Posted on 05/31/2006 7:00:41 AM PDT by doc30
survey asking Halifax teachers their sexual orientation drew fierce criticism yesterday, just weeks after the Halifax Regional School Board was singled out in a human rights case against a gay teacher.
The “employee identification survey” is being handed out this week to all 8,000 employees of the school board, most of whom are teachers. They are being asked to list their names and employee numbers, and answer questions on their race and sexual orientation.
The survey, the school board maintains, will help it to better understand the diversity of its work force and therefore allow the board to foster a more inviting and accepting environment.
Not so, says the union.
“From our perspective we cannot for the life of us see how knowing the sexual orientation of a teacher is going to help a database or help the teaching profession,” said Mary Lou Donnelly, president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union.
“It's a very personal question, an extremely personal question. To want to know [teachers'] sexual orientation, we have a real problem with that.”
The union is particularly concerned that teachers are being asked to provide personal information and also give their names. Although most sections of the new questionnaire are voluntary, the union wants the board to alter the questionnaire so it provides anonymity.
The controversial questionnaire is being distributed on the heels of a well-publicized Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission ruling against the Halifax Regional School Board.
Earlier this month, the board was forced to pay damages of nearly $30,000 when the commission chairman ruled that discrimination played a role in the false accusation that a gay physical education teacher had molested a student.
“We recognize the school board would like to have some statistics on certain areas, but in terms of sexual orientation we have some real concerns about human rights issues and the confidentiality of such information,” Ms. Donnelly said.
School board officials defended the survey.
“I want to make it clear that we're not just asking about sexual orientation. We're asking about ethnicity, disability and languages spoken,” said Carole Olsen, superintendent of the school board. She said the survey results will go toward producing reports about the makeup of employees within the school board.
“We're only going to be surveying the employees once,” Ms. Olsen said. “When an employee retires or leaves the board we can take that name off the database. And when an employee is hired by the board we can offer that survey to an incoming employee. You can't do that anonymously.”
Ms. Olsen said the board would not change its hiring practices because of the results.
“I understand that some of the employees have concerns, and I think what I can say is that we're going to have a very confidential database,” Ms. Olsen said. “We are only going to be reporting the information out in a broad way and it's not going to be connected to an employee's personnel file.”
The survey worries Lindsay Willow, the lesbian gym teacher at the centre of the recent human rights ruling. Earlier this month she was vindicated when the commission acknowledged her reputation had been shattered because of discrimination.
In the 40-page ruling, chairman Walter Thompson agreed with Ms. Willow's claim that because she was a lesbian, colleagues believed she had sexually assaulted one of her students.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail yesterday, Ms. Willow blasted the school board's decision to issue the survey.
“This is definitely the wrong approach, and I don't think there was a lot of foresight,” she said. “It's extremely difficult to ask gays and lesbians to come out, especially before establishing a certain amount of trust.”
Ms. Willow said that if the board wants to be more inclusive, it should focus on education, not statistics.
“Inclusion isn't about numbers. We all know there are gay teachers and gay students out there. You don't need a survey to tell you that.”
Toronto lawyer and gay rights activist Doug Elliott said the results of the survey will undoubtedly be skewed because many gays and lesbians are still in the closet and some don't identify themselves as gay.
Mr. Elliott said the survey likely doesn't violate any human rights codes in Canada because most of the questions are voluntary. But he did criticize it.
“While it may be important to understand this information, it has to be gathered in a sensitive way, and I certainly think that handing out a survey like this is not a good way,” he said.
Union officials said the school board attempted to issue the survey earlier this school year but pulled it amid controversy. The school board denied the claim, saying the survey was held until now because of timing issues.
Quotas for Gays are coming.
They don't seem to have had a problem giving the test to students...
Maybe they believe the students will score better....
The rejection of the survey is predictable.
Homosexuals seek to conceal the high level of involvement they seek with prepubescent children, and minors below the age of consent.
The union is absolutely right.
(These people must be nuts.)
While we're at it...
...let's find out who they voted for in the last election ...
Oh Canada -we feel your pain...
What an invasion of privacy!
Whatever happened to the old lib song "We are the world, we are the people."
Now they just pit victim identity groups against each other.
Nothing can make our society better if we're all at war with one another.
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