PEW: Transforming children as critical theory takes over Canadian schools

James Pew is the publisher of Woke Watch Canada, a contributing author of the best-selling book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) and a contributing writer to several Canadian journals and independent media.Annie Ohana is an acclaimed educator at L.A. Matheson Secondary School in Surrey, B.C. In 2023 she was a finalist for the Global Teacher Prize. Unfortunately, this has little to do with Ohana’s ability to teach academics..Several months ago, images from the inside of her classroom came to light, revealing her pedagogical approach to have a transparently far-left political bias. Legacy media portrayed the resulting public concern and pushback as bullying and personal attacks against Ohana.The National Post’s Jamie Sarkonak, however, pointed out the following about Ohana’s classroom: “There’s a Palestinian flag, but no Israel flag is visible. There are progress pride flags but no thin blue line flag. There are denunciations of colonialism but no posters honouring Sir John A. Macdonald or Queen Elizabeth II. There’s a Canadian flag — over which the text, ‘No pride in genocide’, is printed.”Ohana is, unfortunately, far from unique in her approach. Teacher training programs, like the kind offered at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), have been tilting toward left-of-liberal identity politics for years. OISE’s influence can be seen (and felt) nationally. It is considered a world leader in education and education research, this year being ranked the world’s 8th-best educational institution by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject.The OISE is a full-throated practitioner and advocate of critical social justice theory for education. At its simplest, critical theory — and offshoots such as critical race theory — is a neo-Marxist method of analyzing society which attempts to reveal, critique and challenge its (alleged) power structures. It is a negatively skewed radical critique and opposition to the foundational institutions of society, such as capitalism, liberalism, the Western Canon of art and literature, the Christian Church, the nuclear family, etc.Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire is often cited as the founder of what became critical theory’s teaching methodology: critical pedagogy. In his influential 1970 best-seller, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire proclaimed that, “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.”Fast-forward 50 years and critical pedagogy is nested in Canada. In an email exchange with a Toronto-based academic (PhD in History) who publishes his research under the pseudonym Mr. M, I asked for his take. “In educational studies, there is a clear understanding that radical pedagogy is in an ascendant position, with the potential to eclipse traditional liberal teaching,” Mr. M wrote. “Indeed, the fact that this educational transfiguration has already occurred, and has been occurring for generations, is a matter of consensus for education theorists across political aisles.”Stephen Reich is a Toronto-based researcher and currently a doctoral student at OISE, unique in his willingness to openly take on critical theory right in the lion’s den. Reich’s Master’s thesis, Does Ontario’s Ministry of Education Promote Critical Theory in K-12 Education? argues that critical pedagogy is a flawed approach ill-suited to Canadian education. According to Reich, “It has no place in the classrooms of our country.”Running afoul of critical pedagogy is dangerous. Last year, Abbotsford, B.C. teacher Jim McMurtry was fired for discussing Indian Residential Schools outside of the critical framework. McMurtry, who has a PhD in Education and Indigenous History, plus 40 years of teaching experience, was ousted for relaying historically factual information that diverged from the required genocide narrative.Two years earlier, Cheryl Gould, another teacher with a glowing record, was fired from her Catholic school in Toronto for satirically critiquing diversity, equity and inclusion, gender ideology and critical race theory on her own time on social media.Among the social justice paradigm’s underlying premises is that the activism (praxis) of critical social justice liberates the mind from false consciousness (being ignorant of oppression). Anyone who disagrees is simply said to have false consciousness.Mona Moftakhar, according to her X profile, is a Toronto District School Board “Vice Principal/Former Special Education Inclusion Consultant” and an “Equity-Centred Educator.” Her posts include discussions about immersing Grade 2 students “in dialogue around identity, representation, social justice and activism, while cultivating their critical consciousness, so they see themselves as agents of change.” In other words, as Freire’s transformers of the world.In other images Moftakhar posted to X, Grade 3 students at the Peel District School Board are asked, “What does the word privilege mean?” Two examples of apparent student responses hung on the classroom walls are telling. The first one reads: “privlege (sic) means when something is easier like white People have more privlege (sic) than black” (sic). The other child’s sentiment is similar: “Privilege Means When someone is easyer (sic) for someone else for exempal (sic) someone is white” (sic).It is high time for parents, students and concerned citizens to demand some accountability from the education leaders who push critical pedagogy and its related social justice theories, and the political leaders who refuse to push back against this radical movement.The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal. James Pew is the publisher of Woke Watch Canada, a contributing author of the best-selling book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), and a contributing writer to several Canadian journals and independent media.

PEW: Transforming children as critical theory takes over Canadian schools

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