Catholic Group Protests Teacher's Diversity Guide
The Catholic Civil Rights League has launched a protest against a draft teacher’s guide in British Columbia. The guide, entitled Making Space, Giving Voice, was introduced by the Education Ministry to encourage discussion about diversity and is part of a larger review to ensure discrimination isn’t promoted by schools.
So what’s the Catholic League’s beef with the guide? Well, according to a press release entitled Resist, Counter and Protest, the guide is all about the B.C. Education Ministry’s “drive to introduce non-heterosexual realities in all classrooms.”
“Non-heterosexual realities?” Hey, I think that’s a new entry for my still-growing Dictionary of Obtuse Lobbying Terms! (Though, it is a little unusual for a lobby group to flat-out admit they’re protesting reality.)
At any rate, Glen Hansman, the president of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association, was confused by the protest, saying that these guides are nothing new, and are only an optional resource:
The new guide will assist teachers in addressing social justice issues, just as a similar guide some years ago helped them incorporate aboriginal content across the curriculum.
The ministry is putting out this document as a suggestion; it’s not mandatory, but I think it’s pretty solid.
Lobby groups often oppose the discussion of diversity in schools. In November, the anti-gay lobby group Defend Traditional Marriage and Family successfully banned a teacher’s resource on diversity from the Waterloo Catholic School Board, saying that the booklet could have “[encouraged] students and teachers to view the gay lifestyle as being morally neutral.”
- Parents urged to protest teacher guide on diversity [Vancouver Sun]
