Re: "Perhaps our path is changing for the better," p. 27, Nov. 14 Gazette. Simon Ducatel's commentary of Nov. 14 requires an answer. The "true colours" of the Kenney conservatives would perhaps best be recognized if their opposition to Bill 24 was represented accurately. Bill 24 prohibits any parental (or other) notification concerning Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) or a student-requested "activity," other than notice of the establishment of a GSA or the holding of such "activity" generally. Has it been made publicly understood that this applies to students as young as five years old? Read again that word: prohibited. That does not mean that an educator is permitted to withhold information. It means that he/she may not give information, at the risk of legal consequences. What is the assumption here? There are several. First, that the educator does not have the wisdom to take students' situations on a case-by-case basis, exercising his/her professional judgment regarding contacting parents. Age, mental capacity, emotional state are not to be taken into consideration.
Second, that "safe" and "caring" generally excludes parental involvement. When did we, as parents, become the villains? How is it that the people who birthed, raised, loved, and provided for these children should be excluded from some of the most important and life-impacting decisions their children are making? The second objection of the "Kenney conservatives" is the requirement that a principal at a religious school, if a request for a GSA is made, to "immediately grant permission for the establishment of the school organization or the activity at the school" without board consultation or consideration of parental rights or the school's religious character. Choice in education is a valued freedom. A parent who wishes their child to be at a school where GSAs are established without parental involvement or notification can easily find a public school for their child to attend. A parent whose child attends a religious school has generally made this educational choice because of their preference for the school's religious character. The idea that bullying and ostracism of a child expressing sexual or gender minority preferences will be tolerated at a religious school is a gross misrepresentation and caricature of these schools. Society will always have to balance individual freedoms with individual rights. What we are seeing here is the removal of parents' right to know what is going on in their child's school life, and the removal of choice in education.
All of this ostensibly to protect the safety and autonomy of the student from those who, generally speaking, are the most "safe" and "caring" of all the influences in their lives: their parents, and the individual teacher/principal. Finally, since Mr. Ducatel personalized his commentary with the moving horror story of Alan Turing's forced sterilization and subsequent suicide, let's give a more current anecdote: In June 2017, a kindergarten class at Rocklin Academy in Sacramento were given a lesson in transgendering (without prior knowledge or consent from the parents), celebrating the transition of a five-year-old boy to a girl. Many of the children went home traumatized, asking their parents, "Am I going to turn into a boy (girl)?" Following this, a fellow student was disciplined for inadvertently calling the student by his former (boy's) name. "Misgendering" was the transgression. The pendulum is swinging away from the extremes of the 1950s, but is it swinging too far? Consider reading the statement of the American Pediatric Association on "the current trend to quickly diagnose and affirm young people as transgender, often setting them down a path toward medical transition." Parents, do you want to be in the loop or out of it? Do you want choice, or do you want the education minister to make your choices for you?
Sheryl Patterson
Water Valley
