An article about Canadian parental rights getting the back burner to gender diversity.
nationalpost.com/opinion/schools-trampling-parental-rights-in-the-name-of-gender-diversity
It would be easy to write off such incidents as anecdotal or isolated, but the schools were merely following official government guidance. The Alberta government’s guidelines state that protecting “a student’s personal information and privacy” is of paramount importance, including, “having a student’s explicit permission before disclosing information related to the student’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression to peers, parents, guardians or other adults in their lives.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) also advises schools to implement a “simple, one-stop procedure” for students to change their names and gender on official transcripts and not to “talk to anyone about (a student’s) identity, including parents/caregivers, to whom they have not already disclosed their gender identity.” Instead, staff are told to, “Discuss with them the possibility of rejection, harassment, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse.”
Withholding such information would make sense if there was good reason to believe that a parent might turn violent upon hearing the news that his or her child came out as transgender, but to make withholding information the default policy is a fundamental abrogation of parental rights. To then advise that children be warned about the possibility of being beaten or sexually abused after coming out as trans will only make it more likely that they will continue to hide such information from the people who love them most.
We understand the impulse to avoid situations in which a child may be put at risk because of information shared with a teacher or guidance counsellor. But the fact remains that in the vast majority of cases, parents have their children’s best interests at heart and are best placed to make decisions about their health and safety. Even parents who don’t initially react well generally come to “realize the child is the person they’ve always loved,” and end up having a positive effect on the child’s mental health and well-being, according to Dr. Margaret Lawson, head of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s gender identity clinic.
Instead, there have been cases in which schools have placed children in potentially risky situations. As one Ontario father told the Post, his then-transitioning daughter (who has since gone back to identifying as a girl) was assigned to a hotel room with three boys for an out-of-town field trip, which made her feel uncomfortable. Luckily, the father found out and was able to intervene.
This is part of a broader trend within our school systems to remove any discretion parents have over their children’s education and what happens to them outside of the home. Many provinces, for example, allow parents to opt-out of sexual education, but schools, on the advise of PHAC, are increasingly organizing “Gender Splendour” weeks, guest speakers and other extracurricular activities that bypass the sex-ed curriculum entirely.