Parkdale Collegiate administration said the decision was made to align with a provincial directive to avoid political biases in the classroom.
  • SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works
    11·
    2 days ago

    I’m having trouble opening the article without popups but I’d be interested to hear what the school says to justify the censorship, if they even take responsibility at all

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      5·
      22 hours ago

      what a fucking shitty website.

      Here you go:

      https://archive.is/vzkoB

      Back in March, Grade 12 students at Parkdale CI sent in senior quotes for the school’s yearbook. But when some students submitted “Free Palestine” and “Free Tibet” as their quotes, graduating Grade 12 student Remi Ajao-Russell said they were rejected. “Free Tibet” is associated with a political movement pushing for Tibet’s independence from China. The movement is supported by the Canadian government, with Parliament passing a motion in 2024 unanimously recognizing Tibetans’ right to self-determination.

      “Our principal was not pleased with that,” Ajao-Russell said. “So she requested that they be removed and that those students pick another quote.”

      While Ajao-Russell was not one of the students to submit these quotes they said some of their friends were and later asked for a meeting with the principal. At that meeting, Ajao-Russell said their friends said the principal gave students a list of approved quotes like “Palestine for Palestinians” and “I love Tibet.”

      “Nothing that had any sort of quote unquote revolutionary spirit behind it,” Ajao-Russell said of the alternative quotes. Still, the students in the meeting agreed to use one of the new quotes. It wasn’t until these new quotes were later rejected and students held another “tense” meeting with the principal that the school decided to remove all Grade 12 quotes from the yearbook, said Ajao-Russell.

      In an email sent to Parkdale CI staff and Grade 12 students at the end of April that was shared with the Star, school administrators said the decision came after “careful discussions” with senior members of Toronto District School Board and the TDSB’s human rights, legal and communications departments.

      “In the interest of fairness, no grad comments will be included in this year’s yearbook,” the email reads. “The space originally designated for comments will remain blank and we will provide students time before graduation to sign and leave messages in each other’s yearbooks in that blank space.”

      Administrators pointed to a September 2024 directive from the provincial Ministry of Education as part of its reasoning. That directive states that people are not allowed to “disseminate political biases into our classrooms” to avoid enabling “inflammatory, discriminatory and hateful content.”

      “By taking this route,” administrators wrote in their email to students and staff, “we aim to balance students’ freedom of expression with our responsibility to adhere to the Ministry’s position.”

      Administrators added that they recognize the ministry’s directive “may disproportionately impact equity-seeking groups.” The school email also said it was “not the first school to make this decision,” and that administrators believed their approach may become more common in the future. TDSB spokesperson Emma Moynihan did not say whether other schools had decided to remove their grad quotes when asked by the Star.