One of the most irritating bromides I hear from parents (predominantly conservative parents, but not exclusively) is that they don’t want things taught in their children’s schools that contradict their (the parents’) beliefs. I suppose the fear is that teaching children that not everyone thinks identically will so confuse them that their poor little heads will a’splode. I’ve actually had one person try to tell me that kids who learn things that contradict what their parents believe have a higher rate of developmental problems – so therefore public schooling is harmful. It took me way too long to stop taking that guy seriously (that’s what I get for trying to read conservative writers for the sake of ‘balance’).
First of all, bringing up a kid who knows how to disagree with you is a good thing. Second, since the only way to ensure your kid doesn’t encounter any dissenting opinions is to raise hir in a bubble, cut off from the entire world – there’s a legal term for that. Third, raising a child to accept authority unquestioningly puts them at greater risk of being taken in by unscrupulous hucksters of all manner of ideas. Fourth, it severely handicaps their ability to make independent decisions if ze’s never been exposed to stuff that Mom or Dad didn’t warn hir about. Fifth, it retards their understanding of the world – there are a lot of ideas out there and it’s important to be exposed to lots of them.
There is perhaps no corner in which this attitude is more popular than among parents who wish to raise their children in a particular religious tradition. Maybe it is because they know how weak and vapid the arguments for faith are, or maybe it’s because they truly believe that little Ashley couldn’t possibly cope with the knowledge that different beliefs exist, but religious parents are infuriated by the idea of comparative religious instruction. They’re about to get a lot angrier:
Canada’s top court on Friday rejected an appeal from parents in Quebec who sought the right to keep their children out of an ethics and religious culture program taught in the province’s schools. The program, which was introduced in 2008 to elementary and high schools by the provincial Education Ministry, replaced religion classes with a curriculum covering all major faiths found in Quebec culture, including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and aboriginal beliefs.
“Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J [the appellants],” Madam Justice Marie Deschamps wrote in the main ruling.
So it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the chief justice of our Supreme Court – my interpretation of the Charter and the law upon which it is based are seldom at odds. This decision is no exception to that trend. Parents demanded the right to stuff their kids’ brains full of cotton swabs instead of allowing some facts to get in there. The Ministry of Education said “no, we have a responsibility to, y’know, educate.” The parents decided this was an unacceptable infringement on their religious liberties and sued. And lost.
Now, long-time Cromrades will know how dimly I view most arguments couched in the language of “religious freedom“. In most cases (in this country, anyway), it refers exclusively to the paranoid fantasies of the religious-minded that their beliefs are ‘under attack’ by the combined forces of… well let’s just say they think the world looks like this:
And I suppose these parents wake up drenched in terror-sweat at the thought of having this conversation with their kids:
Ashley: Mom, why do we believe in Jesus?
Mom: Because he died for our sins, honey.
Ashley: But Sakineh doesn’t believe that. How come?
Mom: Well honey, people have different beliefs about the world and you have to learn more about your faith tradition and why it’s true.
Ashley: No! Different ideas are CONFUSING! I’m going to go have Satan’s abortion! And then get a degree in paleontology!
Mom: Oh noes! Why didn’t I home schooool?
Ashley: Too late! My ability to think critically has made me try drugs and listen to rap music at an unacceptably loud volume!
The fact is that parents should be teaching their own values to their kids. It is the school’s job to impart facts and critical thinking instruction by which different values (including the values taught at the school) can be judged. When the child’s instruction comes into conflict with parental opinion, that should be a topic for discussion at home. Someone once challenged me to imagine that my child attended a school that taught explicit white supremacy as part of the curriculum. I guess they thought that would be a stumper. If I had a kid (heaven forfend), I would imagine I’d bring hir up to love critical inquiry as much as I do, and to challenge not only hir teachers but hir dear old dad as well. It would only become a problem if ze started getting bullied for not accepting the lesson on hir genetic impurity, but that’s a topic for another time.
Parents like this need to learn a lesson of their own: your religious freedom stops once it leaves the privacy of your own head. You should (and do) enjoy an inviolable right to believe however you choose, and if there were ever a law passed forcing a person to choose a religion (or to choose no religion), I would be fighting it right alongside you. This isn’t that – this is about preparing kids in Quebec schools to deal with a world in which they will repeatedly encounter beliefs that are different from those drilled into them at home. It is not anyone else’s job to help you secure the shackles onto your child’s mind.
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