By Dr. Xiaoming Guo of Waterloo
It is inappropriate that the rainbow flag is flying in our public schools, and in the same mast of our national flag. It violated our traditional and official etiquette about our national flag.
We understand that LGBT groups enduring some discrimination and we should address this social problem, however, making them pride of being LGBT is the wrong way to address the issue. For what are we educating our students in our public school? We make our hero pride so that students would like to be a hero. We make our teachers pride so that students would like to be a teacher. If we make LGBT pride, we are encouraging our students eager to be LGBT. How this investment in our human resource helps our society and economy?
Students in our public school are not only just to learn knowledge; they are growing they brain and nerves system within their body. Their personality is plastic. School can shape their personality, including sexual orientation. They are not mature yet. Their sex awareness is vague and may experience a variety of immature feelings of body change near puberty. Should they focus on study or seek hormone therapy or plastic surgery so that they can pride of being LGBT?
Discrimination against some minority groups exists in our society. LGBT is not the only group and not the most discriminate one. LGBT is an invisible minority, not like Chinese that is a visible minority. On July 20th, 2006, a Chinese immigrant jumps off the freeway pass in Toronto. The Chinese immigrant had two Ph.D. degrees, one in physics from Purdue University and another in chemistry from Toronto University. Yet he could not find a decent job in our society. He could not even find a surviving job due to overqualification. Our society is systematically discriminating Chinese immigrants. We had the head tax on Chinese immigrants. We had the Chinese Exclusion Act. We have an LGBT premier in Ontario, but not a Chinese premier so far. We broadcast Ellen DeGeneres show every day, yet we don’t see any popular show hosted by a Chinese. Chinese Canadians study hard yet few can get government positions. Ontario released the Sun Shine List. Yet few are Chinese Canadians. If we want to eliminate discrimination, we cannot address only one specific group. It is unfair to other minority groups.
Chinese Railroad Workers sacrificed their lives for building Pacific Railway thought the most dangerous Rockies Mountains. Pacific Railway was our national dream. Chinese Railroad Workers contribute in our nation building by uniting our vast geographical area into a confederation, by building infrastructure for our industrial revolution. If we dedicate whole month for LGTB, can we dedicate just one day in a year for Chinese Railroad Workers? Do we want our students eager to contribute to our country or eager to change sexual orientation? Do we encourage our students for hard working or for early and alternative sex experiments?
We have our Charter of Rights and Freedoms for 35 years already. Any discrimination is violating our Constitution. It is the duty of our education system to nourish our students commit to our Constitution. After 35 years, discrimination against minorities still exists in our society. That’s the failure of our education system. Hate against LGBT comes from some extreme groups, not from the public at large. Our school should have curriculum introduce cultural anthropology knowledge and psychology at earlier stages so that our student understand human being and ourselves more, and value the human more rationally. Pushing anthropology and psychology into the curriculum of our public school may help eliminate the extreme in our society. We should not use one extreme to against another extreme. Just because of some extreme against LGBT, does not mean we should make LGBT another extreme. We cannot use extreme to eliminate extreme. That simply divides our society. We can only use knowledge about our human being to eliminate extreme.
Flying the rainbow flag in our public schools, and some in the same mast of our national flag, is not an appropriate way to eliminate discrimination base on any of the broad spectra of differences among human beings.