The following flow chart is of Ontario’s public and Catholic school textbook evaluation process, 1960 to 2000 or thereabouts. If attending school in the province, this procedure governed the textbooks teachers were permitted to use in providing an education for elementary and secondary school students. There was an inspectorate watching over. Because Canada’s publishers gave populous Ontario special attention, and other provinces used Circular 14 to assist in choosing their textbooks, the publication was influential across the country.

During the production of NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS, my first book on Ontario’s quiet program of censoring its education, flouting Canadian and international laws, I sought to map the evaluation process.

This is an accurate representation that benefitted from departmental process maps. All of this procedure though was somewhat of a waste from the view of the publisher, teacher and students.

After six or seven subject specialists reached a consensus on whether a textbook submission should in fact be used as a textbook, the Ministry of Education made the final decision based on political needs. Sometimes the Director had help from the Minister of Education and even the Premier of Ontario.

Rejection letters to publishers obfuscated the decision process. Rejections portrayed majority rejections when they were often made by one man, usually not a specialist in the field, choosing for all of the province based on unaligned motives in conflict with school-based learning.

Would they really do that? They would and they did. If you attended Canada’s schools as a Boomer or GenX student, you were most likely impacted.

The official release of my second book on textbook evaluation, Canadian Mockingbird: Exposing Censorship and Textbook-Mediated Social Engineering is set for February 15, 2024. But as this is a self-published tale, the rigidity of releasing the book has limitations. In the near future Canadian Mockingbird will be available from its own web site www.mockingbird.ink where I will answer readers’ questions and share feedback.

Happy Holidays.