EMSB will comply with Bill 21
No surprise here: the EMSB will comply with Bill 21 and exclude teachers who wear visible signs of their beliefs.
In related news, Quebec says parents can’t pull their kids out of classes in which the teacher is wearing a religious symbol, which in this case – as it overwhelmingly does – means a hijab. Fifty parents signed an open letter in Le Devoir demanding the right to a strictly secular school. (It’s interesting that some of the signatories are people likely to have come from majority-Muslim countries.)
Glancing at the CSDM site, I see that some of these students will be going to École Christ‑Roi, École Coeur‑Immaculé‑de‑Marie, any of five Notre‑Dame‑de‑ci‑et‑de‑ça, and an entire litany of saints from Saint‑Albert‑le‑Grand to Saint‑Zotique. But that’s not a problem.
Update Thursday: This piece clarifies that the EMSB chose not to vote on the issue, thus passively assenting to the law.
Jack 06:08 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Our School Boards are utterly irrelevant, abolish them.
If they can not defend community members from a law that openly discriminates, what kind of message can they conceivably convey to children about discrimination and racism.
They cared more about their pitiful station and pay cheques than they did about individuals who will now be subject to a law that for all intents and purposes polices what one can wear or cant. I worked for these institutions for thirty years and trust me that last thing almost all these apparatchiks ever thought of was your kids in the classroom. Most had never taught or if they had, a school board appointment meant getting out of the classroom.
Angela Mancini, the chairperson and her commissioners demonstrated a lack of courage that will be remembered for a long time. This is a sad day.
Chris 09:27 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
>It’s interesting that some of the signatories are people likely to have come from majority-Muslim countries
Interesting, but not at all surprising. This was discussed back in the height of the Bill 21 debate[1]. It’s no surprise that some people that *left* Islamic theocracies should be happy to see less Islam. If you were forced to wear hijab against your will, like 10s of millions of people are today, then you too might not be too fond of them. Likewise friends and relative of such people.
The other religious signifiers, like kippahs or crucifixes, are less controversial precisely because there’s no place on earth that *forces* you to wear one.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-s-religious-symbols-ban-welcomed-by-some-who-left-muslim-countries-behind-1.5091277
Kate 09:53 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Chris, nobody here forces anyone to wear a headscarf, so the issue is not the same.
Chris 10:23 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Kate, nobody here is forced, obviously. I was replying (and quoted) your part about “people likely to have come from majority-Muslim countries”. Many of them were forced. You don’t see how that could make some of them support 21 and sign the open letter?
Mark Côté 10:25 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
The school boards, or at least the EMSB (not sure about the others), did put up at least something of a fight against Bill 21. How would it be better if the government that *passed* the legislation was administering the schools directly?
Blork 10:41 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Hey, this is me siding with Chris. Take a screenshot; it might not last. 🙂
Chris, I think your point is that Canadians originally from countries where the wearing of hijab/naquib is enforced (either legally or culturally) are the likely to be vocal in opposing the wearing of hijabs. This is a natural reaction, and is similar to people from the former Soviet countries who came to the west and became very right wing and anti-government because they felt burned by living under an omnipresent and repressive government boot.
It’s an interesting observation, but I would counter that there is a strong bias in place that needs to be factored in, so I don’t think those opinions come from a place of insight and clarity. It’s more a reflex against a past injury, and is probably driven more by emotion than logic.
And as Kate says, it’s not like Bill 21 is forcing anyone to wear something, so it’s a separate argument. But Chris’s point is still useful for understanding the discussion and understanding why people who have lived under forced hijabbery (hey, I think I just coined that!) might be among the loudest supporters of Bill 21. However, it is a logical fallacy at heart (I’m not sure which one… deficits fallacy maybe?) because they are separate issues but under the same umbrella. And given that we live in a world that is more and more governed by emotion than logic, we can’t just dismiss it.
Kate 12:57 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Arguably, Bill 21 comes from a similar impulse, from Quebec’s memory of being dominated by the Catholic church. But now the feelings are softened somewhat to sentimentality, so that crosses and saints’ names can be forgiven as cultural trappings, while alien sights like hijabs and shtreimels don’t have that glow around them.
Michael Black 14:44 on 2019-08-29 Permalink
Oddly, I think we have as much obligation to people who want to wear religious symbols as those who want to get away from tyem.
We gave Malala honorary citizenshio, but we also let that young woman from Saudi Arabia come here when she wanted to get away from strict religion. There’s nothing contradictory in either act, both are about recognizing what they choose. That family that killed their daughters for being “too western” were tried, but we should give the same protection to woman who wear a hijab.
We worry too much that people wearing such things are strict etc. I used to think that, then saw better. So that nurse last week could enjoy a joke, and certainly wasn’t trying to isolate herself from the world.
I recently saw some photos of Syilx women with incredibly long and thick braids. That’s cultural, but not really different from women who wear hijabs. But in the past, those women probably would have been told or coerced to cut their hair. Men were in the same situation. “Honor the ancestors” I think is as much because others tried to take that long hair away as some cultural thing. I can have long hair since I was 11 years old, sadly most of it came out this year, because I’m white. Yet I just barely lost the hair genes, so I’m the first without black straight hair, and never as thick as the cousins. But in retrospect it was inadvertently bold, and the loss is doubly so since I’ve lost my familiar hair and now see it as a cultural loss.
I now see the Gazette story today, which explains that by not voting the EMSB defaulted to provisional rules, whuch explains why the CBC story last night said they didn’t vote, which at the time I thougt just meant a postponement. But no meeting before schools go.back on Tuesday, so they caved in.
Michael