Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
Public school is where we sent our children to overcome the limitations of their parents. My wife and I are well-educated, but there are limits to what we know and the values we hold. We wanted our daughters to be exposed to ideas and values different from our own so that they could make their way in the world unencumbered by our limitations.
We believed that it was our responsibility to ensure our children were led out from the confines of the knowledge we could impart or the experiences we could provide. When I stop to consider it, I think things worked out. They are intellectually independent and, although we share many, if not most values, they came to their value positions on their own. We recognize that the family context and the friendship network in which they were raised were no doubt influential in shaping their values and beliefs, but the beliefs and values they hold were not imposed upon them.
It is this disposition on my
part that makes it disquieting to read about the attempts of school trustees to
restrict access to books and ideas in the name of parental rights. A school
trustee in British Columbia introduced a motion that “consideration be given to
the creation of a policy statement that sets parameters around communications
with parents about events scheduled in schools.” The trustee’s rationale was:
The creation of a new policy statement will ensure that parents are adequately informed about upcoming presentations to be held at District schools. The key components of this consideration should include providing parents with sufficient notice for all school presentations to allow families time to determine whether attending the presentation is in the best interest of their child’s education. This will promote transparency, parental involvement, and a more collaborative educational environment.
Parents are not without certain rights. The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that mandatory religious practices in public schools violate Charter rights to freedom of religion (Zylberberg v. Sudbury Board of Education, 1988). However, when parents in Quebec objected to a mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture course, the Supreme Court of Canada held that merely exposing a child to different religious facts in a public school did not interfere with the parents' ability to transmit their faith (S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes, 2012).
The parents alleged that the Ethics and Religious Culture course was liable to cause harm in several ways. Among them:
·
Losing the right
to choose an education consistent with one’s own moral and religious
principles; interfering with the fundamental freedom of religion, conscience,
opinion and expression of children and their parents by forcing children to
take a course that does not reflect the religious and philosophical beliefs
with which their parents have the right and duty to bring them up.
·
Upsetting
children by exposing them at too young an age to convictions and beliefs that
differ from the ones favoured by their parents.
In seeking a favorable ruling from the Court, the parents appeared to want to shield their children from ideas that were dissonant or inharmonious with their own. In its decision, the Court observed:
Parents are free to pass their personal beliefs on to their children if they so wish. However, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society.
I would go further. I would
argue that it is incumbent upon parents to ensure that their children are exposed
to realities, ideas, values, and beliefs that differ from those of their
families. They should count on schools to assist in this. It is in such
exposure that children develop the intellectual and moral capacities that
adulthood requires.