Independent Schools - Education With A Value System

And some left-wing journalists find these values disturbing:

Liberal Canadians will not enjoy hearing that only 12% of students at Christian independent schools approve of homosexuality, compared to the Canadian teen average of 44%. Even fewer Christian school students approve of abortion. (Curiously enough, teenagers attending Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and other religious schools approve of homosexuality at almost the same level as other Canadian teens, and their opposition to abortion is not as strong as evangelical and Catholic students.)

At the same time, many Canadian would appreciate certain values expressed by students attending faith-based schools. For instance, youngsters attending private Christian and other religious schools (the latter group are typically the offspring of recent immigrants) are more likely to value hard work and to say they would return a $10 bill if they found it. As well, religious school students are slightly more likely than other Canadian teenagers to be concerned about world poverty, and believe people in other countries deserve our help.

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No wonder the governments are eager to take more control over independent schools. The difference is just with the methods they propose: In Quebec they make sex education and "world religion" classes mandatory for all schools, including private and religious ones. In Ontario there are courts to remind Catholic school principals that their schools are publicly funded first and only then Catholic. (John Tory's funding proposal would have put the remaining few independent schools under the same regime.)

And in other provinces their strategy is to sit back and wait until parents simply can't afford paying for both education systems at once. Despite Douglas Todd's claim that "many provinces help fund the private schools through tax dollars", parents that choose independent schools for their children, receive no tax credits for opting out of the public education system. As result, they are effectively paying twice - their tax dollars go towards sustaining the public system which they don't use and then they have the public school tuition on top of that. If we want our children to be taught what's right and not what's politically correct - we must demand a voucher system.