Bill 44

Oh, God love Alberta. Alberta, like my sister and her country music, "brings the hick" to this place.

So, after staying up, like, WAY past their bedtime, the members of the Alberta legislature voted in, by a wide majority, Bill 44. Its mandate? To require teachers to notify parents, in writing, of upcoming lessons that will involve information about sex, sexual orientation, or religion. Then, if parents feel the content is objectionable, they are free to withdraw their children from that lesson.

...What the hell?

And, as a real kicker, this was all done under the auspices of the provincial charter of Human Rights. As in, parents have a human right to pull their kid from school. What kind of human right is that?

It was the Conservatives (big shocker right there) who pushed the bill through, so, naturally, it's the right-wing Christians who are largely its backer. They're afraid of controversy, of new information diluting their children's beliefs; their solution is to remove controversy from the curriculum by ensuring their precious children never have to hear anything that might shake the foundations of what "universal truths" mommy and daddy have already sown in their fertile young minds.

This is ridiculous, and I say that as a Christian. Christians have never been shy about controversy. The man we follow and call Saviour was nailed to a cross! Our whole religion is founded on controversy, so what's with the sudden revolt against it?

Some parents are happy about the bill for reasons other than their religious beliefs. They believe it is their responsibility to teach kids about sex, morality, etc. Frankly, they're wrong:
Teachers are held accountable for what they say. They follow a series of guiding principles, created by the Board, detailing what is and is not appropriate to say. If they do say something inappropriate, they say it to twenty-five sets of little ears, and you can bet some of those kids go home and yell, "Mom, guess what the teacher said today!" That's why teachers who want to keep their jobs can't say things like, "Jewish people are bad" or "Gays should burn in hell" or "All Christians are right-wing nutjobs". Parents, on the other hand, have no such check or balance in place against them. They may say even, fair-minded things to their kids anyway, but for the sake of children whose parents might tell them things I can't even say in a public forum, let's leave some of the teaching of these touchy subjects to a civil servant who won't be instructing their children on picketing funerals or denying the Holocaust.

Ignorance--it's the gift that keeps on giving!