On February 3, the Toronto Star published an article which details a Brampton father's attempts to have his son exempted from his Catholic high school's religious courses and activities. The article has sparked a debate revolving around one central question: should students at Catholic schools who are not Catholic be allowed to exempt themselves from Catholic related courses and activities?
The answer is clearly yes. Under the Education Act the Catholic school board is obligated to provide this option to non-Catholic students, as Catholic schools are funded by all Ontario tax payers, not just Catholic ones.
Yet, instead of focusing on non-Catholic student's ability to be exempted from religious teachings in a Catholic school, discourse should focus on why the Catholic faith is exempt from the laws which apply to all other faiths and groups within the province.
As it stands, the Catholic faith is the only one that claims widespread funding from the general taxpayer which allows it to run its own separate and public school board. I am a product of the Catholic system of education, and I do not believe it deserves to continue in Ontario any longer.
From Grade 1 until Grade 12, I attended Catholic schools (Mother Theresa Catholic Elementary School and Saint Benedict Catholic Secondary School, both in Cambridge). There were some positive aspects of my time at these institutions. As the Brampton father, Oliver Erazo, stated in defence of his choice to send his non-Catholic kids to a Catholic school, the Catholic schools in my area appeared to be better than their public counterparts in terms of funding, facilities, and teaching. The schools I attended were also near my home. However, what were benefits to me at the time now play a large role in my disdain for the Catholic school board system.
Students should be able to attend the closest and best funded schools without having to deal with the religious propaganda that may come along with it. The religious aspects of the schools I attended seemed to be largely regulated to one religion course a year, as well as a few other required ceremonies. Yet, as Catholic school board spokesman Bruce Campbell stated in the Toronto Star article "You can't extricate the faith. It's woven throughout the fabric of the school." This deep embedding of faith has numerous consequences.
Primarily, attending a Catholic school implies that you will be subjected to claims like "We are not against homosexuals, we are against the homosexual act," which are justified by adherence to the Catholic faith. For queer students navigating through the challenging self-realization process of high school, this type of discriminatory babble is highly problematic and should not be forced upon Ontario taxpayers. One only needs to look to the school boards reaction to "gay-straight alliance" clubs as a further example of the attitude Catholic schools foster towards queer people.
Furthermore, attending a Catholic school as a non-Catholic implies that you will either need to sit down passively during the ceremonies of a faith you have no connection to, or go through a challenging legal process to exempt yourself. Catholic schools have a tendency of setting up rigid categories of those who adhere to their faith, and those who belong to one of the other "strange" religions. Not all students are equal in Catholic schools as those in the non-Catholic category are often stigmatized, even if not intentionally.
Finally, attending a Catholic school as a non-Catholic implies that your resources and time will likely be wasted on learning the tenets of a faith which you do not identify with. This is at the cost of other far more valuable subjects that are overlooked, such as math, science, or basic literature.
This is not to say that religious teachings have no place in the school system. The "World Religions" course I took in Grade 11, which can be found in public schools, was extremely useful in allowing me to better understand those around me. Ideally though, these sorts of courses would include Christianity, as opposed to teaching all of the "other" religions as mere objects with which to compare the supposedly "main" Christian tradition. Though students should learn about different religions, it needs to be from a secular viewpoint, unless, of course, the student's parents are willing to cough up the money required for a private school.
In a supposedly multicultural society, it is insulting for the government to fund and prefer the teachings of one specific group. The ever-changing makeup of Canadian society means that we are no longer a "Judeo-Christian" nation if we ever were, and so, we cannot give preference to a faith simply because we have a tradition of doing so. This practice needs to be justified, and no one can reasonably do so any longer. The time for the Catholic school board to be transformed into a secular institution is not in the future. It is not even now. The time was yesterday; this practice has gone on for far too long.
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It's time for tax payers to stop funding Catholic school boards. Let the Catholics pay for their own educating just like every other religion does.
Jewish, Muslim, Baptist etc. all of these faiths pay for their own funding & so should the Catholics that way the billions they consume of tax base can be redirected to failing, desperately underfunded public schools. This should've happened the first time a priest was convicted of molesting children while the church hid, protected & defended the rapists. The Catholic church has proven to be a criminal organization.
That's not to condemn all Catholics, its a religion filled with beauty, mystery & value, I just don't want to be paying for anyones religious schooling.
Is this bad? Is real efficiency and higher quality education bad? Must all students be taught to the lowest common denominator to make things "fair"? Is the goal of education to hold our children back to the potential of the most disadvantaged students?
The board we fund had no contract disputes, no interruptions of classes, no work-to-rule disruptions of after school programs. Why should the school board I fund by choice with my taxes be brought down to the abysmal level of the public system when it costs everyone not one cent more than a public board education? Why should Ontario not put more effort into discovering exactly how other boards do much more using the exact same per student funding?
It seems most of the objections to alternate boards of education are on religious grounds and interfaith prejudices, not real cost or education quality. I could care less if a neighbour's children went to a Madrasa that met provincial standards and curriculum, if it cost taxpayers no more. The best way to handle diversity is to accept all options equally and on a level playing field, not by forcing everyone to accept universal mediocrity tha delivers less to everyone in the name of "fairness".
If that sort of thing matters any more.
Of course, the Roman Catholics can argue that they are paying taxes for an education that, being secular, might, by the narrowest imaginable margin, meet their definition of education, but by their understanding is missing important parts.
Of course, you and I might be the only people talking about this. Most arguments go along the lines of "The RCs have this, I don't like the RCs, I wanna take it away." Thank you for temporarily raising the level of the conversation.
Are you serious? That Canada was founded as a Christian nation is an indisputable, historical fact. We were quite obviously a Christian nation as recently as 1982 even, ever read the preamble to our constitution?
It's God capital G, not god lowercase g, meaning it refers to the Judeo-Christian God. It would have to be lowercase g to refer to any god, and Allah to refer to the Muslim god.
In addition, if you look at the historical context, to think that they could possibly have meant any other God than the Judeo-Christian God is simply ridiculous.
You think everyone in our public school system is treated equally. You are in for a rude awakening young man.
You are young & have a great deal yet to learn. What you still need to learn won't be found in a classroom or textbook. It will be found through real world experience which you clearly lack.
Surely the just way is to fund all religious schools as well as public schools. There is a historically documented constitutional requirement to fund the Catholic School system in Ontario. Since it is not legally possible to remove this funding, the only way to restore equity is to fund all religious schools equally on a per student basis. This would give the dissenters the democratic right to place their funding where they want it by voting with their feet. Good schools would flourish because families would choose to enroll their students and poor schools would slowly fade away.
It is a cop out to suggest that funding other schools is 'absurd' All you would be doing is paying per-student to educate students in Ontario, which is the duty of the Government. A blatant injustice is being perpetrated here by denying Ontario tax payers access to equal funding.
The only reason to deny funding to these students is discrimination on the basis of religion.
In my community, we have tons of specialty public schools because parents have insisted: French Immersion, Spanish, different learning styles such as Montessori, art-based schools, science-based schools, Catholic. The list goes on. If it works here, it can work elsewhere.