Jamie Sarkonak: Alberta’s apolitical education bill is far from a ‘far-right attack’

Students sell Pride and pronoun buttons at at an Edmonton school event in June 2023. Photo by Greg Southam/Postmedia

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Land acknowledgements are standard openers to school board meetings. So, no, I’m not too bothered about Alberta’s Bill 25, the act “to remove politics and ideology from classrooms.”

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The bill was tabled at the end of March and has rattled the anxieties of many an education bureaucrat. It’s wider-ranging than it says on the tin, adding a new process for school board trustees running in an election and limiting what flags can be flown at a school, among other things. But yes, a big part of the bill sets some basic parameters for educational neutrality.

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One section reads: “All courses or programs of study and instructional materials used in a school must encourage a wide range of perspectives and ideas, foster critical thinking, foster the acquisition of knowledge and skills, reflect the diverse nature and heritage of society in Alberta, promote understanding and respect for others, and honour and respect the common values and beliefs of Albertans.”

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A similar clause already exists in Alberta’s Education Act, but it is focused only on respect and diversity — the new version emphasizes knowledge, ideas and critical thinking.

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Elsewhere, it states that boards should keep education “impartial, fair, neutral and free of personal bias” and should also “refrain from issuing statements or taking positions, including political, social or ideological positions.” Students should be “free to express any perspective or idea” as long as they comply with their relevant code of conduct.

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“No board shall, directly or indirectly, require an employee of the board to participate in an exercise, or to affirm, recite or make a statement, that is inconsistent with the employee’s conscientious, political, social or ideological beliefs, unless that participation, affirmation, recitation or making comprises part of (a program approved by the legislature or that relates to board operations).”

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The legislation would also subject school naming and renaming to ministerial approval. You can probably thank Edmonton Public Schools for that last one — the geniuses on that board in 2022 decided on the name of “kisêwâtisiwin School” for an older institution whose namesake had KKK affiliations, and in 2024 changed the old Prince Charles School to “awâsis waciston School.” The board further raised the possibility of renaming others with names associated with colonialism. Privilege abused, privilege lost.

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The lobby group Public Interest Alberta calls Bill 25 a “far-right attack on public education” that’s poised to make classrooms “less safe” places where politics takes precedence over objectivity. A school board member in St. Paul worried that the legislation risks replacing whatever’s in the classroom with government ideology. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association labelled it “censorship.” That’s a comical way of putting it.

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For one, this is hardly an intrusion. The points about ideology in the classroom amount to a slight variation of some basic parameters that have always been around. Indeed, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides told me last week that it’s up to the boards to interpret and implement.