Paul Fromm Stripped of His Teaching Certificate

“This ruthless punishment was meant as a warning to any independent thinkers among the teaching profession brave enough or foolish enough to speak their minds. Teachers are encouraged to be mindless parrots for political correctness — indoctrinators, not educators.”

By Paul Fromm — MP3

It was a Soviet-style politically correct kangaroo court, plain and simple. The hostility toward me from the panel of three Discipline Committee members was palpable and remarked on by supporters who, from time to time, attended at the hearings which were held listlessly from January, 2005 to June, 2007. In the end, the decision was harsh, the punishment brutal and the decision meant as a message to other dissidents who might be teachers.

First, a bit of history:

1991. Fellow teacher, conservative Christian Malcolm Ross is removed from the classroom in New Brunswick after Canadian Jewish Congress complaints about his writings and letters-to-the-editor which are highly critical of Zionism.

1991. Now, it’s my turn. The Canadian Jewish Congress starts agitation to have me fired from my position as an English teacher for my immigration and pro-free speech stands, taken on my own time, off school property. Bernie Farber says: “The next day, we got on to our friends in the press and told them who Paul Fromm was.” The Canadian Jewish Congress made my profession an issue.

1992. The Canadian Jewish Congress buys a videotape of a private Heritage Front meeting and shops it around to the press. The Toronto Sun – yes, that’s correct, the “rightwing” Toronto Sun, does a front page expose, “Teacher Addresses Neo-Nazi Rally.” There’s a huge media frenzy with the Canadian Jewish Congress leading the pack howling for my job. No one denies that I’m a first rate teacher. Robert Lee, then Director of Education for the Peel Board, tells the press I’m “an exemplary teacher.” My evaluations are first rate and I’m in demand for summer school and night school teaching assignments, because the proper authorities know I’m a capable and competent instructor in English and writing.

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Ian Douglas Smith, Rhodesian leader April 8, 1919–November 20, 2007

IAN Smith, an ardent advocate of white rule in Rhodesia, who unilaterally declared independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965 and governed as an uncompromising prime minister for more than a decade, has died, aged 88.

For 15 turbulent years following UDI, Smith’s government fought an increasingly bitter war against African nationalist guerillas, which cost up to 40,000, mainly black, lives. It was a struggle he eventually lost, paving the way for the country’s independence as Zimbabwe.

To his supporters—white Rhodesians and many in Britain—Smith was a political visionary, a simple farmer who had stepped forward reluctantly to defend his country against communism. To the left, he was as abhorrent as the leaders of apartheid South Africa.

The context of Smith’s declaration of UDI was the deep distrust among Rhodesia’s 200,000-strong white minority of Britain’s motives in Africa following Harold Macmillan’s 1960 “winds of change” speech that presaged Britain’s withdrawal from the continent.

To Smith and his supporters, it seemed the West was only too willing to overlook military dictatorship, violence and corruption in black Africa while condemning Rhodesian society which, whatever its shortcomings, offered relative security for its citizens.

The West, Smith argued, no longer had the will to stand up to communism; Rhodesia was the front line, and the whites were not engaged merely in a battle for their existence but for civilised values. (more…)