Canada’s education system has long been a cultural battleground. For decades governments, politicians, teachers’ unions and academic theorists have used the country’s schools to hash out competing theories of pedagogy, politics, society and citizenship – with generally disappointing results for the students and their education. More recently, however, schools have also become a literal battleground. What follows is one of many grim tales from the front lines.
In 2023, Cassie was a newly-minted teacher working for the public school board in a mid-sized Canadian city. (At her request, C2C Journal has withheld her real name and location as her case is ongoing.) Among her areas of specialty was a Grade 12 course called English and Art. With the uproar over accusations of systemic racism reverberating throughout the school system, Cassie attempted to engage her class in a reasoned discussion about art and oppression. “I was trying to push back against this idea that black people are always at the top of the so-called ‘victim hierarchy’,” she recalls in an interview. “I wanted to show that it was more complicated than that. Oppression isn’t this fixed ladder.”
In leading this discussion, Cassie was aware that one student in her class came from a family of outspoken black activists, and likely disagreed with everything she was saying. “At first, he just sat there taking it in. But a few days later, it all boiled over,” she says. “During class, out of nowhere, he called me a ‘Gook’.” It was meant as a nasty, racist insult aimed at Cassie’s southeast Asian background. And then it got worse.
“Before I could react” to the name-calling, Cassie recounts, “he grabbed a pair of scissors and came at me. He tried to stab me. The pain hit immediately, and so did the chaos in the classroom. Students were screaming, chairs were scraping, noise was everywhere.”
Amid the mayhem, the other students retreated to the outer walls of the classroom, away from the violence. That left Cassie alone with the attacker in the middle of the room. As she tried to make her way to the hallway, her attacker kept coming at her, using the blunted end of the heavy art scissors as a bludgeon. “It felt like I was being hit with a hammer over and over. I thought he might kill me,” she recounts emotionally, explaining that she ended up with “seven distinct bruises on my back – big dark ones – where he hit me” following the attack.
While she eventually made it to safety, her attacker was restrained by other teachers, the events have never been fully put to rest. “I’m still in therapy,” Cassie says. “I was diagnosed with PTSD. Every time I step into one of the rooms, I see flashes: the scissors in his hand, the way the kids stood pressed against the walls, the blows. It comes in waves – sharp searing memories that feel like it’s all happening again.”
Adding to the lingering personal trauma, Cassie was subsequently attacked again – this time by the institutions that were supposed to be protecting her. “Before anyone could even think about treating this as an assault against me, the boy went home and told his mom that his teacher had said Asians are at the top of the victim hierarchy,” Cassie explains. “That’s not even close to what I said, but his mother – a prominent local Black Lives Matter leader – latched onto it.”
What followed was a Kafkaesque reversal of roles, as the boy’s mother hijacked a subsequent school board investigation to promote the notion that Cassie herself had provoked the attack by disparaging critical race theory and forcing her students to read white authors. While other classes were studying Canadian Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese, the mother complained, Cassie was teaching Shakespeare and promoting colonialism. “By the time she was done – and she was shouting the whole time – it wasn’t even about the attack anymore. It was about whether I was pushing a racist agenda in class.”
Cassie still worries that the boy’s family will make good on their threat to take the case to the provincial human rights tribunal. ‘I could end up having to pay damages,’ she adds. ‘It feels like a violation on so many levels. Like I’m being retraumatized by the system itself.’
Following the hearings, the school board assigned an observer to sit in on Cassie’s classes and create a transcript of everything she said, the goal being to spot any signs of incipient racism. “Basically, I was under surveillance for the rest of the term from all sides,” she says. “It was humiliating. I was the one who was attacked, and instead of focusing on my safety or my well-being, they turned me into the problem! Every day, I had to walk into that classroom knowing someone was sitting there waiting to catch me out, to paint me as some kind of villain.”
And even though the school board finally closed its investigation with no sanction against her, Cassie still worries that the boy’s family will make good on their threat to take the case to the provincial human rights tribunal. If that body finds in their favour, Cassie could be on the hook for a sizeable monetary penalty. “I could end up having to pay damages,” she adds. “It feels like a violation on so many levels. Like I’m being retraumatized by the system itself.”
Welcome to teaching in the age of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Kicked in the head? All in a Day’s Work
Cassie’s horrifying experience is far from unique. Rather, it is part of a growing wave of violence suffered by teachers. According to a recent survey by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, 77 percent of educators have either personally experienced violent behaviour at their school or witnessed one of their colleagues experiencing it. And not just in high school; these figures include violent behaviour by the youngest schoolkids. In the same survey, four out of every five members of the federation said classroom violence has increased over their time at work.
In Hamilton, Ontario, the public school board reported 4,330 violent incidents in the 2022-2023 school year, with the number requiring first-aid treatment nearly tripling over the previous year. In 2024, the local union representing educational assistants and other school support workers released a series of gruesome photos showing bruises, cuts and scratches on their members’ faces and arms as well as smashed furniture – disturbing evidence of mayhem going on in class. “I just had a member that went to the hospital the other day after being kicked in the head by a student,” Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union Local 527 president Susan Lucek told the Hamilton Spectator.
A review of violent incidents at the Toronto District School Board by the Ontario Auditor General last December reveals a shocking growth over the past five years. Between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023, the number of sexual assaults in the district’s secondary schools roughly doubled from 12 to 23. So did physical assaults (35 to 76) and weapons-related charges (37 to 71). Even elementary schools saw a similar rise in such behaviour, with overall reported incidents going from 81 to 186 over the five years.
Neither is it merely an Ontario problem. A recent Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF) podcast discussed the alarming rate of teacher-reported in-school violence throughout the country, including in Alberta, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island as well as Ontario; in PEI one in every four teachers said they felt harassed or unsafe at work. Last year the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation (STF) profiled “Shelby”, a Saskatoon middle-school teacher who was walking in a hallway between classes when she was attacked by a student in what the STF delicately described as “an elevated emotional state”. Shelby suffered a “severe concussion, broken nose and multiple bruises.” She now teaches in another province.
An elementary school teacher noted that after she became pregnant she grew worried that aggressive students might actually harm her unborn baby. ‘Is my baby safe? Am I safe?’ she asked plaintively. It is now common for pregnant teachers to take maternity leave as early as possible as a precautionary measure.
The crisis has gotten so bad that it is impairing the recruitment of new teachers. During the CTF panel discussion, one high school teacher explained how several student-teachers doing their practicum at her school ended up changing their minds about their planned profession. After the experience, the teacher said, “They [had] no intent to apply for teaching jobs, as it was far more violent and far more awful than they’d been led to believe.”
On the same panel, an elementary school teacher noted that after she became pregnant she grew worried that aggressive students might actually harm her unborn baby. “Is my baby safe? Am I safe?” she asked plaintively. It is now common for pregnant teachers to take maternity leave as early as possible as a precautionary measure.
The worrisome evidence goes on and on. In every province, teachers complain that they are scared to go to work for fear of being attacked or injured. And they vow that the situation today is far worse than it ever was in the past. Why have Canadian schoolchildren become so violent, so suddenly?
Is school violence on the rise in Canada?
School violence in Canada is rising fast. A recent survey found that 77 percent of Ontario educators have personally experienced or witnessed one of their colleagues involved in school violence. At Toronto District School Board secondary schools, physical and sexual assaults and weapons offenses doubled between 2017 and 2023. This is a problem across the country. In 2024 the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation highlighted the case of “Shelby”, a Saskatoon middle school teacher who was attacked by a student, leaving her with a “severe concussion, broken nose and multiple bruises.” It is now common practice for pregnant teachers to take their maternity leave as soon as they are eligible, to avoid any harm to their unborn baby at school.
A Spending Problem? Really?
While teachers’ organizations may be a credible source of information on the growth of violence in schools – and deserving of our sympathy in that regard – their analysis of the causes behind this trend seems embarrassingly weak.
The CTF podcast described above is entitled “The Violence of Austerity in Schools” and attempts to make the case that the recent onset of violent behaviour among students is the direct result of education budget cuts at the provincial level. According to Chris Bruckert, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa who appears on the podcast, “The genesis of violence that we’re seeing in schools has nothing to do with the children. In fact, I would say the children are also victims of a system that has absolutely denied them access to the mechanisms to meet their needs.”
Bruckert goes on to blame “cuts in health care, cuts in supports in schools…[and] increase in class size” as the root cause of the outbreak in violence. The theme that the recent rise in violence is due to an expansion in class sizes or reductions in overall government funding is repetitive across teachers’ organizations. Indeed, whatever the problem, teachers’ groups habitually claim it can be fixed with bigger education budgets, smaller classrooms and higher salaries for teachers.
![University of Ottawa criminologist Chris Bruckert on a podcast saying that the recent rise in student violence in Canada is due entirely to “cuts in health care, cuts in supports in schools…[and] increase in class size.”](https://c2cjournal.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Inset5-1024x446.png)
As a review of the evidence shows, however, there is no credible link between government funding and violence in schools. This school year, for example, Ontario plans to spend $29 billion on education, an all-time high. The province’s school system currently boasts 127,900 teachers and 2 million students, producing a student to teacher ratio of just over 15:1. In 2009, long before violence was identified as a major threat to the teaching profession, this ratio was 16:1.
Where there has been a big change is in net spending per pupil. Last year the Alberta Business Council published a nationwide analysis of education spending between 1997-1998 and 2021-2022, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available. In 1997-1998, spending across Canada averaged $11,400 per pupil. Adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending had reached $17,200 in 2021-2022 – a real increase of 50 percent over 24 years.
Shortening the time-frame, a recent report from the Fraser Institute looked at education spending between 2012-2013 and 2021-2022. During these nine years, spending across all provinces on primary and secondary education grew from $61.5 billion to $82.5 billion in nominal terms – or almost twice the rate of inflation. Adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending was up about 5 percent across Canada during this period.
Based on the available data, the trajectory for education budgets and per-student funding is up, up, up. Clearly something other than government spending is to blame for the recent outbreak of violence. Could it be what’s going on in the classrooms?
From Teachers to Oppressors
“Teachers in every province say that violence is increasing in schools,” observes John Hilton-O’Brien, executive director of the Alberta-based education lobby group Parents for Choice in Education. “Why is this happening now? What has changed?” His questions are entirely rhetorical. “We know precisely what has happened,” Hilton-O’Brien observes. “It’s because the people running our schools are working very hard to demonstrate their commitment to ideologies that are not related to education effectiveness.”
Hilton-O’Brien points to a tidal wave of progressive teaching ideologies that have swept through the education establishment over the past several decades. This movement has taken different forms and gone by different names, but in general it promotes the advancement of low-income and poorly-performing students – and by doing so diminishes merit-based accomplishment – and seeks to upend traditional methods of teaching.
One such example is a policy known as “de-streaming”, in which top-performing students are no longer given access to advanced classes or elite school programs. Rather, all students are funnelled into the same general classrooms. While this serves to level out performance, it creates additional stresses on teachers by forcing very good and very poor students into the same program. More recently, it has been alleged that traditional streaming of students into advanced and applied categories is “racist” because students from low-income families (more of whom are allegedly non-white) tend to congregate in the applied programs.
Student-centric learning and “unschooling” are two other variants of this general trend. Advocates of these concepts include Carlo Ricci, a professor at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario and author of the 2012 book The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion have to Do With Learning? and Judy Arnall, author of Unschooling to University: Relationships matter most in a world crammed with content.
In contrast to conventional education theory that places the teacher at the front of the class as an instructor and disciplinarian, unschooling encourages students to view their teachers as peers rather than authority figures. The students’ own individual whims are meant to supplant the structure and shared purpose once provided by their teacher. Personal growth, rather than the acquisition of knowledge, becomes the purpose of time spent at school.
As a result of these changes, the traditional hierarchy of the classroom has been eroded, says John von Heyking. “The school system is today viewed less and less as a place of learning that demands respect for its purpose and its members,” he observes. The classroom instead has become a social laboratory. Von Heyking is a professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta and a board member of the Calgary Classical Academy (CCA), a private charter school serving kindergarten to Grade 9 kids based on the classical liberal precepts of “virtues, knowledge, and habits befitting free citizens.” As he explains, the CCA promotes time-honoured pedagogical techniques that include respecting the teacher as the head of the class.
Student-centric practices such as unschooling undermine the discipline and order in the classroom through such practices as encouraging students to address their teachers by their first names and choosing what to study. But what was once a gradual diminution of hierarchical structure and pedagogical coherence accelerated sharply in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in the U.S. and the subsequent society-wide adoption of radical concepts such as critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). (The process of institutional capture by CRT and DEI and the broader implications of this are the subject of previous C2C Journal articles, including here and here.)
How have teachers’ unions responded to rising violence in schools?
In a very short time, these theories have become firmly embedded throughout the school system and its method of reward. “Being a passionate exemplar of the woke ideology has become a pathway to advancement [for educators],” says Hilton-O’Brien. And this is having a significant impact on experiences in individual classrooms.
Student Takeover
Based on perceived or alleged power imbalances, DEI and CRT sort all people into the binary categories of victim or oppressor, notes Hilton-O’Brien. “DEI is a game that fosters resentment and division, a dynamic that encourages hostility and weakens classroom authority,” he says. And the primacy of DEI ideology in Canadian schools has created a cascading series of problems for the relationship between teachers and their students.
First, asserts Hilton-O’Brien, it opens the door to students claiming victimhood just by being in a classroom. “It doesn’t take a perspicacious student very long to realize that it is the teacher and administrators who have the power,” he notes. This makes it possible for the student to take on the identity of a member of an oppressed group rather than a pupil who is there to learn from (and follow the proper instructions of) educators. Rebelliousness naturally follows.
One of the key precepts of CRT is that force is an acceptable means of fighting injustice. ‘This makes it possible for a student claiming membership in an oppressed group to always be in the right when committing violence against someone from a supposedly dominant group,’ explains Hilton-O’Brien.
The many teachers who have taken to actively promoting DEI and CRT concepts in their classrooms are essentially undercutting their own status and authority. This not only erodes their classroom position, it can also trigger other unintended consequences. “A teacher might feel that she can take some liberties with discipline” for certain students as a way of furthering their social justice goals or demonstrating a commitment to DEI objectives, adds Hilton-O’Brien. This favoured inequity can then lead to further chaos, as it signals to some students that they have a free hand to act as they wish. And it breeds resentment among other students who see themselves as being treated inequitably in order to elevate the favoured group.
Finally, by celebrating victimhood and abdicating their own authority, teachers are opening the door to a constant pushback against their perceived “power”, which can eventually lead to violence. One of the key precepts of CRT is that force is an acceptable means of fighting injustice. “This makes it possible for a student claiming membership in an oppressed group to always be in the right when committing violence against someone from a supposedly dominant group, even when the behaviour is clearly aggressive on an individual level,” explains Hilton-O’Brien.
Schools, says Hilton-O’Brien, “are now at a point where disciplinary measures are non-existent for students. Students can assault a teacher and that student is back in the classroom the next day.” And in this modern update of the 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle, it’s the teachers themselves who are to blame. Adds von Heyking, “DEI and CRT have fundamentally reshaped education policy in Canada. Do I believe these ideological frameworks are fuelling classroom violence and hostility towards teachers? Yes.” And note well that the five-year time-frame for this rise in school violence, as documented by the Ontario Auditor General among others, fits neatly with the rapid rise of CRT and DEI ideology since 2020.
Ideology Trumps Reality
With the recent rash of violence in schools likely being due to the infiltration of DEI and CRT policies throughout Canada’s school system, there is unfortunately no immediate prospect for improvement. Even teachers, who have ironically become the victims of their own commitment to victimology, seem incapable of properly recognizing the problem, let alone advocating for measures that would fix it.
This can be seen most obviously in the support offered by numerous teachers’ organizations for blanket bans on police officers in schools. The B.C. Teachers Federation (BCTF), for example, has stated that, “We cannot justify the continuation of policing programs in BC schools.” This position statement is larded with complaints about “a settler colonial context” and “ongoing police violence.” (It also makes the obligatory claim that the underlying problem of violence in schools lies in “underfunding.”) Bizarrely, the removal of police protection is presented as a way to make schools “safer and more inclusive.” In reality, the exact opposite has occurred. At what point will the BCTF realize that the removal of school safety officers coincides neatly with the dramatic increase in student violence and the terror experienced by their own members on a daily basis?
Then there is the curious case of Section 43. Before Parliament was prorogued in January by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, two bills before Parliament proposed to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code. This clause, often characterized as “the spanking law”, dates back to Canada’s original Criminal Code in 1892 and permits parents, teachers and other individuals acting in place of parents to use “reasonable” physical force as a corrective measure against children. While the progressive left claims this condones violence against minors, it in fact allows people with responsibility for the safety of children – such as teachers – to take necessary action where required.
Stripping this crucial legal protection from teachers will leave them at the mercy of endless accusations of assault by students. In the absence of Section 43, they will have no justification to grab, restrain or otherwise corral a violent student – or one in an “emotionally charged state” – who threatens the safety of him or herself or others. Strangely enough, however, it is the official policy of the CTF to advocate for the removal of Section 43. Why? Because in its zeal to demonstrate its alliance with Indigenous reconciliation, the CTF has committed itself to accepting all 96 of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action regarding residential schools. And Call to Action #6 demands the repeal of Section 43.
To square this impossible circle, CTF policy calls for Section 43 to be repealed – and then for the Criminal Code to be further amended to add in an identical section somewhere else giving back teachers the protection once provided by Section 43. It is an absurd position to take. And it further reflects teachers’ organizations’ preference for political posturing over confronting the real issues physically imperilling their members.
What are the real reasons behind the rise in school violence in Canada?
Experts outside the school system point to the rise in critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion policies as the cause of the loss of authority and discipline in Canadian schools. According to John Hilton-O’Brien, executive director of the Alberta-based lobby group Parents for Choice in Education, “It’s because the people running our schools are working very hard to demonstrate their commitment to ideologies that are not related to educational effectiveness.”
The Cancer Spreads
Alongside the violence perpetrated by students against teachers, the insidious influence of DEI and CRT within the school system is now spreading to other forms of violence and harassment. One alarming trend is the sharp rise in student-based anti-Semitism. Writing in The Epoch Times, Barbara Kay notes that the TDSB reported a tripling of anti-Semitic incidents last year, including threats of violence and #killthejews graffiti – a direct result, Kay surmises, of a host of CRT-inspired anti-racism programs in schools that promote the victimology of Palestinians and cast Israel as an oppressor.
In his own column in The Epoch Times entitled “Anti-Semitism in Canadian Schools? Blame Critical Race Theory”, Hilton-O’Brien describes the horrifying case of a Jewish high school student hounded throughout the hallways of his school by dozens of girls shouting “Free Palestine!” and waving the Hamas flag. Hilton-O’Brien draws a straight line from this sort of abuse to claims of “systemic discrimination” enabled by Canadian school boards’ slavish devotion to CRT and DEI. “We’ve allowed an idea into our schools and society that makes violence inevitable,” he writes. “Canadian Jews are the first target, but will not be its last.”
The woke takeover of the education establishment has also led to educational institutions abusing their own teachers, based on adherence to anti-racism ideology that casts teachers as oppressors. Cassie’s experience of being forced to defend herself against accusations of racism following her school board’s investigation into the attack against her is one such example.
Another can be found in the horrific case of Richard Bilkszto, a former TDSB principal. Bilkszto was required to attend a series of anti-racism seminars in which he was relentlessly bullied by the DEI consultant leading the seminars. Bilkszto disagreed with consultant Kike Ojo-Thomson’s unsupported claim that “Canada is a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism” and that “the racism we experience is far worse here than [in the U.S.].” Following Bilkszto’s pushback, Ojo-Thomson claimed he was representative of “white supremacy” and made his views the focus of a subsequent discussion.
As a result of this bullying, Bilkszto went on sick leave and later made a successful claim of workplace harassment with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Still, despite clearly being the victim, the former principal was denied further work by the TDSB, fell into a depressive state and eventually took his own life. As Hilton-O’Brien says of Biltszto’s tragic experience and terrible fate: “To an alarming degree, unelected bureaucrats, such as the DEI trainers, are trying to tell highly-educated professionals how to think and how to act.” The results are not just bad for teachers – they can actually be fatal.
How are parents responding to rising violence and ideological shifts in Canadian schools?
If…Only We Could Do Something
The 1968 dark comedy If… depicts a violent student rebellion at a British boarding school. Led by a sneering Malcolm McDowell in his first movie role, a group of students confront the school leadership by seizing an old cache of weapons and spraying machine-gun fire on the annual Founders Day crowd. A headmaster ventures out from behind cover to calm the scene. “Boys, boys, I understand you,” he yells to the rebels. He gets a bullet square in the forehead for his efforts.
The movie was originally intended as an allegory for the social upheaval of the 1960s, but it works just as well as an example of the effects of CRT and DEI ideologies on Canada’s schools in the 2020s. Having been told they are the masters of their own education and victims of an oppressive society, it should come as no surprise that many students now reject any attempt at imposing order or discipline upon them. And the inevitable result of this loss of order and control in the classroom is the rapid growth in violence directed at teachers.
The violent student rebellion depicted in the 1968 dark comedy If… was originally intended as a commentary on the social upheaval of the 1960s, but it works equally well as a parable about the toxic impact of CRT and DEI policies on Canadian schools today.The only viable solution is to re-impose the traditional hierarchical structure of schools. But this is made all the more difficult by the actions of so many teachers themselves, as they are the ones who have orchestrated and promoted the destructive concepts in the first place. Now, like the headmaster in If…, they are finding out what it means to reap a woke whirlwind.
We had a reliable education system in Canada for decades, if not centuries,’ says von Heyking. ‘But now, with the loss of focus on virtue and discipline, we are seeing a loss of faith in the entire public school system.’
Fixing this problem will require the root-and-branch removal of these poisonous ideologies from the entire education system, starting with universities and teachers’ colleges and moving down to school boards, schools and individual classrooms. Given how firmly it appears to have embedded itself – and how reluctant teachers are to accept common-sense evidence about the true source of their problems – this could take a very long time. And given that those few teachers who push back, even tentatively, are more likely to be abandoned or attacked by this system than praised – as the experiences of Cassie and Bilkszto clearly show – waiting for Canadian educators to reform the nation’s education system on their own is clearly a fool’s errand.
For the moment, then, it falls to parents to correct the situation for the benefit of their own children. As Hilton-O’Brien points out, 10 percent of Alberta students are currently studying in charter schools outside the public system and a further 15 percent are on wait lists for such schools (with another 2 percent home-schooled). “In total a quarter of all families have either left the public system, or are desperately trying to do so,” he says. He figures such a mass defection from publicly-run schools is without parallel in Canadian education history. Von Heyking agrees. “We had a reliable education system in Canada for decades, if not centuries,” he says. “But now, with the loss of focus on virtue and discipline, we are seeing a loss of faith in the entire public school system.”
If public education cannot reform itself – despite the physical harm it is now inflicting on teachers and students alike – then the only realistic option may be a swift exodus to private, charter and home-schooling options. While Alberta families are blessed with the country’s most generous and enlightened private school policy, every parent in every province ultimately has the ability to make their voice heard on this matter – either by voting with their feet and removing their children from the public school system, or by voting with their ballot to effect meaningful political change.
Brock Eldon is Associate Editor at C2C Journal. Since earning his B.A. and M.A. from Western University in London, Ontario, he has taught and designed curriculum in Canada, South Korea, China and Vietnam. His literary criticism can be found here and his short fiction can be found here.
Source of main image: a film still from Blackboard Jungle, 1955.
