The Why Files: School Bans Oh Canada

Every so often, I come across news stories regarding strange rules or behaviour and I just have to ask myself "why?" In the first of what I hope will be a continuing series, lets head over to New Brunswick and to Belleisle Elementary School where the principal has scrapped the daily tradition of singing Oh Canada before classes.

A principal's decision to eliminate the morning tradition of singing O Canada at a tiny New Brunswick school has sparked outrage among parents across the country and renewed a heated debate about the encroachment of political correctness in the classroom.

Principal Erik Millett of Belleisle Elementary School in Springfield, N.B., a small community about 90 kilometres southeast of Fredericton, scrapped the morning ritual in the summer of 2007, citing concerns from several parents. But the issue failed to gain much notice until this week, after a mother complained about the policy to local media.

The debate has since traveled to the upper echelons of government, drawing a sharp rebuke from federal Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson, who said publicly he views Mr. Millett's decision as an assault on a proud tradition.

For his part, Mr. Millett has stood firm behind his decision, offering a myriad of reasons for nixing the morning anthem - most notably the effort to accommodate parents who did not want their children taking part. Citing privacy reasons, he has not explained the source of the parents' objections, whether religious or otherwise.

"Is it right or is it fair for children who are not allowed to sing the anthem to be forced to?" Mr. Millett asked in an interview with the Telegraph-Journal newspaper. "Different families have different beliefs.... It's not up to me as a school administrator to subject kids to something their parents don't want them exposed to. I have to protect the minority rights as well as the majority rights." --National Post Thursday January 29th, 2009

Well, this is certainly odd as I cannot find anything possibly offensive about singing our national anthem. I do know that New Brunswick does have a sizable francophone population but I was unaware of any strong separatist movement existing there, so that rules out that as reasoning. Maybe it has to do with immigrants being offended by it, to which I ask "why are you even in this country if you don't like what it stands for." Most likely, it's political correctness run amok and creating victims of "offensive" content where none exist. For making a fool of himself for the tireless practise of trying to hard to be inoffensive, Erik Millet, you're being inducted into the Idiots Hall of Shame.

I'm also adding Google to the Idiots Hall of Shame because of the way Blogger handles bold and italics. Why is it I can't turn off italics after I've written something using it. I hit the button to turn it off, it shows it is unselected, yet it continues to write in italics. Could somebody please fix this?! Blogger has been a bit squirrely lately, which is why some of the text layout in my recent posts looks off.