Saturday, January 08, 2011

2 Boards 1 Constitution

The province is considering merging the catholic and public school boards lately, and it is high time, I should add. It seems strange to have a separate board for one religion, and a tad discriminatory to see it publicly funded. The obvious solution, however, would be better served to allow the board to buy itself from the government; it would allow the 125,000 children to continue with the education their parents intended for them, but not put our system in the awkward position Ontario is suffering.

Ontario, for those who missed it, is dealing with its Catholic school board banning gay-straight alliance groups. The rationale (and you will all love this) is that they would not allow a Nazi group either. Because neither of these are within the teachings of the Catholic church. I wonder how the one, newly-elected, gay board member feels about this; his soundbite on the matter was that he would do what was right for his community and his constituents, which is functionally "No comment" in fancy talk.

It would be nice of Ontario to hitch up its big-boy pants (Yes, I fixate on pants a tremendous amount) and say, "If we are giving you money, you give us the services we desire" but I see that as unlikely to happen. I would love to know which Catholic board member has pictures of which government official naked with a cheerleader, because that is some powerful leverage.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would not like to see the boards merged; the culture is different between the two. In Edmonton, the public board has been closing schools at a much higher rate than the separate board, to name one difference.
As for the schools themselves, the Catholic schools provide the same education and follow the same guidelines as the public schools, but within a Catholic setting. Why should they not be publicly funded? Catholics pay taxes just like everyone else. In fact, I don't see any rationale for not allowing other religions to have their own schools; the only mitigating factor about having their own school board would be whether there are the number of students to make it economically sound.
AND, yes, ensure that they're all teaching the same curriculum.
For those who say that having students effectively segregated by religion creates intolerance, I'd like to see a study that shows that provinces such as Alberta, which have a separate school system, are in fact more intolerant and have higher rates of things such as hate crimes, than provinces which don't. I don't think it's the case.
lol, mapa