A group of “concerned parents” who seriously need to chill out started a petition to remove a high school principal. Her only crime? Being a fun-loving fan of Iron Maiden, a band associated with “satanic” imagery.
Sharon Burns, the principal at a high school in Ontario, Canada seems like quite the character. Her social media pages proudly display her love for all things heavy metal and, particularly, Iron Maiden. Her Twitter handle reads, “Principal at Eden High School. Groth Mindset Practitioner. Fueled by metal & ska. & chickens.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d have killed to have a teacher with even a sliver of that personality when I was at high school. It’s clearly not for everyone, though, as a group of parents started a Change.org petition to oust poor Sharon, as per Consequence of Sound.
Titled “Eden High School Principal, Sharon Burns, Needs To Be Transferred Immediately!”, it racked up more than 500 supporters at its height.
“As concerned parents with impressionable children at Eden High School in St. Catharines, Ontario, we are deeply disturbed that the principal assigned to the school blatantly showed Satanic symbols and her allegiance to Satanic practices on her public social media platforms where all the students can see them under @edenprincipal (not her personal account),” the petition stated.
“Our school is based on inclusion, and openly displaying Satanic symbols (on a public social media platform) that directly goes against the principles of the vast majority of families who represent the school, is not inclusive.
As parents we are demanding her transfer to another school. Please replace her with another principal who aligns with the values of the families at Eden and will not sabotage the teaching or upholding of those values and will not try to introduce impressionable students to Satanic practices or symbolism.”
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The odds of an angsty teenager being swayed to like anything by *checks notes* their high school principal are very slim but these oblivious parents didn’t pause to consider that. They then tried to clarify that their problem wasn’t with Sharon’s love of Iron Maiden but just her open display of satanic imagery.
“This petition is about a principal of a school openly displaying her OWN handmade sign with the 666 clearly displayed on it which she knows full well what that SATANIC SYMBOL means to the vast majority of families in her school AND she put it on a PROFESSIONAL, public @edenprincipal account on social media, NOT A PRIVATE ONE, which she very easily could have done,” they said.
Thankfully a counter movement started on Change.org and the petition “We Need Mrs. Burns” proved to be far more popular, gaining over 19,000 signatures. “It is ridiculous that a couple of parents only judge her role as a principal only based on an instagram post. (About liking the band Iron Maiden. That’s it.)
Eden High School is a public school. Not a Christian school. If you somehow don’t like the principal of your child, grandchild, relative etc.’s school, then send them to another one,” the petition stated reasonably.
And the even better news is that the original petition has now closed on Change.org, and their silly crusade against Sharon appears to be over. Doesn’t the U.S. public school system already have a bad enough reputation without these parents acting like this?
Iron Maiden’s music has always been targeted for supposedly being “satanic”, something which they’ve always refuted. Bassist Steve Harris once explained that ‘The Number of the Beast’, the track which contains the line, “666, The Number of the Beast”, was actually inspired by a nightmare after watching the film Damien: Omen I, as well as reading the Robert Burns poem Tam o’ Shanter.
Maybe one day heavy metal will be allowed to exist without silly fearmongering.
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Check out ‘The Number of the Beast’ by Iron Maiden:
