Why I’m Against Faith-Based Education Funding
Isn’t racism and hate already a big problem in our society? Do we really want our children growing up in schools were all the kids around them are exactly the same race and religion? In a surprising and somewhat depressing statement, John Tory (the conservative MPP leader) has said if elected he would give public funding to faith based schools. The elections are October 10th 2007. I know many of you despise McGuinty, but the sad reality is that both leaders have no grasp on reality and only seek to satisfy their own personal agendas. Is it time to start looking at Hampton?
It’s interesting how Tory even believes that funding for faith based schools even exists. With all the cuts that are happening, wouldn’t the money be better severed improving our existing infrastructure? I guess I’m surprised that he didn’t see the backlash that would occur by taking this stance. On the other hand, I know that the Greek Patriarch of Canada is telling us to vote Conservative cause he wants to push his Greek Schools and I hear radio advertisements on 680 news supporting faith based schools by the Jewish Congress of Canada.
The argument of funding catholic schools is a good one, but I believe we first need to stabilize our existing structure before we can start rationing what little money we have already. Furthermore, I really feel raising the future generation of children in schools were everyone is the same race and religion can’t be positive, irrespective of what the catholic’s have.
Clio-maria has a good post on this topic.
I started a Facebook group about this.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I’ve read your post with great interest and must respectfully disagree with you on a number of points. First off, you ask if we want Ontario’s children growing up in schools where all the kids around them look the same as them. Well, I have a counter question: What do you think of the kids currently attending Catholic schools? What are they like? They attend schools where all the kids around them are just the same as they are. Are they the worse for it?
Moreover, do you not find it hypocritical that McGuinty says that faith-based schools lead to divisions, segregation and racism, when he himself AND his children were educated in Catholic schools? Is he saying that he’s a racist? And if not, is he saying that ONLY Catholics are able to educate their children religiously without turning them into monsters?
I think that this issue is black and white. Catholics get money and no one else does. That’s it. Fini. It’s an issue of fairness. Either fund everyone or don’t fund anyone. Now, there are many people who do not believe that the government should fund any religious schools at all. This is a perfectly valid argument. But…BUT…if people make that argument, then they must fight against religious school funding and must also fight for an end to Catholic school funding. Do you not agree?
I’d be very interested to chat with you about this. I’ve enjoyed reading your post on the matter.
Best,
Elana
September 11th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Really insightful post. I do hear about this issue a lot and just to be upfront about it, I do believe that additional funding for faith-based schools is highly impractical at this point, especially at a time when schools and public services are getting impoverish every minute. I don’t even know why we are talking about this at this point. It seems that all politicians does nowadays is touch on every emotional issue that they can come up with and hide on talking about the really more pressing matters, such as public transportation, environmental issues and the like.
As far as any effects of the existence of faith-based schools, I believe that kids attending those schools might be worse off in the long run. Something that we all do in the real world is learning how to tolerate other people’s differences. Spending time with people that look, talk and dress the same as you does not help our children on that matter. True, they might be better off right now, but sooner or later, they would eventually interact with those people that they try so hard to avoid, and all it does is make it hard for children to learn this fact earlier in their lifetime; worse they might hate other people for it. If it’s religious values that we’re scared of losing on imparting to our kids, then I think the church would be the more appropriate place for that. It’s true that Catholics might be getting a bit of an advantage at this point, but I just hope that the process of eliminating the funds for those schools does not negatively affect the children in any way.
September 12th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Geofrey F,
I’m very pleased that you responded…I wasn’t sure anyone would engage me on this issue! So thank you!
But I still have to respectfull disagree with you. I’ll respond to some of the points made in your reply.
There seems to have been a huge myth perpetuated by McGuinty. He’s brought up an issue and made people believe it….even though it really isn’t an issue at all. And that issue is….breeding intolerance by sending children to spearate religious schools. There is absolutely no….zero…evidence that suggests that children who attend separate religious schools have any problems interacting with people who are different from themselves.
My husband attended a private Jewish schools when he was growing up (elementary and high school), as did his two sisters. This means that, according to Dalton McGuinty, they did not ‘learn to interact with other types of religious people’ until they were 18! You’d think they’d be scarred for life!
But they’re not. All three are extremely open and tolerant people. They ineract fully with the rest of society (not just the Jewish community). My husband is a tax lawyer. He has clients of every race and religion and he fights for them all with all his heart. In his office, he works with Muslims, Christians, Jehovah’s Witness, etc. And he gets along great with everyone! They attended our wedding, come to our home for dinner, etc. My husband’s sister is a social worker. Her clients come from all walks of life and all religious backgrounds. She’s a child protection worker and no child is treated any differently under her watch. And my husband’s other sister is also a lawyer. She does policy work (work that brings justice for all races and religions) with the Canadian Bar Association. And I received religious education, too. I now work for the Canadian Forces and am the ONLY Jew out of thousands of employees in Ottawa. I love and respect my colleagues dearly and I think they like me too!
None of us are intolerant….just like the kids graduating from Catholic schools are not intolerant. And just like all the kids whose parents currently pay for Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh schools are not intolerant of others. Kids aren’t stupid. They understand that there are differences between people’s religions. They understand that they are receiving a slightly different education than their neighbour because they are Sikh and their neighbour is Jewish. And they totally understand that they can still play in the park with the Jewish kid.
If you still believe that having the government fund religious schools is wrong, then I can really understand where you’re coming from. But I did not see any response to my question about how it’s fair to fund Catholic schools without funding any other religious schools.
Oh..and I wanted to respond to your comment that “It’s true that Catholics might be getting a bit of an advantage at this point…”.
I have been raised in a community of people who did not receive religious education funding like Catholics. To characterize the advantage that Catholics are getting as “a bit of an advantage” is completely and totally off the mark. I know families who never ever took a family vacation in their entire lives because they had to pay to send their kids to Jewish school. I know families who had huge mortgages on their homes…and owned no cars because they spent all their money sending their children to Jewish school. My own aunt (who is a teacher!) is still paying off debt she incurred by sending her sons to Jewish elementary school….and her sons are of marrigeable age!
My husband and I put aside money to pay for our children’s Jewish education. We diligently save 10% of our paycheques so that we can afford to send them to religious school like we went to. And y’know what? We don’t even have kids yet! We’re a young, newlywed couple, and we’ve considered our salaries and realized that we have no choice but to start saving now, even before we have children, if we want to stand a chance of staying afloat once our children are born.
To send a child to Jewish school in Toronto today, the tuition across the board is $12,000 per child per year. That tuition starts in nursery and goes all the way until University. Jewish families often have three or more children (just like religious families of all faiths). For a family of three children, it would cost parents $36,000 AFTER TAX dollars to educate their children every single year. That usually means that mothers MUST work and that their entire salaries (and often the father’s too) goes to pay for their children’s schooling. If I’m not mistaken, you have to earn about $55,000 a year to walk away with $36,000.
Now consider that Catholic parents do not have to pay any of this. For a family of three, that leaves them with an addition $36,000 after tax dollar PER YEAR to play with. This is not “a bit of an advantage”.
All I want is to be treated fairly. If government funding is good enough for Catholics, than it should be good enough for me. If our society thinks it’s wrong to fund religious education with tax payer money, then they must immediately stop funding Catholic schools.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Hi Elana,
On the argument of fairness, your 100% right. It’s not fair that the Catholic school board gets funding from the Government, while everyone else is denied. The question now is were does that leave us? We could lobby the government to stop funding for the Catholic school board, but no political party would even dare touch that lightning rod. I sympathize with you, I do, but my biggest fear is the segregation of future generations. Also, it’s normal for non-catholic children to go to catholic schools with no problems whatsoever. I’m not sure how accepted a catholic would be in, for example, a faith-based Sikh or Hindu school. It’s amazing though, how in a world were we strive for fairness and equality, we end up with one group of people getting money from the government while everyone else is denied.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:19 am
ElanaEva,
I recognize the validity of your argument about fairness and I do sympathize with your situation. At the same time, I don’t believe that there should be government funding for faith-based schools. Providing funding for religious private schools would be akin to the state providing funds to private secular schools, which I assume most Ontarians would disagree with. If parents make the decision to send their children to a private school, then the financial cost should be placed solely on the shoulders of those parents, not the tax payers. At the same time, I recognize that it is unfair to provide funding to Catholic schools and no one else. To be honest, even as a Christian, I don’t believe that Catholic schools should be funded by the government. But although I disagree with Catholic school government funding, the thing about catholic schools is that you do not necessarily need to be catholic to attend. As a government funded institution, the catholic school board does not have the right to exclude non-Catholics. If John Tory is elected and public funding for religious schools is instituted, would you be comfortable with this policy in Jewish schools?
There is one last point that I would like to make. The provincial liberals have been trying to make the point that faith-based schools will destroy Ontario by breeding intolerance and racism. While I don’t agree that faith-based schools will transform school children into hateful, racist monsters, I do believe that faith-based schooling will dramatically change the cultural landscape of Ontario by further entrenching ethnic enclaves. Growing up in the public school system, I had the opportunity befriend students of many different ethnicities and religions. Some of my closest friends were Muslin and Sikh, and it was through these friendships that I had the opportunity to learn about our commonalities and, importantly, our differences. School is an important institution for the socialization of children. Learning about others, and being around other students of other faiths and ethnicities, is an important part of this education.
September 12th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
George, I agree with you 100%. This doesn’t have to do with 53,000 students now in faith based non Catholic schools, but the future.
What will stop Baptist schools, Muslims schools, Jewish schools and even Scientology schools from springing up everywhere?
Yes, Catholic school funding needs to go. It should become a referendum issue.
I’ve written 3 posts on this subject. Please visit.
John Tory has lost my vote. And I have to vote Norman Bates (McGuinty) just to make sure we don’t take a step backwards.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Hi all,
Thank you for your responses and I apologize for my prolonged absence…
I appreciate all your arguments about how the government shouldn’t fund religious schools. I agree, that, just like the government has no business licensing marriages, they also have no business paying for religious education. That is ideal. However, in this coming election, that isn’t really a choice. We have two real choices (I don’t consider the green party a real choice). We can either vote for McGuinty and maintain our discriminatory status quo, or we can vote for John Tory and at least make a very bad situation fair. As it currently stands, we have a very bad situation that is very unfair.
As for the questions about religious kids in religious schools, here’s my response.
First, you should know that there are plenty of non-Jewish kids who attend Jewish schools. Their parents recognize the quality of education, discipline and academic rigeur afforded through these institutions and send them there(These benefits stem from the fact that Jewish parents, who pay 12,000$/year to send their kids there, expect nothing but the best). The same, however, cannot be said of Jewish parents. While Jewish parents have the right to send their kids to Catholic schools, they do not (seriously, find me one jew in a Catholic school) because the parents know that there is positively zero benefit in sending their kids to Catholic school….they’re no different than a non-religious public school.
And here’s another major discriminatory policy from Catholic schools…Jews cannot work there. That’s right. A Jew cannot get a job teaching any subject whatsoever (Gym, French, English) in a Catholic school. But…guess what…Jewish schools are not allowed to discriminate like that. Of course, both Catholic and Jewish schools are allowed to discriminate based on religion when it comes to the religious subjects, like bible, but only Catholic schools are allowed to discriminate when it comes to the non-religious subjects like gym and math.
In the early 90s, my mother (a 20+ year experienced teacher) was interviewed for a job at a local Catholic school. The interview went very well and she was offered the job on the spot. The principal asked her to fill out all the documentation to formalize her acceptance. When she finished with the forms, the principal said “Ok, now all we need are your baptismal certificate and a reference from your parish priest”. My mother said “Well, I’m Jewish, so I don’t have either of those things”. And the principal replied “Then I’m sorry, if you’re not Catholic we will not hire you”. My mother had been interviwed for a job teaching French.
As for all of the points about “changing the cultural landscape of Ontario” by allowing all children to attend religious schools…Well, none of you have answered the obvious question: What’s happening to 1/3 of Ontario’s students who attend Catholic schools today? Are they all turning into socially sheltered adults?
Here’s what I think….Deep down, many of the Catholics believe that they are the ONLY ones who can give their children a religious education without turning them into religious fanatics. They think that raising Catholic kids in a Catholic school bubble is ok, but raising Jewish kids in a Jewish school bubble is religious extremism. Oh..and let’s not forget that huge elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about…The Muslims…Let’s face it…Islamic extremism plays a huge role in people’s opposition to religious school funding. People are afraid that Islamic Madrassas that will teach Muslim kids to blow themselves up, will pop up around Ontario if we fund all religious schools. Well, I can’t predict the future and I truly don’t know what would happen to Muslim kids. But what I can tell you is this: Jewish schools have produced some of the brightest, most educated and successful kids in Ontario for the past 75 years. Jewish schools do not produce socially sheltered kids. And Jewish students shouldn’t be denied funding because of what MIGHT happen with Muslim students.
As one commentor wrote above, it’s pretty much impossible to remove funding from Catholic schools now…it would anger too many Ontarians. So, as I see it, we only have two options: One unfair option, and one fair option. Funding everyone equally is the only fair thing to do.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Elana, the only fair thing to do is stop funding Catholic schools whether that is political suicide or not. Funding all schools is a step backwards in time. It doesn’t matter what results private Jewish schools give. It is a non issue.
And if you want to talk fairness. It is only fair that couples without children (my situation) don’t have to pay as much in taxes as those with kids. Lots of things aren’t fair.
And yes, you can’t pretend that Muslim schools won’t produce more homegrown terrorism.
You can’t pretend that Baptist schools, Mormon schools, Scientology schools, etc. don’t start popping up.
What is next? Funding hospitals based on religion?
September 27th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I posted on this issue today.
My basic argument that state-sponsored segregation of children does not foster a stable society.
Everyone pays taxes, parents or otherwise, and everyone has a stake in the education of children.
Secular state = secular education system. Fund none. Allow private religious schools.
Comply with the UN request. End the “discriminatory” system. By funding no faith-based schools.
Promote the values Canada claims to embody.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
The Conservative Party in Ontario is said to have favored faith-based
schools in Ontario. There are already 50,000 plus students in Ontario
attending religious schools, and the Tory Leader merely wants to balance
things out by making all religions eligible for the same funding as Roman
Catholic schools in the province.
If only things were so easy and equitable. Some wonder why all the firestorm
in Ontario over what the Tories suggested; funding for non-Christian
religious schools in BC has being going on for three decades; not just
Catholic but Jewish, evangelical Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and even Mormons
practicing polygamy have the right to some funding.
But there is a crucial difference here, and it is that Catholic and Protestant schools (leaving aside the
evangelicals) are already secularized. Moreover, the
non-Christian religious schools are essentially ethnic-race based schools.
It is said that these religious schools do not teach ethnic superiority.
Don’t you believe it; they do teach it by the sheer fact that the students
in Islamic, Sikh, and Jewish schools are almost all members of respective ethnic
groups, and the objective of these schools is to promote their own
cultural, philosophical and pedagogical views in the classroom. The
objective is: learn the “secular” views which will allow you to participate
in the economy of the “West”, but remember that you belong to a culture
which is not Western; your real roots lie in your own ethnic history and
religion. The result of this policy is the creation of separate enclaves within a neutralized
Western field which merely works as a culture offering “rights” to ethnic
groups committed to their traditions. If we are really serious about
“equality”, how about creating Catholic schools which would only allow
students from countries with a Catholic history, and only welcome
students from a Catholic-ethnic background? These schools would no longer
commit the injustice of having Jewish classmates listen to Christian prayers
and hymns. They would be like our current Islamic-based schools, which do
not
commit such grave injustices, or like our Jewish schools, which are made up almost totally of Jewish students.
The evangelicals are aware of the double standards in our multicultural
society, it is not only that they oppose the empty secular neutrality of the
liberals; they know well that the Christian side has been playing the
secular role for everyone else for a few decades, right when Canada was
dramatically changing its cultural character, becoming multicultural, and
they have had enough, and so now they want to play the religion-based
tradition, which indirectly comes with ethnic based elements, but not in the
obvious manner of non-Christian based schools.
If we are really committed to public funding, in the name of equal rights,
let’s openly talk about religious-based, ethnic-based, and possibly
race-based schools. If not, let the matter be decided in a private manner…and let’s see what happens.
December 11th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Elana,
I personally think that your comment is ridiculous! First of all, how can you argue that everyone who attends a Catholic School are of the same race? And secondly, how is it fair to fund only secular schools? My family is from Trinidad, and when I attended high school a few years ago it was very multi-cultural. So if you are going to make outlandish statements, make sure that you have some type of stats or fact to support your argument. Otherwise, you are simply stating your bias opinions.
Secondly, as you personally feel that Catholic schools are violating your rights, I would argue that secular schools violate my rights. To a certain extent, secularism= atheism, which is considered a belief system. Therefore, you are imposing your values onto those who do not agree with you. So who is really being prejudice now? Everyone needs to be tolerant of other people, and respect their values. For many different ethnic groups, their culture and their religion are intertwined, and are inseparable. Therefore, in funding faith based schools ethnic communities will be more successful in preserving, and transmitting their culture to future generations. The study of religion is so complex that you should really have a degree in it before you engage in an intellectual debate.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I believe in Faith based Funding of schools for many reasons. But one that has not been brought up is competition. With only one school board, do you think your children will get the best education. As someone who has worked in the public school system, I can tell you the school boards EXIST to provide you with an education. There Goal or mission is to make life easier for anyone who works there. When we allow only one or two school boards with make education a monopoly. We have seen what a monopoly does with Bell Canada and Ontario Hydro, poor service at twice the price. Currently it costs approximately $10,000 to send a child to school in the public system. Quite frankly the public system failed my daughter. When she went to a private Christian School, I saw here grades go from Failing to 70%. I saw here self confidence increase. I saw a better education for the $4,000 I spend on a private school, then the $10,000 the government spends on a public education. I think that in the interest of fairness that the government should allow me to deduct the $4000 I spent. If they were to do this, they would still save $6000. Alberta has a completely open education system, and it does not have problems with racism. It does however have the highest standards of education in the country.
Thanks for reading.