Quebec's creepy new curriculum
steevefr...@gmail.com
An often-quoted Jesuit maxim boasts, "Give me a child until he is
seven and I will give you the man."
Only seven? Amateurs! Since September all Quebec students from primary
school entry to high school graduation, whether enrolled in public or
non-funded private schools, must attend Quebec's new Ethics and
Religious Culture course (ERC). And teachers, regardless of their
beliefs, must teach it.
Jonathan Gagne, a courageous teenager at the Joseph-Hermas-Leclerc
secondary school in Granby, Que., has just been suspended, and will
likely be expelled, for boycotting ERC. He is a hero to thousands of
angry, mainly Catholic, Quebecers who consider compulsory submission
to ERC a violation of their human rights.
The ERC curricula are mandated to introduce students to Quebec's rich
diversity of religious tenets and "facilitate the spiritual
development of students so as to promote self-fulfilment." Since when
does the state "facilitate" spiritual self-fulfilment? To parents who
take religion seriously, this is a chilling intrusion into what all
democratically inspired charters of rights designate as a parental
realm of authority.
ERC was adopted by virtual fiat, its mission to instill "normative
pluralism" in students. "Normative pluralism" is gussied-up moral
relativism, the ideology asserting there is no absolute right or wrong
and that there are as many "truths" as there are whims. There were no
public consultations.
The program is predicated on the worst possible educational model for
young children: the philosopher Hegel's "pedagogy of conflict." As one
of the founders of the ECR course, put it, students "must learn to
shake up a too-solid identity" and experience "divergence and
dissonance" through "le questionnement."
ERC is to the grasp of authentic religion and spirituality as
Esperanto to the comprehension of Spanish and English -- both are
useless adornments, artificial rather than organic constructs. Worse,
they may deflect forever the desire to acquire meaningful knowledge.
Reading ERC manuals and activity books, one finds a superficial
mishmash of trendy theoretical platitudes whose cumulative effect will
be to convince children that belief is fungible, and that all
religions -- including pagan animism and cults -- are equally "true."
The curriculum is strewn with politically correct material that openly
subverts Judeo-Christian values. In many of the manuals, ideology and
religion are conflated. Social engineering is revealed as the heart of
the ECR program; in the most recently published activity book, for
example, Christianity is given 12 pages, feminism gets 27 pages.
No religious leaders are solicited for their views in this text, but
Francoise David, the radical-feminist leader of the Marxist party
Quebec Solidaire is "interviewed." Beside a large picture of Mme.
David, benignly smiling, face upwardly tilted in the old Sovietic
mode, the question is posed: "What would you say to those adolescents
who don't feel concerned about feminism?" David replies:
"[Adolescents] need a feminist analysis in their life."
Paganism and cults are offered equal status with Christianity. Witches
"are women like any other in daily life;" "Technologically [the
Raelians] are 25,000 years in advance of us." And considering that of
the 80,000 ethnic aboriginals in Quebec only 700 self-identify with
aboriginal spirituality (the vast majority of ethnic aboriginals are
Christian), aboriginal spirituality (falsely equated with
environmentalism) is accorded hugely disproportionate space and
reverence.
In this ERC monoculture, only similarities between religions are
permitted, to further the jolly illusion that all religions are merely
variations on a single theme of brotherly love.
Take for a subtle example ERC's gloss on the Golden Rule --
Christianity's "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
Judaism's "Love thy neighbour as thyself " and Islam's "None of you is
really a believer if he does not wish for his brother what he wishes
for himself." All are posited in the ERC text as the same
acknowledgement of the common humanity of all God's children.
But in fact, there is a deep interpretive chasm between Christianity's
"others" and Judaism's "neighbour" -- both of which refer to all
people -- and Islam's "brother," which refers only to fellow Muslims.
Here is "divergence and dissonance" truly worthy of "le
questionnement." But encouraging real critical thinking is precisely
what the ERC course employs duplicity to avoid.
On the surface, the ERC curricula present an innocent, even uplifting
multicultural picture. But their subliminal agenda is pernicious: to
short-circuit authentic spiritual development by banalizing normative
religions in order to bind children's loyalty to Quebec's state
religion of left-wing, heritage-averse ideology.
Quebec is veering into creepy Orwellian political territory here. I
wish Jonathan Gagne and his family the moral sustenance -- and the
public support -- to peacefully resist the state's coercion to the
bitter end. They should know that they are fighting not only for
themselves, but for all Quebec citizens' freedom of conscience. Which
is to say democracy itself, and nothing less.
Duncan Patton a Cambpell
> Since when does the state
> "facilitate" spiritual self-fulfilment?
When it provides for education that people might find their own salvation.
Dhu
--
Duncan Patton a Campbell is Dhu
klunk
"Duncan Patton a Cambpell" <camp...@neotext.ca> wrote in message
news:B1a2l.61902$zQ3....@newsfe12.iad...
> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:15:55 -0800, steevefrenchster wrote:
>
>> Since when does the state
>> "facilitate" spiritual self-fulfilment?
>
> When it provides for education that people might find their own salvation.
great answer... ;-)