This paper supports the right of parents to educate their own children as they see fit. Whether it is choosing the best government-funded school for their children within the public or separate school system, sending them to independent religious schools or educating their children themselves at home, such decisions are best made by parents. We also understand that whatever constitutional guarantees there are for Catholic school education, Canada’s 21st-century religious plurality and the exodus of many faithful Christians from the public school system requires provincial education policies that are not, or do not appear, discriminatory.
But Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory’s plan to bring faith-based schools into the public system is the wrong way to go. If elected premier, the Progressive Conservative leader says he will fully fund existing private religious schools through the public system, as long as these schools teach the Ministry of Education curriculum, follow standardized testing and have accredited teachers just as the public system does. Many parents send their children to independent religious schools precisely to escape the curriculum taught in public schools, including its immoral sex education, the normalizing of homosexuality and the promotion of a secular worldview.
On Sept. 5, Tory indicated what the ramifications of such a policy would entail. After intially telling a Toronto radio program that creationism could be taught in Christian schools, he later back-tracked, saying that it could only be taught within the context of a religion class, not alongside the teaching of the theory of evolution in science. Many private religious schools infuse their entire program with their moral and theological teachings, so under Tory’s plan, religious schools would become less explicitly religious.
Homeschooling Catholic parents in Ontario can attest to the experience in Catholic education since PC premier Bill Davis introduced full K-13 funding for Catholic schools in 1985. While there are still good schools and great teachers within the Catholic system, many parents witnessed the same kind of erosion of moral and educational standards in Catholic schools as had already occurred in many public schools (or “Protestant” schools, as they used to be known). We are concerned that the same thing will happen to religious schools that accept public money in exchange for abiding provincial regulations.
Yet, Tory has put Ontario’s Christian conservatives in a bind. The backlash against his plan has exposed a nasty secularism. Opposition to funding religious schools has often been coupled with a desire to bring a levelling uniformity to education, rooted in a hostility to the very existence of religious schools. If the Conservatives win and John Tory implements his program, the vitality of religious education in Ontario will be jeopardized. If the Conservatives lose, social conservatives will be blamed, as this issue has become central to the provincial election campaign.
There are three other ways of addressing the problem Tory says he wants to correct; namely, the perceived discrimination against non-Catholic families who want to send their children to religious schools. Provincial governments could provide education tax credits or school vouchers to help alleviate the financial burden of families sending children to independent schools. Tax credits would discount a percentage of private school tuition from a family’s portion of the provincial income tax. School vouchers can be used by parents to pay a school directly for a portion of the tuition.
A more radical plan, one proposed by Canadian education expert Mark Holmes, is to end the practice of direct funding of schools and instead have education funding follow the student. Such a plan works as follows: determine the average cost of educating each student in the public system and provide that amount to whatever school parents want to send their children to, whether it be a public or a private program. If private schools are more expensive, the parents could make up the difference. Such funding would also be provided to homeschooling parents, who could use the money to offset the cost of supplies and books.
Studies have shown that competition among schools results in an improvement in the quality of education. Competition should also make schools and school boards more receptive to the concerns of parents, including about issues such as sex ed and other curriculum concerns. Giving parents the tools to decide where their children should be educated recognizes the primacy of the role of parents in the education of their children, unlike John Tory’s education plan, which reduces educational choice, threatens the religiosity of (now) private religious schools and increases the power of education bureaucrats at the expense of parents.
