Rex Murphy: Controversy Over Ontario Teacher With Large Fake Breasts May Challenge the Dominance of Woke Ideology
CommentaryIt was encouraging to see some parents—and students—come out in protest Sept. 23 against the patent lunacy going on in the Oakville Trafalgar High School in Ontario. Some schools, and especially some school boards all over the continent, are increasingly becoming highlighted for their furious embrace of “diversity, identity, and so-called inclusion”—an embrace that in the more ideologically driven arenas has assumed a dangerous priority over the process of education itself. It is very difficult, in fact impossible from a common-sense angle, to disagree with the sentiments voiced by the protesting parents: “It’s just wrong. It’s gone too far. Students have a dress code to abide by. Why should the teachers not?” As it is equally impossible to refute the claim made by one student who spoke at the protest as reported by the Burlington Post: “I thought teachers were supposed to set the example for the students, not the other way around.” Good for him for saying the inescapably obvious. While it is not surprising the administration of Trafalgar High School have been solemnly reticent (apart from the usual soft woke pieties about inclusion and diversity and safe spaces) on the huge controversy over the shop teacher with the massive prosthetic breasts, it is or rather should be surprising that as far as I can tell, no teachers, either in the Trafalgar school or across the whole Halton board, have deemed it worth their time to say something. I have been given to believe that teachers regard what they do as something more than a mere job, something close to a vocation. The voices of practising teachers would add a most needed dimension to this uproar, but I suppose in an era of political correctness teachers, in the main, sadly like to stay firmly behind the scenes when a storm breaks. It would be quite wonderful to hear, even second-hand, what the staff of Trafalgar had to say in the teachers’ common room when their colleague first appeared in the school geared up in gigantic artificial breasts and bicycle shorts. Did they all rush to congratulate him on his new “identity?” Or was there a collective staring-down at their shoes and embarrassed silence? Not incidentally I’d like to hear the reasoning behind conceding feminine pronouns to an obvious male when he, on some given day, merely “declares” he is a woman. I don’t mean from friends and acquaintances who can do what they like as a courtesy or a kindness. I mean officialdom, school offices, and in particular the media. What logical, biological, or philosophical justification can there be to accept a self-declaration as constituting a “right?” Is there any other identity one may assume by the simple act of saying: From today on I’m a doctor, or a pilot, or a … you choose. Added to that consideration is another: On what grounds does anyone know the “self-declarer” is actually telling the truth, that he, or she as the case may be, is “having you on” or simply lying to get attention? Here’s a shocker: Sometimes people lie to get attention. Only latterly have parents become alert to this mutation, alert to the more “activist” school boards and teachers who have assumed the right to indoctrinate their young charges in the latest obsessions and causes of the over-woke educationists. A quick run through the stories on the internet—mainstream publications shy away from this topic—easily reveals how these same teachers and boards arrogate to themselves the right to counsel kids on sexual behaviour, identity, bias and “whiteness,” and “privilege.” In some cases the practice goes so far as urging or ordering their students to keep parents uninformed, to maintain a silence on what goes on in school. It is absolutely outside the aims of education to politicize the classroom to preach the highly insalubrious doctrines of critical race theory and gender identification. The Oakville affair as I prefer to call it had some virtue in that the teacher who comes to school in outrageously oversized (and overweight—the prosthetic according to some accounts is 35 pounds!) synthetic mammaries is now a feature on news sites all over the world. This is all to the good, because finally there is a real challenge emerging to the dominance of woke ideology and its most fervent evangelists in schools, governments, corporations, and politics. This saga provides such an extravagant illustration how common sense is throttled when these policies are allowed full play that now—maybe—their arrogant and righteous proponents may have to argue for them in the public eye. This would be a very good thing. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Follow Rex Murphy is an author and columnist, and a former CBC Television and CBC Radio host.
Udumbara
Commentary
It was encouraging to see some parents—and students—come out in protest Sept. 23 against the patent lunacy going on in the Oakville Trafalgar High School in Ontario. Some schools, and especially some school boards all over the continent, are increasingly becoming highlighted for their furious embrace of “diversity, identity, and so-called inclusion”—an embrace that in the more ideologically driven arenas has assumed a dangerous priority over the process of education itself.
It is very difficult, in fact impossible from a common-sense angle, to disagree with the sentiments voiced by the protesting parents: “It’s just wrong. It’s gone too far. Students have a dress code to abide by. Why should the teachers not?” As it is equally impossible to refute the claim made by one student who spoke at the protest as reported by the Burlington Post: “I thought teachers were supposed to set the example for the students, not the other way around.”
Good for him for saying the inescapably obvious.
While it is not surprising the administration of Trafalgar High School have been solemnly reticent (apart from the usual soft woke pieties about inclusion and diversity and safe spaces) on the huge controversy over the shop teacher with the massive prosthetic breasts, it is or rather should be surprising that as far as I can tell, no teachers, either in the Trafalgar school or across the whole Halton board, have deemed it worth their time to say something.
I have been given to believe that teachers regard what they do as something more than a mere job, something close to a vocation. The voices of practising teachers would add a most needed dimension to this uproar, but I suppose in an era of political correctness teachers, in the main, sadly like to stay firmly behind the scenes when a storm breaks.
It would be quite wonderful to hear, even second-hand, what the staff of Trafalgar had to say in the teachers’ common room when their colleague first appeared in the school geared up in gigantic artificial breasts and bicycle shorts. Did they all rush to congratulate him on his new “identity?” Or was there a collective staring-down at their shoes and embarrassed silence?
Not incidentally I’d like to hear the reasoning behind conceding feminine pronouns to an obvious male when he, on some given day, merely “declares” he is a woman. I don’t mean from friends and acquaintances who can do what they like as a courtesy or a kindness. I mean officialdom, school offices, and in particular the media.
What logical, biological, or philosophical justification can there be to accept a self-declaration as constituting a “right?” Is there any other identity one may assume by the simple act of saying: From today on I’m a doctor, or a pilot, or a … you choose. Added to that consideration is another: On what grounds does anyone know the “self-declarer” is actually telling the truth, that he, or she as the case may be, is “having you on” or simply lying to get attention? Here’s a shocker: Sometimes people lie to get attention.
Only latterly have parents become alert to this mutation, alert to the more “activist” school boards and teachers who have assumed the right to indoctrinate their young charges in the latest obsessions and causes of the over-woke educationists. A quick run through the stories on the internet—mainstream publications shy away from this topic—easily reveals how these same teachers and boards arrogate to themselves the right to counsel kids on sexual behaviour, identity, bias and “whiteness,” and “privilege.” In some cases the practice goes so far as urging or ordering their students to keep parents uninformed, to maintain a silence on what goes on in school.
It is absolutely outside the aims of education to politicize the classroom to preach the highly insalubrious doctrines of critical race theory and gender identification.
The Oakville affair as I prefer to call it had some virtue in that the teacher who comes to school in outrageously oversized (and overweight—the prosthetic according to some accounts is 35 pounds!) synthetic mammaries is now a feature on news sites all over the world.
This is all to the good, because finally there is a real challenge emerging to the dominance of woke ideology and its most fervent evangelists in schools, governments, corporations, and politics. This saga provides such an extravagant illustration how common sense is throttled when these policies are allowed full play that now—maybe—their arrogant and righteous proponents may have to argue for them in the public eye.
This would be a very good thing.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
