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Ontario Should Join Quebec and Go For Secular School System

Well, boys ‘n’ girls, CC over at the tweeter best describes this situation. It is indeed breath taking how those religious wingnuts  who whine about the  so-called indoctrination of impressionable youngsters in universities of “lefty”, evul “soshalist” values,  crying the blues about how social conservatism has no voice there.  Those very same people don’t seem to have any problem with indoctrinating even younger and more impressionable youngsters with anti-choice values.  Enter, the Ontario Catholic school system.  A Catholic high school is now strongly encouraging these kids to support Woody-Worthless’ bill, m-312, to reopen the abortion debate which the supreme court shut down 2 decades ago.

In an email sent out to all teachers at St Joseph Catholic Secondary School this week, teachers are encouraged to ask students to sign. Xtra obtained a copy of the email from a source at the school.

Yep,  misogyny has taken precidents the teaching of  good ol’ reading, writing and math, it would seem. It’s turning these kids into gov’t lobbyists. What else would you call it?

Michael Payton, interim executive director of Centre for Inquiry, says the school is manipulating students to lobby the federal government on behalf of Conservative causes.

“This is a clear example of indoctrination and pernicious lobbying that is being funded by taxpayers in Ontario,” Payton says. “Why is this allowed in a publicly funded school? This is not education. It’s vile and manipulative.

Vile and manipulative is an understatement. It’s obscene, especially given the fact that Ontario tax payers are footing the bill to invest in future misogynists. Indoctrinated by those very same wingnuts who whine about their tax dollars paying for abortions.  Awesome!

So-called freedom of speech won’t cut it neither. Not when students at these tax-payer funded schools are having their speech curtailed.

Administration staff at St Joseph’s previously blocked student Leanne Iskander when she wanted to start a gay-straight alliance (GSA). At one point students were banned from using rainbows in anti-homophobia posters. The principal deemed the rainbow image “too political” because of its association with Pride.

Yep, no rainbows allowed.  Yet, photoshopped gory pics of fetuses are just peachy and definitely not political. Hokey-dokey, then.

Two questions come to mind, one from Fern Hill:

Are the admins keeping track of which teachers return the most signatures? Is it a quota thing?

The second question, from your’s truly: The students who don’t sign this petition; do they automatically fail their school year? Or something worse? Let’s remember Alexandria Szeglet and 35 other students from St-Patrick’s High school who who wore green tape on their school uniforms that said “choice” and were subsequently sent home and suspended for refusing to remove them? Is it outside the realm of possibility that students who refuse to sign this petition suffer similar or worse consequences?

What a great example, when those who are supposed to condemn bullying are being the bullies themselves.

I’m sorry but the argument of CAtholic schools being allowed to inflict their doctrine on their students and stifle anything that goes contrary to their beliefs just doesn’t cut it. Not while the tax-payers are funding this.

In fact,  isn’t it about time Ontario do away with segregated Catholic schools funded by tax payers and start having one secular school system?  The majority of the people living in La belle province are CAtholic, (definitely more Catholics in Quebec than Ontario) yet we did away with religious based school boards. The skydidn’t come crashing down.  If Ontario were to ever join Quebec, sure there’d be some kicking and screaming, but, in the grand scheme of things, who cares? Shouldn’t reading, writing, math and science take precedence?   If religion is more important than reading, writing and math, there are always private schools.

 

 

 

3 comments to Ontario Should Join Quebec and Go For Secular School System

  • Alison S

    The old grey cells ain’t what they used to be, but didn’t Newfoundland get rid of its catholic system some years ago too?

  • Sm

    Schools are the battleground. Public schools in the US now can’t talk about climate change without mentioning Hocus Pocus as a parallel theory. Ontario Catholics can’t respect women’s rights. Yet, most people don’t pay attention to school boards at all, even with kids in school. I think it would be interesting to take a look at the profound societal influence of those school boards, that look harmless enough until you pay attention. How many people actually VOTED for their school trustee?

  • Deb OConnor

    This article has fired me up on the cause of ending public funding for Catholic schools like nothing before. I’ve always resented it but until now haven’t had a strong reason to squawk. This has done it for me, thank you. The very notion of opening up the abortion debate in Canada sends me into a cold fury so finding out the catholic school boards are using their students like this sends me over the edge.

    BTW our local school board trusteee is a former federal tory MP who left in disgrace over tax fraud issues. His son is a failed tory MPP who is now the constituency assistant for our latest tory MPP, who was a school teacher until last fall in the public system. Good old semi rural Ontario, some things never seem to change.