Elementary Schools Ban Father’s Day Cards!
School officials in elementary schools in six Scottish municipalities, including Glasgow, have banned the creation and distribution of Father’s Day greeting cards. However, Mother’s Day are still permitted on school grounds.
The rationale behind the strange ban is “in the interests of sensitivity” because many children now live in single parent or same-sex households. Family rights activists have protested the ban, but local authorities have insisted that teachers must adapt to “the changing pattern of family life.”
Tina Woolnough, whose son Felix attends Edinburgh’s Blackhall primary school, said several teachers there had not allowed children to make Father’s Day cards this year. Mrs. Woolnough explains that the Father’s Day card ban is enforced on a “class by class” basis. If a student in the class does not have a father living at home, or lives in arrangement that is not the traditional nuclear family, the ban is put in place.
“I’m astonished at this,” said Matt O’Connor, founder of campaign group Fathers For Justice, a divorced father advocacy group. “It totally undermines the role and significance of fathers whether they are still with the child’s mother or not. It also sends out a troubling message to young boys that fathers aren’t important.”
A spokesman for East Renfrewshire Council defended the policy. “Increasingly, it is the case that there are children who haven’t got fathers or haven’t got fathers living with them and teachers are having to be sensitive about this,” the spokesman said. “Teachers have always had to deal with some pupils not having fathers or mothers, but with marital breakdown it is accelerating.”
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