“Neutrality” in the classrooms: A government-enforced myth

Alberta’s Bill 25 claims to promote “neutrality, impartiality and diverse viewpoints,” but that wouldn’t be the entire truth. Engaging with peers and teachers together has always been the central purpose of the classroom. Yet, with this new bill, the Government of Alberta is deeming some topics “too political” or “distracting.” 

Section 61 is just one of those pushes towards “neutrality.” In this bill, “school authorities [may] display no flag other than the Canadian flag and the Alberta flag at a school, unless permitted in regulation.” Clarified regulations restrict some flags to being flown on specific days or bans them entirely. This most prominently restricts flags that show solidarity for vulnerable communities. “Every Child Matters” flags raise awareness about the ongoing effects of residential schools. Pride flags promote diversity and inclusion in the classroom, allowing teachers to foster safe spaces for 2SLGBTQIA+ students. The purging of Ukrainian and Palestinian flags in schools will also then be in the name of “impartiality.” These flags do not force a political agenda on children by providing visibility. 

This same section of the bill requires that “Canada’s national anthem is played at each school [at least once a week].” The government seems to have forgotten that national symbols are inherently political: they are declared with the intention of crafting a particular narrative. Our anthem is no different. The lyric “Our home and native land,” for example, erases the fact that for 95 per cent of us, this is not our “native land.” When Jully Black sang “our home on native land at an National Basketball Association (NBA) game in 2023, the public reactions demonstrated how the anthem is just as politically charged as hanging an Albertan or Canadian flag (especially after the referendum). 

As we can see, the government’s “politically neutral” and “ideologically free” educational environment has already contradicted itself. But this myth of an impartial classroom also ignores the fact that schools were never neutral institutions to begin with. Learning outcomes and textbooks do not just naturally develop from “the way the world works.” Particular people choose what they believe is most useful for particular children to learn at each stage of their lives. They then write and assign texts that teach these children accordingly. This is not to say we should distrust everything we learn, but that we should have the capacity to be critical of it. Rather than “encourag[ing] diverse student perspectives,” labelling conversations outside of the curriculum as “distracting” suppresses crucial dialogue between teachers and students. 

Additionally, if course content was apolitical, it would be essentially useless. If we study Othello without confronting the current relevance of racial stereotypes, female idolatry, and class structure, what is the point of studying it? In social studies, we address how colonization and imperialization have caused genocides and continue to significantly influence our world. When it comes to matters of oppressor versus oppressed, there is simply no middle ground. How can a teacher explain the Nazis’ persecution of “undesirables” in the Holocaust, then “refrain from issuing statements or taking positions on political, social or ideological matters” for contemporary relapses? How can a teacher talk about the Chinese Head Tax or Japanese Canadian internment camps without addressing the xenophobia behind present-day anti-immigrant policies in Alberta? 

Bill 25 claims to create “a safe and caring environment,” but rather than nurturing diverse perspectives, it narrows them. Rather than removing politics, it imposes them. Bill 25 has wasted time pretending to address problems that have never been problems. Perhaps if the government dedicated such efforts towards issues like underfunded rural schools and overloaded disability services, they would not need to use censorship to compensate for their shortcomings.