Teachers try to cancel Trustees.

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Feb 21

RE: Teacher’s Union Calls on Trustees to Resign.  Hamilton Spectator 13 Feb 21.  The executive of the Hamilton Wentworth District Elementary Teachers Union called on the School Trustees accused of impure thoughts to resign.  There’s an old Arab saying, that a sick camel draws fleas.  The union executive is just piling on, and we can’t eliminate careerism and personal advancement from among their considerations for speaking out.

The right of free speech is deeply imbedded in Canadian law.  While the right is enshrined in the Charter, it is also in Common Law.  People have to be allowed to say what they think for civil discourse to proceed at all.  Given the importance of free speech in political affairs, the right of free speech is especially protected among elected representatives.  What is the point of representation if the representative can’t say what his constituents actually think, warts and all?

Consequently, it is deeply offense for the Teacher’s Union executive to call upon School Trustees to resign because of what the Trustees might have said among themselves.  As educated people, the Teachers ought to know better.  But let’s put the shoe on the other foot and see how it fits.

The executive of the Teacher’s Union ought to be fired for insubordination and improper interference in democratic representation.  Then, the members of the union should be examined for Marxist-Anarchist-Nihilist sympathies, and if so found either re-educated or fired.  Teachers instruct impressionable students, and they can’t indoctrinate or pollute the minds of the next generation with poisonous ideas.  The Trustees were talking to other adults; but teachers talk to young, impressionable minds.  The Trustees are harmless; let’s cancel the teachers instead.

I’m sure the outrage at such a proposal would be vociferous, among certain groups.  Others might smile.  But something like what I proposed be done to the union is what has been advocated for the Trustees and the Board.  And a better case can be made that the Teachers are Marxists than that the Trustees are racists.

Enough already!

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