There were a reported 300 plus emails sent to the school board to protest the handling of the Feb. 7 school board meeting.
Let me guess: this was an organized campaign by “moral high-grounders” against SOGI 123 and the content of some of the books in the school libraries and was not “natural outrage” by Chilliwack citizens?
This brings me to the question: why, when many of you campaigners probably send your children to your own religious private schools anyway, do you care so much that the public schools are trying to impart some of the better 21st- century values to their students?
Here are a few of my ideas. Maybe you simply feel that it’s your right to meddle as a taxpayer. Other reasons might be: that you want a “safe” school to send your child who has learning and/or behavioural problems that your school can’t handle; or that your child turns out to be very smart and needs a real education to qualify to get into a real academic field, but must not be “corrupted.” Or the family finances might tank and you won’t be able to afford private school fees anymore. Or, you really enjoy the ridiculous dream of having the power to mould and degrade the public schools into an imitation of your own church schools. I would caution you, however, to not draw too much attention to yourselves.
If paying taxes gives one permission to meddle, what about the idea that, if private schools accept public money, which is around 50 per cent per head, then their school boards should have half their seats up for open general elections? That could be interesting. Maybe a path to more modern beliefs, true science, loving tolerance towards others’ identities, the shrugging off of 2,000-year-old concepts of the world, and, eventually, the erosion of these private schools’ reason for being.
Be careful what you wish for.
Pauline Harms
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