Whenever I receive a sensationally worded email, I google the keywords along with the word hoax. If the story is true, as this one is, I try to find out what really happened.
1. The VPMS website shows pride in its diversity and the principal’s commitment to his three R’s: respect, responsibility, and reasonableness. In 2008 concerns about students losing class time after attending services at a nearby mosque led VPMS to allow Muslim students to use the cafeteria for Friday prayer services. http://www.tdsb.on.ca/SchoolWeb/ValleyPark/docs/Valley%20Park%20Middle%20School%20-2nd%20council%20meeting%202008.pdf
2. The prayer structure separates boys from girls, boys in the front row and girls behind them. Menstruating girls sit at the back and do not participate. Opinions vary on whether this discriminates against women or protects their modesty and relieves them from duty during menstruation.
3. Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“CCRF”) and the Education Act, R.S.O. 1990, c.E.2 (“EA”), freedom of religion is a right.
The CCRF guarantees:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression…;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
It also guarantees freedom from sex discrimination:
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination … based on … religion, sex ...
The EA also protects freedom of religion:
Religious instruction
51. (1) … a pupil shall be allowed to receive such religious instruction as the pupil’s parent or guardian desires or, where the pupil is an adult, as the pupil desires. R.S.O. 1990, c. E.2, s. 51 (1).
It does not address sex-based discrimination.
Terry Pratchett once wrote, “sometimes the best answer is a more interesting question.” I can think of several.
· How does the school meet the cafeteria access needs of non-Muslims every Friday afternoon?
· Does the school accommodate other religions? How?
· Does the prayer ceremony’s structure contravene the CCRF’s provisions against sex discrimination? If the purpose is to
- give boys precedence over girls and shame girls for a natural biological function, then yes.
- protect female modesty and provide a welcome break for cramp-ridden girls, then no.
If the girls prayed in front, would we complain that they are forced to display their bottoms to the boys? But if it is a question of modesty rather than status, why are boys and girls not segregated by right and left rather than front and back?
· When religious practices conflict with gender equality, which prevails?
Which brings up something else my googling taught me: the EA makes extensive provisions for publicly funded religious education rife with discrimination. That means your tax dollars, regardless of your religion, fund entire school boards dedicated to teaching children that
· people who do not share their beliefs deserve eternal damnation.
· birth control is evil.
· divorcing a partner who abuses you is a sin.
· homosexuals belong in Hell.
· women are inferior to men.
· personal responsibility for any crime, no matter how heinous, may be absolved by
repeating a religious phrase a set number of times.
repeating a religious phrase a set number of times.
Nope. Not Muslims this time. The Roman Catholic church is probably no more riddled with corruption or superstition than any other religious institution, but
· why does it get its own publicly funded school system?
· why are we more upset about a public school allowing one room, one hour per week, to accommodate one ritual than we are about providing public funding for an entire school system devoted to a religion that excludes everyone outside its faith and bases its tenets on values contrary to the CCRF?
VPMS Minutes of the Council Meeting—November 24, 2008: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/SchoolWeb/ValleyPark/docs/Valley%20Park%20Middle%20School%20-2nd%20council%20meeting%202008.pdf
