk responsibility for schools’ curricular resources, but it cannot shirk responsibility for funding and regulating outcomes in our education, health, and social services. When we look around our communities and see firsthand the growing homeless population, hospital closures, and mobile learning systems replacing classrooms, it feels like the government is using these failing systems as justification for doing little or nothing to address these problems. So Tara Houle’s letter begins: “Education is the cornerstone of our society; it should be a priority in every political election, and we need to be reminded of that at the ballot box in October.”
Jo-Anne Berezanski
North Saanich
