Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Issues with religious education

The issue of Catholic (and other religious) schools in Ontario and Canada surfaces from time to time, and could conceivably become an issue in the next Ontario provincial election, which is looming upon us in October 2007, as the Conservative candidate John Tory has come out clearly in favour of them.
As a recent article points out, the only reason we have Catholic schools now is due to a rather iffy political deal struck back in the days of the Confederacy debate. Not much on which to base a whole educational philosophy, you might reasonably think.
Over the years, Ontario and Canada has been working on rectifying many of the other historical inequalities, inconsistencies and irrelevancies we have been saddled with. Maybe the time has come to do away completely with such anachronisms, and get religion out of state-funded education once and for all.
Certainly we should not go down the route of extending state-funding of religious education as Mr. Tory proposes (apparently, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Copts, and Protestants have all indicated their intention of applying for the funding that Mr. Tory has promised if elected).
I have no objection to any of these sects establishing their own schools, providing they are private. I do object to my tax dollars funding them.

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