Catholic School Controversy: It is Because It Shouldn't Be

              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 Putting it bluntly: the recent controversy in Saskatchewan has exposed a system that is outdated and, worse, not what it claims to be; nor is it often accessed for what it says it is—but more on that below.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.)