Well said Karin. And on behalf of this BC parent, I’d like to thank you for your brave efforts concerning your application for intervenor status at our upcoming court case involving the BCTF and the Ministry.  Too bad more parents didn’t apply, but perhaps next time around they might be encouraged, by your actions, to do so.

Parents have always been supported by our school administrators and staff when we fundraise for their schools and bake cookies for staff appreciation day, but whenever we try and raise legitimate concerns about our children’s learning in the classroom, our concerns are immediately dismissed.  It seems everyone involved in the education process has an opinion about how our children should be taught except the parents.  Looking at the current onslaught of union workshops concerning “white privilege” and other despicable topics which have no value except for indoctrinating our children, I wonder, as Karin has mused here, that the only way parents can make an impact here is through a court challenge, as our parental rights and opinion have virtually no impact within the education system anymore.  And can someone please remind me what our tax dollars are paying for these days when it comes to public education?

Education activism must take place in the courts of the land. Otherwise, the K to 12 establishment and the education ministry will continue to used their legal legislative authority to ensure parents and students will have restricted rights,  according to the best interests of the actors of the K to 12 establishment.

The education acts outlines the powers, authority, duties and rights of the paid K to 12 employees. Unfortunately, the rights of parents and students were and have never been considered in the codification of drafting education legislation. The only recourse short of redrafting the education acts for the 21st century is to go through the courts.

Under duties of teachers, section 264. (1) - clause c - “religion and morals
(c) to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues;”
http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90e02_e.htm#BK437

Just wondering how it squares with the teachers unions across Canada studying ‘white privilege’ theories for the intention of making it part of the curriculum versus the rights of students.

The legislation education acts were designed to protect the educator employees, the legal authority of the K to 12 and to limit the K to 12 legal obligations to the parents, students and the public. Parents, students and the general public have restricted rights that are granted by the Education Ministry via through the Education Acts that meets only the minimum basic legal obligation under the Constitution, Human Rights Code and the Education Acts. The purpose of education is outlined in section 2 of the Ontario Education Act states, “The purpose of education is to provide students with the opportunity to realize their potential and develop into highly skilled, knowledgeable, caring citizens who contribute to their society.”

The Education Acts across Canada, only provides education opportunity. As for the parents, students and the general public they have no rights to seek education that goes beyond the legal concept of education opportunity. The only restricted rights that are afforded are in the Education Act -   Education Act, along with other regulations and policies, define the education rights of children and youth as well as parents or guardians.”  http://www.schooladvocacy.ca/left_level2/know_rights.html

Excellent post !

It lays bare the fundamental mechanisms around which systemic power is exercised and controlled. This post may represent one of those “ah-hah” moments where the lever is defined which can move “parental activism” towards meaningful “education hacktivism”.  To truly open up this realm, one needs the legal templates and guides to insert parental views into the legal discussion at minimum cost and with maximum effectiveness.  I will look forward to this next phase of the campaign for establishing a parents code of educational rights.

Karin,

In Ontario parents came very close to developing pa Parent Bill of Rights in the Spring of 2001. The surveys were in, the venue booked and parent stakeholder groups from across the province were set to begin to hammer out what they wanted to see in just such a Bill of Rights. It was headed up back then by the Ontario Parent Council, had the ok of the then Minister of Education and we were on our way.  What happened next was the notice of resignation by Ontario’s Premier, a shuffle of cabinet and the momentum of a Parent Bill of Rights in Ontario stopped dead in its tracks, never to be picked up again.

Parents in Ontario learned to advocate around the system, and develop their own support networks of which there are many now who claim advocacy for parents.  Any gains made at the MOE level were wiped clean in favour of carrots of money to parents in the name of Parent Reaching Out Grants (essentially our tax money being given to parent groups and councils to spend on whatever fundraising flavour of the month is in vogue), and a small tease of money to school councils. Again, our money used to entice us to be “engaged” with our schools.

Unfortunately for the education reformers money has bought the silence of parents in Ontario, which is what the current government was banking on I’m sure.

One need only look at the rise of “contingency fee class action law suits” to see an avenue to legal precedent. More and more this is the route which one sees the precedents set without the buy in of the status quo players.

Ultimately, such classes have to embrace a common enough harm and quantity the harm financially then find the appropriate legal team who wishes to take the ball. More and more lawyers are out of work or grossly under employed or under paid. It is from this milieu that one will find the willingness to take on such cases.

Once a class has been certified, the bus will fill up very fast with volunteers to both share their stories as well as potentially share the ultimate financial benefit should the case resolve itself in the class plaintiffs favour.

As I and others have strongly suggested, it is when not if this will occur…regardless of the “wonderfulness of the status quo”.

On another note, the students with disabilities is an avenue that is worth using the courts. The protocols and appeal processes of the K to 12 is one such mechanism that discriminates in the favour of the school boards. In the Human Rights report - “Unfortunately, a growing number of parents and students have found that school boards are
unable, or unwilling to meet their legal obligations to provide appropriate educational programs
and services for exceptional pupils within their boards. ” http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/opportunity-succeed-achieving-barrier-free-education-students-disabilities/elementary-and-secondary-education

The Norton Task Force on Disability and Education http://www.jfcy.org/PDFs/NortonTaskForceSubmission.pdf

As mentioned in the OHR report - “This funding system also discourages the Boards from providing successful remedial and/or compensatory programs that will help the child to be included within the mainstream. More money is given to Boards that document poorer children’s performances on cognitive and academic measures and document more severe behavioural problems. These Boards may be providing poorer services that contribute to the children’s failure. They then get more money to continue to provide ineffective special educational support. Boards that successfully remediate the child are penalized with less funding.”

What happens to the dyslexic student? The program is pulled as soon as there is improvement. In fact, it occurs with the other disabilities from mild to severe.

2010 OHR human rights document on Ontario school boards.

“Once formal human rights applications emerge
boards often take an adversarial and litigious legal
approach
 most boards retain lawyers
 mediation often not used to resolve matters
 delay tactics often employed
 motions to remove respondents or add grounds
 requests to defer cases pending outcome of grievance
 opposing requests to expedite cases
 production delayed and denied”
http://www.oesc-cseo.org/english/Downloads/equityInclusivity/presentationsJun2010/humanRightsComplaints.pdf

As soon as a parent files a formal complaint at the school level, the school and school board kicks in their machine of adversarial tactics to have parents back off and crawl under the rock that they came from. One would think the OHRC would have more complaints than the 386 complaints filed between January of 2004 to July of 2008. The reason being, is because of the effective machine of adversarial tactics at the school level. So effective, often the students suffers the consequences of the adversarial tactics. Parents back off,  for the sake of their children.

The concerns regarding the human rights commission is, as Nancy has illustrated here, are very complex, and the results are never clear.  It seems that whenever one of these complaints are raised, school boards raise their defence mechanisms, withdraw behind a shield of defence lawyers and communication between the parent and school board administrators comes to a screeching halt. 

Perhaps this is naïve but I would like to suggest collaboration with BOTH the teacher unions and the Ministry to ensure our parental voice is heard in all education camps.  Recently here in BC, our provincial parent organization, the BCCPAC, initiated a groundbreaking recommendation to all 8 education partners, that a Classroom Resource Fund be established from the ground level up, asking that parents collaborate with teachers on behalf of what meaningful resources should be used for their children in the classroom.  The BCCPAC Executive met with all education partners in the province and are looking at implementing this fund, which will remain separate from regular school funding so that whenever cuts come down the pipe, this fund will remain intact and untouched. file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/DPAC Summit News Release.pdf

It’s a small step forward, but perhaps it could lead to other meaningful collaborations with both the Ministry and the BCTF, such as parental input on curriculum design, as well as ensuring curriculums are followed accordingly in the classroom.  Now wouldn’t THAT be revolutionary?

Very interesting comments.  I think the only thing I’d like to reiterate here is that we don’t need any new laws.  The point is to enforce the laws we already have.  We are legal guardians of children and as such have a right to make educational decisions for them.  That is an individual right, not a collective one.  But the collective power of paid (vested) stakeholders is so heavily guarded and readily deployed that our individual rights, even on the odd occasion that they are defended by an individual parent, simply vanish in practical terms.

What this means, I’m starting to figure out, is that there has been no progress to DEVELOP the law in the area of parent rights vs a vis public school.  Just having a law doesn’t matter - see “conflict of interest” and “school trustee” in BC!

I have spent the last two days in court listening to the appeal of the Griffin decisions (one more day today) in which I applied to intervene.  The subject matter is the extremely fine distinctions between whether the Section 2d right is specifically to collective bargaining, or whether to some form of consultation. Whether it is just process of bargaining that is protected, or whether the outcome is protected. And what is the difference between an outcome of substantial importance to union members, or one of minimal importance where Section 2d is not triggered.  And so on. 

Every morning, parents drag their kids out of bed, and feed dress and deliver them to a school they probably didn’t choose, to a teacher they didn’t choose, for a curriculum they didn’t choose, with associated social content they didn’t choose, on a schedule they didn’t choose, with classmates they didn’t choose, and whether they would choose school for their child that term or not.  With no dispute resolution mechanism, etc.

The task of defining the nature of parent rights throughout all those levels of engagement as clearly as employee/union rights are already defined in law is not just a matter of drafting up a new document, nor is it a matter of one definitive legal case.  It will take dozens of initiatives, in my opinion, whether the objective is to establish parents’ rights within schools or to free parents/children from schools. 

But the frustrating thing is that no one is likely to do this for us.  The civil liberties movement is aligned with the union movement, and we don’t have a vehicle through which our collective resources can be commanded for the purpose.  Employees really never needed initiative to achieve what they have, it was all done for them by unions (or by a few employees with power to compel others through unions).  In order to get equivalent recognition in law, parents will have to take initiative. It may require the courts to be literally crawling with parents asserting their rights and freedoms in every province - the same “overwhelming onslaught of litigation” that has gotten the unions where they are today.  (Hmm, maybe we do need to start a union for parents, with a mandatory fee to be used for legal protection…).  It is not a question of whether to go the human rights route or the class action route or to file complaints with labour boards; they all have promise for some phase of the process.  In pursuit of worker rights, all those routes have been taken, as well as every civil action you can think of.

By the way this is an article I wrote over ten years ago on the topic of collective parent voice.  At that point I had no idea that parenting laws even existed nor what the Charter really was. 
http://edrogue.blogspot.ca/2014/09/parent-voice-in-public-education.html  I ca.n now express the same basic idea in legal terms, but it is no closer to being regarded in court because it has not been taken there, and so the law has developed without it.

Karin - I would beg to differ, in order to distinguished that civil rights movement is a much different beast in Canada as opposed to the USA. In Canada, public sector unions and in particular the teachers’ unions have not and never been defenders of individual rights for the public they serve. Nor are unions a shining example of equality and democracy in Canada or the USA.  Here is one paper discussing it - http://www.irle.ucla.edu/publications/documents/Tilly-Unions-inequality-democracy-inUS_MX-13-45-1-PB-RethinkingInequality_Devel-2013.pdf

Nor can we forget the political matrix at play, that is steadily eroding individual rights. https://www.aftfacts.com/the-american-federation-of-teachers/

Nor should we forget, that unions are defenders of collective rights at the expense of individual civil rights. http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions

When was it the last time a teachers’ union defended the rights of Canadian students to have the right to access private tutors to remediate reading and numeracy?  Never, because learning to read and do numeracy well is not a goal of the teachers’ unions, but pushing white privilege theory is one of the goals. What we do have is collective rights that have been assigned by the K to 12 and political collective.

What happens when a parent asserts their individual rights? The latest in Ontario - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/school-trustees-rapped-for-lifting-order-that-barred-aggressive-parent/article21113536/

“No charges were laid and none of the allegations have been proven in court.”  Yet, the collective K to 12 along with the Ontario Labour Board moved very fast to protect the K to 12 collective and their authority at the expense of the rights of the parent. The parent is banned from the school.

Parents never did have rights in the collective K to 12. Our rights are whatever the collective K to 12 grants in the absence of due process and the Charter of Rights/Freedom.  Rights will change at a moment’s notice to appease the K to 12 monopoly and the political powers. 

A parent union? Perhaps, but one should never allow employees of the K to 12 on the executive and administration of a parent union. Education employees don’t speak the language of parents, and there is the conflict of interest. The conflict of interest preferring collective rights, one-sized-fits-all approaches minus the individual rights of the parents.  The US parent union - http://www.theparentsunion.org/the-parent-exchange

The latest video making its round on social media on a parent’s fight to get help for her dyslexic son. In Canada, dyslexia is a dirty swear word within the K to 12. Legally speaking, Canada is behind 30 plus years when it comes to the education rights of children with disabilities. If the American parent was Canadian, she would be swearing a torrent of words how backwards the Canadian K to 12 system is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjdcRmHjnbE&feature=youtu.be&utm_source=Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Free+Resources+and+a+Job+Opportunity&utm_campaign=Dyslexia+Events+and+Information&utm_medium=email

Nancy, I don’t think I disagree with you.  I meant that the civil liberties movement in Canada is aligned with unions to the extent it would never act for parents in opposition to union preferences.  Your point is well taken that it is different in the US where the ACLU has been a driver of the “right to read” cases.

And fundamentally, I do agree that a parents’ union is unworkable, otherwise I would probably be trying to form one.  The reason you give is one of the best.

Karin, I commend you for being such a strong advocate for BC parents and their children.

It is common knowledge that many parents are tired of the social engineering in our schools, and want to get back to the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.  Parents want a sound education system to train their children to take their place in society as responsible citizens of the future.

Kudos also to those who have taken the time and trouble to voice their many concerns with the present system.  Many parents are enrolling their children in private schools despite the tuition fees, because they strongly feel that the Ministry of Education and the school districts are not respecting their parental rights. 

Parents, it’s time to unite with one voice and let the powers that be know that we want a better system that works for us and for our children.

There are many dedicated, conscientious teachers in the public school system in British Columbia.  Unfortunately, however, radical groups have gained a wide influence in determining policy at both the provincial and local levels.  This has resulted in the opening up of school classrooms to harmful indoctrination. 

In the October 20th, 2011, edition of the Vancouver edition of the homosexual magazine Xtra, the managing editor of that magazine wrote in the online edition:

“. . . the gay rights movement is shifting norms in Canada. And with that comes a message to those who won’t evolve: your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norm.”

It may have gone relatively unnoticed, but this boast by a homosexualist spokesman encapsulates what so many of those who claim to stand for traditional morality fail to acknowledge:  Pro-homosexuality activists are not poor, down-trodden members of a minority who simply want to live their own lives as they choose.  They are seeking to change the hearts and minds of our children and our grandchildren.  They are seeking to establish “new norms” for our society.

Dear Karin et. al:

I read this post and every comment with great interest.

What I want to know is how can I get involved? have become very concerned about curricula produced by a radicalized ETFO. I think one of my children was harmed by one of their ‘equity’ lessons about 5 years ago.

I have been reading the Comments section of your website with much interest. Glad to see that parents are waking up to the problems in our public schools. Of particular concern is the Comprehensive Sex Education program which is disseminating that is inaccurate and supportive of sexual programs and sites that many parents would be most concerned about. Our public schools have lost focus on education, and are promoting behaviours that are detrimental to children and safety.
Lets get back to basics of the 3 R’s. That’s what parents want.

Does anyone know who is responsible for the Comprehensive Sex Education program in public schools. 

Has anyone heard of the organization SIECCAN - The Sex Information and Education Council of Canada?
Is there any connection between the two?

Deanna, I don’t think SIECCAN is connected to the current sex education programs in the K to 12 schools.
http://www.sieccan.org/links.html

However, one should check out WHO - http://everydayforlifecanada.blogspot.ca/2013/11/more-expicit-sex-ed-curriculum-from-who.html

WHO may be the vehicle being used to affect change at the local and national levels via through the social justice menus of teachers’ unions. It will require a deep search, to trace the historical timeline of how sex education has evolved in today’s schools.

That said, the teachers’ unions have spent a great deal of their energies on trying to change the optics on Homophobia. http://etfovoice.ca/article/proud-rainbow-voices-an-ontario-network-for-lgbttq-educators-equity-and-womens-services/
Using the social justice and equity networks to make lasting change - http://www.adetfo.on.ca/social_justice_and_equity.html

The last link is of importance, for what is being omitted and what is stated. Discrimination comes in all forms and has no limits. Not just women, race, Aboriginals, people with disabilities, sexual orientation, and people living in poverty. The K to 12 establishment would like to think they have social justice in hand, but they do not. Instead, the K to 12 establishment has set up the parameters where civil rights will be meeting the social justice of restrictive rights in the court arenas across Canada.

To Elizabeth, I guess the problem is there’s nothing to “get involved” in at this point - it’s a matter of breaking trail.  Because education is a provincial matter, we can’t even join forces across provincial boundaries.  So parents who want to take action have to start something, and what they do depends on whether they have time, money, or access to legal resources through other means (ie, having a lawyer in the family…).  But as legal precedents are set, which I hope they will be if the right questions are asked, they can be used across jurisdictions.

I have worked almost entirely on my own, but there are probably ways of getting help to do it.  In theory, one should be able to go to one of the organizations that does civil-liberties type law, for example your provincial civil liberties organization, and see if they will take it on.  Because I’ve had previous contact with the one in BC, I was sure they wouldn’t so I never bothered asking.  It would also be interesting to put the idea in front of various feminist organizations, such as Women’s or West Coast LEAF.  Custody of children is the original feminist issue; that’s what women went to bat for to start with, but it’s become unfashionable, and of course less genderized. 

Regarding one’s own child, if you feel harm has been done I hope you feel free to address that with the child.  It is hard to teach children to respect their teachers while also telling a child that you disagree with the teacher, but I found the person can be separated from the position taken. 

On the topic of sexual politics in the school, I avoid taking a stand on that issue in particular because to me it is an endpoint of myriad legal mistakes but in itself it may or may not be a legal mistake (also too much moral, religious, social overtones).  I advocate addressing the very basic aspects of parent rights to make educational decisions for children, or addressing a global question, not a single highly polarizing and emotional issue.  My general approach is that when I see a hot button issue, I retreat to the issue of principle behind it (specifically legal principle) and work there. 

The trick in formulating legal action is to read the legal documents that create the setting you’re in, and find where actions have deviated from what is required - and identify whose actions and whether you have standing to hold them to account.  There are doctrines, like the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, and principles of law to learn, statutes to read, and so on.  This is where it’s important to understand that you’re unlikely to be able to take the unions to court for anything.  But you might be able to take the government to court for handing over responsibility to the unions. 

The question of how to get started depends so much on the situation you’re in and what is going on around you that it might be easier to contact me by email if anyone is seriously considering it (litz at telus dot net).  But one can never go wrong knowing the School Act, maybe the Labour Relations Act if you are concerned with things going on in labour relations, and the statutes pertaining to parent rights, which delineate parent rights and duties in order to divide them up between spouses. 

The courts have included parenting under Section 7 of the Charter - Blencoe http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2000/2000scc44/2000scc44.html
and NB v G(J) http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1999/1999canlii653/1999canlii653.html
are the relevant Supreme Court of Canada suthorities, but a recent BC Supreme Court decision also nicely reviews the field: http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2013/2013bcsc2309/2013bcsc2309.html  You .can search these documents for key words, like “Section 7” or “parents” to find the relevant paragraphs, but reading them through gives you a flavour for how Charter challenges are evaluated.

I see things said every day somewhere in the education system that I think might be fodder for legal action, but the trick is to decide what your objective is, what point you want to stake a legal claim for.

After reading Karin’s post, below is a very helpful website to nib problems in the bud, by approaching education from a legal approach with a smiling face. I only wish I knew all this back in 2001, because I would have had the school administration over the barrel. If at least 1/3 of parents in a typical school, approach education issues from the legal perspective, advocating for their children would be as easy as baking a cake.

Take for example - the art of letter writing -  http://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/letters.draft.htm

Or here on legal guidance for parents on IEPs -http://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/iep_guidance.html

Or here on How to Deal with a Hostile Environment at School - http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/advo.hostile.env.htm

Or here - 10 Strategies to Fight Mandatory Retention & Other Damaging Policies - See more at: http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/retain.strategies.heath.htm#sthash.kZ5d2hrv.dpuf

Or here on bullying - http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/harassment.index.htm

Granted it is American law. However, Canadian education laws are adaptations of American law and precedent law cases.

The trick is to trained parents to keep logs, to begin a paper trail. In the event a problem at the school level escalates to court action.  The courts are ever so happy to see parents that have kept a log, recording the communication by phone, letter and face to face conversations.  One of the greatest fault of a school, is communication and not following their own regulations. Often the teacher will not communicate to the parent over issues that have legal implications to the school. They may not even record it in the school file, hoping it will just go away. The parents are kept in the dark, and often is a deliberate tactic on the school’s part.

I was kept in the dark on a few issues in 2001, and it was not until 2006, that I found out through the innocent conversation of two girls, on why my child got the handle of being the dumbest kid in the school in 2001. I used the information to my legal advantage to obtained accommodations that I should never had fought for but did.

Dear Karin:

Thanks so much for your reply. My sons are fine and now out of high school (thankfully). A daughter to go but girls are at somewhat less risk of educational abuse than boys so I am less worried about her. I have usually been able to intervene successfully on behalf of my children, although I would not win any popularity contests in some of their schools. I have always taken the time to create paper trails in the form of letters and logs. I also approach everything from the most basic ethical principles, which usually confounds those whose principles are based on indoctrination supported by doublespeak.

My issue is less about parental rights than the rights of the child. And I am afraid many of those issues are squarely within the realm of sexual politics. You may be wise to avoid this area. On the other hand, this could turn out to be the best area for a lawsuit because the unions and other elements of the womens movement have had a free hand in this area for a long time and may have made ethical or legal mistakes that could leave them culpable. The union may not have a duty to all children but teachers do. If the union promotes a curriculum that enters schools and causes harm to children, well….the conflict of interest is clear, but is it a legal one?

Elizabeth

Elizabeth your concern regarding the rights of the child sounds similar to the rhetoric with what the teacher unions love to trumpet.  It’s all about the kids!!  They also like to promote rights of children through their “social justice” campaigns and utilize children on their placards and banners while protesting about the deep cuts to public education. Not only are these claims inaccurate, it would appear to me, to be completely unethical to use children as tools for their objectives:  i.e. more money+benefits for union members.

Parental rights, though, already includes those rights of children.  As our children are of minority age when we, the parents, send them to school, they do not have the ability to determine how and what should be taught to them in school, as well as which resources should be utilized.  That is why they have us, the parents, and / or legal guardians, to speak for them.  In essence, by recognizing parental rights within the education system, you would also be ensuring children rights, which would be a separate issue from that of both the ministry and teacher unions which love to use children’s images in their own propaganda.  Parental rights would also ensure that we, the parents, are the strongest advocates for our children.  The union advocates for its members, the teachers, and the ministry provides the schools.  However parents provide the students for which the system is allowed to exist.  And that is something that I believe should take precedent here.  Without a strong parent voice advocating for their children, this broken system we call “public education”, will never get better.

Has anyone seen the article below
“’Family group’ targets pro-gay policy”
http://www.peacearchnews.com/news/280191542.html
and the poll:
The Leader at http://www.surreyleader.com/  there is a polling question: “Should the Surrey School District stand firm on its year-old policy that fosters acceptance of homosexuality?” 

Parents are waking up.  The elections are coming up - it’s time to address issues.

Just to add to Tara’s post, is to stress that children rights are restrictive in the school setting, Furthermore, the restrictive rights are not based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (CFR). But rather the rights are developed under the social justice, equity and inclusive banners that are created by the K to 12 education gurus.

For example, under Ontario Policy and Program Requirements, rights are described as “It calls for upholding human rights by identifying and eliminating discriminatory biases and systemic barriers to students’ learning and development, to enable all students to succeed to their highest potential and contribute to society.”  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/policy/os/onschools.pdf

What the K to 12 won’t do, is to live by the above words when it comes to the actual education of these children. Children rights only exist in the K to 12 according to the needs of the paid K to 12 staff, the legal authority of the K to 12, the right to attend a public school and the secondary right of attending a French or English school, if the parents meets the criteria under Section 23 of the CRF.   

It isn’t that I want to stay away from the issue of sexual politics.  It is that I feel it is a symptom, and that it can be solved by resolving the same root cause as many of the other issues that concern parents and the public.

Some of us are concerned about math, some about reading and writing, some about environmental ideology, some about sexual politics.  My point is that rather than fighting each of these battles individually, as parents and public have been doing fruitlessly since the days of Mary Johnson, and before, we look at what these issues have in common, and look at the legal framework that exists there.  And that the place to take legal action (since we have, as parents, the limited resources of any one individual) is at the point of common cause.

For example, one project I have on my plate is to seek judicial review of the BC Labour Relations Board’s handling of the 2011-2012 teachers’ partial strike in BC.  One stipulation of the essential services order was permission to not fill out report cards, even though children remained in school.  This, to me, is a point of common cause.  It speaks to the question of who has custody of the children, who makes educational decisions for them, and what the legal framework for that authority is.  It is, if one likes, a beachhead, a basepoint, from which one can further establish and define parent rights and the limitations of school authority.  Resolution of all the problems - math, reading, sexual identity politics - flows from establishing who has a right to student progress information, and why.  This is a fundamental question you get to no matter which issue you start digging at, which is why it, and not the issue itself, is the place for legal action.

In addressing the issue within the context of the Labour Board’s jurisdiction, one also addresses legal process issues, such as who has standing to participate in education labour relations, not to mention in public sector labour relations generally.

I think another common cause point concerns - as per the opening gambit in this thread - the ability of the union to control “professional” development.  I never use the word “profession” unironically in teaching, because teaching is not a profession.  Collectively, it has no duty to the public, and in particular no ACTIONABLE duty.  Practitioners, individually or collectively, are not liable for the effects of their work, and they are not liable for the cost of their work.  For that reason, it is (in my unlegal opinion) not legally supportable for the government to allow the union to do so-called PD programming.  This seems to me another beachhead that could be established by class action by either parents or taxpayers.  The issue could be whether governments can legitimately pay teachers for attending PD days, for example.  Or whether the information from those PD days can, unfiltered by accountable education officials, enter the classroom. 

There are so many ways to go at this, but one is - again to repeat a point from the original post - whether the government has the legal authority to require children to attend school when it does not control programming, and when programming is demonstrably immune from public control. 

The most important point here to underline is my assertion that all of this CAN ONLY be addressed in court.  Elections are irrelevant (sadly).  The common cause of all our hot button issues is going unaddressed no matter who is in office: that the system is, as so many of you so often so eloquently express, impervious to parent and public direction, unresponsive to the direction of elected officials, and entirely under the control of its functionaries, all of whom emanate from the same edschools that have escaped academic standards and all of whom benefit from the growth of empire and the subjugation of children to it.

Here are some articles that might be useful background reading:

Three links from Wellington and Winter:
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1961/
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1963/
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1599075?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104402352561
Sara Slinn on the BCTF
http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/scholarly_works/392/

Oh shoot, I forgot to address children’s vs. parent rights, Elizabeth.  Nancy fortunately has done so, and I second that.  Children’s rights are a slippery slope that increasingly has no role for parents; going in the direction of institutional care.  I call this trend Residential Schools 2.0, as I explain in my blog entry here: http://edrogue.blogspot.ca/2014/09/residential-schools-20.html

Parent rights, or the stipulations of family law if you like, have been entirely steamrolled by labour law in public education.  Children are all the more vulnerable to that kind of exploitation and manipulation than parents are, as we see every time they are marched out on teacher picket lines.  The point of my actions is to put parents where they can protect children.  Children are not independent legal entities, they are the responsibility of some adult for a reason.  That adult should be, in my view, the parent - with support and oversight of the state and fellow citizens by all means, but by default, the parent.  Children’s rights mean nothing unless there is an adult who can act when those rights are infringed.  It is not having rights that protects us; it is the ability to defend our rights legally when they are violated.  Children don’t have that ability.

Dear Nancy and Tara:

I am not arguing against parental rights or the need to safeguard them with respect to the education system.

However, children do have rights that are distinct from those of their parents or guardians. To use an extreme example, little Jeffrey Baldwin had a right to life that was denied by his own grandmother Elva Bottineau, who ‘neglected ‘ him – to death. To generalize this situation, children have a right to be free of abuse by those with power over them – including their parents and their educators.

I don’t want this to degenerate into debates about spanking in the home or sex education in the schools. These issues are very debate-worthy and that debate is being suppressed, in my view. But there are lots of situations where all citizens could probably agree that a situation is abusive – if they were provided all the relevant information. I think that there are huge areas of systemic child abuse in our school systems that are obscured by strategic rhetoric.  The education system defends its actions by mischaracterizing them as something else that is socially ‘desirable’ – when in fact the reality is much different or even the opposite of the impression given by the language. You have both provided examples of this rhetorical doublespeak – where the system claims to be doing one thing while actually producing something else altogether – or even its opposite. So in the name of ‘equity’, Canada has built an education system that is elitist, racist and sexist. The way to prove this is to demonstrate the harm in action to children.

For example, in the Ontario ‘white privilege’ lessons, I am sure the rhetoric will be aimed at unspecified ‘cultural’ or ‘gendered’ or ‘racialized’ forces in the broader society. But if viewed through the prism of elementary education (it is the ETFO after all) it would be better called it ‘female white privilege’ because the predominantly white, female workforce to whom these lessons are pitched are failing boys, immigrants and children living in poverty in their elementary schools and classrooms.  Should we not do something to disrupt their denial of responsibility and accountability?

And a bit of research can produce data that proves these points.

Elizabeth

Dear Nancy:

Have you considered the possibility of using the Charter to challenge the ‘restrictive’ rights imposed by provinces?

Also with regard to your quote:

“upholding human rights by identifying and eliminating discriminatory biases and systemic barriers to students’ learning and development, to enable all students to succeed to their highest potential and contribute to society.”

These people do not live by their own words, so why not use their own words against them? Maybe we should be exposing their doublespeak instead. Let me give you a concrete example. Boys do very poorly in writing in elementary school curricula. This should be well know as it is long standing and followed on a annual basis by the EQAO. It should furthermore be no secret why this occurs. Young boys have poor fine motor skills, and weaknesses in expressive vocabulary (but not in receptive vocabulary) compared to girls, that hamper their writing efforts. They also have some executive function weaknesses that leave some with difficulty organizing and expressing their thoughts in writing.  As a result, their written expression may be inferior to their comprehension. This can be mitigated by teaching synthetic phonics in grade 1, providing explicit training in the elements of good writing (spelling, vocabulary, punctuation, grammar), and limiting the amount of writing and ‘seat work’ demanded of them. How does the education system deal with this? By pushing ‘the communication aspects of the Ontario curriculum” into lower and lower grades by demanding increasing amounts of essay writing and other seat work from younger and younger children,while doing away with the teaching practices that might make this feasible for boys. When these unhappy boys act out they get punished. And then this educational abuse gets disguised as a brand new learning disability “Executive Dysfunction”. And this in a nutshell is why 50% more girls than boys go to university. These lousy curricula are also bad for ESL students and children in poverty, so the biggest losers in all of this are poor immigrant boys. Where is the ‘equity’ in that?

And when viewed from this perspective, aren’t educators violating their own principles because they are paying way more attention to everyone else’s “discriminatory biases and systemic barriers” instead of recognizing their own?

Dear Karin:

I agree with all of your points. I have been thinking about residential schools myself. I hope we will not wait until decades after the fact to do something about the current institutionalized abuse of our children.

You made this statement:

“Or whether the information from those PD days can, unfiltered by accountable education officials, enter the classroom.”

I am working on a complaint to my school board that could have the potential to become such a test case. If I get it done I will send you a copy. it is complex and I am struggling with it a bit. I am not making a legal case at the moment, just an ethical one.

It involves a union-produced curriculum that promotes demonstrable falsehoods about children and their parents and has the potential to place vulnerable children at further risk. I will start by asking my board to ban this curriculum and prevent it from being promoted to teachers on PD days.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth, I would love to see a copy.  Please do email me at litz at telus dot net. 

Which brings me to the thought that seeing my documents might be helpful to people.  I have actually uploaded most of my documents to Google Drive.  This is my first application to the BC Court of Appea (it was denied).  If this link works, I’ll put up the links to the rest of my documents.
https://drive.google.com/drive/#folders/0BzGp5WUK-Jr3N0dGRG1uS05hcXc

Be aware too that you can look at the documents submitted in any court case; just visit the court registry, be prepared to pay a small viewing fee ($8 in BC), and read away.  It’s a good way to learn how the documents are done.

Elizabeth -“Have you considered the possibility of using the Charter to challenge the ‘restrictive’ rights imposed by provinces?”  The Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the Moore case is one such example. If one studies the case, one will find the Moore boy only right was to a desk, a set of books and the right to be in an inclusive classroom. However, the Moore boy did not have the right, nor any other child in the present have the right to the tools and skills to access the set of textbooks and education offerings of the schools.  However, the Supreme Court decided the Moore boy had rights and ruled in his favor.

Elizabeth has outlined it perfectly with boys. The case can be made for low-income children to the autism children to any other groups of children that do not have their education needs being met. The vast majority of children sitting at the bottom half of the achievement chart, are SE students, Aboriginal students, SEL students, and then the boys.  Low-income students are the wild card in Canada, depending on location. However, all 5 subgroups are at the greatest risk in receiving sub-par education based on,  the built-in restrictive rights.

There is systemic institutionalized built-in barriers in the K to 12 structure. In Karin’s link on Residential Schools, she said it perfectly - ” You know all those people who say children are the future?  They don’t mean your future, or your children’s future, or the future of the culture we now enjoy. They mean their future, the one they imagine, in which they and their children are economically secure.  One in which everything that parents have done for aeons for their children for free is monetized, done by a bureaucratic functionary, for a salary. And it is the bureaucratic functionaries who are colonizing our minds with the idea that children must be raised in institutions.”

Elizabeth also touches on her work - “It involves a union-produced curriculum that promotes demonstrable falsehoods about children and their parents and has the potential to place vulnerable children at further risk. I will start by asking my board to ban this curriculum and prevent it from being promoted to teachers on PD days.”  The social justice policies of the K to 12, and what is being pushed by the unions run roughshod over the individual rights of students and parents. Such as white privilege classroom discussions, a very predictable and real outcome is that the white students will become ashamed on who they are.

In the same way the disability classroom discussions are structured, are shaming practices that puts student with disabilities at greater risk for bullying and humiliation. My dyslexic child knows only too well the feeling of shamefulness. It was a good thing she knew the teacher could not call her out on her dyslexia, so she stayed out of the conversation. Difficult to do, when falsehoods were being cited by the teacher, but to remain silent was the best safe way for her to proceed.

Thanks Karin:

BTW my address is hlizanderson at yahoo dot ca if anyone wants to contact me directly.

One final thought regarding residential school. It has to do with capturing hearts and minds on important issues. Even in the legal world this is important. What statement do you think is most compelling?:

Residential schools were bad because parental rights were trampled by the institutions.

Residential schools were bad because children experienced institutionalized psychological, physical and sexual abuse.

In fact, the best case for parental rights may be that it is the surest way to prevent institutionalized child abuse, which we know to have occurred in residential schools, the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children and the Mt. Cashel orphanage. All of the children in these institutions lacked parents or were removed from their protection and abuse was rampant.

I want to thank everyone who posted, especially Karin. I had put my complaint on hold because I was feeling discouraged and sure it would be an exercise in futility. I feel more encouraged now and intend to pick it back up.

Elizabeth