Mustafa Khattab – Sex Ed. Conference 3
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AI: Transcript ©
So our next speaker is brother Omar Zia.
Omar Zia is an educator working with the
Peel School Board in Ontario, Canada. He is
a well known and lecturer in Toronto. He
holds degrees of Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of
Education, and a Master's of Education.
For their honors, he currently works in the
curricular in the curricular head of studies at
of student services as a guidance counselor with
the Peel District School Board. Previously, he has
been a a department head of the ESL
and special ed,
cross cross curriculum literacy head and an English
head. He has also served in the in
the as a principal in the,
paramilitary,
sorry,
night school for a few years. Brother Omar
has the honor
had the honor of studying Islamic studies under
numerous well known Muslim scholars in the Toronto
area. He has been running popular youth help
us and parenting workshops
at understanding
Islam Islam Academy and turned to learn for
several years now. So, brother Omar, the mic
is yours.
It's my pleasure to be here with all
of you today.
Just be to begin, I have a tendency
tendency of speaking too fast. If I speak
too fast, someone just wave your hand. I'll
slow down inshallah.
And I wanna thank all of you for
coming here today. As I've just mentioned, it
is a very important
part of our lives that we share our
knowledge, we share our expertise,
and that we come together as a community
to help each other.
All of you here are from individual families,
but it is an expectation of a ummah
that we all help each other. We are
from a similar brotherhood and sisterhood of Islam.
So you are seeing each other's faces here
in the Masjid. We're seeing each other's faces
here. We now all know you share the
same concern.
So in the days, in the weeks, months
to come, my sincere hope is that you
continue to talk with each other, speak with
each other, perhaps the masjid will continue to
facilitate these parenting workshops, so you have an
opportunity to talk and share and discuss with
each other. Many of you, your children are
the same age.
Okay. The concerns are the same. Your children
are going to go through the same learning
process as well, the same development. So it's
very very important that you meet and reach
out to each other and develop a network
amongst yourselves so you continue to have these
conversations. Right? When we get together, it's not
always about politics and religion. We should talk
about our children and their upbringing as well.
Clear?
Okay.
So what my perspective what I'm bringing here
today is similar to what our sister mentioned
and there really some overlap. But I would
like to really promote
understanding.
That's what I'm going to present with you
here today is understanding what is happening in
the world around us. And these are the
4 perspectives I'd like to bring. The public
school board,
life as a teacher. Can I I'm not
presenting the Ministry of Education nor am I
representing a specific school board? Just as an
educator. I've been an educator for 16 years
now. As a Muslim and as a parent.
So to begin with,
try to understand the public publicly funded school
boards. This is both the public board and
the Catholic board. They're both equally funded through
the public monies, so they're both responsible.
And in both situations, in all situations when
dealing with a public board of education,
we have to understand that they have a
number of clients and stakeholders.
Meaning that there are a lot of people
with their hands in the pie, trying to
control what happens inside the school. How to
try and have some sort of influence.
And those stakeholders are as you see here.
There are staff members, teachers,
administrators,
current students, former students.
A lot of schools have an alumni association
where, you know, you may have older graduates
in the school giving money and thereby having
some influence as to what happens in the
school.
You have the government, of course, with their
curriculum.
And you might have some other community agencies
that might be involved in scholarships at the
school or coming to the school to give
presentations.
We also have local politicians
who might wanna play a role in terms
of what happens inside the school building. So
the public school board is actually open
to everybody,
to a very, very large number of stakeholders.
And very important to remember that as a
parent, you are one of those major stakeholders.
And because
the public board of education is open to
all of these stakeholders
and because it has such a wide variety
of clientele,
both parents and students,
it does not have the luxury
of excluding anybody.
It must include every single person,
no matter of their background, into the school.
And this is protected
for every single Canadian
to the 1982 Charter of Human Rights and
Freedoms.
And that same charter
of rights and freedoms in Canada is what
protects every culture,
every skin color,
every ability or disability.
So it's something very, very important to understand
that all public schools all public schools are
protected by this charter. It's what allows our
children
and us to exist in this world and
exist in these schools without discrimination based on
our color of our skin, the language we
speak, the colors of countries that we come
from.
Why I'm saying this is because in the
19 seventies when I was growing up, my
teachers would openly call me *.
It wasn't until the 19 8th 1980 when
the charter was introduced that that disappeared.
And it's the same charter of freedoms and
rights that allows all of the religions to
exist in our country
and to seek accommodations in our places of
work and at our schools.
It is the same charter of rights that
allows us to wear hijab, to have a
beard, to wear hooffi if we want to,
to have prayers in our school buildings or
prayers in our workplace
organization.
Even the ability to go for Jumma salah
is now part of the charter. I mention
this because when my father first came to
this country in the sixties, they had to
have Jummah on Sunday
in this in in Toronto
because they did not get permission from their
from their workplaces of work to have Jummah
on a Friday.
And so because of this charter,
in if you go into the public education
system, as a parent you can you're involved
in church to do this. But all schools,
generally speaking, the GTA will educate children about
Ramadan because of this charter.
And because of this charter, our children will
also learn about Christmas,
Easter,
Yom Kippur,
Passover,
Wonka.
They'll also learn about Diwali.
Right? So these are all these holidays and
celebrations from a variety of religions are also
taught in the school system because of the
same charter of freedom and rights.
And so generally speaking,
public school boards of education
have
to put into place bill 13 as was
mentioned by the sister.
Basically, it means that all public boards of
education have a mandate that they must recognize
every single difference that exists
amongst all of its clients and stakeholders, no
matter what those differences might be. Whether it's
religion,
culture, creed, language, the food we eat, the
abilities or disabilities that we have. Glasses, no
glasses. In a wheelchair, not in a wheelchair.
Deaf or not deaf. Blind or not blind.
Just why in Ontario, you have schools for
the deaf, schools for the blind, and programs
that exist in public school systems to help
students with that. There's also extensive learning disabilities.
Right? Almost 1 third
of the budget in all points of education
is spent on learning difficulties. Students have an
actual learning disability,
whether physical
or
cognitive.
And because of this,
the boards of education must put into place
a program or several programs
to ensure that discrimination does not happen to
anybody.
And this includes
homosexuals.
And one of the biggest reasons for this
is to understand this might be difficult for
us to understand.
But the truth is is that there are
students who come to public schools
who go home to 2 fathers or 2
mothers.
This is gonna make your kids explode.
And what will shock you to know now
is because I thought you could make your
head explode and listen to this because it
happened to me this year.
You have to understand my role as a
guidance counselor. I don't teach in a classroom
setting. I I used to. Now I help
students with their problems. And one of the
issues that arose this year was a female
student coming to me. Now I've met her
mother, who a Muslim,
she was a lesbian, had a lesbian partner.
So this is real life.
Your your children are going to schools
where their peers
have 2 mothers and 2 fathers,
And they will talk about that and share
that in their discussion with each other and
in the classroom itself.
So one of the biggest difficulties for us
as a community of Muslims
is that we have no problem with people's
color, people's culture, people's food, their creed. We
are all you know, we we have that
within our own religion and we are accepting
of all differences.
When it comes to sinfulness,
that is where we as a community have
a problem. Whether it be fornication, murderers, thieves,
homosexuals fall within the same category. And so
this is why it's so hard for us
to understand what's happening. But what is happening
is that the homosexuals want to be and
are now being recognized
just as if they were a different color
or spoke a different language or came from
a different country. And that's where the big
disconnect is, not only with Muslims, but anybody
belonging to a faith group. Christians, Jews, Hindu,
Sikhs, Buddhist.
They all have the same problem because we
all see all faith groups see homosexuality
not as a color or a creed or
a language or a country.
We see it as a sinful action.
But because we're all living in the same
country,
it has become the same.
That's why homosexuality
is
accept or being trying to be accepted. And
that's why through Build 13 in this new
curriculum, that's why it's being talked about.
So John Kirchyan, who was a former prime
minister of this country,
what there's a very famous incident that happened
when he went to Montreal
to his home church. And he's a practicing
Catholic, practicing Christian.
And the priest refused to have him in
the congregation
because at that time he just passed a
law allowing
homosexual rights to get married.
And so there's a big controversy.
He was questioned, how could you do this
as a practicing person of faith?
He said, because as a person, I'm a
Christian. When I'm prime minister of this country,
I am here for everybody.
That's everybody's rights. How can you be protected
again in the same charge of rights and
freedoms? The same charge that gives us our
rights
gives everybody rights including homosexuals.
And the rights of one group cannot
be used to trample over the rights of
another group. The beliefs of one group cannot
be used to trample over the beliefs of
another group. So
faith based values cannot be used to say,
well, homosexuals have no right to be here.
We cannot say that. Because the same thing
is white standing up in South Africa and
saying blacks have no right to be here.
So the question comes, why does this have
to be taught at such an early age?
And the reason is because
biases
and racism and discrimination
also start as an at an early age.
And as Sister mentioned very specifically in the
curriculum as to why they said that to
teach things at a certain age and why
that's happened so early, and why these books
like my 2 dads Sammy has 2 dads
or my 2 moms why these books being
taught is because
the indifferent the the differences
become apparent right from when the child is
very young.
And so
we know it ourselves in our own homes.
We might be teaching our children values from
a very early age as to who we
accept, who we don't accept.
Right?
Because if I'm from Pakistan
my father's from Pakistan. I'm born and raised
here. But when I was growing up, my
father made it very clear to me from
age 3, we'll hate every single Hindu. And
if a Hindu comes in his home, we'll
kill that person.
Okay?
Because my father fought in the war. My
father was part of partition.
The hatred is there. My father-in-law,
also same thing. They lost everything.
So these are the values being taught to
our children when they're very, very young.
You think about the people growing up in
Bosnia. What are they teaching their children about
the serfs?
Right? So values are being taught from a
very early age.
Discrimination starts from a very early age because
of us as parents in our backgrounds and
what we're teaching our children.
The other people out there also have their
own biases.
Right? How many people out there telling their
kids hate for Muslims?
And you see all of these discrimination actions
happening at a very early age in elementary
schools across this country and across America.
So this is why these values and this
is why this concept of anti discrimination, anti
racist curriculum has to set a very early
age.
So that's the public word of education.
I'd like to now switch over to a
different hat and that's from the perspective of
a teacher.
And the first thing I'd like to mention
is that education in Canada,
education in Ontario is very different than education
around the world.
And as the system mentioned, we come from
different cultures and different countries.
And our expectation of the education system
might be one way. And when we come
here, we find, oh my gosh. What's happening?
It's not the same as back home. It's
not the same as our expectations what education
should be like.
Very simple example is that in our own
home countries and give you example of myself.
I taught in Saudi Arabia for a short
time. And over there, if a child was
to step out of line or to talk
back to the teacher, it was dealt with
in a very stern way. And the parents
had no problem with us raising our voices
or a consequence of our children consequences of
the students in that setting.
But here, if I were to ever raise
my voice, if any teacher were to raise
their voice at a child, there would be
a very, very big problem. There would be
a whole write up. That teacher would be
evaluated. That teacher could be moved. There's a
report to the Ontario College of Teachers. That
teacher could be disciplined at the government level.
So the differences are very, very obvious.
One of the major differences that we find
is that in this country and in this
province,
values, beliefs, and morals
are not in the purview of the teacher.
It's not the teacher's responsibility
to directly teach beliefs
and values and manners and morals and character.
We talk about character education in this country.
We talk about character education in the curriculum,
but it's not really that obvious.
It's not existent.
And we know it ourselves because every time
I tell someone I'm a teacher, they say,
oh my gosh. And when I say my
high school teacher, they say, oh my gosh.
You must be crazy.
Because, you know, high school teachers, they must
be crazy. Right? With all the nonsense that
goes on. Right? The drugs, the drinking, the
alcohol, the rock and roll. How are you
dealing with that? Oh my gosh. How can
you deal with that every day?
So we know ourselves that there is an
issue in our schooling system. There's an issue
in our country.
We see the things that are going around
us. Someone mentioned billboards,
television commercials,
so on and so forth. What happens on
the radio, the music our children are listening
to. There's a very large problem with character
development in this country and in this society
because it is never explicitly
taught in the school.
I hope that's very clear. So while there's
religion or religious values, whether God exists or
not, These are not topics that we talked
about.
Why can't we talk? Why is this not
being taught in the school? Now my big
question. You know? In our home countries, we
can teach this. Why can't we teach over
here? So again, when I was growing up
in the seventies up into early eighties, we
would recite the Lord's prayer, which is the
second page of the New Testament of the
bible. And we recite this after
singing O Canada every morning.
And this is the religious,
majority in this country at that time.
So every child, no matter what religion they
came from, was forced to recite every single
day, no, our lord, thou art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come will
be done unto us as it is in
heaven. I can reset the whole thing for
you from memory from when I was a
child.
So it was imposed.
The Judeo Christian values, 1st and second testament,
old testament, new testament were imposed on everybody
in this country in this province specifically from
the 6 actually, from late sixties on into
the seventies to about the mid eighties when
someone said, hey. The Charter of Freedom and
Right and Rights is about 3 or 4
years old. This has to stop.
And that's still being going on in Brampton
finally, earlier this year, after 3 months of
debate, they finally decided to stop saying the
Lord's Prayer at the beginning of their business
meetings.
So
because of the Charter of Freedom and Rights,
no religious values can be taught in the
school, whether they be beliefs, direct beliefs as
to, you know, what they what the actual
creed is.
But also none of the values can explicitly
be taught.
So it really is the parent's job.
From a teacher's perspective, it is the job
of the parent to teach manners and morals
and ethics at home. That is the full
right and responsibility
of the parent.
So as parents, perhaps we have not been
aware of
this, but we have to take time
to explicitly
teach
manners and morals to our children at home.
I put up here it's funny when you
type ethics ethics in school, that matters and
morals in schools. What do you see when
it pops up in Google? Well, everything about
Muslims.
It's interesting because we are, you know, alhamdulillah,
we are the last guardians of manners and
morals in this world,
as Elizabeth Wills. But this is a book
I put up here because you can find
find this book online or at some of
the bookstores around here. But it's a great
small book to teach kids basic manners and
morals, Aslak and Adab, to our children.
Right. So this is from the teacher's perspective,
from the
And so that comes us now to the
curriculum.
And so once again, the curriculum is a
public document.
You can find this online anytime you wish.
You can download as a PDF. And some
of the newer documents, you can actually order
the paper copy if you like as well
for free. Free shipping and everything. Question is,
how many of us have ever taken a
look at the curriculum?
I'm talking about basic this is grade 1
to grade 8. Language arts, math,
science and technology,
arts, kindergarten curriculum. Anybody who actually ever
read any of these books?
As a parent,
we have to.
As a parent, we have to. And I'll
tell you this as a person my youngest
brother is 11 years older than me. And
when I was interested in teaching, well, 2nd
year of university, I picked up curriculum about
some kind of what is he actually teaching
him? What's he actually learning in school?
Okay. It is very, very important for us
to know what our children are being exposed
to every day. If we don't read the
curriculum documents, we don't know what's going on
in school. That's why it's a public domain.
Okay? So all of us here have a
not only right, but all parents have a
responsibility
to read all these curriculum documents. You can
read it grade by grade if you want
to. You have to read the whole thing
in one setting. If this is just a
sec, but one grade at a time.
But we have to read all of these
books. We can't just get upset when the
* ed curriculum comes out and says, oh,
now we have to read. Where where where
where were we for the last, you know,
5, 6 years when I get to the
school? All of these documents
have things in them that contravene our Islamic
values.
All of
them. You have to read them to understand
what I'm saying, but you have to read
them yourself with your spouse. And I'm not
talking about one parent reading this. Both parents
need to sit down and read this. Read
it with your children.
Show them. Explain to them. Especially the science
and technology curriculum that you'll see to say,
hey.
That sounds a bit fishy. There's the Islamic
version of this I should teach my children.
Social science social studies and social sciences.
What do you want your children knowing about
how this country was developed or conquered?
Because you can make illusions as to what's
happening in our own countries around the world.
Our children need to know. And oftentimes, we
as parents with our experience and our backgrounds
are in a much better position than the
teacher in the classroom to teach our kids
what's actually going on in the world.
Okay. So it's not just about * ed
curriculum, it's about all curriculum.
The second part about this is that teachers
do not have to share their lesson plans
with any of us here.
Right? Teachers have autonomy in the classroom. They
develop their own lesson plans. They do not
have to share those lesson plans at all.
So a parent is one responsible for reading
those documents.
So it comes to the * ed curriculum.
Right? So these are the old documents.
I want to ask a question, how many
people actually read the old document, the 1998
or even the 2010 version that's available now?
We never did because we didn't care about
it. But all of a sudden this news
comes out and now we're like, oh my
goodness. What's happening?
But as the sister mentioned, you look at
the 1998 curriculum and you see today, there
was already things inside that maybe we as
parents should have questioned a while ago. What
is my child learning?
You might be interested to know that the
grade 9 science curriculum, which I have taught
many times,
tells exactly the same thing. The beginning to
the end,
covering homosexuality, transgender,
all those type of conversations,
but along with reproduction. And all the diagrams
and things that go forward with them as
well. And all the talks about having safe
* and how you use contraceptives.
Some parents might be, you know, astonished to
learn. Even a 14 year old or a
13 year old are learning these things in
school as well. Oftentimes parents don't know.
So the well, the most important message here
is that these documents are public.
You as parents, we as parents need to
take time to read all of them.
Not just the 2 pages from this particular
document that we're all upset about, but all
of it.
Now I mentioned that teachers do not have
a responsibility to share with us their lesson
plan. I've got time, this isn't it before.
Hey. This is what I'm teaching tomorrow. They're
not going to do that. Some teachers who
are technically advanced
might say, you know, I'm gonna put some
of my curriculum online so parents can keep
up with it.
But we as parents have a right
and a responsibility
to approach our teachers and say, how are
you teaching this?