My
first eight school years were spent in the Catholic (or “separate”) system. I had a
nun for Grade 1 which shows my age because nuns as teachers were relics of when
my mother and her siblings entered the same school, a school their father had helped in seeing created. That school has existed for decades, offering
a town of around 2000 people an option for K-7 (and in fits and starts attempts
at 8) Catholic education, and every year since it has opened has been knelled as
its last. The town is too small for two schools, its enrollment is low despite the
very Catholic production levels some families show. It just can't last. They were saying that when
I entered it in 1982, when I left it in 1990, and when I subbed at
it—recognizing that I had at least one cousin in any class of any grade I
taught there—in 2001 and again in 2003. They are saying it today.
I
have fond memories of my time at that school, and though I don’t believe for an
instant that this current hiccup will kill it, I feel no need to cry out for it
or any other religious school’s preservation amid the grind of these secular
times. I don’t myself believe in Catholic, Christian, or any sort of single-denominational religious education,
but I am a firm believer in living and letting live. Until your actions
affect me or mine, or anyone else. That’s why since I was old enough to learn
that “separate” means the division of dollars, I have been against public funds
and resources being routed to religious education. Putting it bluntly: the
recent controversy in Saskatchewan has exposed a system that is outdated and, worse,
not what it claims to be; nor is it often accessed for what it says it is—but
more on that below.
Hypocrite?
Heathen? Perhaps. Certainly the latter. But I have a unique perspective given
that I went to a Catholic school until joining the public system in Grade 8,
and today I am an educator and a parent. School is my life. The bible is not.
And my roles as an educator and a parent matter much more than my religious
disposition (or lack thereof).
Those
of you already sharpening knives in order to slit the throat of this lost sheep
need to allow me the explanation that I was baptized and even confirmed Catholic,
though it was more out of family tradition than a strong passion for the faith.
I’ve always referred to my mother as a “thinking man’s” Catholic, and my father
is a non-practising Lutheran. Nothing was ever levelled down on us, and critical
thinking was encouraged—which is why I annoyed Sister Mary so much; well that and
because I was a six-year-old boy. In a fumbly, confused way I may have seen
myself as a Catholic until I was 14 or so, but I was never a good one (sorry
Grandpa).
I’m
not a Catholic now. I’m not even a Christian, though I am a spiritual man
and—I’ll say again—all good with people having faith as long as they keep it
out of my face. Sadly, there’s that evangelical and fundamental nature to so
many religions. Maybe that’s why I dig Buddhists and Jews so much . . .
My
Catholic school was in southwest Saskatchewan, and I currently live and teach
in southern Alberta; these are the only two provinces in the country with this separate
education system, and of course this whole issue stems from a Saskatchewan
stereotype: a very small town with two schools. Theodore, a town of fewer than
400, opened a 26-student Catholic school as a “healthy alternative” to its
42-student rural school. (There are classes in my school the size of these
schools). The tempest raged far outside the teapot when the Court of Queen’s Bench
judge’s 200+ page ruling said that although the extremely dated religious
protection laws couldn’t be eliminated entirely from education because the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does protect religious and minority
freedom, the judge could rule something
very obvious: only Catholics could attend Catholic School.
Simple? Elementary? About dang time?
No,
Armageddon. Pass the Kool-Aid.
See,
this separated education system has led to years of competition. Catholic
schools have often used faith-based education, small teacher/pupil ratios,
school proximity, sometimes French Immersion, or the exclusion of coded or
at-risk students (allegedly) to draw parents. Christians of another stripe would
often plug their noses and let the Catholics teach their kids rather than us
heathens. Then a judicial decision ripped this away from them.
And
who’s complaining? The non-Catholics who want access to the Catholic schools
for one of the above reasons, who want to choose to send their kids and tax
dollars to a school based on a system rooted in a faith that they themselves
don’t belong to.
Would it be
possible? Only if the entire education system in Saskatchewan was started over.
It’s a bad, bad system, but it’s deeply entrenched. Okay, but if so, when? Not
for years and years thanks to trial and retrial. Time enough for Alberta to
maybe consider the same thing. Here's hoping anyway.
Enter
Brad Wall, who busts in as the conquering hero and uses the notwithstanding
clause to overrule the decision. Ah, Wall, once again saving Saskatchewanites
from the evils of recession (expect he didn’t) and liberalism (except it’s not
his jurisdiction), and now from the persecution of the exploitation of
loopholes. Except he doesn’t care. He’s doing this to a) once again get himself
in the national news and b) to test his muscles so he can look at overturning
rulings on, say, labour laws—things more attuned to his own interests.
It’s
been interesting watching this from one of the few Alberta towns where the Catholic
option has not always been there; it’s only about twenty years old here and has
nowhere near the muscle. Locals find the dichotomy that most of us in these two
provinces—in towns or cities—have always taken for granted strange and impractical. Because it is!
Battle lines
are being sharply drawn: public versus Catholic. Secular education versus religious
indoctrination. Many non-Catholic Christians who have sent their children to Catholic
schools were also looking for this indoctrination (which goes against what
education is) and/or to hide their children from the evils of society (which
goes against what Jesus told his apostles to do). Big appeal in ultra-Christian
(but not necessarily Catholic) Southern Alberta. Some who can’t find the way to
closet their kids off in homeschooling havebtaken this as a second-best option, knowing
that if they can’t brainwash against evil public school policies—things like
gender equality, racial harmony, and vaccinations—in the comfort of their own
home, well at least at the Catholic school they’d do it with the endorsement of
Jesus.
Having publicly
funded Catholic schools is like Coke funded Pepsi machines. It’s not just
worldview, they’re doing two different things. Public
funding should not be going to private interests, Catholic or otherwise. That
this option exists means not only a splitting of tax dollars, but a splitting
of bureaucracy and resources. Catholic schools should have always been
privately funded by the parents that feel that indoctrinating their children
matters more than educating them, that telling them that following a set of
beliefs matters more than challenging oneself as a critical thinker.
This
is the purpose of education: to teach children to think, not to follow, not to believe.
If
the public system were all-encompassing had access to the funds wasted on Catholic systems, we would see class sizes shrink, quality of materials
improve, and an end to the spreading of quality educators between systems. And
true Catholics (or Muslims, Jews, etc.) could pool their resources and buy
their own private schools if they really felt that their beliefs needed to be
delivered every day in school, even though education comes from the State,
where religion has no place. That is, if they’d rather see their kids fed a
faith, rather than challenging and examining it as a part of a world, not
hidden from it. But then I’ve always thought a faith has to be examined to
succeed. (Mine failed before midterms).
I
am not a Christian, but I have no issue with Christians. Same for most other
faiths. The school I teach at has several Latter Day Saints students who have
no issues attending a public school while attending seminary in the mornings
and church on Sundays, going on their missions after they graduate. They are
somehow able to remain faithful without how to go about that showing up in
their textbooks.
If creationism is challenged by Science
class, go home and discuss it with your parents. I tell my own children that there are
people who believe that Jesus was the Son of God and good for them; I tell my
kids that I believe that he was a very good and yet controversial teacher,
and believe what you will about him, most of what he said is a pretty good way
to approach living. If my kids want to challenge that, I’ll discuss it with
them rather than tell them they must believe what I do. I thought that’s what
parenting was.
To
me, Christianity has no place in our schools unless it is being studied
scientifically and as an equal of its peers. It should be recognized as the
most important Western religion, just as Islam is given the same significance in the
Middle East and Buddhism in Asia.
If you must
have a faith-based school then pay for it yourselves, and if you must have a
faith-based school then it should be of your own faith, not some reasonable facsimile that you can send your
kids to thanks to gentle rules and positive funding models. It’s a fairly
simple logic but those are the sorts of logics that usually ring true. No
dramatic change is coming, but at least a system that has never made sense is
being examined—for challenge is what improves a thing or kills it. (‘Scuse my
Darwinism.)
