The “gender wars”, as they are being called, have become the most contentious front in the culture conflict, and they are being fought in our schools every day.

The National Post just published a long feature outlining just how these conflicts are playing out that is well worth your time

The feature gathers the stories of 10 parents whose children have experienced gender confusion, relating in chilling detail how culpable some educators have been in actively keeping the children’s parents in the dark about “social transition” procedures happening at schools.

“’It put a wedge in our ability to communicate and made our child feel like we were indeed unsafe. There are authority figures basically telling kids you should keep this from your parents’”

            -“Robin”, parent interviewed for National Post article

 The transitioning at school starts with the child using a different name, new personal pronouns, or sometimes a different bathroom. Parents consulted in the article claimed that board policies “undermined their children’s well-being, destabilized the family, and alienated them from their children”.

How can this happen?

One reason is that many school boards in Ontario, including some of the province’s largest, have policies that require obtaining the child’s permission before informing parents that their child has begun transitioning at school!

The Toronto District School Board, York Region District School Board, and the Thames Valley District School Board all have policies citing Ontario’s Human Rights Code for rules that keep parents out of the loop, all for the child’s purported “protection and privacy”.

The Hamilton Wentworth District School Board “permits children as young as kindergarten to make these decisions”, having a plan in place for students aged 4-12 who request a change of names and personal pronouns.

How does a child in kindergarten even know what a pronoun is?

And what is Ontario’s “conservative” government’s Ministry of Education saying about all this? Disappointingly, just a word salad that encourages parents to be “fully involved and engaged” at the school board level, while also revealing that “(they) are not making any legislative changes”

“I just felt completely blindsided when I found out…that literally everybody in her life knew about it except for me.”

             -“Theresa”, parent interviewed for National Post article

Ontario’s parents deserve better. So do their children.

Schools should be helping children build stronger relationships with their parents, not withholding information on something as critical as a child’s struggle with gender confusion.

Premier Ford would do well to heed the Angus Reid survey that shows nearly four-fifths of Canadians believe parents should be informed of any social transition steps being pursued at school.

He should follow the example of government leadership in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, all of which have taken measures to honour the essential right of parents to know what’s happening at school with their children.

We must keep up the pressure at every level of government, especially school boards, so that Doug Ford, and everyone else, get the message that protecting the rights of children and their parents isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also a political winner, regardless of what the unhinged radical minority says.