When the Alberta government tabled Bill 25 last week, they made much ado about "bias" in the classroom - complaining that teachers were "telling students what to think", and engaging in "ideology". Anytime a politician starts yammering on about "those guys are engaging in ideology", you should be suspicious. When it's a UCP politician, we should absolutely suspect that this is far more insidious.
The first clue about where they are going with Bill 25 comes with their rewrite of S61 of The Education Act, where in S61(2), they stipulate "... no flag other than a flag referred to in subsection (1) is displayed at a school ...". Of course, S61(1) names only the national flag of Canada, and the provincial flag of Alberta. This one is pretty obvious - the Christofascist right has been whining about Pride flags for years now, and it's hard to see this rewrite of S61 as nothing more than part of a plan to erase Pride from schools.
Which brings us to the first real objective of this bill: this bill is about erasing 2SLGBTQ representation and voices from Alberta schools. Let's be clear, along with the Christofascist right, the UCP regularly throws around language about "Gender Ideology" - so even the title of the bill implies certain things about the real goal of this legislation. Just like the book ban, which was designed and targeted against 2SLGBTQ oriented books, this is another piece of the UCP's campaign to erase voices that the UCP doesn't like.
The second major clue comes in the UCP's use of the word "neutral". Notice that they don't choose language like "objective", or "evidence-based" to provide this guidance. Neutral isn't really "neutral" here - this is coded language for "both sides". Demanding that "both sides" be presented means that even where one "position" has little or no validity.
"Both sides" is a weapon - it's a tool that the GOP and Conservatives in Canada have used to pollute the media landscape. If they see a story they don't like, they whine incessantly about "media bias", demanding that their perspective be given equal time - no matter how utterly ridiculous that perspective might be.
Let's look at this for a moment. The best science we have is solidly oriented around Evolution as a working Scientific Theory for explaining the development of life on Earth. Now, on the "other side" of that is any number of magical explanations, including Creationism, Intelligent Design, and so on. The latter have no basis in science for a number of reasons - regardless of what proponents might claim. The UCP's demand for "neutrality" could well result in a science teacher having to present Creationism as if it were equivalent to Evolution, in spite of the scientific consensus being quite clear that they are not "equivalent". That's the kind of ridiculous situation which this "neutrality" language can lead to.
The bigger question becomes "who decides what is neutral"? Well, it turns out that Bill 25 is a great big sop to the "Parental Rights" crowd. Lurking in it are all kinds of clauses that place parents (whether or not they are qualified as educators) in the position of driving decisions that school boards make. Then there is the rewrite of S18.1(4), which reads:
(4) Neither subsection (2) nor (3) applies where the learning and teaching resources are used or provided to provide religious instruction.
Yeah - another one of those huge carve-outs that allow for all kinds of crap to be slid in - as long as the people doing so declare that it's "religious". You'll pardon my skepticism here, but I've enough hateful garbage be protected by the claim that it's "religious" that I personally see such clauses as little more than a carve-out for hatred.
There are so many places where the government can simply ban a topic by updating whatever "regulation" they attach to this law down the road. If the government decides that talking about a topic in social studies is "inappropriate", they just add it to the regulation - slam - bam - suddenly you can't talk about it. Don't like feminism? Cool, it can be banned from discussion in class with the stroke of a pen. Think that it's "too controversial" whether or not the US landed people on the moon? No problem, just declare it in the regulation.
So much of Bill 25 isn't about "neutrality" - it's about silencing voices. It's Alberta's version of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" laws - only Alberta has broadened considerably, and has now placed the Minister of Education in a position where he gets to decide what topics are to be banned. For a party of "small government" and "personal freedom", the UCP is heading rapidly down a path which will create a government that has its nose in every aspect of your life so that you don't make _THEIR_ base uncomfortable.
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