Schools face tricky calls on religion
Once, maybe twice a year a parent will ask principal Nickolas Stefanoff to excuse his child from band class because he believes instrumental music contravenes the teachings of Islam.
That’s not often for a school of 1,200, but when it happens it poses a dilemma for the head of Toronto’s Valley Park Middle School: The Ontario government says children must learn music, but it also says schools must honour a student’s religion when it bumps up against public education.
So Stefanoff strikes the kind of compromise that is becoming more common — and controversial — as schools grow more diverse.
“I let one child switch to vocal music, and had another do a big independent research study of instrumental music,” he said. “We don’t exempt students from material that is expected to be covered in the curriculum and evaluated on the report cards. But where we can make an accommodation, we do.”
He refused another parent’s request to pull his child out of classes on Greek mythology for dealing with the study of “false gods.”
“I asked for evidence that this would contravene his faith,” said Stefanoff, “but when he didn’t provide it, we had the student take part in the class.”
These are tricky calls facing today’s schools. Valley Park drew fire this summer for allowing a weekly Muslim prayer service in the cafeteria during the winter instead of having hundreds of students leave to worship off-site. Some accused the school of religious favouritism, even though no other faith group had made such a request. Others charged the placement of girls at the back of the room violates Ontario’s gender equality laws, although trustee Gerri Gershon has said it is not for school boards to judge religious practice.
And some accused the critics of being Islamophobic.
The debate put the school in the eye of a political storm, and shone a light on one of the most turbulent new frontiers in education: the question of what to do when public school values clash with religious belief.
It will only heat up this fall as gay-straight student clubs — encouraged by Queen’s Park as a tool against bullying — fight for a role in Catholic schools. Even before school starts, Mississauga student Leanne Iskander was reminded last week she cannot rename an anti-homophobia club she started at St. Joseph Secondary School as “a gay-straight alliance” because of the church’s stand against homosexuality. Catholic schools are waiting for a provincial committee to rule on what to call their anti-homophobia clubs, said Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.
But the political fuss has revived questions about whether taxpayers should fund Catholic schools.
“I think if the Catholic school system takes public money, its equity policy should follow government guidelines,” said York University professor William Westfall, who specializes in the history of religion in Canada.
He also said accepting different religious practice is the sign of a truly inclusive society.
“Religion is an important part of many cultures so we have to embrace it as well, not just the superficial parts like dance and food,” he said. “We’re at a moment of great tension, trying to decide what should be included (in curriculum) and what should not.”
From allowing the Sikh kirpan to recognizing sexual diversity, “Canadian schools have not been great at recognizing diversity,” noted University of Toronto professor David Rayside, director of the Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.
“This is all complicated, uncharted terrain, the conflict between faith and equity claims and to what limit do we respect the right to religious practice?”
Khalid Baloch has two children at Thorncliffe Park Public School, where he praised principal Kevin Battaglia for holding information meetings last year to explain to parents what is covered in the sex education part of Ontario’s grades 4 and 5 growth and development curriculum.
Parents left reassured enough to let their children take part, said Battaglia, yet not all parents could attend, and some 25 to 50 per cent signed forms asking their child be excused for part of the program.
“They had fears we might be giving explicit description of sexual acts or even encouraging sexual activity,” said Battaglia, “but when we explain we’re teaching anatomy and reproduction and peer pressure, most agreed to have their kids take part.”
Baloch, an IT consultant, agreed. “There was a lot of misconception but it’s not about anything bad that could affect the kids’ character. We just don’t want kids to mature before their time.”
As chair of the school council, he said religious accommodation is the glue that will keep all Canadians in the same school system.
“Otherwise what will happen is each culture and religion will leave and start their own schools and that won’t be good.”
Whenever religion enters the mix, education gets “messy, and complex and emotional — which isn’t a bad thing because it accelerates our learning curve,” said Catherine Fife, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, which will hold a workshop this winter for school trustees on how to navigate the issue of religious accommodation.
The issue calls for even broader debate, said Pamela Klassen, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s department for the study of religion. When Quebec held a commission four years ago into how far public institutions should bend to people’s religious practice, it was forced to define its secular values — something that should happen across Canada.
“We may all agree religious accommodation is a good thing, but there are going to be conflicts about what it looks like on the ground and we need to set up a way to talk these things through in a calm, less heated manner.”
Personally, I think any and all religions should be removed from school and kept off school grounds - except in general Religious Education, where the students learn about the history of the religions as well as just the religions themselves.
If parents want their kids to have the same religion as themselves, they should keep it at home, teach them about it at home, and let schools deal with actual education, without being hindered by his or that stupid religious dictate.
