Catholic school boards can’t be wished away just yet
TheStar.com – News/Canada – Our forefathers came up with the artful compromise of separate schools in the 19th century, but updating it will take a few more years of forbearance.
Nov 29 2014. By: Martin Regg Cohn, Provincial Politics
Time’s up for school trustees in Ontario. Their historical role as guardians of local democracy has been diminished by . . . well, the passage of time — and a paucity of votes.
But trustees are not alone in losing political clout and electoral relevance.
Our Catholic and public school boards are also losing their way — and getting in the way. Lacking any real taxing or spending powers, laden with religious contradictions, our separate and public systems have also outlived their historical purpose.
Thursday’s column argued that both of them should be gone — not just trustees, but the boards they supposedly oversee. Both are accidents of history that serve no enduring purpose.
Today, our elected provincial government wields the democratic authority to run our schools, craft our curriculum and negotiate pay for teachers. Why indulge the political patter of trustees and the bureaucratic burden of school boards if they only sow divisions and soak up dollars?
But in pedagogy, as in politics, timing is everything.
While few Ontarians would shed any tears for trustees, the tears might flow for Catholic boards. While most voters wouldn’t notice the absence of trustees from the ballot, abolishing our separate schools could well provoke a voter revolt.
Amalgamation, consolidation or elimination is an idea whose time hasn’t come — yet.
There’s a reason all three major political parties are loath to lead the way. Given the choice between alienating Catholic voters with wedge politics or winning them over, they’d rather woo than wedge. The Tories won’t touch amalgamation after their 2007 campaign election promise to fund faith-based schools cost them the election. And the Liberals seem content to rely on strong support from Catholic voters.
Only Ontario’s New Democrats have given abolition any consideration in recent years (the federal NDP has long opposed funding of religious schools). To its credit, the party created a task force on education funding in Ontario, but its 2010 conclusion was a clarion call for the status quo.
The report’s reticence makes for fascinating reading. First, it acknowledges that our historical inheritance makes little sense in today’s multicultural, non-discriminatory, secular Ontario. Clearly, if one were redesigning an education system from scratch, there’s no question that separate school boards make no sense as public policy.
But that’s not the question. Today’s challenge is how to dismantle, delicately, what we have inherited — how to liberate the laity from Catholic constraints, and how to spare the rest of the expense.
Newfoundland relied on a referendum, but majority rule is a blunt way to deal with minority rights, be they religious or linguistic. Its seven competing denominational boards — not just Catholic but Presbyterian and Seventh Day Adventist — were self-evidently unsustainable.
Quebec’s consolidation of religious boards was driven by a strong societal consensus to refashion schooling along linguistic lines as a way to reinforce the French fact in that province — motivated by an atavistic desire to create something stronger and more enduring.
Ontario lacks any such societal consensus, especially from its sizeable Catholic and francophone minorities. And that is surely a prerequisite to amalgamation, which can’t and shouldn’t be forced, no matter what public opinion polls suggest (most show a split down the middle).
Another argument for consolidation, beyond non-discrimination, is the question of duplication. But the cost savings are debatable — separate and public boards have been pooling resources for years, and amalgamation is almost always oversold as a cost-saving measure given our per-student funding model. If the goal is efficiency, then the real solution is elimination of our already bloated school boards.
That said, the Catholic Church might one day be the author of its own excommunication — or more precisely, amalgamation — if it puts canonical tradition ahead of the secular curriculum. Tensions persist on questions of homosexuality and the legislated right to LGTBQ support clubs (A Catholic school overstepped — then wisely backtracked — last week when an Ottawa principal blocked student plans at a Gay Straight Alliance).
Catholic bishops made impolitic noises about sex education in 2010. They might miscalculate again when a new curriculum is rolled out in 2015, antagonizing the government and alienating the secular public.
Another shift could come if Ontario’s perennial fourth-place party, the Greens, ever gains traction. Ostensibly an environmental party, it is evangelical about amalgamation — and has won votes in the past after pledging to stop public funding of Catholic schools.
Without those triggers, it will take time: Perhaps if increasingly secular Catholic parents grow uneasy about the amount of time devoted to religious studies (at the expense of academic pursuits), or morning prayers in the classroom, or restrictions on the role of women and the rights of gays.
Without a consensus, we are condemned to our inconvenient contradictions for a while longer. After all, Quebec took two decades to resolve the matter. Our forefathers came up with the artful (if now antiquated) compromise of separate schools in the 19th century, but updating it will take a few more years of forbearance.
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Tags: budget, ideology, rights, tax, youth
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