Debate continues over religion in schools

SYLVAIN-JACQUES DESJARDINS | If the Quebec government goes ahead with its plans to remove religious instruction from the province's public school system, lawmakers should expect a raucous uproar from their constituents, according to McGill education professors Spencer Boudreau and William J. Smith.

Speaking at Moot Court in New Chancellor Day Hall last week, during a heated discussion entitled "Religion in Schools: Where do we go from here?" both men agreed that eliminating religion from schools could ignite a debate even hotter than the province's never-ending language disputes.

Ironically, the McGill discussion was held just as politicians are debating the very issue in the National Assembly, having heard the pros and cons on the subject from concerned groups and following recommendations made in the Proulx Task Force Report on the Place of Religion in Quebec Schools.

The push to change schools from denominational to non-denominational institutions came about in 1997, when Quebec lawmakers ordered thatthe province's Protestant and Catholic school boards be replaced with linguistic ones, namely French and English.

It was an alteration made to reflect the religious diversity of Quebec students, who today aren't necessarily Catholic, Protestant or religious at all.

The challenge for the provincial government, said Smith, the director of the Office of Research on Educational Policy, is to find a solution that will satisfy all Quebecers. Which is no easy task, he added, given that human rights, parental choice and rights of children cannot be impeded upon by whatever decision the government makes.

Smith stressed the main problem with having denominational schools is that they force people of other religions, or those who aren't religious, to opt in or out the institution's religious studies. Having to take a stand in this matter, he said, can cause those concerned to be ostracized and violates the principles of Quebec's freedom of religion. "The status quo infringes on human rights."

But making Quebec's school systems religion-free is a complicated affair since religious rights are guaranteed under both Quebec's and Canada's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The provincial government now needs to decide whether or not to amend its charter in response to its changes.

For the past two years, the provincial government has got around amendments by temporarily invoking the Canadian Charter's notwithstanding clause. Smith said lawmakers have no choice but to amend the Quebec Charter as they cannot continue to circumvent it through the notwithstanding clause forever.

The province, Smith said, faces three options: to offer no religious study of any kind, offer students the choice between moral education or religious instruction in all denominations or offer moral education and a non-denominational study of all religions.

The best of the three options, Smith argued, is to drop religious instruction from schools. "Faith is something that should be left to churches," he said.

But Boudreau, from the Department of Culture and Values in Education, director of McGill's Office of Student Teaching and author of Catholic Education: The Quebec Experience, disagrees. He doesn't believe Catholic or Protestant instruction should be eliminated altogether from public schools. "A better solution would be to extend religious rights to other groups," he said.

Offering students a broad instruction in all religions, taught by non-partisan university-certified teachers, he said, might be the closest to an ideal solution that could please everyone. It's also the main proposal put forth to the provincial government by a Catholic committee of which Boudreau was part.

"The objective of religious education in public schools," he said, "is to offer students a better understanding of the world they live in."

Parents, Boudreau said, should not be forced to send their children to private institutions if they wish their offspring to receive spiritual schooling.

Quebecers don't want to end up with a two-tier system like in the U.S., he continued, where the absence of religious training in public schools has forced parents to send their children to religious private schools, which mushroomed throughout the country.

Religious instruction is essential to help students grasp the great existential questions of life, Boudreau said, and to deny them that is a mistake. If we can have publicly funded arts, music and sports schools, he said, "why not religious ones, too?"

Boudreau said religious instruction is an inalienable right that's essential to social cohesiveness and a better integrated pluralistic society. Separating religion from schools, he predicted, "will impoverish and diminish society."