Since the start of the school year, like every year, the children of our primary school have been practicing instrumental and sung musical pieces from various repertoires and cultural backgrounds. Over the years, pieces in French, Latin, Innu, English and Inuktitut have been sung. Everything is crowned at the end of the year with a series of concerts, which are the source of great pride for the children, their parents and their teachers.
In our opinion, it is unfortunately censorship and cancellation that are entering our school this year. Indeed, the concert of the students of 2e and 4e years has been stripped of part of its content on the unacceptable basis of ethnic origin. On March 26, less than a month before the concert, a parent questioned the choice of a musical piece from Hebrew folklore, under the pretext of the political context and sensitivities surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
After discussion with the teacher, everything seemed resolved. However, the school management and the Montreal School Service Center (CSSDM) decided to analyze the musical program designed by the teachers, which included 4 pieces in Hebrew out of a total of 21 pieces. Because of fear and panic, the ax falls, and censorship begins to operate. The management judges that there are too many songs from the Israeli repertoire and that certain lyrics could be poorly received in the current political and social context.
After initially forcing the cancellation of all the Hebrew pieces that the children were to perform during their concert, the management reversed its decision somewhat. Ultimately, three of the five planned pieces will be censored. A piece is banned and removed from the repertoire. We eliminate the Hebrew from another which we replace with humming. Culturally less delicate, the instrumental piece remains unscathed, as does one of the three sung pieces, which retains its title and lyrics in its original language. Finally, a play is finally translated into English, the result here of the self-censorship that the teacher imposed on herself after understanding the danger she runs.
During our interventions with the school management and the CSSDM, we proposed that the management, if it felt the need, explain to the spectators the approach and the choice of repertoire, while reinforcing a message of peace. Additionally, the word soldier found in the popular play Tsena, Tsena could be replaced by the word “friend”, as found in the version of the American pacifist folk singer Pete Seeger. Nothing to be done: the management power had spoken.
Enlightened in its approach by what we consider to be amalgamation, overinterpretation, ideology and fear, the CSSDM has signaled the end of recess. Play, pleasure, art, culture and knowledge have been replaced by the ignorance, obscurantism and political correctness of an administration and its rackets.
Let us be clear: we are unconditionally empathetic and in solidarity with all those suffering from this terrible war — and all other conflicts, for that matter. But we cannot bring ourselves to accept that sometimes it is acceptable to cancel a cultural object on the basis of ethnicity. One thing is certain, the conflict raging in the Middle East has nothing to do with the programmed repertoire. By thus amalgamating and canceling these songs, the management is only further widening the divide between people and polarizing opinions.
By wanting to secure space, we undermine it. This is fertile ground which fuels hatred rather than promoting dialogue and openness to others.
Through its censorship, the administration makes a people and their culture guilty and, in doing so, invites politics, war and religions into the school. As UNESCO says, “wars originate in the minds of humans, it is in the minds of humans that the defenses of peace must be built.” Despite the war in Ukraine – and although these questions resurfaced abundantly at the start of this conflict – he is still fortunately playing Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Stravinsky on all the major stages of the planet.
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are still studied in several schools and universities (but nothing is won). Despite our request to the school management and the CSSDM not to succumb to cancellation and censorship, a message that the teachers transmitted to them from the start, our request remained a dead letter.
We now hope for intervention from the Minister of Education to stop this type of abuse, to defend freedom of expression and education and to take the necessary measures to better protect pupils and students from the ideological and technocratic obscurantism that is rampant.