This is right in my backyard. The one thing I would like to add is that the major city in Halton County is Burlington, Ontario. Burlington has a reputation for being elitist and “Yuppie central” as it is rather affluent compared to its neighbours.

This school board, is apparently known for doing some pretty wonky things like forbidding government sponsored inoculations. I honestly think this has more to do with the Yuppie factor than the Catholic factor.

A few weeks ago, a board spokesperson went on the radio to comment about why this book was pulled from the shelves (it hadn’t been banned at this point.) He couldn’t give an answer as to what was objectionable about the book other than there had been a complaint.

One of my old parish priests (who I respected greatly) is actually on the Halton Separate School Board board of trustees. I’m curious to see what kind of role he had in this.

All in all, I’m totally embarrassed that something like this could happen so close to home. I thought you southerners were the ones who had to deal with this nonsense.

The Calgary and Elk Island Catholic boards have also banned these books, but aimed to almost keep it less heard than in Ontario. Calgary is the largest city in this province with about 1 million residents, and Elk Island is just outside the capital of Edmonton.

It’s all utterly ridiculous.

And thanks to Brett for clearing up our messed up school system.

It could also have been that I’m a man, unrelated to them, and not a Muslim. Maybe a propriety issue?

It’s something that I need to find out, now. It’ll give me some ammunition with my Catholic relatives.

Why do we not see huge, huge families in Muslim countries like we see in the more religious Catholic countries, like central and South America, where having 18 or 20 births is not terribly uncommon? Are they all ignoring the dictates, like Westernized Catholics?

My grade 8 girls never did their homework for any subject.

The first, and later least surprising thing, I noticed was the ratio to girls v. boys. Boys were significantly outnumbered. Most of my female students had brothers in public school, and were proud that their fathers worked so hard to pay their tuition as opposed to their brothers’. This was not-so-subtly the most sexist and possibly the most offensive thing about it. These men were making sure their daughters were good Muslim wives (in fact, I had a grade 11 student who had been married since she was 15), while their sons could go out and get all Westernized.

It probably has a great deal to do with the misogynistic elements of the faith. There’s less need to keep the men ignorant of options, because they’re more likely to opt into this system which gives them so much power.

And it was an island of ignorance. I got into trouble twice. Once for mentioning birth control in geography class when we were talking about population trends in developed nations (and I was careful to point out the Islam forbade birth control) and the other time for bringing a few magazines for collages (GQ, Rolling Stone and Esquire, while not exactly prudish, hardly pornography).

The idea was to shelter these girls as much as was possible in a country with cable television.

Incidentally, the boys and girls weren’t allowed to play together. Not basketball, dogeball, or anything. Even when they were in the gymnasium together. That may have been the most bizarre part of it.