Schools call math racist and the flag offensive, time for a clean up – Toronto Sun

The Canadian flag is now offensive to some of the powers that be in Ontario’s education system. Last week, a school principal sent home a letter warning parents that their child was about to be offered a free Canadian flag and if they didn’t want to receive one, they should send the attached form back.

When it comes to Ontario’s education system it can be difficult to tell reality from ridiculous parody. The idea of warning parents that their child might be offered a small free flag would seem like a made up story but sadly it’s where we are in 2022.

We need to fix this and that will require serious attention.

The big education story at Queen’s Park right now is that contract negotiations are about to get underway for the five big unions representing teachers and other education workers. Most of the interest from the media has focused on wages and Bill 124 — the law that limited salary increases over the last several years.

What I’d like to see the Ford government do over the coming years is the stare down the woke educrats who think Canada’s flag is offensive and math is racist in the same way they stared down the unions on Bill 124.

Most teachers and principals in our system are fine people — your family, friends and neighbours — who just want to provide a good education for our children. There are, however, too many radical activists who hold positions in the classroom or are part of the educational consulting class who think their job is to indoctrinate your children with their politics.

We have seen school boards across the province import American anti-racism training and other curriculum aids that are fully steeped in the radical critical race theory. These materials, filled with American spellings, history lessons and examples don’t deal with the very different experiences of Black and Indigenous communities in Canada.

They are adopted by activists here, not because they will help but because the materials match the politics of the activist/consultant introducing them to the system.

“Mathematics is often positioned as an objective and pure discipline,” the province’s math curriculum stated last year before explaining that racism was really at the heart of math.

“Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions,” the now-removed part of the curriculum stated.

It shouldn’t be shocking that the ministry of education would find a way to make math about racism. The now former head of Ontario’s public service called the entire provincial civil service a “White supremacist” organization in an official report last year.

Racism is real but that doesn’t mean everyone and everything is racist, which seems to be the view of the underworked civil servants pushing this agenda.

Thankfully, premier Ford stood up to the attempt to make math about racism and called it out last year.

“In math, let’s stick with math,” Ford said last July. “Other social issues, let’s talk about it, there’s no doubt, but let’s not talk about it in math. Talk about it in other courses that the schools offer.”

Now we need him to stand up to the rest of the woke political agenda being pushed in schools. He also needs to give clear instructions to his education minister, be it Stephen Lecce or someone new, that politicizing the classroom won’t be tolerated.

Such a move would outrage activists, the bosses at the teachers unions and those in the media obsessed with such issues. The people who would be happy with Ford for taking such a stand would be parents and the majority of teachers.

Let’s hope Ford does the right thing in his second term.