BELLEVILLE, Ontario, February 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A poster campaign by an Ontario public school board advises its 15,000-or-so students that it is not appropriate for them to use words such as mother and father, husband and wife, or even Mr. and Mrs.
Instead, the Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board located in Belleville, Ontario, says that students should say “parents/guardians,” “partner or spouse,” and call adults by their first names rather than say “Mrs. Smith.”
The posters put up in the board's schools run the gamut of politically correct speech, from “gender inclusive language” to “sexual orientation and sexual identity inclusive language,” with the admonitions that “inclusive language uses terms that include a range of possibilities in relationships and families,” and “language that depicts all relationships as heterosexual denies the complexity of human relationships.”
The series of posters also includes inclusive language suggestions for more universally applicable subjects such as disability, economic status, race, and faith.
The poster on gender tells students to avoid all use of the word “man” in conjunction with other descriptors, so they are enjoined to say human beings or people instead of mankind, while chairman, policeman and “manning the display booth” are also forbidden, apparently even if the person referred to is a man.
Under a rainbow marker, the sexual orientation poster offers the definition of “gender identity” as being an “internal sense or feeling of being male or female” that may be at odds with a person's actual sex as determined by their chromosomes.
A request by LifeSiteNews to Kerry Donnell, the board's communications officer, for a comment on how the poster campaign has been received by parents with children in the board's schools was not responded to by press time.
However, the board is currently soliciting community members in Hastings County and Prince Edward County to take its 2015 Public Survey to collect input for its next 5-year plan.
“We’re looking for input from everyone,” said Director of Education Mandy Savery-Whiteway. “As the local public school board, we want to hear from community members, students, employees and families as we review our goals and priorities for the coming years.”
The electronic survey will be live only until February 8, 2015, so the opportunity to comment on this poster campaign or any other concerns about the education provided in the board's schools is limited.
Contact:
Hastings & Prince Edward District School Board
Director of Education Mandy Savery-Whiteway
Phone: 613 966-1170
Fax: 613 962-1048
Email: [email protected]