Dear editor,
As an ex curriculum writer I’d like to comment about Tyler Olsen’s editorial ‘Battle against intolerance will be fought in history classrooms’ in your recent issue of the Comox Valley Record (Thursday, August 24, 2017). In his article Olsen expresses concern about a growing neo nazi tendency by young white males. His answer to the problem is to change the school curriculum by increasing content about disadvantaged minorities of our society. I need to point out that since Olsen’s day the BC social studies curriculum has become full of content about minority rights – including those of women, Dukabors, Metis, Japanese, Chinese, Aboriginal people, et al. So, if not content, what other force lurks below the surface of this growing intolerance? Olsen hits on the root, describing the above young white males as ‘mentally incompetent. ’While his own position ironically wreaks of intolerance, Olsen might not be surprised to find that over the past twenty years or so boys have been doing less well in school than ever before. And it wouldn’t be a surprise for the bottom-dwellers of this group to emerge from the school assembly line as despondent failures. Another needy minority, and another irony?
So, changing a curriculum that has already changed isn’t the answer. And, in my opinion, connecting between incessantly poor results in school to neo nazism may be a jump, but I agree with Mr. Olsen – intolerance is anti-social and takes us nowhere. The trouble is, as long as you put kids in a group you’ll always have a bottom. So what can be done? Schools need to be sensitive to the point that all students belong to one minority group or another, and as members of these various subgroups everyone can (and is expected to) make important contributions to our society. Finally, countering intolerance is something for all of us to engage in instead of heaping this daunting responsibility on one lone social studies teacher. Intolerance should be the beginning of conversations, not the end.
Dr. Neil Garvie (Retired)
Comox