On May 14, 2024, the Ministry of Education updated its memorandum to schools and to the public on Creating safe and accepting schools: resources for schools and school boards. The memorandum – on the ministry’s website – contains nine parts, the fifth of which deals with “Bullying detection and prevention”.
This section on bullying states: “School boards should use these strategies to prevent and address incidents of bullying at school and to foster a positive learning environment.” It then directs readers to two specific policies on the subject.
• Policy/Program Memorandum 144: Bullying Prevention and Intervention and,
• Bullying – we can all stop it – a guide for elementary and secondary students.
Program Memorandum 144, is a substantive, even fastidious, procedural document that sets down a comprehensive administrative framework for school staff and administrators. It was published on May, 2021 and updated July 24, 2023.
Bullying – we can all stop it, is an in-depth, highly readable, introductory primer on the subject of bullying. It was published November 13, 2019 and updated May 1, 2024.
This was the institutional educational background against which Toronto high school student, Hannah Schwartz, last summer, bravely wrote her letter published in the Toronto Star, that decried the blatant discrimination and constant bullying she suffered in her school because on account of her religion. “What many people may not know,” she wrote, “is that right now it’s hard to be a Jewish kid at just about any school in Canada.” (See the GAJE update July 12, 2024.)
It is important to point out that Hannah experienced the bullying despite the existence of the two Education ministry policies on bullying.
Hannah was courageous and eloquent in describing some of her harrowing experiences. “Before the Israel-Hamas war broke out, I didn’t fully realize what antisemitism was. I knew it as an abstract thing, but I had never come face to face with it myself. Then Oct. 7 arrived and everything changed. I began to notice small hurtful comments from my peers about my religion and culture, and then bigger more painful comments. One of my peers started calling me “Jew” instead of my name. They thought it would be funny to scream it at me in the hallways. And then another told me: “I wish Hitler was back,” and “I wish your whole family had died in a gas chamber.”
“…The bullying and Jew hatred is hard enough but what is almost just as hard to see is the impact this experience has had on my friends. I notice that some of my Jewish classmates who were once proud of their identity now feel uncomfortable with it. They are scared to be “too” Jewish in public. And for those of us who are proud to be Jewish and show it, many of our peers shun us.”
With youthful, guile-free candor, Hannah concluded her letter with a plea to civil society to help bring about an end to bullying, intimidation and erasure. “…(T)he response from school leaders and politicians feels quiet, like the whole country is a bystander to this bullying. This feels so wrong, like a betrayal of the lessons we were raised on….Yes, we need to be safe from hate and violence. But there’s something we need just as much, now more than ever. We need allies, not bystanders.”
Enrollment in elementary and high schools has increased this year from last by more than 200 students. This is the fourth consecutive year that enrollment in Jewish schools has increased. But it is likely true, given the published testimonies by students and parents (See: Hannah Schwartz’ letter) and reports of the in-creeping and adoption of antisemitic notions and tropes into school board policies (See: the debates surrounding APR) that some Jewish students are departing public schools, at least in part, because they and their parents wish to avoid having to contend with the menace of antisemitism.
Thus, this week when all children have returned to their public schools, GAJE recalls and reiterates Hannah’s brave, clarion plea. It feels like “the whole country is a bystander to this bullying”.
We do not wish to hear the cliched nostrums that politicians and others in leadership positions prefer to utter such as: “There is no place in Canada for racism, antisemitism….” Or, “Canadians are better than this….”. Such words are the quick, vacuous, sound-byte proclamations that mean essentially, nothing.
School leaders and politicians, including the Minister of Education must actually act to ensure antisemitic bullying specifically is eliminated from public schools and public spaces. Yet, there were no back-to-school pronouncements this week by politicians and especially by the Minister of Education, warning against a reversion to or re-embrace of antisemitic behaviour in our schools, in school playgrounds or on our streets. This is much the pity, for the sake of the youngsters who will once again feel unsafe and unwanted in the halls of Ontario’s schools and indeed, for the sake of Ontario, whose society is also being targeted by the haters who target Jews.
We hope the Minister of Education will at least enforce the ministry’s own policies to eliminate intimidation in schools, ie, Bullying – we can all stop it, and Program Memorandum 144.
That is not too much to ask of the government. And that would be a good start.
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The appeal by the Government of Ontario of Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou’s refusal last summer to throw out GAJE’s application for fairness in educational funding, was heard in early June by a panel of three judges. The court reserved its decision.
GAJE will publish the court’s decision as soon as it is known to us.
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.
For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.
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Shabbat shalom
Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
September 6, 2024
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 