B.C. Education Ministry won't delist scientology website

The Vancouver Sun - February 5, 2009

By Janet Steffenhagen


The B.C. Education Ministry says it has no plan to delist a reference to a scientology website from two of its teaching guides.

It seems I was wrong when I suggested in an earlier post that the ministry's inclusion of a scientology website - Youth for Human Rights International - in its teaching guides must have been a mistake and that the electronic link had been terminated. The link remains and the teaching guides -- one for Social Justice 12 and one for K-12 called Making Space - will continue to list YHRI as a supplementary resource, the ministry says.

(Social Justice 12 and the Making Space guide were developed as part of an agreement the government reached with Murray and Peter Corren in 2006 to make classes more gay friendly.)

Although the YHRI website is among several dozen listed as resources for teachers, the ministry told me it is "not a ministry-recommended learning resource". Rather, it is a supplementary resource which offers "potential support" for teachers looking for ideas about teaching social justice. Teachers will decide if they want to use ideas from YHRI, the ministry says.

The fact that YHRI is included in official teaching guides "doesn't constitute ministry endorsement of the website, nor of the organization," the ministry stated.

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