island school

(island breezes)
Well, Quebeckers like to keep things interesting, non?

NP:

A new religion course taught in schools across Quebec was intended to improve inter-cultural understanding, but so far it is generating deep division as hundreds of parents pull their children out of class….

….Stéphanie Tremblay, a spokeswoman for Quebec’s Education Department, said school boards across the province have received and rejected more than 1,400 requests from public-school parents seeking to have their children exempted from taking the course. The dissenters represent a small minority of the one million children enrolled in public schools…..

“The course was designed with an eye to respecting the freedom of conscience and religion of all students,” she said. “It is not a religious instruction course. It is religious culture. We introduce young people to religious culture like we introduce them to musical culture. The goal is to better know and understand others.”….

Meanwhile…

The new course is also mandatory in private schools, and Montreal’s Loyola High School has initiated its own court challenge. Parents of more than 600 of the Jesuit school’s students asked to have their children exempted from the course, and all were refused by the province.

Paul Donovan, the school’s principal, said much of the curriculum is already taught at Loyola, but not in the “relativistic” way favoured by the Education Department.

He said the course does not ask children to distinguish between right and wrong. “What it essentially says is that religion is just, ‘You like tomato soup and I like pea soup, so don’t be all offended because someone likes tomato soup. It’s really just a matter of preference,’ ” he said. “Religion could be Wiccan or Raelian or any of the new movements or atheism or agnosticism.”

So far Loyola has refused to teach the Ethics and Religious Culture class. “I can’t tell my teachers to teach that course in conscience. I can’t,” Mr. Donovan said.

I don’t think Ms. Stephanie really understands the concepts of ‘parental perogative’ and ‘freedom of religion’ – or for that matter, ‘culture’!

How many more self immolating ‘reforms’ will Quebec endure under the rule of Monsieur Charest?

We’re talking about the right to free-speech and freedom of religion. Basic rights.

Washington Times has an article reminding us how much today’s universities are controlled by the ‘PC’ agenda :

…Young America’s Foundation once again compiled the “best of the worst” academic abuses for 2008. These stories are usually not reported in the “drive-by” media, no doubt to shield school officials from explaining their radical curricula. The Yuba incident tops the list, although it had plenty of competition, as you’ll see.

Transgendered Activists In, Pro-life Speakers Out:

Administrators at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic institution in Minnesota, inexplicably censored the appearance of prominent pro-life speaker Star Parker.

In April, Ms. Parker, the best-selling author of numerous books, was slated to speak on campus about the devastating impact abortion has on minority communities. Yet St. Thomas bureaucrats, under the helm of the Vice President of Student Affairs Jane Canney, forbade the lecture, claiming they felt “uncomfortable” and “disturbed” by previous conservative speakers at the University.

Speakers that passed Ms. Canney’s litmus test in 2008? Al Franken, the liberal U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota, and Debra Davis, a transgendered activist who believes that God is a black lesbian….

When helping our young homeschoolers choose a university, we should keep in mind whether the school of choice will maintain the same standards of freedom and integrity we’ve been struggling to personally instill in our children. There still are some private colleges that understand what the ‘liberal’ in ‘liberal education’ means, but not that many!

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(island breezes):
German Family Court rejected the State’s evaluation of the ‘fitness’ of a German couple to parent their own children. The court did not, however, allow them to continue homeschooling – something they had been doing successfully, though illegally, for fifteen years.

LifeSite News:

….The Gorber children had been removed from the family home in January by officials of the Jugendamt, the German Youth Welfare Authority, because the family was homeschooling, a crime that has remained on the books in Germany since the Nazi period.

The HSLDA notes, “Homeschooling parents in Germany face these types of repercussions on a regular basis.” The Gorbers have homeschooled all of their children over the past 15 years. In January, youth welfare officers arrived at the Gorbers’ home in cars and vans to take all the minor children without any notice or hearing. The children were placed in state orphanages until August, when a court allowed a home visit…..

….German law requires all children to be placed in state approved schools, a requirement that has resulted in numerous cases of homeschooling children being removed by the state from parental care. In the majority of cases, such families are devout Christians who want a less heavily secularised education for their children, one that does not include the explicit and anti-family state-approved “sex-education.”

In a landmark legal case, started in 2003 at the European Court of Human Rights, a homeschooling parent couple argued on behalf of their children that Germany’s compulsory school attendance endangered their children’s religious upbringing. They said specifically that the state-approved sex education clashed with their children’s right, according to the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, that “the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

Three years later, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the German ban on homeschooling, stating “parents may not refuse …[compulsory schooling] on the basis of their convictions.”

Ah yes, the good old European Union. Can’t wait ’til Cayman gets sucked into their ‘vortex of evil’ through the London mandated ‘Bill of Rights’. Good Times Ahead!!

I’ve decided to kick off by linking to my most relevant education posts from island breezes:

Who’s Right Is It?
Watch Out, Here Comes The Backlash!
REAL Teacher
Perverse Education
Environmental (Mis)Education
Homosexual Indoctrination – Public Schools
Shakin’ My Head
More Good Works
Education – Who’s Right?
Not Only In B.C.
Repressive Regime of Quebec
MA Parents Warn Florida – Its About Power!

You may have noticed an underlying theme of Parental Rights and Freedom of Education!

(Cheer up! This blog WILL NOT be mostly about education politics. I’m aiming for something more practical.)