Funding Religious Schools
I’ve been having this discussion with a few people lately, so I thought I’d throw this out for the communal brain to mull over.
With the upcoming Ontario election, the Conservative provincial leader John Tory has decided to make parity of religious funding at the top of his campaign agenda. I only take this issue half-seriously since within his own party he doesn’t even seem to have a lot of support for the idea. So, I don’t expect this to come to fruition, but being kind of a “big deal” I thought it would be interesting to consider the unintended consequences of such a funding policy.
Again, since i don’t even think of it as a serious possibility, I don’t really feel like it’s worth the mental effort to take a vested interest one way or the other. So, I haven’t seriously considered the issue the way most are discussing it. I don’t see public schools as models of unity and tolerance, so I don’t much cling to the idea that our public schools are somehow sacred institutions; I don’t see them as something worthy of funding while private institutions are eroding our social fabric. I also don’t totally buy the “fund one, fund them all” issue because equality isn’t as simple as “treating everyone the same.” And, for a third time, I really don’t think this idea will take off, so I don’t care about debating the two “sides” as we’ve seen them presented in the media.
So, if I’m so uninterested in this issue, why write about it? Because what is terribly fun, interesting and exciting about the thought of this policy actually finding its way into our government is picturing how this would completely shake the foundation of the system we have now.
Thought #1. Why has no one (or have I just not read/listened carefully enough) brought up the fact that religious schools, by very definition according to our current model of education, are private schools. I could almost care less about whether or not a school is deemed religious. What I do care about is putting public money in private pockets. If religious schools want funding, I’d be happy to give it to them through a Board of Education that works the same way our public and Catholic boards work. (Note: Of course, I’m not suggesting that I like boards of education. But, if government money is going to flow, it should flow consistently.) I actually have no problems with a Jewish Board of Ed. (One of my former-students-turned-good-friends informs me that there already is such a thing, but it’s just not public. Looking at the Jewish schools in Toronto, I can believe they’ve got such an infrastructure already in place.) Bottom line is, I’m intimately familiar with private schools. There is absolutely no way I could sleep at night knowing the government was giving money to them.
Could you imagine the outrage if some private schools received student funding and others didn’t? And, it’s the secular private schools, who perhaps more closely resemble the public schools (at least in their secularness and separation of church and state) who would not receive the funding. This just doesn’t seem right.
Thought #2: What’s the criteria for designating a school as “religious?” A couple of religious instruction courses? Religious ceremonies on school property? A letter from a religious official? Imagine your typical small Toronto private school who’s competing for students. The religious school down the street can offer significantly reduced, if not free, tuition. What’s to stop any school from holding a religious class or two and then calling themselves a religious school to get the funding? (Joe asks what’s necessarily wrong with that, but I’ve gotta think there are people who might find that offensive. I do, in principle, and I’m not even religious.) Take it one step further, what’s to stop a school from finding an “easy” religion (by this I mean an obscure believe system from Wikipedia that has few, if any, “rules” or “practices” so that it would be easy to say you’re following that religion) and claiming funding? What’s to stop someone from establishing their own religion then creating a school to “worship” those beliefs?
Thought #3: I actually support the existence of religious schools in the sense that I support everyone’s right to choose the education they want for their children. Perhaps because so many of my personal beliefs are rooted in personal freedoms, I want to believe there will be schools that will refuse funding, and the strings attached, in the event that it’s offered. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that I’m suspicious of the schools who want the funding. When a school, founded on particular beliefs that require it to differentiate itself from a public school, willingly conforms to the same regulations as public schools in exchange for money, it sends the message that the money is more important than the beliefs. This is perhaps another example of me holding people to unreasonable high standards of behaviour. And, I’m sure there are some religious schools out there that are really not that much different from their local public school in their main aspects. So, it’s perhaps not a huge philosophical change to conform to the strings attached to the government funding. I just have a difficult time envisioning how schools that are currently free in many respects would willingly enslave themselves to more restrictions, if they really valued themselves as something different from the public system.
Thought #4: Obviously, the schools with funding will be in a better financial position than the school without. Will this increase conformity? Will more schools feel the pressure to more closely align with the public system in order to receive public money? It would stand to reason that the schools who choose to remain independent are in danger of losing students to cheaper or free alternatives. Will it become more difficult to run or establish a non-religious private school? Will we be left with fewer educational choices?
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