The best way to summarize the latest developments in the high school scandal that was seen around the world – the story of the shop class teacher who wears jumbo-sized prosthetic breasts to class – is that the school and school board are attempting to normalize the situation.
When the videos and images posted by students in Oakville went viral it became the subject of shock and debate among parents and commentators in multiple countries. The consensus opinion seems to be that, transgender issues aside, this is just a completely inappropriate way to present yourself in a classroom and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue.
Someone would be forgiven for thinking this was something of a “caught on camera” story that, once attention was brought to it, was immediately rectified and hasn’t repeated itself.
But here’s the thing: It has continued, consistently. The Sun has learned that the teacher still shows up to teach class every day in the same or similar attire. Parents have written to express their concerns to the school and the board. Students themselves have even participated in multiple protests in front of the school.
The school and the board though are sticking with their original talking points: That they support gender rights, so case closed. Nothing to see here folks.
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Their strategy seems to be to wait things out in the hopes that the controversy will die down and everyone will forget about it. Maybe that will work. But it’s hard to believe that those within the school community who find this jarring display inappropriate will embrace it being normalized after a couple of months elapse.
One of the more troubling aspects of this whole thing is that the administration seems mostly focused on managing those who have an issue with the problem, as opposed to professionally managing the problem itself.
First, there was the original statement from the school when the story first broke that they would create a safety plan for the teacher. More recently, the Sun has seen emails sent to parents telling them that police will be on site to “ensure students are behaving and protesting responsibly and safely.”
What does this mean? It’s fine to say police will be on hand to enforce the law. But it’s not their job to ensure that people are “protesting responsibly”, whatever that even means.
To be fair, the school seems to recognize that it’s also normal for students to protest this scene. “Students who participate in the protest are exercising their democratic right to protest,” the email to parents continues. “Staff will supervise students as they leave class and exit the building. Those students choosing to join the protest will be just off school property with others at the front of the school.”
But this is not a good situation to normalize either, one where students are regularly outside protesting their own teachers. Every single element of this is disruption. Plus, it’s just plain awkward for staff to facilitate the students as they come and go to protest one of their own colleagues.
It’s not a sustainable situation. The whole thing continues to be surreal.
Isn’t the solution just to deal with the underlying problem? And couldn’t that have been done by someone in authority taking the teacher aside on day one and explaining to them that while they respect gender rights or whatnot this whole outfit thing is beyond the scope of that and that they’ll have to change attire? Employment lawyers have already gone on record stating that this is an available option to the administration.
Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying if you want to know what the latest is on the viral prosthetic breast saga, it’s that it’s still very much going on.
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