Publicly funded elementary and secondary education in Canada is well understood as a public good and an accepted obligation of the state. Canadian provinces spend more money only on health care. There is a certain level of respect for parental rights in education. No province in Canada, for example, prohibits private schools or home schooling, and it is doubtful whether any provincial government could enact such legislation politically or enforce it legally.
Co-operation between church and state in the area of public education exists in Canada. There is no shortage of options for publicly funded education that provides religious instruction, and not just education about religion. In Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, Roman Catholic schools are publicly funded, as are certain Protestant schools. Generally, however, religious schools are private and receive either no public funding, as in Ontario, or some public funding including substantial levels in British Columbia and Quebec. Alberta is experimenting with religious schools under the aegis of public school boards.
Despite a degree of accommodation, there is a certain lack of traction for authentic pluralism and parental rights in public education. What explains this? What can be done about it? These are the subjects of this article.
I argue that liberal democratic principles oblige the state to offer parental choice in publicly funded education that respects their religion. Public education today, however, has goals more consistent with those of secular humanism than authentic pluralism.
The formative nature of education
Parents know that education can either assist or defeat them in transmitting their faith to their children, so the stakes are high. Education of the young is bound to be formative. If the state educates the young, it also forms them, at least in part, and perhaps the major part. Educator Dr. Glenn Watson comments:
“An educational system cannot be neutral. If there is no religious education or any form of religion in the schools, then secular humanism, by default, becomes the basic belief system. Secular humanism does not represent a neutral position.
“In every relationship, and especially in that between a teacher and a student, there is something that can be referred to as religious education. It is the transmission of ideas, or answers to significant life-related issues, or it is the exemplification of values by ‛precept and example.’ There is no way to avoid such an interaction and the learning experience associated with that relationship over a period of time.”
Public education has always seen itself as formative in purpose. This was certainly Egerton Ryerson’s explicit goal as the godfather of English-speaking public education in Canada. He tirelessly promoted the concept of one Christian non-denominational and universally accessible common school system. Such a system, he said, would be an effective antidote to crime, poverty and class and sectarian conflict, would protect representative government, enhance productivity and so knit the country together.
In opposition to the assertion by Anglicans and Roman Catholics particularly that parental rights needed to be respected, Ryerson asserted the primacy of the state as “collective parent.”
He argued that, “(T)he state, therefore, so far from having nothing to do with children, constitutes their collective parent, and is bound to protect them against any unnatural neglect or cruel treatment, on the part of the individual parent, and to secure to them all that will qualify them to become useful citizens of the state.”
Those observations led Ryerson to conclude, in a manner that dovetailed with his utilitarian concerns, that separate schools for Anglicans and Roman Catholics would isolate those who attended them from their fellows. He was afraid that separate schools would be too costly and would undermine the common school system. As a polemicist Ryerson warned that the children of separate school supporters would be disadvantaged:
“If public schools are founded at the public expense, and for the public good, no citizens can be separated from them without injury — injury in some degree to the public schools on the ground of support, - but much greater injury to the parties separated, as being deprived of the advantages of the public schools, and compelled to support other schools at greater expense, and, generally, less efficient ones, and with the additional disadvantage of being severed and alienated from other classes of the community, with whom their interests, position and future prospects, are largely associated...”
But even the somewhat fractured Christian consensus of Ryerson’s time has long since disappeared with secularization and the increase in religious diversity in our society.
The basic contours of the debate have not changed for the better part of 200 years. The battle was and is all about the formation of children and who will control it.
The ambiguities of liberal democracy in Canada
Despite our apparent commitment to individualism, Canadians have an ambivalent attitude toward pluralism and the accommodation of diversity. We affirm liberal precepts of a libertarian nature in some areas on some occasions but deny them elsewhere.
Committed to individualism
In separate rulings, the Supreme Court of Canada identified the purpose of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as “:the unremitting protection of individual rights and liberties,” and has endorsed “:the centrality of individual conscience and the inappropriateness of governmental intervention to compel or to constrain its manifestation.” In Morgentaler vs. the Queen, the court noted that:
“Individuals are afforded a right to choose their own religion and their own philosophy of life, the right to choose with whom they will associate and how they will express themselves, the right to choose where they will live and what occupation they will pursue. These are all examples of the basic theory underlying the charter, namely, that the state will respect choices made by individuals and, to the greatest extent possible, will avoid subordinating these choices to any one conception of the good life (emphasis added).”
There is a cultural sense that each person has an original way of being and a unique identity, which it is the duty of each of us to work out for ourselves.
The ability of each person to choose his or her own approach to life makes choice sacrosanct. In a case about the division of matrimonial property, the Supreme Court noted: “:choice must be paramount and “respect for choice” enhances rather than diminishes respect for autonomy and self-determination.” This flows from the fact that: “One of those essential (Charter) values is liberty, basically defined as the absence of coercion and the ability to make fundamental choices in regards to one’s life.”
In these words can be seen the Supreme Court’s fundamental commitment to individualism. There seems to be widespread agreement on the moral principle expressed by John Stuart Mill: “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
The ambivalence of pluralism
The commitment to individualism has implications for the way people think about the proper role of the state in many areas of life, including education. The court’s quasi-libertarian orientation would seem to support parental choice in education, but there is another aspect that must be considered. There is a need to drill deeper. In this section of the article, I put philosophers William A. Galston, John Gray and Charles Taylor into conversation.
Galston argues that autonomy and pluralism are competing theoretical conceptions within liberalism. Autonomy is the consequence of the Enlightenment, which championed liberation from external authority through the use of reason. Pluralism is the consequence of the Reformation and the need to accommodate religious differences. It is the emergent political problem in liberal democracies, says Galston, to manage the clash of autonomy and pluralism within liberalism; this requires both toleration and balancing in public policy, and a robust appreciation for the limits of state action.
Gray argues that there are two basic approaches within liberalism. In one, pluralism and diversity are tolerated as a temporary stage in the evolution of society. Diversity will inevitably disappear as individuals come more and more to see the wisdom of a common set of values and a common form of liberalism. Gray calls this the pursuit of “rational consensus.” We will, so goes the argument, achieve rational consensus over time as pluralism and diversity diminish.
The other approach holds that pluralism and diversity are permanent and natural features of human life and the way in which communities are formed, and therefore of life in a liberal democracy. There are incommensurable ways of life that need not conflict. We must strive for, as Gray puts it, the “modus vivendi.”
In tracing the genetics of modern liberalism, Gray observes that it originated in relatively homogeneous societies. It was nurtured in Christian cultures where conflicting judgments about the human good were understood as symptoms of error. So a project of orthodoxy, of a “liberal fundamentalism,” as he puts it, is perhaps not surprising.
All such projects, whether authored by John Rawls and his followers, by John Stuart Mill, or by Gray’s mentor Isaiah Berlin, among others, are doomed to fail. There is no rational consensus that can reasonably cope with the degree of diversity and pluralism that exists in modern society, which results from immigration, the erosion of cohesive national cultures, internal cultural experimentation and the phenomenon of “hybridity”, in which individuals are simultaneously members of different communities and autonomous. In short, Gray argues that a rational consensus in terms of values and morals is unattainable in the real world.
In Canada today, we are wrestling with these two concepts of liberalism. Neither the courts nor the legislatures have adequately grasped the problem. We take different sides on this issue at different times, but Gray is no doubt right when he says that, “The predominant liberal view of toleration sees it as a means to a universal civilization.” Signs of this “liberal fundamentalism” can be seen in the area of public education.
Liberal fundamentalism and public education
There is tension between the formation function of public education and the need to accommodate diversity. In his 1985 Report of the Commission on Private Schools in Ontario, Dr. Bernard Shapiro explains the basic policy thrust behind public schools today: they are necessary to “ensure that, in a pluralistic and multicultural society, schools can contribute to the strengthening of the social fabric by providing a common acculturation experience for children.” He adds that “:it would also be difficult to underestimate the importance of a common, non-commercial acculturation experience in the socialization of the young. Indeed, the more fragmented the society and diverse the groups striving for their ‛place’, the greater the need for schools to seek a common unifying core.”
In Adler, Justice Beverley McLachlin, dissenting in part, set out the argument against funding for independent religious schools in similar terms:
“(217) The argument linking denial of funding for independent religious schools to the ultimate objective of a more tolerant society goes like this. By providing funding to secular schools where people of all religions are welcomed free of cost, the government encourages people of different cultures and creeds to educate their children together. If funding were provided for private religious schools many of those who now send their children to secular schools would instead send their children to independent religious schools. The public secular schools would lose some students from diverse backgrounds. These students, instead of being educated in public multicultural multi-religious schools, would be educated with homogeneous groups of people of similar beliefs. In short, secular schools might become less diverse and the number of students receiving parochial education would increase. The overall effect would be to diminish the multicultural exposure of children in schools. This lack of exposure, in turn, would diminish the mutual tolerance and understanding of Ontarians of diverse cultures and religions for one another.”
The implicit and illiberal idea here is that the state really must be the legitimate protector of a particular way of life and that its function is to engender and to protect one way of being in preference to all others. Public education is to be the indoctrinating tool. This idea is plainly at the root of the ideology of the secular humanist common school.
What are the fears?
What accounts for this apparent inconsistency on the Supreme Court’s part between the celebration of state neutrality in aid of individualism, choice and personal authenticity on the one hand, and the obvious non-neutrality in public education on the other hand?
Some factors are evidently more important than others. Three seem to be of particular importance. The first is the fear of social fragmentation, perhaps best expressed by Yeats poetically, that the “centre cannot hold” in the absence of the common cultural experience constituted by public schools.
The public system is in the course of appropriating “charter values” as a new consensus around which it can coalesce and be bold. This confidence that our liberal democracy has public values that are and must be transmitted through the educational enterprise can be seen in the teacher discipline case of Ross v. School District No. 15. The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a teacher who publicly made discriminatory statements in his off-duty time on the basis that: “By their conduct, teachers as ‛medium’ must be perceived to uphold the values, beliefs and knowledge sought to be transmitted by the school system.”
There is a sense that peace, order and good government depend on the success of the public system’s effort, through this common acculturation experience, to create a society that holds charter values in common as a matter of fundamental personal belief. This is a form of public ideological orthodoxy.
A second and related factor is a general suspicion of religion that has only been highlighted by events such as the war on terror. Religion is seen by many as divisive, if not dangerous, particularly if the result is separate schools. The nightmare scenario would see Islamist madrassas as a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists.
In a liberal democracy that purports to value freedom of religion, the solution has been to privatize it, making it the business of the home, the family and the religious organization to which one chooses to belong, but not the state. There is also an increasing Canadian political acceptance of American dogma that the separation of church and state is constitutionally required.
Canada’s cultural elite are often indifferent or actively hostile to religion. It is increasingly difficult to explain and justify religious thinking to political or legal authorities. The Supreme Court has observed that we are no longer “a society of shared social values” reflective of “Christendom”. Public policy and law no longer seem to recognize the legitimacy of an appeal to religion to justify a public policy position. This elite prejudice against religion has a corrosive incidental effect on parental rights in education, since serious religious commitment is seen as suspect, if not antisocial.
The third major factor is economic self-interest in the opposition to funding religious schools. In their resistance to diversity, those within the existing public system see education spending as a zero sum game. Extending funding outside the charmed circle would mean a reduction in spending within it and that would adversely affect those who are now its beneficiaries.
Limits to government and the need for social space
The critical starting point in any discussion of liberal democracy should be the need for political humility. This is a recognition that the state is a servant, not a master; that it is a means to an end and not an end in itself; that it is not the source of individual and community rights, but the protector of those rights and sometimes the object of them; that is not a proper function of the state to provide a meaning for the lives of its citizens, but to preserve space within which they can pursue meaningful lives, individually and collectively; and that it is not the role of a liberal democratic state to create a sense of “belonging” or “membership” that is so notably absent in modern life with the ascendancy of individualism.
These basic propositions are generally accepted by liberals, even by liberal fundamentalists, but dissolve in practice for reasons ranging from the utilitarian (it is too expensive), to the idealistic (the false consciousness, in the Marxist sense, of ordinary people means that they must be indoctrinated in liberal mores by the state), to the pragmatic (the risk of divisiveness is just too great). These caveats lend support to a remark by Catholic philosopher Etienne Gilson: “Of all the types of political society the liberal state is the one least qualified to beget the spiritual forces which alone can keep it alive.”
It is not enough that the state merely forebear, as Galston argues, from using “coercive state power to impose one’s own views on others.” There must be active resistance within liberal government against the temptation to take over all aspects of life as if it were an immense tutelary power. There must be a conscious effort to repopulate the gulf between the state and the individual with intermediate political bodies and civil associations that can play meaningful roles in civil society.
Smaller political entities like hospital boards, school boards and municipal councils, together with voluntary associations like service clubs and churches, give individuals a habit and taste for self rule that is essential to a liberal democracy. These form parts of a “network of nested public spheres” which should be a major form of civil society and a buffer between bureaucratic state and the individual. This is, of course, what freedom of association is about.
But a liberal democracy is entitled to maintain appropriate conditions for its own existence; as Galston argues: “in securing the cultural conditions of its survival and perpetuation, for example, it may legitimately engage in civic education, carefully restricted to the public essentials — the virtues and competences that citizens will need to fulfil diverse roles in a liberal pluralist economy, society and polity. One thing above all is clear: Because the likely result of liberal pluralist institutions and practices will be a highly diverse society, the virtue of tolerance will be a core attribute of liberal pluralist citizenship.”
Among the essential commitments are, for example, to respect the requirements of public order like the rule of law and the ability to enforce it, and to such elements as basic decency, being the preservation of human rights, the provision of basic needs and the avoidance of great evils of human existence such as natural disasters. About these there need to be no particularly neutrality on the part of a liberal pluralist state.
A pluralist approach to parental rights in public education - the creation of social space
A long tradition recognizes the role of parents as the first teachers of their children.
Article 26(3) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), for example, provides that: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” There is really no dispute about the existence of this right.
Can the state satisfy its obligation by offering public education in a way that does not permit meaningful diversity and real choice to all parents?
Most people in our culture would recognize the decision to become a parent and raise children as an aspect of self-fulfilment; they would respect the decision of an individual and a couple to live a certain form of authentic life. While most people would agree children will eventually become autonomous moral agents capable of appropriating their own personal form of authenticity, few would agree that the state is a better parent.
For their part, Canadian courts have recognized the central role of the parents. In the Richard B. decision the Supreme Court of Canada noted: “That constitutional freedom (of religion) includes the right to educate and rear their child in tenets of their faith. In effect, until the child reaches an age where she can make an independent decision regarding her own religious beliefs, parents may decide on her religion for her and raise her in accordance with that religion.”
In Multani v. Commission Scolaire Marguerite Bourgeois, the Supreme Court of Canada addressed the issue of religious accommodation in a public school setting. The court held that there must be a reasonable accommodation of the religious obligations of students in public schools, in this case the obligation of a Sikh student to carry a ceremonial dagger known as a kirpan. An absolute prohibition did not fall within the range of reasonable alternatives. The motivating safety concerns could be adequately met by stitching the kirpan into his clothing.
Any provincial efforts to prevent the wearing of religious garb in public schools in order to create a homogeneous student body (as has occurred, for example, in France) would not be acceptable to the Supreme Court of Canada. It would be hard to think of a justification that could pass scrutiny under s. 1 of the charter for preventing a student from wearing a chador, or a cross or a Star of David for religious reasons in a public school context. The case is a precedent favouring meaningful pluralism. It resists continuing cultural pressure for uniformity or conformity.
It is not unreasonable to insist that policy makers accommodate the religious viewpoint in public policy. In 2002, Chief Justice McLachlin said: “: The modern religious citizen is caught between two all-encompassing sets of commitments. The law faces the seemingly paradoxical task of asserting its own ultimate authority while carving out a space within itself in which individuals and communities can manifest alternative, and often competing, sets of ultimate commitments.”
The metaphor of “carving out a space” for religious communities is suggestive.
It is perhaps ironic, in light of these comments, that the strongest support for liberal fundamentalism in public education is Chief Justice McLachlin’s decision in Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36. The court struck down the decision of a British Columbia school board to refuse approval for three books presenting positive images of same-sex families for use in junior kindergarten and Grade 1. The refusal was on the basis that a significant number of parents and others in the school district would consider these books to be incompatible or inconsistent with their moral and religious beliefs on same-sex relationships.
The case marks a significant moment in the debate about parental rights in education. Chief Justice McLachlin’s comments about “carving out a space” for religion do not square with the utter displacement of parental rights that she supported in Chamberlain. This is why reframing the issues around a more robust appreciation of the proper limits to government and the need for social space is such a critical venture.
Once society is persuaded that the better accommodation of diversity in public education is good public policy, many options exist. At the same time, however, such persuasion will not be possible unless it addresses the main concerns identified in this article. The core issue is the role of the state in education.
What role should the state play in public education?
Most people, even those who favour a more decentralized education system, would agree that the government has an essential role to play in a number of areas.
Government is responsible for ensuring that public funds are spent in a responsible way and that such spending complies with standard public policy criteria. Government should ensure that the teachers are suitably qualified for their tasks. This does not mean that government should necessarily control all of teacher education. But control of certification is necessary to ensure that students are taught by qualified teachers.
Curriculum Content
There seems to be little disagreement that the government should set the benchmarks of knowledge and skills that must be achieved for all children being educated in the jurisdiction. This does not suggest that schools cannot insist on higher standards. The necessary degree of curriculum control by the government should still permit local adaptation of curriculum to accord with the values base of the school, and leave the school able to supplement the program with other subjects and courses.
These tasks also suggest that government should play a supervisory role to ensure that the schools and teachers are performing to the expected standards. This implies direct supervision and indirect supervision through direct evaluation and some form of testing.
It is proper for the state in a liberal society to insist that civics be taught so that all students, regardless of the schools in which they are educated, emerge with a basic understanding of the political system and human rights, and understand themselves to be part of a larger community. Government can and should ensure that the system of education fosters a civil society. These are essential curriculum requirements that must be enforced.
There is no justification, I argue, for the expenditure of public money on schools that do not teach tolerance as an essential personal and social virtue. This requirement should be applied even to independent privately funded schools.
At a certain point in their education, students need to learn what it means to be informed and participating citizens in a democratic society. They need to learn about the elements of democracy and the meaning of democratic citizenship in local, national and global contexts. They need to learn about social change, to examine decision-making processes in Canada, to explore their beliefs and those of others, and to learn how to act and think critically and creatively about public issues.
Conversely, however, increasing insistence on teaching charter values that conflict with parental values poses a serious problem, both in principle and in practicality, for a system of public education that does not provide some options. It is to be expected that parents who find teachings in the public schools to be morally unacceptable will establish private schools if another outlet is not available. The record shows, for example, that numerous private schools were established in Ontario after the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered the removal of religious elements from public school curricula.
To use a current example, the charter, taken together with Bill C-38, will inevitably compel public schools to teach their students that same-sex marriage is morally equivalent to heterosexual marriage, that same-sex sexual relations are morally equivalent to heterosexual sexual relations and behaviour and, to the extent that these concepts are explored from a mechanical perspective in health and physical education classes, the exploration must be equivalent. Any other approach, it will be argued, would be discriminatory and contrary to the equality rights under s. 15(1) of the charter and the numerous court cases that have led to Bill C-38.
There is little doubt that, given the relative lack of support for the change in the definition of marriage in the Canadian populace generally, this new reality will not be welcome. Canadian tolerance may well support adult homosexual conduct in certain places at certain times, but it is not likely to support teachings in local public schools that conflict radically with the moral values held by parents, particularly in the early years. One can predict an exodus from public schools unless the options explored in this article are made available, including provision for separate schools.
A public education system that adopts a liberal fundamentalist orientation will find itself in decline as parents vote with their feet. The critical task is therefore one of reconciliation of the competing interests. If it is not done, meaningful diversity in public education will not become successful public policy because children will just leave the public schools.
The options
The fear of fragmentation, the divisiveness of religious differences and cost are legitimate public policy concerns, alongside the recognition of value pluralism and the need to accommodate differences, political pluralism and the need to respect subsidiarity, and expressive liberalism with its focus on authenticity and respect for parental rights. Each needs to be assessed in the context of the particular option under consideration.
The aspirations of parents who want more diversity in public education vary. Some would only be content with separate schools. Others would find separate classes to be sufficient. Still others would be satisfied if their children could opt out of certain classes. Others would like nothing more than an opportunity to teach religion to children in public schools during off hours. Each of these options, and any others that might be considered, pose varying degrees of difficulty in terms of the substantive concerns that have been raised.
Any time that accommodation is an issue, creativity is necessary. But there can be no flinching from the fact that the accommodation of differences, particularly religious differences, does require a degree of separation, which is protected “social space.” That means, of course, accommodating religious views that may be unpopular.
Separate schools
The option of separate schools is worth considering where numbers warrant. In sociological terms, schools that have a consistent religious philosophy, such as Catholic schools, are capable of forming “functional communities.” In addition to teaching academic subjects as approved by the general educational authorities, such schools are able, on the basis of shared common values, not only to develop better relationships among students and the teachers, but also to extend beyond the schools themselves to involve parents and other adults from the larger community. Such schools, argues James Coleman, the most prominent authority on the sociology of education, are more effective in the build up of a social capital than those schools that are not functional communities.
This option cuts against the idea that children should be educated in common schools as a form of “common acculturation experience,” to borrow Dr. Shapiro’s expression. It does, however, best provide for parental choice for those parents who want something that the common school does not or cannot provide, for example, pervasive religious influence across the curriculum in the Catholic tradition. The concerns behind the common acculturation goal could largely be addressed through curriculum standards.
There is no hard evidence that separate schools cost more money than public schools. The most costly elements of education are the building and the school staff. Whether the school is public or Catholic or Jewish should have no fundamental impact on the economics of its operation. The “numbers warrant” condition should address the cost concerns.
Separate Classes
This option would see the creation of separate classes for certain subjects including religion. It would permit religious instruction and not just education about religion. There is a “numbers warrant” aspect to this option too, since it would be impractical if there were too few students for some classes.
The advantage of this option is that it is a halfway house between a common acculturation experience in one school which many advocate, and entirely separate schools, which some would call divisive. It would not be sufficient, however, for those parents who want religious influence to permeate the entire curriculum.
This option is not free from difficulty in administration. There will be debates about how many children there must be in order to warrant a separate class. If virtually all of the children in the school opt in to the separate class, does that unconstitutionally stigmatize the children who do not attend the class? Or, if the separate class is very small, does it stigmatize those who have opted in?
Opt-Out Rights
This option would give parents the right to have their children removed from classes in which material that is objectionable to parents is being taught, for example, the moral equivalency of heterosexual and homosexual activity. An opt-out right could not be absolute. One could argue, for example, that the obligation to take a civics class should be mandatory and opting out of it entirely should not be possible. There needs to be a debate about the limits of opting-out rights.
In Chamberlain Justice Gonthier recognized that the right to “opt out” might be a good way to reasonably accommodate the rights of parents on the one hand and the desire to have a common school. He pointed out that the failure to provide relief to parents might prompt them to withdraw their children from the public school. Chief Justice McLachlin was, however, much more approving of the prospect of teaching children matters which caused them to suffer “cognitive dissonance.” The combination of both sets of reasons in Chamberlain has arguably revived the option of opting out.
This option serves the public policy goal of maintaining a single body of students as the common acculturation experience, for the most part. It also accommodates the rights of parents and respects religious freedom.
Flexible School Day Access
This option would permit religious organizations to have access to public schools and to their adherents during the day, outside of school hours, flexibly controlled.
The advantage to this option is that it does not involve the government in programming religion at all. Making use of the right of access would be purely voluntary. There would be no interference with the ordinary day school program. There is no doubt that what would be taught by religious organizations would not have the sanction of government.
The options are not entirely mutually exclusive. Within a school system, one could have separate classes, coupled with opt-out rights and flexible day school access.
No doubt there are other options that could be explored if the desire of the public system is to accommodate diversity, particularly religious diversity. There will always be a number of parents who will insist on privately funded independent schools. One can never satisfy everyone. But the public system can do better. A spectrum of responses is possible and necessary.
Concluding Observations
There are two relevant sayings “If you build it, they will come”; the public system has an opportunity to reform itself in some way to better accommodate the needs of parents and students in a time, interestingly, of demographic decline across the country. The second is: “Every force evolves a form”; unless the public system responds to the desire for diversity that will only increase as ideological conformity strengthens its grip on public education. More private schools will be inevitable.
There is something quite attractive in Galston’s argument that “genuine civic unity rests on unforced consent. States that permit their citizens to live in ways that express their values are likely to enjoy wide-shared support, even gratitude. By contrast, state coercion is likely to produce dissent, resistance and withdrawal.”
Neither extreme, neither secular humanist liberal fundamentalism on the one hand, nor rigorous separatism on the other hand, is a viable basis for public policy in education. Some better co-operation between church and state in education, some better accommodation, is needed.
What is to be lamented is the absence of real public debate on the accommodation of religious diversity in public education. The resources of liberal democratic pluralism are rich and should be used by advocates of authentic pluralism. At bottom, however, there must be a conviction among Canadians, using Galston’s words that: “A free society will recognize, within broad limits, the liberty of parents to raise their children in ways consistent with their understanding of what gives meaning and value to life.”