Classroom chill in Alberta

Cop-out clause for sexuality class extends to literature.

by Gillian Steward

For more than a year now, parents in Alberta have had the right to compel a teacher to defend herself before a human rights tribunal for discussing topics such as gay marriage or aboriginal spirituality in the classroom.

So far, no formal complaints have made their way through the HRC labyrinth. But that doesn’t mean that this highly controversial legislation isn’t having an impact in the classroom, especially in high schools.

It’s caused quite a chill — reluctance on the part of many teachers to include anything in the curriculum that might upset a parent and provide the basis for a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

Like most teachers, Dale Wallace, former head of the English literature department at Calgary’s Lord Beaverbrook High School, was vehemently opposed to the legislation when it was first proposed, even though literature courses weren’t supposed to be the target.

In fact, the government assured teachers that the legislation would not affect literature courses. It was intended for other parts of the curriculum and designed to give parents the right to take their children out of the classroom when such topics as human sexuality, sexual orientation or religion were being studied or discussed.

After the government adopted the new rules in 2010, the provincial education department flagged those particular courses — including aboriginal studies, world religions and career and life management (sexuality) — as requiring teachers to notify parents before one of the touchy topics was to be raised in case they wanted their children excluded.

If students do opt out it is then up to the teacher to organize an alternative lesson for them.

Wallace maintains that even before the new legislation was in effect parents started to complain about certain books and movies that they found objectionable.

Two parents objected to a fleeting shot of a woman’s exposed breast in the movie Into the Wild, which was shown to Grade 11 students who were studying the book of the same name.

The teacher eventually had a letter of reprimand placed in his file and Wallace as department head was compelled to review with all the English teachers the department’s policy of showing movies with “questionable content.”

“Teachers started to change how they taught, with English teachers realizing they’d have to send letters home for almost any literature they studied. The quality of English education started to fall — and has continued to fall in the two years since (the legislation was passed),” Wallace writes in a recent issue of Alberta Views Magazine.

Wallace asserts that it’s almost impossible to teach high-school English literature that doesn’t have references to sex, homosexuality or religion. Canterbury Tales has a religious theme; The Merchant of Venice includes homosexuality; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has sexual content as does Timothy Findley’s The Wars.

“As a result, challenging novels such as 1984 are replaced with safer ones, like Pride and Prejudice… provocative, thoughtful films such as Apocalypse Now are replaced by films with different themes altogether, like Cast Away,” Wallace says.

Of course, some parents objected to curriculum topics or materials long before this legislation. And parents have always had the right to withdraw their children from certain instruction. But this law goes much further. It means teachers might have to defend themselves before a human rights tribunal.

So who wanted this legislation? The real push for it came from Christian social conservatives led by former PC cabinet minister Ted Morton. During the provincial PC leadership campaign in 2006, Morton had vigorously campaigned against gay marriage and at one point lobbied for a bill that would disallow any teaching about marriage to include same-sex marriage.

After he lost the leadership race and was appointed to cabinet, he took up this cause and drove quite a wedge into the PC caucus

In the end, the Stelmach government decided to appease rural MLAs, many of whom supported the opt-out provisions even though the Alberta Association of School Trustees, teacher unions, and student associations vigorously opposed them.

Premier Alison Redford has hinted that she might reconsider the legislation. But so far nothing has changed.

In the meantime, as a new school year gets underway, high-school students can expect ever more bland books and movies for their English courses and only “safe” topics in other courses.

A sure recipe for boredom.

© Copyright 2012 Gillian Steward, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca