Students being offended by Lisa Thompson’s comments just as they should be. While the MoEd suggests that students were put up to the April 4th demonstrations, lets not for one moment lose sight of the fact that it is most likely that Thompson’s comments are simply a parroting of Doug Ford’s vitriolic language. Language that will be remembered just as his gross and profound betrayal of the people of Ontario will be remebered.
April 5, 2019 11:29am
Area students are offended by suggestions by the province’s Education Minister that teachers put them up to yesterday’s walk out.
In a release, Lisa Thompson called the walkouts a “stunt” and accused teachers of “enabling students to skip classes.” She also said in the release, “even when students are in class, too many teachers are choosing to use students as a captive audience for their union’s political agenda”.
Student senator for Walkerton District Community School, Moira Robertson, says she’s angry.
“The comment made it sound as though (we) as youth are unable to make these decisions on our own and we could only possibly have organized 100,000 of us to walk out yesterday if we had some kind of persuasion from teachers.”
The teachers were aware the protests were being planned, as Robertson put it, “because they don’t live under rocks.” But, she says at no time did they make comments during class.
“They obviously could not stop us but they also couldn’t encourage us and they didn’t. There was no encouragement from teachers. It was all done on student time, after hours, during our lunch breaks.”
She says she spent a lot of time communicating with other organizers across the province on social media and also in meetings.
“There were meetings with me and other students organizers…at my school and I also worked with some students from (Sacred Heart High School) in Walkerton so there were meetings that happened there. There were a lot of phone calls. There were a lot of emails that were sent out to media. There were obviously meetings that I had to have with administrators.”
Some school boards sent notes home to parents advising them of the pending student action but Robertson says her school did not with the exception of students in grades 7 and 8 that wanted to participate. She says they had to get permission slips from parents to leave class.
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