To echo Tara Houle’s letter of B.C. classrooms becoming a battleground for identity politics, I would like to add my comments about what we are seeing in our school system, especially when parents' rights are disregarded. Like so many families, we too have seen a disturbing decline in student achievement where our overpopulated, understaffed schools are pushing children through to higher grades when they do not meet the basic reading, writing and math skills to move up. Just because we are moving to an AI-reliant 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 on sexuality at the tender age of five. Without online exposure, I read To Kill A Mockingbird in Grade 10 in the '70s and don’t recall it being racially discriminating, if anything we learned about the injustices of society against a people. It is only in recent years that students are finally learning about Canada’s injustices, discrimination and treatment towards Indigenous people in Canada. After less than a decade some school districts are removing this material from classrooms based on 'sensitivity'. Many traditions of Canada are changing because of ideology and politics with our changing landscape, and not always for the better.
Our education system is replacing proven methods of academic report card grading, dress codes, and codes of conduct for the freedom of expression at the expense of respect for society as a whole. Government may be able to renege responsibility for curricular resources in schools, but they cannot shrug responsibility for funding and regulating outcomes in our education, health, and socio-economics. When we look around our communities and see first-hand the growing homeless population, hospital closures, and portables replacing classrooms, it feels like government uses these failing systems as justification to do little or nothing to fix these problems. So absolutely as Tara Houle’s letter opens, “Education is the cornerstone of our society; it should be a priority in any political election and we need to be reminded of this in October at the ballot box.
Jo-Anne Berezanski
North Saanich
