Tag Archives: separate schools

Separate Schools are a federal responsibility

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Michael Den Tandt thinks the federal Liberal Party should take on separate schools.

Liberals could begin speaking truth about education. This is provincial jurisdiction — but the constitutional guarantees that provide for separate schools in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as the statutes that provide the same in the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut, are federal. Separate schools in Ontario, under the microscope now because of the furor over provincially mandated “gay-straight alliances” in Catholic schools, increasingly look like an anachronism. More importantly, most parents with children in public schools will agree it’s time to bring back the failing grade and negative consequences for bad behaviour. No federal politician is touching this.

Renegotiating the constitution requires provincial support so it isn’t a very good way to bring the battle against separate schools to the federal level, even if it would be a nice gesture.

A more appropriate way for federal parties to get involved in the separate schools debate is to point out Canada has been condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Committee for its separate schools (once in 1999, and a repeat in 2005 when the UN realised Canada ignored the 1999 report). This makes it a federal issue if we take our obligations with the UN seriously.

So what can the feds do? Not much without touching the constitution. But if all they did were to recognize the problem by citing the UN reports, they could then just recommend the provinces deal with it. It sounds lame and is just passing the buck, but having the feds recognize the issue will force the provinces to defend the funding. Since there are no moral, economic, or even religious reasons to keep funding separate schools, an open debate is all we need to keep up the pressure.

Ignoring our human rights violations simply because education is a provincial responsibility is wrong and we can’t let our federal politicians get away with it.

Blame Ontario Politicians

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Just when I thought I’d had enough of the media coverage of the ongoing debate around the Ontario Liberal government’s amended Bill-13 that will, if passed, require Catholic schools to support gay-straight alliance clubs, I came across Adam Radwanski’s article: “Politicians, not Catholics, deserve Ontario’s wrath for funding religious schools.”  Radwanski presents an excellent argument for why the responsibility for resolving the issue belongs to

the men and women running the province, who prefer to tell religious leaders how they should change their moral code rather than tell them they no longer have any business advancing that code through publicly funded schools.

To most of the rest of the Western world, it would come as little surprise that Catholics in Ontario – the ones in senior positions within the church, at least – are uncomfortable telling kids that it’s okay to be gay. The surprise, rather, would be that Ontario still has a publicly funded Catholic school system beyond any point at which it’s reasonably needed or defensible as a minority right.

Regardless of how angry we, those of us who support the elimination of Catholic schools, get with Cardinal Thomas Collins’ pronouncements, it is time we focus our wrath and pressure on

The government [that] has thus far shown more inclination to try to make Catholicism palatable to the masses than tell Catholics to practice it on their own time

and on their own dime.

New poll finds Ontarians support elimination of Catholic schools.

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The Forum Research survey also found more than half of Ontario residents — 53 per cent — oppose the public funding of Catholic schools with 40 per cent supportive and 6 per cent unsure.

As the issue of gay-straight alliances dominates debate around new anti-bullying legislation, the poll concluded people are accepting of the anti-homophobia clubs designed to promote tolerance.

Fifty-one per cent agreed that students in publicly funded Catholic schools should be allowed to form clubs under that sometimes contentious name with 28 per cent opposed and 21 per cent undecided.

The GSA issue is big if we can make good use of it. Atheist groups CFI:Canada and the Canadian Secular Alliance cosponsored a rally last weekend yet I found it annoying that all of the focus has been on forcing the Catholic schools to accept GSAs rather than acknowledging the real problem that Catholic schools are funded in the first place.

But since the government is proposing laws that reduce the influence of Catholic beliefs within the separate schools, having the public wonder why we’re keeping the two systems apart is a valid end game. Why attack separate schools on moral or anti-religious grounds when simple economics might do the trick?

via Toronto Star

Convenient hypocrisy

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Chris Selley wonders why Canadians put the heat on our politicians who want to open the debate on abortion while at the same time allowing publicly funded schools to push a pro-life agenda.

But that’s the greatest part of stories like these. While politicians cower, the Catholic system all but rubs their noses in the Vatican’s brand of social-conservative activism. [Catholic School board trustee Bruce] Campbell reminded the Post that, “hundreds of [Catholic] students every year attend the March for Life,” and that, “the concept of pro-life is ingrained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which affirms life begins at conception.”

“In Catholic schools there is a culture of faith-related, social-justice activism,” Mr. Campbell told Xtra! earlier this week. “[Catholic schools do not support] activism that is not in keeping with the tenets of the Catholic Church.”

It’s a good comparison. Politicians need to be called out wherever possible but why so silent when the schools we fund push their students to support the same ideas? Maybe Canadians are just lazy. Simply mocking politicians who have unpopular religious beliefs is easier than trying to stop unpopular religious actions. Sad.

School Choice

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Scott Rowed discusses school choice.

Choice means discrimination against teachers based on their religion. Catholic teachers can work in either the separate schools or public schools. Teachers from other religions or no religion need not apply to the Catholic system, even though the jobs are fully funded by public taxes. In the publicly-funded private and alternative schools run by evangelical churches, choice means that teachers must believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and that evolution is a myth. If you’re a science teacher who happens to accept, well, science, you don’t stand a chance. Pastors make the hiring decisions for these government-funded positions.

While he’s specifically talking about Alberta’s separate schools, the same logic applies to all provinces who still fund the discriminatory system.

A point worth emphasizing is the idea that while Catholic schools don’t have to discriminate (they regularly admit non-Catholic students), the fact that they can allows them to only accept good students. Catholic schools often have better test scores than its public counterparts not because it is a better system (as its defendants want you to believe) but because of its privilege to keep bad students out.

Improbable allies

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Is Michael Coren arguing for the elimination of separate schools?

Some background first. In Ontario, as well as most of Canada, state-funded Catholic education is generally about as Catholic as an Orange Lodge meeting in East Belfast. Non-Catholics assume that eager little Papists are indoctrinated into the Roman faith, but if only this was the case. The vast majority of Catholic teachers — while often decent and dedicated — are non-practising and even anti-Church.

They are divorced, gay, abort and use contraceptives, live together, never attend mass, reject Catholic teaching, are indifferent or even hostile to the religion they are supposed to be part of.

As hate filled as it is, Coren makes a point I like repeating. Why bother funding Catholic schools if they aren’t even Catholic? Catholic schools have the privilege to discriminate against non-Catholics but if there are too many schools and not enough bigoted Catholics to staff them it’s reasonable to expect the theology will be watered down. Also remember Catholic schools are still required to follow provincial guidelines, including the recent requirement to allow gay-straight alliances. If it isn’t representative of their beliefs, the separate school system should be something Catholics oppose.

As atheists, it’s a silly argument but getting Catholics on our side requires different approaches and I see no problems in trying to convince them they’re better off without government funded schools as a necessary step towards defunding.

We already have the moral, economic, and constitutional arguments against the Catholic school system so let’s add the religious.

Alberta introduces new bill to create secular schools in Morinville

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Education minister Thomas Lukaszuk announces changes that will give parents a secular option for their kids in Morinville, Alberta.

The Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division would lose its “public” status and instead become a separate school district in St. Albert, Morinville and Legal under a new name — Greater St. Albert Roman Catholic Separate School District.

That change would create the untenable situation of having two separate systems operating in St. Albert, so Lukaszuk is calling for St. Albert Protestant Schools to lose its separate status and instead become the city’s public school system. His proposal suggests the new name St. Albert Public School District.

Replacing Protestant boards with a secular system is a good step forward. I’m not sure if this counts as a total win since the Catholics still keep their schools and if the proposal goes ahead there will still be two systems operating in the same small town leading to inefficient and expensive education. And why are the Protestant schools are getting the ax and not the Catholic’s? (There is precedence- the Protestant system in Ontario was largely dissolved into the public system it has today.)

Whatever the reasons, quoting an education minister calling for religious schools to lose its separate status and become a public system is good rhetoric I’d like to see repeated across the province-and the country.

Tough economic times

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Dan Gardner pushes the case for the elimination of separate schools in Ontario.

On its face, this is absurd. Ask a thousand organizational consultants to create a thousand models for administering education and no one would suggest anything remotely like what Ontario has now.

So the obvious question is this: How much money could we save if we replaced four school systems with one?

I don’t know the answer. In part, that’s because the one school system could take many different forms and savings would vary from one to another. But it’s also because this is a question the province’s political class won’t touch with a remotely controlled bomb-sniffing robot, and so almost no one has attempted to crunch the numbers.

One person who did have a look is Gilles Arpin, a longtime French public school trustee. Arpin assumes that amalgamating school boards, and cutting their overall number to 36, would produce significantly reduced administrative costs. And because schools are, collectively, well below capacity, amalgamation would permit the closure of 10 per cent of elementary schools and five per cent of secondary schools. Net savings to the taxpayer: $1.425 billion a year.

The economic arguments are often overlooked in our battle against separate schools since most activists believe the moral case is strong enough. Yet in an era of deficit-running, governments will be more likely to consider the money issues when looking for the service cuts and duplicated, overlapping school boards and bus routes are a prime example of extra gravy that can be eliminated.

I’ve looked at the numbers Gilles Arpin proposes back when it was presented at the One School System conference last May and while I think the methodology makes too many assumptions to convince elected officials, it’s a good start and can be used to provoke further studies by any politician is looking for a wedge issue.

Food for thought

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Food writer Corey Mintz hosts a dinner party with a crew of GSA activists. Guests included activists Leanne Iskander and Casy Oraa, journalists Andrea Houston and Johnathan Goldsbie, and CCLA lawyer Noa Mendelsohn Aviv.

Once everyone has some food in their bellies, they try to explain to me how this type of discrimination is allowed in Canada, in the 21st century.

“These schools are answering to the bishops,” rasps Aviv, her voice lost to a cold. “The Ministry’s in there somewhere.” That would be the Ministry of Education, which sets policy that is supposed to be followed by all Ontario schools. “It seems fairly clear that there was an unwritten ban across the province. Unfortunately for them and fortunate enough for us, that they went so far as to ban it on paper.”

Halton Catholic District School Board chair Alice Anne LeMay went further, explaining that they would also not allow Nazi groups. She later apologized.
The provincial government took no action.

“They’re abdicating their responsibility,” says an emphatic Oraa. Everything he says is emphatic. “Because they’ve created this policy, specifically the one for GSAs.”

A partial transcript of the evening is posted here. It’s a good introduction for anyone not familiar with the GSA issue and separate school funding. The only cringe-worthy omission was when Andrea mentions that the CCLA and Queer Ontario have been in the fight against Catholic school funding since ‘the beginning’ when they’ve really only been at it for the last year. Atheist groups, like CFI, have been involved for years, and independent groups like CRIPE and Education Equality Ontario have been around for decades.

Editorial Addresses Two School Boards

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The editorial in Peterborough This Week on October 26, 2011, “OUR OPINION: Big questions about education,” presents an excellent argument for the merger of the separate and public school boards in Ontario:

The Canadian constitution protects Catholic education, but in an increasing multi-cultural province, how long can this be justified?

At a time when businesses and taxpayers are struggling to pay their bills, we see the tax burden of two school systems — administrators included — as an inefficient use of those dollars.

It’s simple math. And isn’t sharing one of the first things you learn at school?

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