Public education is a shambles and many young people will be ill-prepared for all but a very narrow range of career pursuits: professional climate change protestor, socialist activist, cheerless woke author whose audience consists entirely of gullible progressives, interim leader of the Green Party of Canada or some other similar career path where adherence to a wide range of preposterous doctrines is required and knowledge of basic mathematics is a disqualifying liability. Nothing else can be concluded from a perusal of the list of workshops at the Elementary Teachers of Toronto professional development day this week.

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The list of 25 workshops includes such unpromising titles as: “Teaching math while White: An abolitionist approach to dismantling racism in the math classroom,” “Climate change and the classroom: Engaging students about frontline climate work,” “Centering anti-racist and anti-colonial pedagogy in early years literacy,” and “Elementary teachers acting for social justice — theatre of the oppressed.” Spare us the social justice theatrics; the real oppression in public schools is the dismal quality of instruction that prevents many students from receiving a proper education. Test results this fall showed only 47 per cent of Ontario’s grade six students meet provincial standards in mathematics.

For those teachers registered for the “Teaching math while White” workshop, let me share a secret: teaching math while White is the same as teaching math while Black, which is the same as teaching math while Chinese, Indian, Aboriginal, or Japanese. Whatever the skin colour of the teacher or student, the circumference of the circle is equal to twice its radius multiplied by pi. That a person is White instead of Black or Black instead of Chinese does not change the fact that the distance between two points on a Cartesian plane can be calculated by taking the square root of the sum of the squared difference in x and the squared difference in y. The numbers 17, 43, and 97 are prime numbers for White people; they are also prime numbers for the Japanese.

The second half of the workshop name — “an abolitionist approach to dismantling racism in the math classroom” — is curious. If racism is so rampant in Toronto’s public schools that an abolitionist movement is needed to dismantle it, a reasonable person might conclude the problem would better be solved not by holding an afternoon workshop for a handful of teachers but instead by disbanding the Toronto District School Board and issuing vouchers to families so they can send their children to private schools that offer non-racist mathematics classes where students have a better than 47 per cent chance of attaining a reasonable standard of mathematics education.

While there is only one workshop on teaching mathematics — i.e., there are none on teaching math while LGBTQ, or teaching math while Catholic, or teaching math while being a septuagenarian former French pastry chef — there are four workshops on climate change. In addition to the one on engaging students about frontline climate work, there are: “How educators can organize for climate action and win,” “Local workshop series: Climate change and climate action,” and “Climate justice is union business: A workshop for workers,” which calls on teachers to turn themselves into “effective climate warriors.”

Professional development indeed! What profession do the union leaders think their members are in, climate change activism? Or if the union has redefined the teaching profession to refocus it on woke activism and other assorted political campaigning instead of actually educating students, the families who pay taxes so their children can go to schools staffed by the union have not been sufficiently informed of this fact. Nor would their morale be greatly improved by learning it. This redefinition of the teaching profession might raise consternation even among families who do not have school-age children. Taxes are supposed to pay for things that deliver some public good. The proposition that there is public benefit in transforming a generation of youth into woke Greta Thunberg facsimiles is one reasonable people are likely to dispute.

On its online page providing information about the professional development workshops, the Elementary Teachers of Toronto (ETT) informs its members that “your union has won this day in our collective agreement as a time where teachers are released to attend ETT organized professional development activities,” the verb “released” perhaps conjuring up in readers images of prisons or asylums. The people who really need to be released are the students — released from the shackles of the failing public school system, through voucher programs or other policies that give them alternatives to the government- and union-run woke monopoly.

Matthew Lau is a Toronto writer.