Proxy Peace (or "What I Said At The Debate")

... for Don Valley West Trustee" [VOTE TODAY: MONDAY!]

“Thanks everyone for coming and being a part of this — it's great to see such turnout for a trustee byelection — it just shows how serious politics is getting and everybody's kind of waking up, right?

Um, pleasure to meet you all — my father was a TDSB teacher: he taught at Don Mills Collegiate — he died when I was a year old from lung cancer, but what I knew is that he wanted to teach at OSIE because he was convinced that teachers didn't know how to teach, and I've spent every step that I've been through the education system asking myself how to fix the education system, because I knew that my father believed that, and I formed my own opinion, and realized he was right!

And I went to UofT for 10 years, I was a student president there, and I teach at a bunch of different schools — I do teach in the TDSB on Saturday mornings for The Leacock Foundation and I run an after-school program called Ultimate Coders, and I've taught for Toronto French Schools, I taught computer science at a synagogue up north — I can compare a lot of different school boards, and over the past week I've been telephoning this riding, uh, hopefully I've been able to reach some of you, uh, donate to my campaign so I can make more calls that call software is not cheap!

[n.b. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has not publicly released updated statistics on hate-motivated incidents since the data from September 1 to December 31, 2021.]

But what they tell me on the phones is not these practical problems:

What I actually hear from parents on the phone is that the number one problem is in fact hate — we hear about rising anti-Palestinian racism, we hear about rising anti-Asian racism, and, uh, personally I've observed anti-Semitism on the rise for the last 20 years, and, um, you know, we've all — we all have the concept of a proxy war but what we have in Toronto is actually a proxy peace: we have an uncanny, uh, amalgamation of different cultures here in the city and I was reflecting just as I was on my way here that if we can't get along in the Toronto school board, we can't get along anywhere, but what that means is we also have an easier version of the problem here, so if we can get along here, maybe we can get along anywhere else, so, so, uh, pleasure to be here.
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Q: what policies will you advocate for to ensure the safety of students and staff in our schools especially with issues such as bullying harassment and violence

Yeah, well this touches on by chance the thing I opened with, which is hate, and um, you know, there's been a lot of talk lately about, uh, defining or not defining different kinds of racism, and I think, uh, speaking of equity what we need to emphasize is equality before the law, we need forms of definitions that don't specify really specific groups — we definitely need to flag certain groups when there are certain conflicts ongoing but — to get people's attention — but you don't need different definitions for hate against different kinds of groups — there are general definitions of of hate and racism and, uh, I'm glad to see that work is ongoing on the board — I've been watching all of the meetings about anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian racism, and, uh, we have to continue that work and make it more general:

We basically have to generalize the solution — luckily that’s kind of what you can do with formal tools like what we teach kids in coding — that'll be part of the curriculum as well…

So fairness involves a bit of using general purpose tools before you get to the specific ethical conclusions, but, um, that's that's that's the issue I hear about on the phones all week so thanks everyone.
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Thank you everyone, this is such a crucial issue, um, as I've already alluded, to and, um, you know, it's — I agree with what's been said that a hate crime is a hate crime —that's kind of I was saying earlier, that you have to start at that sort of abstract template before you apply, uh, special cases, and, uh, we need to broaden that definition in various ways — obviously we've been discussing about broadening the definition of anti-semitism to include certain forms of anti-zionism — not every possible form of anti-zionism is anti-semitism but that is good work that it's being included, some of it — um, I've written about this in my blog by the way look up “When is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism” and, uh, other things need to be included:

If you tell a student not to show a religious symbol, such as a star of David or even a Keffiyeh — that itself is a hate-motivated offense, I would say — it's also victim blaming when you're basically — it's no different than when the police — well, what the police chief said that started the Genesis of Slutwalk:

It was victim-blaming when you tell women not to dress that way, it's victim-blaming when you tell Jews not to dress that way, or anyone not to dress that way.

So, we do need to expand the definition of hate to include more instances of it and, uh, I don't think we've overdone it yet — we do have to be careful, you can't define everything as hate, but, uh, there's a lot and we’ve got to work on it, thank you.
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Hi everyone — Aaron is not quite right: the biological reality is that some people are intersex, some people have different chromosomal configurations — especially outside of humanity, and prenatal hormones vary continuously, so there is in effect an infinitude of [biological] genders if you define it hormonally, but:

Capitalism over prescribes everything: it over-prescribes ADHD medications, it over prescribes vaccines, it over prescribes death in the form of MAID, and it over-prescribes gender hormones, and Europe has begun to realize that.

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Um, I want to comment on this question, how it's phrased: in terms of gender ‘ideology’ — uh, I understand the concern about any kind of ideology, but there's a big difference between teaching diversity and teaching ideology, and I I don't think we should teach any ideology:

We shouldn't teach what conclusions are correct; we should teach how to reason, how to think — obviously it has to be a safe space in which to do that, um, but we we shouldn't we shouldn't be teaching ideology uh period.

Um, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a pride month but, uh, you have to not teach the conclusion, right?

And, uh, I want to add — look up an article I wrote about this called gender curious care — I don't think gender affirmation is exactly right, I think it was well-intentioned in a lot of cases, but it's, uh, been used against the left at least in the arguments by the right — even if that's not quite fair — um, we shouldn't be talking about gender affirmation because, uh, not everyone needs every treatment, and actually it's great for business to say every customer is a customer and that's not how we should be doing things — we should be saying this is a rare treatment for a rare situation.

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Hi everyone um look me up online at adamgolding.ca — I've a lot more to say, you can read my blog you can read my resume, um, when I'm not teaching extracurriculars for the TDSB or for other school boards I run this school called “Ultimate Coders” — we teach computer programming to kids starting in senior kindergarten — those are curriculum reforms that we have to bring to school boards, and in the case of the TDSB, working with the province to do so — make sure you get a copy of my short platform it's real simple: we're going to teach coding early — early coding: that's what I do professionally — we're going to have longer recess: that will actually help reduce medication — when I was a student union president at UofT over half of my executive was on ADHD meds — I don't think they were all deficient — they were… UofT kids — and, uh, smaller classes: everybody agrees with that — we have to do some funding triage every year to actually make it happen, and uh fund the arts — that's what I also wanted to do when I ran for city council, and, uh, bottom line? Uh, you can trust me — I've got this.

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Hi everyone, I mentioned at the outset that my late father taught at Don Mills Collegiate, so I have a sort of spiritual connection to the area, at least that’s the way I feel personally, and what I didn't mention is that my partner who's not a public figure lives at the corner of the riding, so if I win this election I can afford to start a family here — so I will have real skin in the game.”
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adamgolding.ca (Candidate for Don Valley West Trustee)
ultimatecoders.com (Centre Director)

PS see also