Dr. Jim’s Poison Word Processor Strikes Again!

This time in the Edmonton Journal, on Monday, March 24. In a complete inversion to my usual strategy of writing in response to a letter or article by a dipwit, I wrote to build on an op ed piece with which I agreed totally. So, my word processor isn’t really poisonous all the time. Just when I need it to be. I’m a sneaky bugger.

So, Scott Rowed wrote a piece enitled “Gov’t surrendered choice to religious schools: Our kids need to be integrated, not separated,” on March 15. Basically, the title is pretty descriptive of the contents and I blogged about it here. But, to repeat myself:

Scott argues that the fundamentalist schools in the province are now poised to receive full funding from the Alberta government due to advantageous loopholes that also allow them to discriminate on religious grounds in their hiring practices. I won’t summarize the whole article here, but it is well worth reading in its entirety. He discusses examples from Canmore, Ft. McMurray and other places. A few choice excerpts:

The history of religious schools in Alberta is not one of open debate. These decisions have been made behind closed doors between government officials and religious leaders — no public participation welcome. The most recent example was a secret document uncovered by the media in December 2007, showing that the government planned to increase funding for private religious schools…

Parents who believe that the first cowboy saddled up a triceratops have more choice as their children can attend either a faith school or a public school. On the other hand, Christians who accept evolution, non-believers, and followers of other faiths can enrol their children only in a public school. Every teaching position in a Christian school means one more fundamentalist teacher, and another teacher is out of a job…

When the Catholic school started up in Canmore in 2001, they had to share Lawrence Grassi Middle School with the public school board. The Catholic board tried to build a wall in the school and a fence in the playground to stop their children from mixing with the public school kids. Only the diligence of public school officials stopped this.

The article as a whole is very well worth reading.

From our email exchanges, I learned that Scott has received a lot of rather negative feedback from the Journal’s readership (his email address was included in the article. But this is what I had to say in my letter:

I agree with Rowed on religious schools, but more may be said. Rather than continue to divide our education system on sectarian lines in the name of “choice” and “diversity,” we should realize that when it comes to the pluralism at the heart of modern society we really have no choice. We either learn to get along with a set of shared values and an ability to share common institutions, or risk part of society sliding into self-absorbed and potentially xenophobic enclaves.

A common school system can play a great role in ensuring the brighter of those two alternatives.

That being said, a “world religions” class should be mandatory for all public high school students. It is imperative that students become aware of the primary beliefs, values, customs and histories of the main religious traditions that have shaped our world.

It must be noted, however, that teaching about different religions does not mean preaching any one religion as the ultimate truth.

The need to intelligently engage the role of religions in our pluralistic world should outweigh any reluctance we have, given the difficulty and expense of the task. Our school system must not shy away or pass the issue off onto schools dominated by one religious worldview or another.

No hate mail for me yet, but you never know.

Now, back to my old tricks and to formulate a response to another dipwit: “U.S. athiests may have no rights at all” Ah,the Lethbridge Herald, gotta love it.