Howard Levitt: Time to hold miscreants in education responsible for their actions

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It is firing time.

But what is unclear is whether it is not only teachers who should be fired but the entire management of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), too.

The TDSB has faced controversy before for seemingly tolerating intolerance toward the Jewish community. In May 2021, for example, material was circulated to teachers that an investigator later determined included content that was antisemitic. The board had even censured a Jewish trustee who raised concerns about those materials. Earlier this year, Jewish parents alleged they were denied the right to speak at a debate over the adoption of an anti-Palestinian racism policy.

But last week’s field trip fiasco brought things to a new plateau.

As widely reported, teachers from several TDSB schools obtained consent for children as young as eight years old to observe a march?in support of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, which suffers from mercury pollution. Parents were reassured in the consent form that the students would not be participating. They?were told to wear blue shirts.

Those blue shirts, most parents apparently only later discovered, identified the children as “colonizers” and “settlers.” And video clips from the rally shows that they did more than observe — they also marched, with some participating in anti-Israel chants such as “From Turtle Island (Canada) to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” ?Some of the kids reportedly returned home with stickers saying “Zionism kills.”

After the inevitable uproar when parents learned what happened on this supposedly innocuous field trip, the TDSB defended the program but mildly acknowledged “the harm that some students may have experienced” and offered to investigate.

Investigations, as readers know, especially by bodies such as TDSB, are intended to punt the problem to a friendly selected investigator, who will write the report the TDSB wants, and issue it so many months down the road that the issue will hopefully be forgotten. That, dear readers, is the Canadian investigation industry.

In this case, no such “investigation” is required. It is well known what occurred and who did what. The offenders should be asked what they did and why and, if they lie, that is yet another ground of dismissal for cause.

The TDSB’s tepid response was not good enough for Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “I think it’s disgraceful — you’re trying to indoctrinate our kids,” the premier complained. “Kids shouldn’t be at protests and should instead be in school learning math, spelling, geography and history.”

Or for Education Minister Jill Dunlop, who instructed her ministry to launch an expedited investigation of the TDSB’s failure to take swift and decisive action.

“Those responsible should be held accountable,” she warned.

That is where I come in.

What is a teacher’s role? To be a role model for students and to train them in ethical conduct, not to indoctrinate?them in?radical politics.

They are also in loco parentis, the trusted substitute during the school day for the parents themselves. Fundamentally, they have to be trusted. But that is not the role that too many of our public school educators are playing, one reason why parents are willing to shoulder the massive costs of sending children to private schools to avoid the TDSB’s?woke education.

To the point of this column, If a teacher so fundamentally violates their duties,?endangers students, ideologically and even physically, by having them march in an angry rally, that teacher should be discharged for cause. And it does not matter a whit that they are unionized and that their unions will defend them (legally they need not do so). The arbitration case law uniformly supports firing those who betray the trust of the most vulnerable among us, i.e. children. In short, the board would likely win its case.

But this board will not do this.

The province should conclude its investigation, put the TDSB under trusteeship and fire the teachers.

I would be pleased to represent any of these employers pro bono — even the TDSB, if it does the firing — if these teachers grieve. It is time to start holding the miscreants in education responsible for their actions.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.