A father in Toronto is protesting against a certain kind of dates being included into his small son’s student planner:
A father in Toronto, Canada is appalled that the school district chose to insert days of significance into students planners (including his 6 year old son) which, god forbid, highlight hugely problematic, dire, and largely unaddressed social justice issues. He is particularly offended by the inclusion of Transgender Day of Remembrance, Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, LGBTQ Pride Week and World AIDS Day along with a few other “shocking” reminders that most people don’t actually benefit from a white-western-male-cis-straight privilege and have to negotiate marginalization and violence on a daily basis. He felt that his son was too young to be “exposed” to such issues saying to the Toronto Sun, “He’s six. I want him to enjoy being six.” The father voiced his concerns to the Toronto District School Board and was assured that the issue would be investigated.
This is a situation where everybody is being a blethering idiot. People who put “remembrance”, “transphobia” and “LGBTQ” on day planners for 6-year-olds sound like they have been hired to give a bad name to progressives and make us all look like zealous idiots. Seriously, have you seen a small kid capable of understanding what violence against sex workers implies? Or caring about World AIDS Day? Or even reading all these long words? Zero-Tolerance on Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation? International Sexual and Reproductive Health Day? Huh? It’s a handful even for me to pronounce.
The father in this case is also not acting in the best interests of the child. It is completely obvious that a kid is never going to read this convoluted stuff. So why make a huge fuss about it? Tearing pages out of the diary and giving interviews about the entire thing is the best way to get a child to notice that something weird is going on. A normal parent who is not hungry for fame and isn’t willing to sacrifice his kid for the sake of promoting his political beliefs would have chuckled over the planner’s stupidity and let the incident slide. Now, of course, there is little chance that his child will not become very aware of the entire story.
It is so sad to see people use children as a field of ideological battles.
Clarissa's Blog 
tee hee did you see me ranting about an assignment from school this week? I’m just sayin’ once you have kids, and you go to the bother of figuring out what the eff you’d like to be as a parent, is does get old having the school re-inscribe traditional values. However it is a losing battle. I did still email the teacher to nicely request that she include the not-so-old story in the lesson plan, and she nicely replied that she already did. Still, the teachers aren’t the biggest problem. Some kid at lunch last year told fMhson that gay marriage was wrong. Thankfully fMhson already knows gay married people so he knew the kid was full of sh1t. So in conclusion, indoctrinate young is the moral of my story 😉
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This is the post feMOMhist is talking about: http://femomhist.blogspot.com/2011/09/fmh-wont-have-to-do-second-grade.html
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thanks, I always feel like a huge dork linking to my own blog, like I’m attempting to steal readers or something. Tomorrow’s post is all about fMhson’s reaction to my explaining WHY the assignment pissed me off. So stay tuned 🙂
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I always welcome links to good posts on good blogs. Of course, when people try to link to places that sell Viagra or stuff like that, I ban them.
Not that I’m specifically opposed to Viagra, of course.
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Whatever you do, don’t read the comments on the toronto sun website.
I did and my eyes are bleeding.
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I didn’t but now I really want to?
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I looked and the comments, and they are, indeed, bizarrely scary. Who are all these unhinged folks?
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H’mmm. We don’t really do most of those days here, at least not on a national level. However, we do do ‘Pride Week’ and I know for a fact that my local junior and infants school, (it’s a Catholic school) teaches their kids about it and carries themed activities during it. Obviously (well, I think it should be obvious but the fact that I have to type the explanation shows that it isn’t) they don’t go into details but focus on tolerance and diversity and ‘people are different and that’s what makes the world wonderful and interesting’. I think that’s how you go about handling these things – focus on the message and the specifics can wait till later.
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