Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Faith or Funding? No, you can't have both!

Ontario PC Party spokesman made it clear: Faith-based schools that teach creationism in science classes won't be eligible for the proposed public funding, as it goes against the Ontario curriculum. The latter allows creationism to be taught in religion classes, but when it comes to science classes, schools must teach another theory - the evolution as the sole truth.

The article doesn't mention moral values. Apparently the same spokesman didn't say anything on the subject. So we can only guess whether faith-based schools would also be forced to adopt sex-education in its entirety as part of the Ontario curriculum, while teaching abstinence and traditional marriage too would only be allowed in religion classes (if allowed at all). We may even call it a "progressives' hidden agenda".

Anyway, the PC party press release confirms what I've already said twice on this blog: that public funding will cost faith-based schools their identity. It may be ok for some parents whose objective is heritage rather than faith. Yet many other parents will find that unacceptable:
He appears to have made no one happy - not his liberal secular friends and certainly not the majority of people of faith who want no part of the current establishment's secular and sexual propaganda. These are, after all, the two main reasons that faith-based schools exist. Money was not the object then. And it is not the object now. It is a pity that Mr. Tory cannot understand this. It would have saved him the serious embarassment he is currently experiencing.
The Parental Choice System, proposed by the Family Coalition Party, which would allow parents to choose the school, public or privately owned, for their children, using the government-provided Child Education Cheque (commonly known as "school voucher") to pay the tuition, makes much more sense.

2 comments:

Baconeater said...

There should be no public funding of faith based schools period.

There is plenty of time to separate children in church and at home with ones parent's beliefs.

Leonard said...

<<There should be no public funding of faith based schools period.>>
Why? After all, the parents who send their kids to those school are also taxpayers and their taxes, among other things go towards our education system.

John Tory's proposal is a bad idea since it would cost faith-based schools their independence. But that doesn't mean there should be no tax breaks for parents who choose to opt out of the public school system.