SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Say a Little Prayer?

This issue just doesn’t seem to want to go away.  The other day there was a protest in front of the Toronto District School Board offices (reported here  here and here) organized by a coalition of other falth organizations.  

Two articles in the papers actual point out the hypocrisy around the issue of prayer in school.  This National Post op-ed points out (as SFT did in a previous post) that Eden High School, a public school, holds Bible study before the school day:

     In fact, Eden High School has a “spiritual life department” with a website that quotes directly from the Bible. The department provides Grade 9 Bible study, as well as “a rich array of spiritual life activities,” including retreats and missions. Oh, but prayers happen just before school starts. Apparently that makes it all right.

and concludes:

     If this latest debate was purely about keeping religion out of publicly funded schools, then you’d think protesters would indeed head straight for St. Catharines. But something tells me that all this bluster has more to do with who is asking for the accommodation than the principles behind it. It’s the latter we should be discussing.

But it’s Christina Blizzard’s column in today’s Sun, that really nails it:

       Meanwhile, a simmering issue is proving just how hypocritical it was for the Grits turn the faith-based school funding issue into a political football in the 2007 election. We need a full, frank - and emotion-free - discussion of how to deal with the discriminatory nature of funding for faith schools in this province, where only Catholic schools are tax-supported. 

     Asked about it, McGuinty said he counts on school boards to “work in consultation with their school communities talking to parents in particular to strike the kinds of accommodation that they think are reasonable and supportive. “When it comes to faith matters, I have faith in the school boards, I have faith in schools themselves to make judgments they think are appropriate in their particular circumstance.”

     Well, that wasn’t what he said in 2007, when he said public funding for faith-schools was “segregation and sequestration.”

Say a prayer indeed.