To the editor;
Re: “Social justice as student indoctrination,” B.C. Views, CloverdaleReporter.com.
I have a suspicion that no one bemoans the latest election loss of the B.C. NDP more than Tom Fletcher.
Had the NDP won, Mr. Fletcher would never have run out of hot topics to discuss. At present, however, Mr. Fletcher must be truly at loss, running out of material faster than a December day out of sunlight.
Looking at his latest column dedicated to the BCTF and its evils, the poor man is seen reduced to trolling old news and stale stories stuck on the BCTF website and in the memory of former education ministers. Mr. Fletcher agrees that “racism, homophobia and sexism” are within the purview of the BCTF while “poverty and globalization” can’t be possibly the topics a major education organization can be involved in.
This is interesting. Although the BCTF’s statistics might be suspect, existence of child poverty in Canada is hardly in dispute.
While Mr. Fletcher is not enthused by the BCTF’s efforts to teach 8-year-olds basic lessons in compassion by encouraging donations to local food banks, he is outright indignant at the prospect of children’s exploring possible reasons behind the existence of poverty, especially if those are “taken directly from the tired old NDP policy book.”
To the utter amazement of Mr. Fletcher, a stale teaching guide “Boycott Nike” is still hanging on the BCTF website.
Don’t they know that it is not only Nike, but Adidas, Reebok and Apple who are also susceptible to the low cost pleasures of third world sweatshops? After all, if you are not the only one behaving unethically, then you are clearly entitled to impunity? “If others do it why can’t I?” This is how Mr. Fletcher dispenses with any possible misdeeds perpetrated by multinational corporations around the world. This is a very persuasive point on Mr. Fletcher’s part.
The most amusing bit is found at the very end of the Mr. Fletcher’s article where he resorts to mining wisdom from none other than George Orwell, the very man, who is well-known for being a democratic socialist, a fighter for social justice, and an advocate for economic equality (i.e. redistribution of incomes) – the very worldviews that are so abhorrent to Mr. Fletcher.
Alex Posoukh
Surrey
