Is Trudeau really to blame?

The photo was startling, at least to me: Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson and Conrad Black posing in connection with an event in Edmonton, I think. It accompanied an article written by Black titled something like: What happened to Jordan Peterson has serious Implications for all Canadians.

What happened to Peterson is that the governing body of professional psychologists in Ontario ruled that some of Peterson’s public pronouncements went beyond the bounds governing professional conduct and obligated him to take a media course if he wished to retain his license to practice.

Since then his case, propagated as a conspiracy to stifle free speech in Canada and championed by Conrad Black and Rex Murphy and others, has become another signpost on the supposed “road to perdition in Canada.”

The article was published by the Epoch Times, a periodical that purports to tell the unvarnished truth while predominantly printing news that can be tailored to its central theme, which is the promotion of a reactionary response to liberal values and legislation. Of late, it seems clearly to have decided to jump on the bandwagon with those demonizing the Prime Minister, a strategy that’s working but is unworthy of thinking persons in a democracy, in my opinion.

Firstly, the Peterson incident is not a case of stifling free speech. Black, Murphy and Peterson himself have aired that shibboleth repeatedly in public without repercussions. Their opinions, their speech are not hemmed in by Trudeau, or the Liberal Party, or the courts; that declaration is a flag waved to attract the disaffected, individuals who feel oppressed by circumstances, convincing them that “Trudeau’s to blame.”

Based on a comparative assessment of individual economic and personal freedom, Canada ranks high, alongside other liberal democracies. (The World's 10 Most Free Countries - WorldAtlas) It’s been liberal democracy that’s established and maintained a country where the balance of individual freedom and community cooperation has been able to thrive. We need only go back as far as the eras of Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Pierre Elliot Trudeau to see how liberalism in Canada ensured access to medical care for every individual, took its place on the world stage by initiating peacekeeping forces, got the police and courts out of our bedrooms, gave status to millions by legislating official multiculturalism.

And when we look back on the COVID and climate change dilemmas down the road, assess how we under Liberal governance and later, Liberal/NDP cooperation, weathered the pandemic storm, we’ll conclude that we did the best that could be expected given the knowledge and resources available. At least, comparisons to the experiences of other countries all point that way. A Pew survey reported by the World Economic Forum[i] indicated that in Canada, 88% of citizens believed their country had done well in its response to the pandemic; in the USA, the approval of the country’s response to the pandemic was at 47%. The indecisiveness of the Trump administration at the critical time has been cited as a reason for US citizen dissatisfaction.

All this is important. Two Sundays ago, in an expat church in Mexico, a pastor lamented “what’s going on in Canada.” The anti-Trudeau rhetoric was blatant and overt in US news during the convoy protest/occupation in Ottawa. Conspiracy theories, crime news, intimations of threat spread easily and far; to see our fellow Canadians bargaining away our international reputation for political points at home is discouraging, especially when using false scenarios to do so. 

We are a great country, as great as countries anywhere have so far managed to become. Per capita crime rates are lower than ever, our healthcare system is faltering but will clearly recover, literacy and education standards are higher that ever, individual freedom of choice is remarkably unhindered, our politics are made responsive to public need by free and fair elections and although we’re not nearly there yet on environmental protection protocols, we’re working hard at it.

The word on political systems popularized by Winston Churchill continues to be insightful: Democracy is the worst form of government … except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Let’s all weigh what we hear against the reality of our own experience. Trudeau is not to blame, dictatorship neither characterizes our government nor are we moving in that direction, personal freedoms are not being stifled, there are no such things as a leftist or “woke” conspiracies, the Chinese didn’t create COVID, the phasing out of fossil fuel energy sources is good for us in more ways than one. And as every adult knows, there never were monsters under the bed. Moldy cheese sandwiches and lost socks, maybe, but no monsters.

Conrad Black, Jordan Peterson, Danielle Smith, Tucker Carlson, please think further down the road when you speak; your words have an audience, you attract followers, choose the paths you advocate carefully.

 

 

 

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[i] These countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic well, says recent Pew survey | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) The WEF is itself the target of conspiracy theories that see it as manipulating world economic conditions for the benefit of its members, a theory which the Conservative Party of Canada is supporting as an election strategy.

Now's not the time ...

 

The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) grew out of the Progressive Conservative Party. Without making too much of this, the fact remains interesting. What we call left wing or liberal (and perhaps, socialist) politics are also called progressive political ideologies. Voters should have learned in school what’s meant by left or liberal politics as well as the difference between it and conservative ideology.

Conservative impulses exist in all of us; we find comfort in conserving what is; change is unsettling. A good example is the CPUs campaign to “Axe the Tax,” a progressive carbon emission tax imposed to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change. Progressive ideology recognizes that a changing climate demands new ways of doing things; conservative ideology looks to what worked yesterday and campaigns for the status quo. Progressive policies look forward; conservative thinking focuses on the present as informed by the past.

Tree-hugging environmentalists may be progressives—even socialists—on Employment Insurance, but adamantly conservative on preserving forests as they are. Being “right-wing” is not like being right-handed; we’re all politically ambidextrous depending on the issue. It’s the divisive party systems that label us either “candy-assed liberals” or “red-necked hillbillies,” making every election an us-and-them, win-and-lose proposition.

There’s a time and a place for conservative thinking, and it’s tempting to join the current rush to defying change while the “let’s all hate Trudeau” theme is threatening to displace our national anthem. It’s easy to get swept up in the notion that the time and place is now. It most certainly is not; this is the worst possible time.

The implications in a time of rapidly escalating global warming are clear: to reject progressive measures and deny the need for decisive change is to borrow life from future generations. It’s the refusal to make a small sacrifice now, even if it results in a lifetime of huge sacrifice for our grandchildren.

In times of frustration—inflation, forest fires, dependence on foodbanks, intolerance, medical care crises, “wars and rumours of wars,” etc.—the temptation to kick over the furniture in rage is strong, the blaming of leaders and the dividing into for-and-against camps is predictable. But like wars, depressions, pandemics, famines, hurricanes and such, climate change and economic cycles cannot be gone around, they must be soldiered through. Neither are they the fault of the government in office: the cycles of human social and economic fortune have always been. And because each trial is unique, it’s progressive thinking—innovation—not adamant conservatism and finger-crossing that will help us through.

Feel Free to reply to gg.epp41@gmail.com

They Ride on Moonlight

THEY RIDE ON MOONLIGHT (Copyright)

        George G. Epp 

They ride on moonlight through the night,

sad tidings at the speed of light

delivering news of wars and strife

most murderous waste of limb and life. 

    With images of blood and fire

from cities, playgrounds, churchly spires

comes news of wailing, moaning, dying

the screams of anger, life denying,

     while here in quiet Canadian town

i offer up a furrowed frown,

a wish that somehow, somewhere men

would learn compassion once again, 

    would feel the wounds their victims feel

the misery that smoke conceals,

the choking, pleading question, “why,

to serve what end must children die?” 

    Is it because we’re humankind

that selfishness has left us blind

to pain and sorrow f’ those who lie,

in fields and ditches? wounded die? 

    But let us now make this our prayer

to do more than just say “we care,”

to pick up pen, placard or phone

and tell the world “we all are one?” 

    to say a pleading prayer again

for those who suffer grievous pain

seems more a gesture, less a gift,

won’t ease their burden, bridge the rift. 

    ‘Twas hoarding, greed and selfishness

that sowed the seeds for such excess;

as humankind prepared the way,

so human hands must seize the day 

    and pave a way for lasting peace

for justice, fairness, equity

for dignity for everyone,

with news: new dawn has surely come. 

    Then sparks like sunlight through the day

glad news will bring, and hope hold sway:

“rejoice, my people everywhere,

the bow of love has banished fear.”

  

The Vulnerable Colony

 

It wouldn’t be surprising if students of the Bible and the general history of the Middle East would see parallels between the Israel/Gaza conflict today and the Biblical conquest of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Moses, and then Joshua, the Hebrew ethno/religious nation dispossessed, routed, killed indigenous tribes and clothed the genocide in the robes of manifest destiny foretold in Jehovah’s promise to Abraham to give them a dedicated homeland. [i]

As a Mennonite with a Prussian/Russian sojourn in my heritage, I recognize both the advantages and the hazards implicit in the choice of living and dying in ethnic and/or religious, homogenous colonies.[ii] Historically, Mennonite colonies tended to thrive economically because a common belief, common meeting places, parochial schools and institutions enjoy general support, and co-operation facilitates progress. But that very success made Mennonite colonies targets for the disadvantaged population surrounding them when hardship and hunger drove the mass to desperation.

The conquered Palestine gave birth to a successful “nation state” after the Hebrew conquest. Its defence, however, would prove to be a continuous concern because it too had—as an ethnic colony—enjoyed the advantages of co-operation and internal solidarity—relatively speaking. Having to repulse constant military threat can consume resources and in due time, the Babylonian Empire did to Israel and Judah what the Hebrew nation had done to the indigenous tribes of Palestine: the “promised land” was seized, resources were routed, its temple destroyed, and leadership marched into captivity.

And therein lies my main point: one price to pay for establishing and living in a homogenous colony lies in the fact that by its nature, it makes of itself a visible target. The antagonism and frustration that’s bound to accrue when hardship besets a general population will find you easily. The markers you displayed to demonstrate your solidarity with your community will become symbols drawing negative attention, even hatred: long skirts, yarmulkas and hijabs, overalls and Stetsons, horse and buggy as requirements of religious piety, a refusal to participate in the military, etc. I might think about antisemitism writ large as a model for such an eventuality.

After the Russian Revolution, Mennonite colonies saw their populations scattered to the winds, their resources confiscated, their institutions co-opted or destroyed. Those of my ancestors coming to Canada hadn’t the option of resettling in ghettos, as had their predecessors in Prussia/Russia. Land was divided into 160 acre plots in Canada, homesteaders were required to live on them, work them in order to benefit from the homestead settlement program. Solidarity in the Mennonite faith would henceforth have to be preserved in the establishment of central institutions of worship and learning while adherents might well find themselves surrounded by Catholic, Ukrainian, British, indigenous, etcetera neighbours. This, along with compulsory public education, literally forced Mennonites to live cooperatively with non-ethnics while maintaining as best they could the faith imperatives by forming a “virtual colony.” We became “less Mennonite” and “more Canadian” by outlook. [iii]

History tends to indicate that if Israel of today continues to function as a religious/ethnic colony, it might well be preparing its own destruction. This is not an antisemitic comment, but Realpolitik pertaining to the prospects of maintaining a bordered colony with citizenship tied to religious/ethnic background in the world as we find it today.

Mennonites don’t have a homeland. Neither do Gypsies, Kurds, Uyghurs, Hutterites: this list could be very long. Some Christians sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a’passin’ through …,” even as they participate fully in the economy of “this world.” For people of faith, whatever they’re born into, the question of “in” but “not of” this world is relevant, but often ambiguous. And as communication and transportation become faster, freer and less regulated, we had all better be thinking clearly about our places in worldwide humanity. [iv]

For many, the threshold between personal freedom and the responsibility to live cooperatively is fuzzy, and they begin to see the two as either/or, so that requirements of their faith trump national and/or international convention and vice versa. For Mennonites in Latin America who have achieved a right (for now) to settle in self-determining colonies, the consciousness of being “in the world,” but not “of the world” may be satisfied for now, but they, too, are finding that living in colonies doesn’t guarantee immunity from outside influence, nor from creeping apostasy, even rebellion, from within. As necessity makes colony borders ever more porous, there’s finally no way to prevent Jacob Dueck from falling hopelessly in love with Tasha Samborski, or her brother Ivan, perhaps.

It's tempting—but probably appropriate—to invoke the natural law called entropy here, namely that every system decays, falls back toward randomness. Building a house is the gathering of materials from the random environment and forming therefrom a “system,” which in the passage of time will be rendered unusable due to entropy. A nation, municipality, church denomination, even a family or clan are all constructed systems in a process of decay, the elements of their construction returned “in dust and ashes” to whence they came. The vibrant, exciting “downtown” invariably becomes the slummy, decaying urban core.

Seeing nations, municipalities, church denominations, colonies as existing somewhere in the continuum of entropy can help us visualize our future, and prepare for it.

One can list the conditions under which life on the planet is enhanced or rendered bearable: social acceptance; enough good food; comfortable temperatures; safety from aggressors, disease, storms, floods and fires; a positive, self-respecting identity; variety, etc. Most certainly, a bordered colony provides promise of better chances than the alternative … until it doesn’t. Mennonites now living scattered among the general population in Canada mostly live lives hardly distinguishable from the general population—the “world.” Except that they find themselves—arguably— far better positioned to provide charitable, peacemaking influences than they would have had, had they settled and lived in bordered colonies like their Hutterian Brethren.[v]

That Israel was conceived of and functions as a religio-ethnic nation/colony is not in question. There are parallels to be drawn historically, even with the Mennonite experience, but there is another “truth” that can’t be ignored: nothing like the genocide of all ethnic Jews by the NAZIs had ever been attempted before, at least not in its coldly calculated magnitude. The juxtaposition of these simultaneous truths poses a quandary for many: for North American Christians, for instance, it’s as simple as praying for—or campaigning for—either Palestinians or Israelis knowing that “success” for one may mean “failure” for the other.

In Christianity Today, October 7, 2023, editor Russel Moore writes an article under the byline, “American Christians should stand with Israel under attack.” He bases his argument on a government’s right and duty to protect its citizens (the just war), not on the “Promised Land” sensibility central to parts of the Old Testament. He fails to—or chooses not to—qualify any of his comments with reference to Israel’s illegal occupation of lands by deposing residents. One wonders if his mind has changed after three months of deadly warfare.

Sometimes, models sharpen issues and whet our imaginations. One of my favourite models has been the visualization of the earth as a ship, the people as either crew or passengers, the destination the shores of the Peaceable Kingdom. As a crew member, I cooperate with the captain, the engineering, kitchen and hospitality personnel, while at the same time functioning collaboratively with the passengers in order to maintain goodwill, peace, and the well being of all. It’s not in my or anybody else’s interest to separate passengers into blocks of cabins based on their skin colour, ethnicity, religion or ideology; landing safely is everybody’s overriding interest.

All crew members and all passengers realize by the peculiarity of their situation that they are, after all, all passengers. If the ship sinks or becomes unliveable through neglect or quarreling, all will experience the same fate.

Some, of course, will always be found to be saboteurs, willing to jeopardize the ship and contents in their grasping for more than their share of the food, the comforts, the influence. There will invariably also be mutineers who seek to displace the captain and crew because all on board are of the living species known as humans, the most complicated and unpredictable of creatures. Still others will be disciples of denial: the predicted consequences of selfishness will probably never happen, so follow  the advice alluded to by the Old Testament prophet to “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die anyway.” (See, for instance, Isaiah 22:13)

Because I was born into a Christian family in a Christian community, I quite naturally see myself as having been called by Christ to join the ship’s crew, although not without the perils and frustrations of being an on again, off again, sometimes generous, sometimes selfish servant of a captain who himself has the insight to know that washing the feet of fellow humans is the epitome of leadership. I’d rather just be a vacationing passenger, sunning in a deck chair with a mug of cold beer.

Others are welcome to reach back in their story to explain their place on the ship.

Or—if you prefer—imagine Canada to be the ship, or North America, or the Middle East, or continental Europe, or your dwindling-membership church.  

(Sorry, I appear to have worked this metaphor to death.)

Unless and until the understanding that humanity is not a myriad of competing “us-es” sinks in and ethnicity, race and colony-dependency are subjugated to the “common weal,” all ships live in peril, the very next storm might well be more than can be survived. We are evolving in that direction and the hiccups we call wars illustrate the enormous resistance to the changes this evolution infers.

But:

 Given the variety of languages, religions and life options on earth today, and the apparent propensity of the human species to clump together with those who understand and can be understood, it’s hard to see how any world could exist without tight communities—like colonies—forming. I’ve lived for the better part of two years on a Canadian first nation, for three years in the heart of Germany. These experiences taught me both how resistant I can be to adopting new cultural ways and languages, and revealed to me the sheer volume of emotional energy that assimilation, even adaptation, can exact. Imagine shuffling the world’s population like one does a deck of cards and then scattering the lot onto one land mass, say, Australia. I suspect the first order of business for you and me would be to search for someone, anyone of the same language and culture as us.

The simultaneous realities of wars, famines, economic fluctuations and now, global warming effects and the migrations they necessitate, open the door to a broader discussion about literal and virtual colony formation and disintegration. That discussion, although relevant, is too large for my purpose here, namely to show how the Jewish nation/colony we call Israel shares vulnerabilities with similar structures historically.

And for another day, the topic of virtual colonies, the kind of clumping together in militant community around an opinion, a prejudice, a hatred or an ideology. Religious denominations, Naziism, Maga, conspiracy theories strike me as colony formation ... sort of.  Somehow, I intuit that the material colony informs the virtual, but like I said … that’s for another day.

 

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[i] That is, if we read these Old Testament accounts as if they were factual histories without the colouring of a mythology that supports the chosen self-image of a people.

[ii] The word, colony, is used in the sense of the Cambridge Dictionary definition: “a group of people with a shared interest or job who live together in a way that is separate from other people.” (COLONY | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary)

[iii] This description refers quite specifically to the “Rosenort Mennonites,” primarily immigrating and settling in the Saskatchewan Valley area in the 1890s. In the immigration in the 1870s to Southern Manitoba, not colonies but villages similar to those in Russia were developed, as they were in the Hague/Osler area of the Saskatchewan Valley. They also declined and largely disappeared as Mennonite communal settlements, a consequence of the grid survey system and gradual but persistent acculturation.

[iv] Similarities can be drawn between ethnic homelands and colonies as they’re used here. A valid argument in equating them might be that both imply homogeneity, a shared ethnicity, religion, culture if you will. My Mennonite experience informs me that shared ethnicity, religion and culture does not automatically imply common land/location ownership. Islamic worship, language, cultural markers are practiced openly in Saskatoon, for example; the only problem I’m aware of has been with occasional racist outbursts and Mosque attendees parking in residential areas. (See: https://islamiccenter.sk.ca/)

[v] My friend, Ted, brought up the case of Hutterites living successfully in colonies in North America as possibly being antithetical to the thesis posed here. I think we agreed that their success as colonies persists because they remain a relatively benign presence and show efforts to be good, unthreatening, cooperating neigbours. 

Feel Free to Respond in an email by clicking on gg.epp41@gmail.com 

A defense of democracy

 

READ, LEARN, VOTE

Is democracy doomed? To hear day after day the fears about losing democratic rights to Trumpian/Republican authoritarianism has obviously got many of us running scared. Is the fear for our political future warranted?

First in New Brunswick and then in Saskatchewan and being contemplated in Alberta, current governments have found it okay to legislate the classroom procedure if a child asks that a pronoun and name exception be made without notifying parents. Ten Republican-governed states in the USA have done the same thing, and others are considering it. (Indiana Senate backs bill on student names, pronoun changes | AP News).

Without arguing the merits and pitfalls of this particular “parental rights” law, the prospect of a central government legislating in that way can certainly be disturbing. We have become used to the dismantling of earlier legislation that seemed to set standards for social/moral behaviour. Gay marriage, MAiD, even film classification are just a few examples of practically withdrawing central authority over what ought to be local, even familial or personal choices.

Granted, solving real or imagined social problems by enacting a law, will live on as a temptation. Problem solved, but in that solution the possibility of significant exceptions, of variations case-by-case are wiped out. Such is the dilemma created by applying central authority to the relationship between a teacher and a child; teachers come to know which students go home to loving, informed, nurturing homes and which to homes that are abusive or neglectful or oblivious. To legislate parental rights that can override individual human rights represents the common, devastating consequence of authoritarian regulation of social issues.

We do well to remember the words of Pierre Eliot Trudeau, who in debate regarding the decriminalization of homosexual acts famously quoted, “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation ('No place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation' | CBC).” And before countering with the fact that PET was much hated, we need to ask ourselves, “By whom was this devolution of central authority on socio-sexual behaviour hated?” Was it the cohort that relishes the presence of kick-ass, authoritarian governance that privileges one stratum of citizens, one set of opinions?

In today’s Iran, women who allow a lock of hair to protrude from a head covering can be arrested and maltreated by authority. Without implying that Canada is headed in that direction, it should serve as a reminder that without vigilance, we can as a nation edge closer toward authoritarianism. Populations in Germany now lamenting the rise and fall of Naziism mourn the fact that they didn’t read the signs and respond at the outset when the persecution of Jews was gaining strength.

You and I have as much power at the ballot box as does the prime minister or the governor-general. Going into the voting booth uninformed about the issues and the policies of candidates might as well be declaring that we don’t really care enough to bother.

Here in Rosthern, our member of the provincial legislature is also the province’s premier. Many are weighing recent legislation against the question of democratic/authoritarian governance in, for instance, the passage of a bill to regulate the approach to schoolchildren experiencing gender dysphoria, requirement that every school fly a Saskatchewan flag, the ongoing rhetoric pitting Saskatchewan against Canada on climate change and resource development issues, the promised attempt to refuse collection of the federal carbon tax, etc. Is the promise of a new hospital for people in the Saskatchewan Valley enough to ensure that we’ll ignore the elephants in the room? I would hope not.

The point being that as long as we’re well informed on issues, and have understanding enough to rank them in importance, we’re not as subject to voting on single issues that may crowd out more important ones. For instance, voting for the party that promises to lower the tax on gasoline, or the party that is keen on sticking to carbon-emissions-reduction goals requires ranking the two policies in importance. Election rhetoric is not likely to clarify the question; science can … for anyone taking the time to tune in, that is.

Most of us, most of the time, can “walk and chew gum at the same time.” Pride in our Saskatchewan needn’t feed on the denigration of our Canada; we don’t have to give up on one to support the other. In a place where Saskatchewanians are also Canadians, and in a province where legislation would never have been forced with the invoking of the Notwithstanding Clause until now, the authoritarian approach to governance lately demonstrated should certainly affect what people rank as important as they enter the voting booth.  

 

 

 

SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES, SPEARS INTO PRUNING HOOKS

Forward: About five hundred years before Christ, a Chinese military strategist, Sun Tsu, wrote a book we now know as The Art of War. He said much about strategies for executing winning wars, but also wrote quite philosophically about wars precursors, including the personalities that lead people to wage destructive, murderous conflict. He wrote, for instance, “An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground … to rule over the ashes.” His “The wise general is a Lord of Destiny; he holds the nation’s peace or peril in his hands” I find naïve if applied to today’s geo-political environment. Surely placing our destinies in the hands of our militaries would be a lot like assigning curriculum development in schools to the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada. Good people, but primary education isn’t where their heads are.

When trade disputes, territorial claims, even ethnocentric impulses lead to strife, the difference between negotiated accommodation and bloody war has come to hinge around the possession of the means of force. US and allied response to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan right now is to send killing and destroying machinery. Strenuous, prolonged negotiation isn’t necessary if you have a big gun to hold to an adversary’s head. What’s more, superior weaponry holds out the hope that you can have it all; compromise unnecessary. A zero-sum game.

And so I wrote this allegory ... But let the allegory—parable, if you prefer—do its work.

GGE

Pablo Picasso, Guernica (la guerra=war)

SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES, SPEARS INTO PRUNING HOOKS

Drill Sergeant Yoshie Hauptmann wouldn’t have needed the alarm to go off at 7:30 every morning. He’d disciplined his body to fall asleep at 11:30 precisely, and as precisely to wake up at 7:30, and he was as punctual at setting the alarm as he was about everything. Just in case. You never know. Be prepared. The devil’s in the details.

               On August 5^th, 2027, he rolled over, sat up gently so as not to wake Anika and padded into the walk-in closet to retrieve the uniform Anika had so carefully brushed the night before. It wasn’t there. He backed out of the closet and closed the door, in response, probably, to the ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing that’s not working usually cures the problem. He opened the door again, but a white robe hung in the precise spot where his uniform should be. He woke Anika. She was as befuddled as he was.

               His duplicate uniform was at the cleaners and they wouldn’t be open until 10:00. He donned street clothes and drove to the barracks. A few dozen raw recruits were wondering around the parade ground, some in pajamas, some in their underwear. They gathered around Drill Sergeant Hauptmann and informed him that where they’d hung their uniforms and street clothes last night, there were only blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts. Also, that they’d been awakened at 7:00 by what sounded like a choir singing something about sheep grazing.

               With that news, DS Hauptmann took out his cell phone and dialed headquarters in Tel Aviv. They already knew something was up, had already decided that Iran was retaliating for the previous week’s bombing of a nuclear enrichment facility by Israel. “The air force has been ordered to scramble all fighter jets, and land-based-missile command to be ready for further orders. Do your best to …”

               The call was interrupted by “Hang on, Hauptmann,” and the click of a phone being hung up.

               The news flashed down the chain of command via X. When pilots (in street clothes) ran to the hangers, they found every jet had been replaced by a skateboard and where bombs were stored ready to be attached to planes, there was a bowling alley. Missile command examining the silos’ contents found that the ICBMs had mysteriously turned into long, fat sausages.

               The entire base was gripped by excruciating fear. Officers and privates ran back and forth between rooms, between buildings, and the parade ground was awash in Hawaiian shirted “civilians” carrying baseball bats, hockey sticks, anything they could get their hands on.

Fortunately, relief followed hard upon all this devastating news: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, Australia, Great Britain were all struggling to understand how their entire military apparatus had turned into food, flowers, game venues and identical Hawaiian shirts. Nobody knew who was who, rank and privilege lost all their markers and most amazingly, every economy discovered that the last year’s military spending had been reimbursed and governments were awash in cash.

Prince William was up early, dressed for a portrait photograph to be taken by Amelia Standingstill, Great Britain’s most celebrated female portrait photographer. At 7:00 precisely, Amelia gasped as she saw poor William through her viewfinder suddenly without hat, coat, pants, epaulets and medals, his entire naval uniform gone, and him looking down and wishing he’d chosen boxers instead of briefs.

Jerry Pinkstable and Hank Surinamy were neighbours on Colonel Wogey Street in Denver Colorado. Jerry’s first thought when he heard the news of very strange doings was to prepare to defend his family. He reached in and felt around in his night table drawer, but his pistol was gone. In a panic, he ran downstairs to his gun cabinet and found when he opened it that his hunting rifles had turned into gardening tools and his last-ditch, assault rifle was now a cricket bat. Jerry has never, ever played cricket. Somebody goofed.

He ran out to make sure the gate in his chain link property fence was locked and discovered no fence and no gate. He ran back into the house and placed Jonathon’s and Sidney’s miniature baseball bats near the door, then ran back to the kitchen for a knife, but wherever a knife had been, there was now a pizza cutter. He felt silly holding one in his hand and making a few ridiculous thrusts with it. He dropped it back into the drawer.

               He picked up a bat and stepped gingerly out onto the front porch. He was startled to see that “that bastard Hank” was mirroring his stance and his weapon on the Surinamy’s front porch. Hank’s six-year-old son stepped out beside Hank, looked at Jerry and said, “Daddy, if your guns went away, and Jerry’s guns went away, prob’ly everybody’s guns went away.” Jerry’s defiant demeanour left, replaced by a sheepishness at the wisdom of a child. He dropped the bat on the lawn, as did Hank and both felt that a ton of rocks had been lifted from their shoulders, although it would take some time before they could admit it.

 

A chapter of Hell’s Angels had bought three adjacent houses on Grady Street in Summerdale, Ontario back in 2024. Every other house in that block had been FOR SALE ever since, but they didn’t care. They tore down the middle house and erected a large garage for their motorcycles.

               At 10:15, a bearded, barbed-wire-tattooed Jason Farthing awoke, sat up, scratched his ample belly, pulled on a black muscle shirt and reached for the leather jacket that he’d left hanging on the bedpost. What came away was not his jacket, but a plaid sportscoat whose only nod to leather was in the elbow patches. Jason hung it back up, shook his head, went for a pee—in response, probably, to the ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing that’s not working usually cures the problem—and came back. The plaid sportscoat was still there, hanging from the bedpost.

What’s more, the handgun he kept under his pillow at night was not under his pillow.

               Jason pounded on every bedroom door in the house screaming, “OK, you jackasses, who’s the wise guy. Joke’s over!” A few doors opened, a few arms appeared, a few hands gingerly held out plaid sportscoats with leather elbow protectors and every coat with a pen clipped into the breast pocket.

               Eventually the world news registered via Aaron “Frisky” Patterson’s Facebook account. He rushed out to the garage where, you guessed it, fourteen Harleys and Yamahas and Phantom Blacks had been replaced by fourteen high-end racing bikes.

Aaron was probably the most astute of the chapter membership. First, he thought, “Strange, bikes for bikes, but why these?” Then he thought, “Military hardware intimidates; motorcyclists in packs wearing Hell’s Angels decals are intimidating, that’s what we set out to be. So what now?” He rang the little bell on the handlebar and remembered the thrill of owning his first bike, a pink CCM hand-me-down that had been a cousin’s. “Whoever did this is smart, not unlike me,” he thought.

He ran his hand across the new leather of a bicycle’s banana seat, then went back upstairs and put on the plaid sportscoat with the leather elbow pads and took the racing bike out for a spin.

               It felt really good except that the jacket didn’t match his leather pants. He stopped on a country road, took them off and hung them over a barbed-wire fence and gleefully headed west in his boxer shorts and the greenish-plaid sportscoat with leather elbow protectors.

               He was enthralled by the singing of the birds on the fence wires.

Joe Biden at age 87 was nearing the endpoint of his presidency and like everyone, he was shaken by the news as it unfolded from around the world. Most astounding to him were the images of the Pentagon on TV—before and after. Whoever or whatever force was at work had exercised some cosmic geometry and turned it into a circle. Furthermore, it was now a school; offices with their maps and strategic planning documents and international intelligence apparatus were all gone, replaced by classrooms. The signage out front and back now read “Plowshare College,” and President Joe chuckled because he’d actually been listening in church and knew where the name came from.

His attorney-general opined that it must have something to do with agriculture, an easy mistake to make.            

Prime Minister Poilievre in Canada approached the new governor-general with a request to prorogue parliament and institute martial law, a request that was denied. “You’re suddenly befuddled and clueless, Pierre,” she said, “and you can’t wrap your head around no fighter jets, no tanks, no army. Well join the club. Go back and write a budget and a throne speech. Trust me. It’s gonna be fun with all that new cash and all those personnel freed up to fight climate change. Right up your alley, nuh?”

And the world unfolded as it should. War- and terrorism-refugees started to drift home, people (who had practically habituated themselves to the inevitability of international violence) became obsessed with saving the planet, cleaning up oceans, rivers and lakes, planting trees, building renewable energy infrastructure, building better hospitals and better schools, ensuring food security, all these and more creating jobs, jobs, jobs.

               Street gangs filled their pockets with rocks at first, but gave that up when their thrown stones turned into potato chips the instant they left their hands. Everyone knows how hard it is to throw a potato chip with any degree of accuracy. A few gangs, in desperation, turned themselves into comic book clubs.

               Most importantly, the world of the poor, the rich, the powerful, the ordinary, celebrities and heroes, artists and poets, writers and readers, labourers and thinkers, all could finally count on a good night’s sleep. The sounds of snoring would at times have been deafening … if there’d been anyone awake to hear it, that is.

               CBC reported later--two years later, actually--that Putin had made a disparaging remark about the Canadian Prime Minister at an international conference. Apparently, the Canadian Prime Minister stuck his tongue out at Putin in response, at which the UN General Secretary was reported to have remarked, “My goodness, will this aggression, counter-aggression cycle never end?”

In Israel/Palestine all the walls and barriers came down, missiles and personnel weapons were nowhere to be found. And amazingly here, the power that had demilitarized the nations had added a twist: whether faces and clothes were different or just appeared to be, observers could no longer tell Jews from Palestinians. Authorities soon tired of having to ask people whether they were Jewish or Palestinian before telling them whether they were allowed to stand or walk, here or there.

There was nothing for it, finally, but to declare the entire area a democratic, secular state with politicians elected by universal suffrage, police armed with little more than good will, compassion and intensive first-aid training, and everyone tapped into the same spirit of well-being and optimism … side by side.

The En…, no, The Beginning!

 

Human "family?"

 

You and I are probably racists … and will likely continue to be until the words race, racism, racial no longer exist, and children all grow up with the consciousness of humanity as a single, interdependent family.

It’s not surprising that the dictionary I consulted for a definition of racism confines its meaning to harms committed to groups and individuals (prejudice, discrimination, etc.) based on their genetic (racial?) characteristics. I define it more broadly by adding: invoking persons’ or people’s genealogy in situations where genealogy is irrelevant. Call it “soft racism,” possibly. A persisting consciousness around people’s genetic origins that tills and fertilizes the soil in which the blatant, directly harmful kind can grow.

An example: Wab Kinew, a Manitoban, became leader of Manitoba’s NDP Party which won the most recent provincial election, making Kinew the new Manitoba premier. All this occurred through normal democratic processes; the same processes exactly by which all previous premiers were chosen. I was appalled at the emphasis on the fact that an indigenous person had just been elected to the highest political office in the province. Although Kinew verbally downplayed his Indigenous heritage as a relevant to his premiership, he made (to my mind) the colossal error of wearing a traditional Indigenous headdress to his swearing-in ceremony. Genetic heritage is irrelevant to Canadian democracy; that’s its strength … and possibly even, its last, best hope.

Heaven help Wab Kinew and the Indigenous population of Manitoba when the new premier makes his first glaring political mistake and the pictures of him in a war bonnet are cartooned all over reactionary media. Soft racism makes up a comfortable bed for blatant prejudice and discrimination.

This morning I read a justification from the chief editor of CBC News explaining why The Fifth Estate researched and produced a story questioning Buffy Sainte Marie’s claim to Indigenous roots. Genetic roots, that is. Is it accurate to say that people who falsely identify by race represent a hindrance to “legitimate” Indigenous artists? Could be; I don’t know the celebrity culture well enough to judge this. In any case, the story is interlaced with soft racism on all sides: at a very basic level, making music is race-irrelevant unless we insist that it be so; styles vary, of course, but dependent on culture, tradition, not on genetic heritage.

Related to soft racism, of course, is soft ethnicism, (ethnic nationalism)  i.e. invoking persons’ or a people’s ethnic heritage when it’s irrelevant to the matter at hand. I’ve been amused by people who identify as “ethnically Mennonite,” say, but do one of those DNA tests to discover that they’re, say, 8% Spanish, 12% Jewish, 4% indigenous and 76% undifferentiable European. True, the tests purport to shed light on biological, genetic heritage, not ethnicity. But as is the case with soft racism, soft ethnicism makes up a comfortable bed for the Newfie joke, the “Pollack” putdown and, most abhorrently, antisemitism and the practice of ethnocide.[i] Take the radical cleansing of ethnic Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as an example.

Here in the town, the province, the church community in which I move and rest and write posts like this, the current preoccupation on these matters is with the Truth and Reconciliation project and the subsidiary Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) focus. To make a difference, you’d think individuals and communities could engage in clearly defined actions in answer to the call to “make right a relationship gone wrong.” It’s not happening, and despite yeoman efforts to move the rock of reconciliation, progress so far tends to indicate that nothing substantial is going to change.

I think we all know intuitively that inviting an indigenous family to dinner and patting their children on their heads isn’t reconciliation. When you steal someone’s car, you don’t reconcile by giving him the occasional ride to town in it, you give him back his car! How to do that locally, municipally, provincially and nationally isn’t obvious by any means. When Jean Chretien proposed sweeping changes to the crown/First Nations relationship in his 1969 White Paper, it became immediately clear that settlers and First Nations both visualized a net loss if, for instance, the abolition of the Indian Act were to happen. That reluctance to risk change is still (seems to me) as decisive now as then. Meanwhile, without foundational changes, the “friendliness initiatives” remain gestures, although probably still worth doing locally as tools for building understanding of what the relevant hindrances to reconciliation really are.

But I’m not naïve enough to assume that genetic-heritage differences will be erased from our consciousness, will cease to be significant factors in our species’ varied strategies for survival.  Wiping out that consciousness, probably, would merit as much hope as would a project to teach deer to protect themselves from human predation by climbing trees.

But, there’s hope! As the world becomes more mobile, more interconnected, intermarriage among demographic groups will increase so much that by, say 3030, bigots will complain that they can’t tell who’s black and who’s white anymore, who’s Asian and who’s ‘Merican. And people’s language won’t give them away either, because we’ll all be speaking Chinese, French, Hindi … ENGLISH!

Why English? Well, it’s still 2023 and that’s my racist/ethnicist ego talking.

To respond, click here: gg.epp41@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[i] I made up the word ethnicist to parallel with racist. Ethnicism can be found in dictionaries to mean “ethnic chauvinism.”

WHAT CHILDREN NEED TO LEARN

 

I just read a Facebook post by an organization supporting the Saskatchewan government’s proposed legislation relating to gender curricula in primary schools. As a retired teacher, I’m convinced that a new and serious rift between homes and schools will occur if the tone of the resulting conflict is not dampened. It’s quickly turning ugly.

First, let’s make just a few observations about the life conditions humanity would most likely agree to as ideal, an environment worth striving toward, in our homes and in our schools:

In the best world we can imagine, the air is clean, the water is clean and clear, the nights are peaceful and quiet and there’s no good reason to lock your doors and windows. Children walk to school hand in hand, unaccompanied by adults, and are secure in their homes, in their schools and on the streets and playgrounds. There are challenges aplenty to whet the imagination, variety and inviting prospects enough to allow everyone optimism about the future, celebratory social events enough to bind neighbour to neighbour.

Everyone has access to sufficient safe and nutritious food without charity; clothing and shelter to suit the climate are general, health and emergency services are in reach when illness, bad weather or disasters strike. The prospect of war and the need to divert resources to prepare for it no longer exists; crime is rare because the desperation of poverty no longer drives individuals to theft and violence.

To keep and maintain such a world, the training and education of the young is as vital as it is among lions and tigers where the survival through adulthood is completely dependent on the ability to stalk and hunt in cooperation with others. What do human children need to learn, what skills need to be rehearsed again and again so that we together nudge our common humanity toward the best we can be?

To this end, I offer some thoughts that bear consideration in what is fast shaping up to be a fight about parents’ rights vs. public schools and curricula. The struggle for control of what children shall be taught is as old as education itself; an example among many is 1) below. 

In the late 1950s, Nikita Khruschev sought to promote atheism, obliterate religion and in that campaign declared that, “… all Soviet children belong to the Soviet State.”[i] The Nazi regime similarly targeted youth with its most strident propaganda campaign. State monopoly of educational curriculum development seems to be a very bad idea, especially when it falls into the hands of totalitarian regimes. Is it equally true that a laissez-faire, democratically-elected government leaving education matters completely in the hands of local administration would be a mistake of another kind?

We probably shouldn’t avoid talking about the changes that have led to a rancorous dispute about sexual/gender issues in school curricula. I took my elementary and middle school public education in 1947 to 1956. Gender and sexuality where not on the curriculum at all, references to it didn’t appear on radio or TV, parents were loathe to even allow their children to be present where animals were breeding or giving birth. Today, verbal and visual references, even explicit depictions of sexual matters are accessible to small children, can hardly be avoided in a home with TV and internet. A seventy-year-old approach to preparing children for the sexual/gender realities they’ll need to face simply won’t answer to the need. We must engage in many conversations that aren’t “them against us,” but are “all of us for all the children.” To this end, I offer some thoughts that bear consideration in what is fast shaping up to be a fight about parent’s rights vs. public schools and curricula. By no means exhaustive, I hope it can get at least one or two conversations started.

 

1)   In the 1920s, hundreds of Mennonite families left Canada and moved to Mexico because they were unwilling to enrol their children in provincial schools. They’d set up their own schools where rudiments of language and arithmetic were taught, and the bulk of the curriculum was Bible-centred. The national mood was overwhelmingly for compulsory citizenship education and conformity to a national standard, and both the conservative Mennonite community and the Indigenous people experienced the practice of forcing assimilation via public education.

2)     Today, under the umbrella of multi-culturalism, a citizenship-oriented public education remains mandatory, but separate schools, home schooling are permitted, even financially supported in some cases so that cultural/spiritual values education can form part of children’s education alongside the public schools’ curricula. Is there a downside to a child being schooled with different value sets in the classroom and the home? An upside?

3)     As with the exiting Mennonites in 1) above, the 2023 backlash against gender issues as part of public education is bound to evoke comparisons to the force-feeding of values to captive children. The “revolt” of parents was completely predictable in the case of the Mennonites as it is with parents in Saskatchewan today who deem a conservative, home-based approach to sex/gender values to be “right,” considering the sensitivity of the subject.

4)     It seems overstated to assert that “the state” has the right to determine what education its citizens must have in the interest of maintaining a peaceful and prosperous democratic nation. By the same token, it seems simplistic to assert that parents alone have that right, given that children very quickly become independent adults with the necessity of functioning in society as opposed to in family or in school. In a democracy like Canada, a citizens’ education would likely be developed if it didn’t already exist, while at the same time, our multi-cultural, multi-faith society demands a more liberal approach to education content than that of the Government of Saskatchewan in the 1910s and ‘20s.

5)     For a percentage of parents to demand and be granted as a right the addition or subtraction of material from a provincial curriculum automatically usurps the equal right of dissenting parents, and vice versa. Can disagreement on what’s allowable in public education and what isn’t succeed if settled by a zero-sum combat?[ii]

6)     As a teacher, I was trained on what rights and responsibilities I had and didn’t have over and for students in my classroom. I had a right to protect the integrity of the learning environment by evicting a disruptive student, for instance, but not to administer corporal punishment. As a teacher, touching a student, even supportively, would put me in danger of violating a student’s rights. If I observed that a student coming to school appeared to have been physically abused, it was my solemn duty to report it—not to the parents—but to the police and/or social services. If a boy of twelve were to have asked me to use the “they” pronoun for them, but not to tell their parents, would that have been a dilemma for me that I as a classroom teacher didn’t deserve?

7)     Using rights as an argument in these situations is fraught with problems. Teachers, parents are not equally competent; most teachers nourish and educate, some occasionally neglect or abuse students and are struck off; most parents nourish and teach, some abuse and/or neglect their own. Whose rights matter here? Who needs the protection of rights? Would it be truer to the current conflict to speak of school responsibility and parent responsibility as relating to the children?

8)     Many Canadian parents entrust their children to organized sports programs. Some, of course, seek to influence how coaches make decisions affecting their child, castigating a hockey coach, for instance, for not giving their child more ice time. If we decided it’s one parent’s right to exercise some control at that level, then it would surely become ALL hockey-parents’ right. Would it then be possible for a coach to form and direct a team?

9)     Suppose a government were to decree that school curricula at the, say, Grade Six level, must include training in the use of firearms and the martial arts. How would Quakers, Doukhobors, Mennonites and other pacifist-bent groups respond, and how might that be comparable to protests over the gender studies curricula happening today?

10)  Historically, how have protests regarding public education content been resolved? Allowing children of non-Christian families to congregate in a separate area during opening exercises that included The Lord’s Prayer and Bible reading was one response. Eliminating sectarian religious activity in public education is the current approach. Neither response has met with universal approval, as you’d expect. Bill 137[iii] if passed will require that schools inform parents of the scheduling of sex/gender class instruction and that provision be made for children to be excused during those times if parents request it. Where will they be while excused, and what will they be doing and under whose supervision might well be the relevant question.

11)  I can imagine an eight-year-old pretending to be copycat trans-gendered as a way of fulfilling some need for acknowledgement, although it’s not easy given the negative response to gender difference generally in this country. And if an eight-year-old is struggling with a gender identification issue, how would a loving, nurturing parent not already know this before it manifested in school? Does gender dysphoria in children really only exist because the education system has promoted it? If it is, what would be the motive behind it? By what means would all educators have planned such a program and kept the planning secret?

12)  If a student asks for non-gender-specific pronouns in school, is it logical to assume that the school has groomed that student to a trans-gender self-appraisal? And if a teacher is faced with a request for secrecy vis-e-vis the parents, is it logical for that teacher to assume a relationship breakdown in the home? Is it more reasonable in such a situation to refer the student to professional counselling whose object would be to involve the parents with the student’s consent, as prescribed in Bill 137?

13)  Private indebtedness and public indebtedness are both serious issues in Canada. Imagine that the federal and provincial governments were to decree that much more intensive consumer education must be offered at every grade level. Imagine further that many schools would end music or art programs to free up resources for consumer education. How do we decide what is essential, what is “nice to have but not essential,” and what is unnecessary as part of public, citizenship education?

14)  Is it possible for public education to present a comprehensive social studies curriculum that excludes or restricts sexual/gender relationship matters?

15)  Is sexual interference against children enough of a problem in Canadian society to warrant teaching even the youngest to identify and defend against paedophilia, child pornography and related abuses of the young?  And is the environment of classroom and playground relevant to how any such teaching should occur? (See Pedophilia - Wikipedia for related information.)

16)  Education has become much more integrated, more confluent than formerly. Roughly, simply visualized, Industrial Arts and Arithmetic can be taught as less-separate subjects, and theoretically, “Industrial Arithmetic” could take on the aura of an entity which advances both disciplines simultaneously. Teaching “the whole child” is a common catch phrase. If parents sincerely and consistently seek to pass on values that may not be shared by the majority of citizens (recent immigrants, members of minority religions, for instance) does that mean that there are “parts of a child” public education has no business addressing? If so, what are they?

17)  It’s been nearly half a century now since public educators began searching for better ways to tailor teaching to individual learning strengths. Earlier on, education required every student to rise to an average standard … or “fail.” Individualized learning, however, can never reach its apex; that would be one teacher teaching a class of one student. (In this sense, a parent is an excellent choice as a teacher of that child, given the skill and perseverance of a parent in the nourishing arts.) Although class sizes have improved somewhat, and teacher-aides have been hired in some places, we still lack the resources to do our best for, particularly, special needs students whose special need isn’t physically obvious. Do we accept that gender dysphoria constitutes a special need in some children, affecting learning?[iv]

18)  School classrooms and playgrounds develop cultures that take the shape of their adult leadership, their facilities and the children themselves. Friendships form, cliques develop, prejudices spread like viruses, pecking orders are established, all under the umbrella of children’s need for acceptance in a culture over which they have little or no control. A microcosm of the world in which their adult stage must make its way; a practice run for maturity. Does a child who’s “gender different” stand a better chance of acceptance if all children on the playground are taught that gender identification differences exist and are “normal,” or are they better off if gender identification is not broached in primary and middle grades, and they attempt—and sometimes succeed—in hiding their difference? Are there home environments in which a child’s uniqueness is denied, such that some children seek it in places where it’s recognized … in school, for instance?

19)  Assuming “parental rights” are fundamental rights like freedom of conscience, freedom of religion or freedom of speech, would such a “parental right” include surgically removing the foreskin of baby males or the clitorises of baby females in obedience to a religious dictate? Would it mean that children are completely subject to their parents’ choice regarding vaccinations or medical treatments like blood transfusions? Is the application of corporal punishment to correct behaviour a part of “parental rights?” Could there be a conflict between parental rights and human rights applying to the child, and how and by whom would such rights conflicts be adjudicated?

20)  Much of a child’s life is legitimately regulated by parents: sports participation or not, family moves whether the child approves or not, bedtimes, table manners, music lessons, etc. Failure to raise a child to accept guidance and to live peacefully and cooperatively with others and, yes, to bend to authority and the rule of law, could surely be chalked up to parental neglect, school and community neglect, or both. How important is it that a child is being guided toward the same set of values by his/her/their teachers and parents? Are there forums for home/school values discussions?

21)  In ancient times, school curricula revolved around community faith and life, standardized content enabled by the fact that mono-culturalism made common views on values and life skills likely. In a diverse, multi-cultural, post-modern nation like Canada, values coinciding can’t be taken for granted. The strongest thread binding us together is our citizenship; our common celebrations relate to nationalism, not to religious or cultural observances. If correct, what does this say about the process of determining educational content?

22)  Suppose that you, a parent of an eight-year-old, see in your child’s homework an emphasis on saving money that in your eyes communicates a message of which you disapprove. You would rather see generosity given at least equal time with wealth accumulation. How would you proceed in the best interest of your child’s well being? Is it possible to supplement the school’s curriculum with your values regarding money in such a way that the child benefits from the combination? or do you protest to the teacher? or is it more important that you as a parent begin to teach your child that life is about competing visions, and in your family, this or that value is king?

23)  Do we know who wrote the Grade Five curriculum on sex and gender? Do we know how it was vetted and approved? Are we willing to find out before reaching a judgment about whether it’s conceived and delivered appropriately? Are we prepared to go beyond “all or none” to possible tweaks of whatever previous work on the subject has produced?

I’ve tried with this to generate at least some public thought about the current division shaping up regarding sex/gender education in the public school system. We live in a world where increasing hard-line division has become a real concern, and the fact that public, aggressive demonstrations for and against proposed legislation on the subject threatens to increase the sense of “them vs. us” in an era that can ill afford further hardening of opposing positions.

A liberal vs. conservative worldview has always existed and always will. Saskatchewan citizens have alternately elected more-conservative and more-social-democratic governments, and this pattern has served us well. It’s when we become convinced that it ought to be one or the other, fulltime, that we begin to see the other as a cohort that must be defeated, and our elections become zero-sum games.

We can’t afford that in education. Our resources can’t possibly stretch to accommodate the myriad points of view and diverse value sets represented in the broad range of political, social and faith persuasions. In my opinion, opening up every detail of public education curricula to close scrutiny would end up making us all conflicted and angry: should there be music or no, and if so, what kind of music, and at what grade levels? A dozen in conversation around a table, a dozen opinions. Every choice a compromise … or heated separation. More STEM education, less social studies? The other way ‘round? A dozen in conversation around a table, six of one opinion and half-a-dozen of the other. Somehow, we must engage in a conversation across worldviews about how educational content will be developed and how disagreements will be arbitrated … and honour whatever decision we’ve arrived at.

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[i] Friesen, Leonard G. Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022, p. 261

[ii] Zero-sum is a term used to describe sports games particularly. In simple terms, it means that there must be a loser for there to be a winner. A conflict or game without a loser would be a win-win conclusion; in this case, it’s hard to imagine such an outcome without dividing children into the “gender education” and “non-gender education” groups, possible now via separate schools or home schooling. Dividing a single playground population has its own effects (see #17), a reminder that “win-win” can turn out to be “lose-lose.”

[iii] "The Parents' Bill of Rights outlines a number of different rights that parents have regarding their children's education, including:

• act as the primary decision-maker with respect to the pupil's education;

• be informed on a regular basis of the pupil's attendance, behaviour and academic achievement in school;

• consult with the pupil's teachers and other employees of the school with respect to the pupil's courses of study and academic achievement;

• have access to the pupil's school file;

• receive information respecting the courses of study available to the pupil, including online learning, and to make decisions as to which courses of study the pupil enrolls in;

• be informed of the code of conduct and administrative policies, including discipline and behaviour management policies, of the school;

• be informed of any disciplinary action or investigation taken by the school in relation to the pupil's conduct;

• if the pupil has been expelled from school, request a review and reconsideration of the expulsion after the expiration of one year;

• be informed and consulted in relation to the pupil's school attendance problems;

• be consulted in or request a review in relation to the pupil's capacity to learn;

• excuse the pupil from participating in the opening exercises;

• be consulted before any medical or dental examination or treatment is provided to the pupil;

*********

• if sexual health content is to be presented to pupils in the school:

o at least two weeks before the sexual health content is presented to the pupils, be informed by the principal of:

§ the subject matter of the sexual health content;

§ the dates on which the sexual health content is to be presented to the pupils; and

§ if the parent or guardian so chooses, withdraw the pupil from the presentation of the sexual health content by giving written notice to the principal;

• if the pupil is under 16 years of age, provide consent before the pupil's teachers and other employees of the school use the pupil's new gender-related preferred name or gender identity at school; and

• be a member of the school community council or the conseil d'école, as the case may be, of the school.

[iv] “Dysphoria is a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction. It is the semantic opposite of euphoria. In a psychiatric context, dysphoria may accompany depression, anxiety, or agitation...” (Wikipedia definition)