PaAC: I've had an idea.

[velvetpage]

I was discussing the homeschooling debate with my dad just now, over steeped tea and donuts at Timmy's, and he pointed out that Canadians who want a religious education have an alternative to secular public schools, in the form of the Catholic school board. (At least, they do in most provinces.) We discussed alternative schools within the boards of education, and I had an idea.

It is quite common now for school boards to offer alternative or magnet programs within the public school framework. That is, a school will be geared towards high-level athletes, or towards the arts, or towards science. These schools are generally opt-in; that is, there is no real catchment area other than living within the confines of the school board itself, so no one is forced to attend these schools because of what street they live on.

Why not offer a magnet school for mainstream Protestant education? That is, an opt-in school, under the public umbrella, that gives kids the religious education they would otherwise be homeschooling or charter schooling to obtain. It would be staffed by teachers within the school board who followed the same creed, and those teachers would have all the same employment standards as their counterparts in the rest of the public board. The one and only difference would be the Christian focus.

In some areas, particularly the Bible Belt, you'd probably end up with two separate systems under one umbrella. That would be fine, as long as the public, secular schools continued to operate and were reasonably located to service the population who attended them. It would give parents and students a choice within the public system, so it would no longer be necessary to go outside the public system to get a religious education. The key here is that it has to be opt-in. So long as students and parents have a choice, it doesn't violate any rights. It's only when that choice is denied that there is a violation.

Thoughts?

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's an argument to meet your second point. Most Protestant denominations have a set of core values they all espouse. There are a second set of almost-core values, of which there are three or four broad sets. After that it breaks down considerably, but it would be possible to group them together to form some broadly similar ideas, and teach those. Then you either leave out the parts where they differ, or you teach the differences side by side and let the kids choose. There's also the argument that most of Christianity believes almost the same things when you get down to brass tacks, and the public education could focus on those and leave out the nitty-gritty. You'd still get the prayer in schools, and the "what would Jesus do?" type emphasis. That's basically how the Catholic schools here handle it. (Yes, I've seen them from the inside - I taught in one as an assistant for a while in university.)