Teachers' Unions, Gay/Straight Alliance Clubs, and Ideological Arrogance
For the 99.999% of the world's population that lives outside Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, let me bring you up to date on a tempest that besets our tiny teapot. The British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) just finished voting to support gay/straight alliance clubs in our schools. They did this over the vociferous objections of some very vocal, placard-waving parents, who were shouting and demonstrating across the street from some equally vocal, placard-waving gay rights supporters. It wasn't pretty. Some reporters are writing about how right the parents are to be angry at a bunch of ex-hippies trying to ram their ideas down children's throats, while others are writing about prejudice, homophobia, and what a bunch of ignorant bastards the parents are.
Now, if you've read the other stuff on this site, you probably know which side of this I'm coming down on, but you may be surprised by why.
I am not against gay-straight alliance clubs in schools. I think that they're a fine idea. However, I don't think that they should be endorsed (or disparaged) by the Teachers' Federation, and I very much doubt the Federation's motives, sense of justice, and intelligence. If a group of gay and straight students in a particular school want to get together and start a club, why not? It's a free country. Freedom of association and all that.
What I object to is the political agenda of the gay rights groups and the Teachers' Federation. What I object to is the smarmy guise of reasonableness and liberalism these people are putting on. I can't say for sure, but I'm willing to bet a whole lot of money that if a bunch of students wanted to get together and start a White Pride club at their school the BCTF would be on them like a ton of bricks, along with everyone else.
What makes me seethe is how stupid educators can be. They don't seem to realize that if it's OK for them to become political about their jobs and indoctrinate young people, not in the values of their parents and community but in the values of the Teachers' Federation, then when society changes and the mix of teachers changes someone else may start inculcating students in values that would make the current crop of teachers blanch.
As the old adage goes: live by the sword, die by the sword. If teachers are allowed to bring feminist, liberal, and socialist ideology into the schools—if teachers are allowed to teach their own values over the objections of parents—then what's to stop other teachers, coaches, or day care workers from bringing any other kind of ideology into the schools at some time in the future? If the teachers' union can get political and push for their ideology to be reflected in the schools then why can't sports coaches start insisting that the kids on their teams learn Christian fundamentals?
Society took religion out of our schools when I was a wee lad. They did this for a good reason: they realized that not all of the kids wereChristians. As society became more diverse it became harder and harder to justify Christian rituals in classrooms filled with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and agnostics. Since nobody could agree on one religion, society took religion out of the equation. Those religions with enough support were free to form their own schools, and they did.
This doesn't mean that Christians can't teach in public schools. All it means is that they can't preach their religion from a blackboard pulpit. Whether a teacher is Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, they have to check it at the door. It's part of being a professional.
I think it's past time to remove ideology from the schools. I think that understanding different ideologies is important, just as it isimportant to understand various religions. There should be some school time devoted to exploring various ways of dealing with the world. However, I'm damned sick and tired of arrogant teachers who think that their personal philosophies are so enlightened that they have the right, even the obligation to indoctrinate all of their students. The problem with such an attitude is that everyone thinks they're enlightened, and once you use your political clout to force your ideas on school children, you open the door for other people—people with whom you might violently disagree—to do the same.
Now, the supporters of the BCTF would argue that the Federation isn't mandating gay-straight alliance clubs. They're not forcing anyone to join anything, just supporting the idea.
My point is that as professionals, it doesn't wash to support only programs and organizations that happen to jive with your personal ideology. Supporting gay-straight alliance clubs is easy if you're a liberal feminist. It's a little harder for a liberal feminist to support White Power clubs, or Catholic Christian clubs, but if you don't then the whole system devolves into mob rule, in which whoever holds the current majority determines what ideas kids will be exposed to.
Which is more or less the way things are going.
I maintain that what the BCTF is teaching students through this action is not tolerance for homosexuals. What it is instead teaching students is that you can have things your way, over the objections of others, if you have sufficient political clout. The teachers are showing students that if they band together and become powerful enough, they can make other people live in their idea of a better world, and the views of those other people can be damned.
The BCTF thinks it is being liberal and progressive. It is not. There is only one truly liberal and progressive solution to this brouhaha: take ideology right out of the schools, so that everyone—the liberals, the socialists, the feminists, the conservatives, and even the homophobes—can believe what they like.
I received a very thoughtful response to this piece. Originally I replied to it as a (long) sequence of comment entries, but I thought I would reproduce it all here, which would make it more readable.
An interesting opinion. I agree that teachers and the BCTF should leave politics and ideology out of the class room; however, comparing the formation of GSA clubs to the formation of White Pride clubs is an unfair argument. While specifically endorsing GSA clubs, I do believe the BCTF crossed a line, the fundamentals of supporting the formation of GSA clubs is correct. Whereas a GSA club promote tolerance and acceptance, and White Pride club promotes the ideas that being white is better than any other race; essentially racist and prejudice ideals. The BCTF probably should have endoresed that the decision to form clubs be based on the principles of equality and understanding, not on the sexual orientation of the students/teacher involved.
R. Stevenson
My response was as follows.
The argument that GSA clubs promote "tolerance and acceptance" is a slippery one. On the surface it appears sound, but at a deeper level I believe that those words are nothing more than smoke. They sound very nice; they're lovely "motherhood" words with which most everyone feels they can't take issue, which is, of course, precisely why they set my alarm bells ringing.
The difficulties with GSA clubs are myriad, and as well I can't say that I'm in the thick of things, but the following things disturb me about "tolerance and acceptance."
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"Tolerance and acceptance," in a humanist, liberal world (that is, the world of the BCTF) means tolerance and acceptance only for those groups chosen to be accepted. In liberal terms, this means any group identified as a "minority." So, a lot of work is expended making sure that "everyone" "tolerates and accepts" the "right people," where who are the "right people" is decided by the liberal establishment, of which the BCTF is a major player.
I have no interest in white power groups. I find their rhetoric reprehensible and offensive. Nonetheless, I have noticed, since my university days, that while keeping up the chant that "everyone" must be "accepted," liberal groups have consistently worked to silence those who have anything good to say about white, Western culture. I noticed it first while I was at UBC, when the student union opposed speakers and groups that promoted anti-liberal or traditionalist points of view. At the most extreme end of the scale they quashed a speaking engagement by David Duke (he of the KKK), but they also lobbied with great energy against conservative Christian groups and anyone else who didn't support the liberal agenda. At UBC, so far as I can see, "freedom of speech" is a phrase used by liberal groups to protect themselves while they simultaneously work to silence groups with whom they disagree.
I see it as the right of every individual to believe what they wish, even if those opinions are ones that I find objectionable. Of course, there are questions of venue and timing: there must be some respect for others of opposing views, and children are not capable of putting some views into a larger context. This last point means, for me, that it is parents who have the responsibility (and the right) to pass on culture to their children, where "culture" includes the notions of which views are right and which are wrong.
In the end, by promoting or opposing the formation of any student group, the BCTF starts down the road of making itself arbiter of what opinions are laudable and what opinions are objectionable. In other words, they usurp the responsibility and purview of parents. This leads to...
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Although I know it's going the way of the dodo, given that our higher courts have adopted the same activist agenda as the BCTF has had for decades, we used to have this thing in Canada called "freedom of religion." Now I suppose it's called "freedom of religion so long as you keep it to yourself."
What of religions that say that homosexuality is immoral? I asked this of a teacher friend of mine once: "What do you do about Sikh children? What about Muslim children? Is it OK for them to arrive home from school and say to their fathers, 'Today in class the teacher told us that you're a bigot'?" This harkens back to the fact that "tolerance and acceptance" is not for everyone: apparently it's not for Sikhs, or Muslims, or Catholics. Their point of view is not "tolerated and accepted." In fact, like Orwell's Goldstien, the Catholic point of view is occasionally used to point out the folly of the anti-homosexual point of view.
In short, it is a tricky balance to be "tolerant and accepting" of everyone, particularly in cases in which points of view and lifestyles are in direct opposition to each other. In this sense, the BCTF and the humanist liberal point of view have taken the easy road: they simply choose one point of view and make it the gold standard, and silence the other ones. They get themselves into this corner by going beyond "tolerance and acceptance."
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There is a huge difference between "tolerating and accepting" those who have proclaimed themselves gay and promoting homosexuality as a perfectly reasonable option for everyone. The distinction may seem trivial, but it is critical.
The problem is that teachers (and most other people, I might add) suffer from delusions of grandeur. Rather than shooting for a kind of tense peace—a school in which students don't abuse each other—they start thinking that they can solve the root of the problem—create a society in which everyone is happy and friendly with everyone else.
Now we're into the area of social engineering. Now it's not enough that homosexual kids aren't beaten up or jeered at. Now we have to change society so that they are befriended and accepted. In order to do that, we have to teach non-homosexual kids that homosexuality is normal and perhaps even laudable (a little overcompensation can't hurt, surely). Unfortunately, some kids' cultures are in stark opposition to this. That's OK. We'll either pooh-pooh their culture (e.g. Catholicism) or tell them to shut up and keep that particular little corner of their culture to themselves. So, gay students are encouraged to be open with their sexuality, but students from cultures hostile to homosexuality are asked to reject or suppress their cultures.
All this because it wasn't enough to have everyone just tolerate each other: we have to go beyond that and change the world.
So, in the end, I see "tolerance and acceptance" as mere weasel words designed to mask what's really going on and befuddle the opposition.
Sadly, there are no perfect solutions to this problem, but there is a good solution, I think, which sadly will not come to pass because the jackasses in our Supreme Court are working hard to squash it: When it comes to issues of morality (or perceived morality), culture, or politics, parents should have the last word about curriculum. It is not the place of teachers to change society. Neither is it the place of the courts. If parents want to send their kids to a school that disparages homosexuality, I personally find that disturbing, but I support it as their right.
It is, I think, a right of every individual to teach their children right from wrong. I consider that right so important that if some parent doesn't bother to do it, I will sit by with a pained look on my face and refuse to interfere. For decades now teachers have been telling parents, "Butt out. We're the professionals. We know right from wrong, and we'll teach your kids the way they should be taught. Just stay out of it."
I was part of a political campaign once. For the NDP. (No, don't ask. It was complicated.) In several of the meetings I talked to the then-head of the Vancouver School Board. I asked him at one point about charter schools, which were an experiment in allowing parents far more control over curriculum and the running of the school. What did he think of them? "Simple," he replied. "So long as I'm head of the school board there will never be a charter school in Vancouver."
"Butt out. We'll teach your children right from wrong. We're the professionals." Indeed.
