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LABOUR MUST DEFEND SECULAR EDUCATION SYSTEM
LABOUR IN ACTION COLUMN, By Liz Rowley
(This article is from the December 1999 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
LAST MONTH the United Nations found Ontario guilty of discrimination because it funds Catholic schools. The declaration has become a rallying cry for the neo-cons and the religious right, who are coalescing to launch a massive first-strike campaign for charter schools in Ontario. Their argument? Well, since funding RC schools is discriminatory, it's only fair that everybody gets a piece of school funding.
If you think this won't affect public education, think again. This is the straw that might break the system.
The ever-shrinking education funding model is not about to increase. It's about to fracture. The Ontario Tories have already transferred public education tax dollars to Catholic school boards; they did it before the spring election, to buy votes.
Now, with the UN "telling them to do it," why wouldn't they just keep cutting up existing funding for the public system (which they want to do anyway) into little pieces earmarked "Jewish," "Islamic," "Pentecostal," "United," etc.?
This is the key that has fallen into Mike Harris' lap, opening the door to charter schools and voucher education. This is what the Tories are cooking up to split the massive opposition to their attack on public education: just call in the UN, and when all else fails, invoke God. All of them, equally.
But what was the real message in the UN findings? Was it a call to dissect universal, quality, public education, as the neo-cons claim? Or was it a call to end existing funding of Catholic schools in Ontario?
The UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child specifies that universal, public and secular education is a fundamental and inalienable right of all children. So the Tories' invocation of the UN is fraudulent. But many people won't know that. And many people are already deeply offended by the 1985 Tory legislation to give special place to Catholicism in Ontario education. For some, this may seem to be a remedy of sorts. For others, it may be an issue of jobs in the Catholic system, or the old argument of constitutionality. Let's look at these views.
The Tories' 1985 decision to elevate and fund one religion over all others was offensive and cynical; the bishops delivered votes, and the Tories delivered school funding. Worst of all, it was divisive, setting working people against each other on the basis of their religious beliefs. In cases where public schools were transferred to Catholic Boards in 1986 and 1987, it even set kids against kids.
Can't we learn something from this horrible experience? Can't we say NO to "my God's better than your God?"
Second, does the Constitution protect Catholic education? It is true that the Catholic Church controlled education in Québec up to the time of Confederation. The Constitution reflects the fact that the right to control education in Québec should remain in Québec (formerly Lower Canada), not in Ottawa (then Upper Canada). The fundamental issue was language: Québec's right to control its (primarily) French language education system.
In the rest of Canada at that time, primarily English-language education was designated "Protestant." But that does not give Constitutional protection today to Protestant control of public education. Historically, the real issue has been state control of education in both French-speaking Québec and in the mainly English-speaking rest of Canada.
Today, democracy demands that this issue be extended further, to recognize the inherent rights of First Nations peoples to self-government, including the right to control over aboriginal education and to set up school in aboriginal languages where numbers warrant.
Powerful political parties and their corporate backers are suggesting that this can all be reduced to Constitutional protection for Catholic control of schools. This is devious and divisive. It is intended to set working people against each other, as has been done in Europe and other parts of the world to horrendous effect.
Can we not learn from those cases and say clearly, "Not here. Not our children. Not ever."?
Third, about the existing jobs of teachers, caretakers, secretaries and others in the RC school boards. All are obliged by contract to be first vetted by the priests, to live personally and professionally by rules set by the Bishops and the Church, or face reprimands and dismissal.
For this reason, apparently, some in the labour movement hesitate to get into the debate, which is leading to justification for charter and voucher schools in Ontario.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association affiliated to the CLC in 1997, and then to the OFL and many labour councils. OECTA supports Catholic school funding, which pays wages to its members. Their fight for better wages and working conditions (widely recognized as inferior to those in the public system) is linked to funding.
The fact is that further fracturing of funding will drive down Catholic school funding and wages, just as it will in the public system. Objectively, support for religious education today means support for driving down wages everywhere, and also for union-busting, since the education unions are leading the fight to improve wages and working (and learning) conditions.
And just how many Catholic teachers are happy about putting their careers in the hands of clerics? How many Catholics like the Church in their bedrooms, and their offices and workplaces?
Today, a democratic and progressive position is to defend universal, quality, secular and public education, open to all regardless of religion, ethnic background, culture or nationality. It means championing the separation of church and school (and synagogue and school, mosque and school, and so on).
A progressive position is to end the practice of screening teachers for their religious views and practices, marital and family status, etc. Such a position is supported by most teachers in the Catholic system, and by a big majority of working people of Catholic faith - many of whom enrol their children in public schools, despite pressure from Church officials.
This is no academic debate. The future of public education is on the line now in Ontario. Privatization in education is now on the agenda of this government, which has pulled out a clever and divisive argument to press its anti-people, anti-children policies. The labour movement cannot sit out the battle. Step up to the plate! Find the arguments! Unite the people - no matter what their faith. Fight back and defend our children! Guarantee their UN birthright to a universal, quality, secular, public education. That's the issue in Ontario today.
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