PENTICTON — A viral video of public school teachers in British Columbia dancing underneath a “Progress Pride” flag has generated a debate on the competency and priorities of public school teachers amid a decline in student test scores..The roughly 30-second video clip, originally sourced from the public school’s Instagram account, shows teachers dancing, lip-synching, throwing papers, sipping juice boxes, and otherwise behaving erratically, underneath a “Progress Pride flag.”Vancouver-based clip account @VanCityVice posted the reel Saturday and wrote that “(so-called) Teachers at Esquimalt High School seem to be salivating at the mouth while making cringe videos, excitedly awaiting the chance to groom your children.”The video, which was posted a week ago and has since been deleted from the school's official Instagram account, has stirred significant controversy on social media, with at least one sitting BC NDP MLA defending it..Delta school-trustee candidate Jim McMurtry quoted the same clip Saturday night and pointed at the flag on the wall behind the teachers, where a map, periodic table, or math timetable chart might otherwise hang..“Classrooms all had a map of the world or the periodic table and math timetable — now it’s just the Progress Pride Flag with trans colours in the chevron on the left, black and brown skin-colour stripes, and sometimes an intersex circle,” McMurtry wrote.The “Progress Pride flag” — not to be confused with the traditional pride flag — is an “inclusive variant of the traditional rainbow flag that incorporates specific colours and a chevron shape to emphasize marginalized groups and ongoing activism.”The new design was created in 2018 by a Portland-based “non-binary” graphic designer named Daniel Quasar.The light blue and light pink colours of the flag represent transgender people, and the brown and black colours represent people of colour and the “anti-racism movement.” The flag's black stripe is also used to include people living with HIV/AIDS.The promotion of gender and sexual-minority politics in public schools has long been a fight in the province, with parents, politicians and some students arguing teachers are putting politics and ideology ahead of actual teaching..OneBC Leader and Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie posted the same reel Sunday morning, noting the video fits within a broader pattern of BC public school teachers prioritizing radical political ideology over teaching..“Who would want their children taught by a bunch like this? This is the BCTF in action,” Brodie wrote. “Streaming only the most radical ideologues and woke people into our schools. Get your kids outta there if you can.”BCTF is the BC Teachers’ Federation, the province’s largest public-school teachers’ union.The union has spent years pushing the same identity politics through professional training programs, some of which are mandatory for members.As previously reported by the Western Standard in an exclusive series, the BCTF course ‘From Awareness to Action — Anti-Racism in the Union” tells teachers they live on “stolen indigenous lands” and instructs them to support DRIPA, UNDRIP and the "land-back" movement..The Federation’s classroom-resources catalogue also lists “Pride History” material for every grade, including students as young as five years old..Esquimalt-Colwood NDP MLA Darlene Rotchford, whose riding includes the school, answered Brodie Sunday afternoon and called the attack on the teachers “beyond disappointing.”.“Beyond disappointing for an MLA to be attacking teachers and using a fun and harmless video to push her divisive agenda,” Rotchford wrote. “I’m so proud of our exceptional Esquimalt High teachers for everything they do for our kids.”Burnaby East NDP MLA Reah Arora, like Rotchford, also answered Brodie and defended the BCTF..“People simply existing as they are is pushing ideology to you? And you try to come for the @bctf haha I can't wait for them to school you with the basic education you clearly need,” Arora wrote Sunday evening.Arora’s line about “the basic education you clearly need” sits next to a scoreboard demonstrating “basic education” is not, in fact, being provided to students in British Columbia..Concerns over teaching standards appear well-grounded based on the scoreboard data. PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment, a recurring OECD test of 15-year-olds in math, reading and science. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada published the 2025 Canadian results this month.BC’s math score fell from 538 in 2003 to 496 in 2022, a drop of 42 points. The 2025 print is 482. That is 56 points below 2003. The OECD treats about 20 points as one year of learning, so the long math decline is close to three years of lost learning.On March 9, Conservative MLA Heather Maahs put the then-latest 42-point math drop to the education minister and said the share of students at the bottom of the math distribution had doubled while the share at the top had halved.Reading in BC fell from 535 in 2012 to 511 in 2022 and 494 in 2025. Science fell from 544 in 2012 to 519 in 2022 and 510 in 2025..On February 19, Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day, then still in the Conservative caucus, told the House outcomes had fallen “the equivalent of a full grade level since 2012, despite record spending.”Day returned to the same line as recently as June 2..Day described BC Premier David Eby as the man who “wrote a book on how to sue the police, decriminalized hard drugs, let chaos reign on the streets, rallied against pipelines, rallied against dams, has overseen a full grade level drop in our education system, thrown reconciliation back 20 years, divided our province, run the biggest deficits in history, mortgaged our children’s futures, and polarized our people.”In stark contrast to the precipitous decline in student learning results, since David Eby became premier in November 2022, Ministry of Education and Child Care spending has risen 22%.
