Seven Courageous Students Say NO To Quebec's Creepy New Curriculum

Despite suspension, despite the threat of expulsion, they refuse to attend a mandatory course which is nothing but a virtual indoctrination into social and moral relativism.

The ERC curricula are mandated to introduce students to Quebec's rich diversity of religious tenets and "facilitate the spiritual development of students so as to promote self-fulfilment." Since when does the state "facilitate" spiritual self-fulfilment? To parents who take religion seriously, this is a chilling intrusion into what all democratically inspired charters of rights designate as a parental realm of authority.

ERC was adopted by virtual fiat, its mission to instill "normative pluralism" in students. "Normative pluralism" is gussied-up moral relativism, the ideology asserting there is no absolute right or wrong and that there are as many "truths" as there are whims. There were no public consultations.

The program is predicated on the worst possible educational model for young children: the philosopher Hegel's "pedagogy of conflict." As one of the founders of the ECR course, put it, students "must learn to shake up a too-solid identity" and experience "divergence and dissonance" through "le questionnement."

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According to World Net Daily, school boards across Quebec have received over 1400 request from parents for their children to be exempted from the course, which emphasizes feminism over Christianity, and suggests that Raelians are centuries ahead of other beliefs. For obvious reasons, all those requests were rejected. So the students have to fight for their rights themselves.

Diane Gagne's 16-year-old son, Jonathan, is one of those hit with a suspension. He has refused to take part in the two-hour-per-week course because it teaches values that run counter to his religious beliefs.

"He told me, 'Mom, I am still standing, and I'm going to keep standing and fight this to the end,'" said Diane Gagne. "We're prepared to go right to expulsion."

Lawyer Jean-Yves Cote is representing the family against the suspension imposed by the public high school in Granby, Quebec, as well as another family with a court challenge to the state demand.

Under the course requirements, "it is the state deciding what religious content will be learned, at what age, and that is totally overriding the parents' authority and role," Jean Morse-Chevrier, of the Quebec Association of Catholic Parents, told the newspaper.

In 2005, a change in the law eliminated a family's right to choose among "Catholic," "Protestant" or "moral" instruction in classrooms, a change that took effect last summer.

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Hopefully, those courageous seven will show the way to hundreds and thousands of others. Hopefully, their effort will eventually grow to a student strike province-wide which would force the government to back down.

Otherwise, if it turns out that Quebec's self-loathing quasi-national socialists are determined to erase Quebec's founding values and vast majority of Quebecers simply doesn't care - then it would make sense for Quebec's social conservatives to just move out. There are other provinces (including New Brunswick - bilingual, growth-oriented and not overrun by pinko-commies) that would be more than happy to accommodate hard-working refugees from Quebec.