Rex Murphy : For schools and apparently the PM, parents are the new ‘deplorables’

National Post

Parents are reviled as ‘hateful’ if they voice concerns about woke activism in the classroom

School boards, schools, and particularly individual teachers should make a choice: are they involved in education or social justice and woke activism?

Schools haven’t been about education for some time now. If ever.

Because from every bulletin they put out, and all the preachments about their “commitment” to diversity and inclusion and equity, and safe spaces, and above all their latest deep commitment to “trans rights,” it is ruefully clear that their passion is for activism.

It’s not for reading, arithmetic or critical thinking that’s for sure!

The latest arena of that activism is of course the fresh concept of the “trans rights of children,” and particularly how some schools and school boards have nominated themselves as the final judges on the rightness or wrongness of this explosively contentious issue.

Schools and boards are mesmerized by the political-cultural issues on the “progressive” side of things. There are endless, jargon-addled bulletins about their commitment to LGBTQ activism, the various school days dedicated to celebrating difference and anti-bias and anti-discrimination. In many schools, Pride — the overall label — has become something like a new sacrament. Pride days, Pride month, and now Pride season — this is like a year-long Christmas for one-interest activism and proselytism.

These schools and boards are astoundingly haughty and unashamedly arrogant. Their every statement comes burdened with certitude, and they blister with all sorts of angry terms for those who have a dissenting perspective. They rail against and belittle parents who are deeply distressed by the massive over-attention given to the schools’ and teachers’ missionary endeavours on children’s sexuality. Parents are the new “deplorables.”

They are reviled as “hateful” if they disagree. They are shut down at school board meetings if they even inquire what is being taught, what books their children are being exposed to, and at what age. School authorities insist that they — not parents — and they alone know what is right. And to disagree with them — well that’s cruelty.

Stop a moment and think about this. A mother or a father wishes to know what their son or daughter is being taught, advised or exposed to in school. A mother or a father has severe reservations about some of the causes being propelled with great vigour in the classroom. They want to be told if their child is showing discomfort while in class — and why. Especially, in the present moment when sexual “transition” has flared up as the latest cause, they want to know what their children are being told, the advice they are being given by teachers, and whether teachers are approaching this issue as advocates and not (for the period of the school day) surrogate caretakers.

They really want to know if teachers are inserting themselves as the authorities on the matter, and keeping secret from them — the parents — how their child is behaving in school.

Teachers are not the authorities over other people’s children nor should they ever be considered as such.

Where did this gruesome, absolutely radical shift come from? That parents can and (by the edicts of some schools and teachers) must be kept in the dark, uninformed about their own child?

Mother — father — child. No institution has superiority over this fundamental and civilizationally core relationship.

No teacher, no school, no board of education has the right to override the primacy of the family, to arrogate the authority of mother and father on nothing more than their say-so.

Now consider this statement by the prime minister on the weekend regarding proposed New Brunswick legislation that would force children under 16 to get parental consent to change their names or pronouns at school: “We’re seeing that angry, hateful rhetoric rise on our continent, particularly targeting trans people. Far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people.”

This is unbelievable. It’s mad. Are parents, fired by concern issuing from the love they hold for their children, “far-right political actors?” Are these concerned, loving parents “trying to outdo themselves … with (what) cruelty and isolation they can inflict” on their offspring?

Can he mean any of this? Could he be saying that parents should not be tolerated?

And then there’s this triumphant gobbledygook: Right now, trans kids in New Brunswick are being told they don’t have the right to be their true selves, that they need to ask permission.” Who’s telling the children that? Do you have any quotations? Is there a single father or mother from New Brunswick that you can cite, who has told any child what you say here?

Could he be saying that parents should not be tolerated?

From the serene height of the Prime Minister of Canada’s office we have an angry — I would call it hateful – declaration that parents are cruel, sadistic, and by implication very ignorant. I regard this statement of his as graver than the Chinese interference scandal.

There is much more to be said on this. And Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre’s tepid, evasive statement that “education” is a provincial affair, doesn’t cut it at all. We’re not talking about education as we used to know that word. He has to be far clearer, more direct, and explicit on this subject. His statement was a waffle.

We are talking about diminishing and hurling insults at parents who are not on board with the new ideology, the new religion of diversity, inclusion and equity. It is the fundamentalism of our time.

Core, civilizationally primary relationship- Family the basis of society- The edu-indoctrination system is attempting to dismantle this relationship with the help of the powers that should not be- all the way to the PM’s office.