The Elephant in the Classroom

On the basis of legal decisions and relatively recent traditions, Christianity and the Bible in particular are informatis non grata in Canadian schools. The reasoning behind Christianophobia derives from equity policies that strive to remove preferences accorded to what are seen as dominant, privileged forces. People familiar with the system understand that "equity" policies are not designed to create equality. If that were the case than the word Christmas would not be banned from December school "Holiday Concerts" while  celebration of Hanukkah, Eid, Diwali, and a variety on non-Christian holidays are classroom topics. Equality would not prohibit Christian school prayer while allowing school cafeterias to be converted to gender segregated mosques during class time.

So in practical terms, the goal of school Equity policies is clearly not to remove all religion from school, but to take Christianity, the dominant religious force in Canada since the nation's inception, down a peg or two while trying to raise the beliefs of oppressed minorities. At least minorities who are viewed as being in the oppressed class within the framework of the oppressor/oppressed binary equation by which radicalized education policy makers view the world.

But here's the problem with taking the Bible out of schools: you can't really understand anything about western civilization, be it history, literature, politics or culture, without a reasonable familiarity with the Old and New Testaments. Writers like Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens, Twain, C.S. Lewis, even Mordecai Richler and Margaret Atwood cannot be fully understood without familiarity with the Bible. European, and by extension, Canadian and American history, as well as the conquest of New Spain cannot be understood without knowing the religious conflicts that drove events forward, based on differing interpretations of the Bible.

The value system and to a great extent the legal system upon which Canada was founded is based on principles and ideas expressed in the King James translation of the Bible.

But school children are not allowed to be taught that all-important key to knowledge in public schools for fear that they may actually believe what they read.

If only the texts in university courses that produce education policy makers were scrutinized as closely. If they were, we might not have the idiocy that prevails in school boards throughout this land.



Thanks to SDAMatt for the video