The Ontario provincial election of 2007 is history. Conservative leader John Tory is probably history, too, but I will lose little sleep on that account. For arguably, the Tory candidate, despite being named Tory, was the least Tory-like candidate in the history of Ontario politics.

There’s no dispute that Tory’s campaign foundered on the issue of providing funding for faith-based schools. He wanted to fund these “separate schools” with the proviso that they accept the provincial curriculum and teacher-certification requirements. A good many Christian parents (who spend their own money to send their children to private schools) and a number of “faith-based” school administrators were in favour of this idea.

For my part, I confess that the concept stuck in my craw right from the beginning. The teaching in the public school system in Canada is now largely based on the worldview of secular humanism. The majority of courses, including those that teach on sexuality and family life and the ones touching on origins of life, are either indifferent or outright hostile to religious truths and ideas. Furthermore, Canada’s preoccupation with homosexual rights over religious freedom rights manifested through court decisions, human rights tribunals and the court of public opinion does not bode well for the future of the public school system.

The recent decision to “queer” the entire curriculum of the Surrey School Board in British Columbia from Kindergarten through Grade 12 is a sinister portent of what we can increasingly expect. The fact is that since homosexual marriage is both legal and increasingly accepted by the public, the school system will inexorably move in the direction of indoctrinating our children into the “normality” of all things homosexual.

One school administrator assured me that we could accept both the funding and the conditions imposed, because he was convinced there would be a way of avoiding curriculum requirements that would contravene Christian teaching. I do not share his optimism. For just over a year ago, the Quebec Ministry of Education threatened to shut down private evangelical schools if they did not teach sex education and the theory of Darwinism. But, even if the administrator was correct in the short term, it’s the long term that concerns me. Surely the old saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune” applies here. Frankly, it’s obvious to me that a publicly funded school system that is unabashedly based on secular-humanist principles will at some point bring down the hammer on “faith-based” schools receiving money from the government. Could be sooner, could be later, but it will happen.

Now, some may point out that this has not happened in the provinces where both the Roman Catholic system and other faith-based schools are currently receiving government funds. That may be true up to the present time, but it ignores the reality that “new truths” and values have been recently foisted on Canadians through the influence of the media and by force of law. For example, even the Catholic separate school system was forced by a court decision to allow young gay activist Marc Hall to take his gay boyfriend to a high school prom back in 2002. And this was before homosexual marriage had been legalized. Admittedly, this was an issue based on practice, but soon, I think, issues of curriculum and values will be the points of contention.

No, in my opinion the faith-based schools have just dodged a very nasty bullet. Public funding in the short term might have looked like a good thing, but in fact, it would have let the camel’s nose of secular humanism into the door of the tent. In the long term, this camel, I fear, would have quashed most of the “faith” in these faith-based schools.

It’s time to ask the question, “How safe is the public school system for my Christian son or daughter?” James Dobson of Focus on the Family for some time now has been calling on parents to take their children out of what he sees as an increasingly faith-hostile system.

I share his same concern. I accept his same solution. People who wish to conserve the faith of their kids should enroll them in faith-based schools or enroll them at the kitchen table and home school them. For the faith-denying embrace of secular humanism will, in its normal course of teaching, overturn the faith system of our kids. If we are not watchful, we parents may end up with politically correct little infidels who stand for everything we don’t, never did and never will.