‘Passive’ Pride protest is a missed opportunity to teach inclusion, educators say

On June 1, a Thursday, teachers and administrators at several public elementary schools in Ottawa noticed a sharp and sudden drop in attendance.

Nine schools within the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board reported that at least 40 percent of their students were absent that morning. At two schools, 60 percent of the students stayed at home. (Normal absenteeism within the management is between 10 and 20 percent.)

“It was an absence that was felt all over the schoolyard,” a teacher told CBC Radios Ottawa morning earlier this week.

Of the parents who explained why their children were not attending school, some blamed a heat warning in effect that day.

Others said they kept their kids home because June 1 marked the start of Pride Month, and they didn’t want their kids to participate in activities related to the celebration of LGBTQ rights and achievements.

“Many students and teachers were in shock,” said the teacher, whose identity CBC has kept secret because they fear speaking out could harm their careers. “The impact of this protest was felt in more profound ways, especially for students who are part of the LGBTQ community.”

Rainbow Club scaled back the plans

According to the teacher, the school’s rainbow club decided to scale back their activities because of the strike and because some members said they suddenly felt unsafe.

“It is very distressing to hear that a child feels unsafe at school,” said the teacher, who marked the day by reading to the children who did attend from a book about a red crayon that can only turn blue.

“It’s the story of the chalk’s journey of learning to accept themselves as they are and the interactions with people in the world who make assumptions about them,” said the teacher.

According to the teacher, it was a striking illustration of the central themes of Pride Month.

“I think there’s a certain amount of misinformation out there about what teachers’ intent is. There may be some fear… that we’re trying to change who people are, but that’s not the case. We’re really just trying to instill tolerance building and acceptance.”

According to the teacher, parents who viewed keeping their children at home as an innocent act of passive protest did not understand the full impact of the gesture.

“Expelling yourself from school is a signal that is not passive – at least not passively felt by the students and staff who are part of or support the LGBTQ community,” said the teacher. “What was communicated to them by that absence was: we don’t support you, we don’t tolerate you.”

Many Muslim students stayed at home

Many of the parents who decided to keep their children home from school on June 1 were Muslims, according to Sikander Hashmi, imam of the Kanata Muslim Association and member of an OCDSB working group seeking a solution to the impasse.

“This situation has been boiling for a while,” Hashmi said Ottawa morning.

The choice not to participate is not an act of hatred and discrimination– Sikander Hashmi, Kanata Muslim Association

Hashmi said he was also surprised by the sheer number of absenteeism on June 1, but cautioned against making assumptions about the motivation behind the protest.

“The assumption is normally that the second someone says something about Pride, it’s out of hate, and I want people to understand that’s not the case for a lot of these parents,” he said.

“The parents worry about beliefs and practices that they feel are inconsistent with their own beliefs, and so they worry that their children are not only being educated about these things, but rather being forced to accept them as being correct.”

Controversial pamphlet

Hasmi said many Muslims get tired of being told to accept “beliefs and practices” that differ from their own, “and if they don’t, they’re wrong. They aren’t Canadian, they don’t belong in Canada, that they shouldn’t come to a public school.”

Hashmi described an incident at a school in Kanata where a teacher responded to students who expressed concerns about the day’s Pride class by printing out copies of a pamphlet titled “I am Muslim and I may not be straight” and distribute them to the class.

(The pamphlet has since been removed from a list of resources for LGBTQ students on the school board’s website. According to the OCDSB, the decision to remove the link “was based on feedback from this community in which they indicated they felt specifically singled out for posting this link.”

According to Hashmi, the school board gave families concerned about Pride-themed activities little choice when it told them they could not opt ​​out of compulsory classes. Faced with a choice between compromising their religious beliefs and keeping their children at home, they kept their children at home.

“This was about human rights and they had no choice in this,” he said. “To me, that’s a pretty passive protest.”

Hashmi said he was dismayed to learn that some students and teachers have viewed the protest as an act of discrimination and said it would be no different if the tables were turned.

“If there is a Ramadan activity going on at the school and there is a group of students who don’t feel comfortable participating in it, then so be it,” he said. “Choosing not to participate is not an act of hatred and discrimination.”

A learning moment?

However, OCDSB chair Lyra Evans disagrees with that assessment.

“If we had 70 percent of students opt out of Ramadan events, I think the school board would step up to defend the rights of Muslim students and make sure all of our students understand why this is culturally important,” Evans said. . Ottawa morning.

“I don’t think we would see people just passively accepting [it]. We would see outrage, and I think that outrage would be justified.”

I think the community would feel it was a betrayal on the part of the school board to water down the education around Pride.– Lyra Evans, OCDSB Chair

Evans, Canada’s first openly transgender school administrator, believes that while parents have every right to keep their children at home, they are depriving them of an important learning opportunity.

“People who choose to opt out of human rights-related criteria are doing their children a disservice because they are not adequately preparing their child for the realities of the world around them,” Evans said.

“We also recognize that we can’t accommodate the requests of some of these parent groups because if the question is that you don’t teach LGBTQ content, well, that’s not an option. Sexual orientation is addressed in the 5th grade curriculum and we can’t pull that off the curriculum, that’s not a competence we have.”

Nor is “watering down” the Pride-themed curriculum to suit the religious beliefs of some students is a reasonable solution, Evans argued.

“The LGBTQ community has fought for decades not to remain closeted. I think the community would feel it was a betrayal on the part of the school board to water down education around Pride,” she said. “There were murders. There are still hate crimes in Ottawa against LGBTQ people, and Pride should be a celebration of how far we’ve come and an acknowledgment that we still have work to do.”

Both sides of the debate say they pledge to continue that work, both through the board’s working group and in other less formal settings. After their appearance on Ottawa morningEvans and Hashmi left together to continue the conversation.