'Passive' Pride protest a missed opportunity to teach inclusion, educators say
When the school curriculum challenged their beliefs, some Muslim parents kept their kids home
On June 1, a Thursday, teachers and administrators at several public elementary schools in Ottawa noticed a steep and sudden drop in attendance.
Nine schools within the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board reported at least 40 per cent of their students absent that morning. At two schools, 60 per cent of students stayed home. (The normal rate of absenteeism within the board is between 10 and 20 per cent.)
"It was an absence that was felt across the schoolyard," one teacher told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning earlier this week.
Among the parents who explained why their children skipped school, some blamed a heat warning that was in effect that day.
Others said they were keeping their children home because June 1 marked the start of Pride Month, and they didn't want their kids participating in any activities associated with the celebration of LGBTQ rights and achievements.
"Many students and teachers were in shock," said the teacher, whose identity CBC has agreed to keep confidential because they fear that speaking out could harm their career. "The consequences of this protest were felt in more profound ways, especially for students who are part of the LGBTQ community."
Rainbow club scaled back plans
According to the teacher, the school's rainbow club decided to scale back their activities as a result of the walkout, and because some of its members said they suddenly felt unsafe.
"Hearing that any child feels unsafe at school is very upsetting," said the teacher, who marked the day by reading to the children who did attend from a book about a red crayon that can only colour in blue.
"It's the story of the crayon's journey of learning to accept themselves for who they are and its interactions with people in the world who make assumptions about them," the teacher said.
It was, in the teacher's view, an apt illustration of the central themes of Pride Month.
"I think there's a certain amount of misinformation about what the intention of teachers is. There might be some fear … that we're trying to change who people are, but that's not the case. We're really just trying to build tolerance and acceptance."
According to the teacher, parents who viewed keeping their kids home as a harmless act of passive protest failed to grasp the full impact of the gesture.
"Removing yourself from school is sending a signal that is not passive — at least not passively felt by the students and staff who are part of the LGBTQ community or supportive of the LGBTQ community," the teacher said. "What was communicated to them through that absence was, we don't support you, we don't tolerate you."
Many Muslim students stayed home
Among the parents who decided to keep their kids home from school on June 1 were many Muslims, according to Sikander Hashmi, imam of the Kanata Muslim Association and a member of an OCDSB working group seeking a solution to the impasse.
"This situation has been cooking for some time," Hashmi told Ottawa Morning.
The choice to not participate is not an act of hate and discrimination.- Sikander Hashmi, Kanata Muslim Association
Hashmi said he, too, was surprised by the sheer volume of absenteeism on June 1, but he cautioned against making assumptions about the motivation behind the protest.
"The assumption normally is that the moment someone says something about Pride that it's coming from a place of hate, and I want people to understand that that is not the case for many of these parents," he said.
"The parents are raising concerns about beliefs and practices that they believe do not align with their own beliefs, and therefore they are concerned that their children are not just being educated about these things, but rather they're being pushed to accept them as being correct."
Controversial pamphlet
Hasmi said many Muslims are growing tired of being told they need to accept "beliefs and practices" that differ from their own, "and if they don't then they are wrong, and in some cases we've heard teachers telling students that they're not Canadian, they don't belong in Canada, that they shouldn't be coming to a public school."
Hashmi described one incident at a school in Kanata where a teacher responded to students who expressed reservations about that day's Pride-themed lesson by printing copies of a pamphlet titled "I'm Muslim and I might not be straight" and distributing them to the class.
(The pamphlet has since been removed from a list of resources for LGBTQ students on the school board's website. According to the OCDSB, the decision to remove it was "based on feedback received from this community expressing they felt specifically singled out with the posting of this link.")
According to Hashmi, the school board gave families that expressed concerns about Pride-themed activities little choice when it told them there'd be no opting out of the mandated lessons. Faced with a choice between compromising their religious beliefs and keeping their kids home, they kept their kids home.
"This was about human rights and they had no choice in the matter," he said. "To me, that's a pretty passive protest."
Hashmi said he's dismayed to hear that some students and teachers may have perceived the protest as an act of discrimination, and said it would be no different if the tables were turned.
"If there's a Ramadan activity taking place in the school and there's a group of students who don't feel comfortable participating in that, then so be it," he said. "The choice to not participate is not an act of hate and discrimination."
A teaching moment?
OCDSB chair Lyra Evans disagrees with that assessment, however.
"If we had 70 per cent of students opt out of Ramadan events, I think there would be the school board standing up to defend the rights of Muslim students and making sure that all of our students understand why this is culturally important," Evans told Ottawa Morning.
"I don't think that we would see people just sort of passively accepting [it]. We would see outrage, and I think that outrage would be justified."
I think the community would feel like it was a betrayal by the school board to tone down education around Pride.- Lyra Evans, OCDSB chair
Evans, the first openly transgender school trustee in Canada, believes that while parents have every right to keep their children home, they're depriving them of an important learning opportunity.
"People who choose to opt out of human rights-related criteria are doing a disservice to their children because they're not adequately allowing their child to be prepared for the realities of the world around them," Evans said.
"We also recognize that we cannot meet the asks of some of these parent groups, because if the ask is that you not teach LGBTQ content, well, that's not an option. Sexual orientation is covered in the Grade 5 curriculum and we can't pull that from the curriculum, that's not a power we have."
Nor is "toning down" the Pride-themed curriculum to suit the religious beliefs of some students a reasonable solution, Evans argued.
"The LGBTQ community spent decades fighting to not be in the closet. I think the community would feel like it was a betrayal by the school board to tone down education around Pride," she said. "There were murders. There are still hate crimes in Ottawa against LGBTQ people, and Pride is supposed to be a celebration of how far we have come and a recognition that we have work yet to do."
Both sides of the debate say they vow to carry on with that work, both through the board's working group and in other, less formal settings. Following their appearance on Ottawa Morning, Evans and Hashmi left together to continue the conversation.
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