The War Room

DOSSIER # 10 EDUCATION: IT’S ELEMENTARY, THE NEW A- IS C+

"The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government of the next." Abraham Lincoln


While at a wedding on Saturday, myself, my lovely new wife and a young teacher got into a debate with two good friends of ours. Both are bright and friendly. They are also unabashedly New Left.

Both asserted that they would only send their kids to an Ontario public school. As they described it, they believed one should expose kids at an early age to people of all minorities and economic strata. The implication was that to not do so would result in children who were prone to racism. They also heavily implied that all private schools were wealthy and white, while government run public schools were fonts of ‘diversity’ and ‘enlightenment’.

I interjected that just because one might not go to a school which is racially ‘diverse’, is in no way indicative that one would grow up racist. Then, the young teacher spoke up. She has taught in the Toronto system for a decade and said that the dream of ‘diversity’ at most public schools is a myth and that many students tend to form cliques with similar cultures. She said this has caused much tension and violence in the schools she has taught in. She said this without judgment, just as fact. She then pointed to many of the predominantly white public schools in the area where she believed racism flourished. I then mentioned the many private Hindu, Jewish and Christian schools in the GTA where the population is hardly all ‘wealthy and white’.

We then mentioned the lowering of standards in the public system with reference to Dalton McGintey and his Education minister Gerard Kennedy making sure that they achieve their quota of 75% of students passing literacy tests in Ontario not by better teaching or study, but by in fact lowering the standards to pass the tests that are taken.

If I understand it, under the new system, instead of having to take a reading test and a writing test independently and pass both, students in the Liberal system will be able to add up their results to make for a combined pass. I suppose this means a failing grade of say 35% in reading in one and 25 % in writing in another now adds up to 60% overall.

See, the Liberals just transformed two failing E’s in the classical system in to a passing C- in the new system.

Another friend who teaches in the public school system of Toronto recently told us that no longer was she allowed to assign due dates for essays or assignments. If she assigns an essay in September, the student can hand it in any time during the year he/she sees fit.

I have made many references to the New Left being informed not by classical liberalism, but by a neo-Marxist, neo-communist view of ‘equality’.

The problem with this goal is the same with the problem with communism. In order for all to be equal, the greatest must be lowered to the least. The NDP-Liberal view of ‘diversity’ is similarly distorted. It merely looks at culture from a superficial and even racist point of view. Minorities are reduced to their cultural stereotypes; the clothes they wear, the food they eat or the colour of their skin. But true diversity comes from understanding their culture as it pertains to their values as human beings.

In the pursuit of achieving NDP-Liberal ‘equality’ our public schools they have also become little more than breeding grounds where children are used as guinea pigs for New Left social engineering.

A poll taken by the Environics Research Group last winter stated that almost a third of all Canadians did not know that the Jews were the primary victims of the National Socialists during the Holocaust. The next day I read a story that the public school board in Montreal would institute ‘gay day’ for school students, whereby they would have to ‘understand’ what it would be like to be gay. I then found another article which stated that in Vancouver, activists were trying to institute a curriculum where history would be taught through the eyes of the gay experience. But a third of Canadians did not know that Jews were the primary victims in the Holocaust!

I certainly believe that children can benefit from an education with students of different ethnicities and cultures. But that is much more complex than Paul Martin putting on a Native head-dress for a photo-op. Will the child from the ‘progressive’ household be taught to ‘tolerate’ his new Orthodox Jewish friend when he finds out he/she believes marriage is only between a man and a woman? Or will he believe his new friend is an ‘intolerant bigot’.

Last winter, when a group of Toronto Muslims protested that their children were being taught the ‘value’ of same-sex marriage, Dalton McGinty said they had to take it because it was a question of ‘tolerance’. To The War Room, Dalton McGinty is a gutter-barrel racist. Period. True diversity goes deeper than skin colour, it goes to the core of the soul, your values, your belief system.

I must also question what is being taught when 40% of Canadian teens say America is ‘evil’.

When I went to my wife’s high-school reunion in Toronto recently, the class-room she was stationed in was filled with assignments depicting different forms of governments. Of course, more than a few students chose communism and one used Che Guevara as a heroic example of a communist. All of the ‘facts’ of him were like one might find on a communist propaganda sight. This is like using Saddam Hussein as an example of an heroic dictator. What mark do you think the student received? How many more stories like this (via Neale News), of the family from Alabama, will Canadians have to read before they realize, that they are teaching their children to become the worst stereotype of an ‘ignorant, boorish American’ that they can think of.

Lowering standards, and just giving cosmetic lip-service to New Left terms such as ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and ‘tolerance’ helps no one.

Instead, it guarantees Canada a future governed by illiterate bigots who see diversity in the most shallow and superficial of terms.

posted by Nicol DuMoulin @ 11:34 AM