Fr. Raymond J. de Souza writes in Canada’s National Post: Bringing soft totalitarianism into the classroom. An excerpt:
Ill winds are blowing across the land when it comes to parental rights, religious liberty and education policy.
Quebec’s new “ethics and religious culture” curriculum aims to promote religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don’t matter. If you are a Muslim parent who wants to teach your child that Islam is superior to being an atheist or being a witch, the education system will be undermining that view in class. Quebec will brook no exceptions to the new groupthink: No child is permitted to be exempt from class when the teacher instructs her that her pious parents are teaching her falsehoods. The Supreme Court of Canada affirmed this soft totalitarianism last month, saying in effect that parents ought to get with the program and get over their religious, moral and cultural obligations to instruct their children. That is the narrowing of liberty to the point of eliminating it; everyone is free to teach his kids what he wants at home, just as long as the state gets to teach the little ones the opposite at school.
After reading Fr. de Souza, I am reminded of this quotation from the great christian statesman Abraham Kuyper with more than a little relevance for current developments on both sides of the 49th parallel:
When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.
Incidentally, Fr. de Souza delivered this homily at Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’ funeral three years ago.
March 8th, 2012 | 3:51 pm | #1
I suppose it’s generally healthy for people with marginal views and values to be exposed to the rest of the modern world’s reasons for judging otherwise. I expect that most religious people would even agree.
A question: compared to times past, is there nowadays less opportunity to effectively barricade yourself and your children alongside those who share your own marginal views and values? I think probably not.
March 8th, 2012 | 5:25 pm | #2
“Quebec’s new “ethics and religious culture” curriculum aims to promote religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don’t matter.”
I’d like to know to what extent the curriculum takes the phrase “religious differences don’t matter.” My initial reaction was to see it as a sort of universalism/hyper-pluralism: “All roads lead to heaven.” However, that statement need not bad. It is true, for instance, that one’s religion shouldn’t effect how she is treated. In that case, religious differences don’t matter in terms of showing love to others. I imagine that given the context this is a pluralistic view, but I’d like to see the text of the curriculum before making a judgment. If it is what de Souza says is true, however, this is indeed problematic.
Ancius,
“I suppose it’s generally healthy for people with marginal views and values to be exposed to the rest of the modern world’s reasons for judging otherwise. I expect that most religious people would even agree.”
I agree that it’s good to expose people to all views. Moreover, I think we should expose people to all views at their best, not with a biased, straw man view. (Meaning not “All Muslims are terrorists” or any nonsense like that.) However, assuming that de Souza’s analysis is an accurate view of the new Canadian curriculum, that’s not what’s being taught. Instead of cultural immersion, it’s a forced pluralism. This approach ignores the fact that pluralism is just as much a worldview as any religion is.
March 10th, 2012 | 12:16 am | #3
“All roads lead to heaven.” However, that statement need not bad.
No, if you are a Universalist, for that is what Universalists believe.
But if you are not a Universalist, then you are losing the right to practice your own religion, because a rival religion – Universalism – is now the state-enforced required belief system.
There’s a paradox there, for those clever enough to find it.
March 10th, 2012 | 12:18 am | #4
This approach ignores the fact that pluralism is just as much a worldview as any religion is.
But how to make this clear to those who do not see it?
March 10th, 2012 | 4:59 pm | #5
Blake,
My apologies… the sentence:
“However, that statement need not bad.”
Refers to the sentence “religious differences don’t matter.” I meant that to say that religious differences don’t matter in, say, giving love and respect to all people. We are called by Christ to love everybody, regardless of faith.
I do think that Universalists, while well-intentioned, actually undermine the free will God has given to humankind. So maybe the statement that God will save all isn’t necessarily bad, but I do think when applied it is bad.
March 10th, 2012 | 8:28 pm | #6
“Quebec’s new “ethics and religious culture” curriculum aims to promote religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don’t matter.”
The phrase “religious differences don’t matter” could mean a lot of things, does it mean that they’re saying that a person’s religion doesn’t change how they should be treated? Or are they saying that all religions are basically the same? If it’s the latter I would find that rather ironic for it is more or less intolerant and ignorant to throw all religions under a single banner and claim them all to be the same.
So, I would find it counter productive for the Canadian government to actually promote religious tolerance by overlooking the uniqueness and intricacies of every religion and say that they are all the same.
Which leads me to believe that either A: The author is giving in to anti-pluralism paranoia, or B: The Canadian government seeks to eliminate religious identity.
What’s most likely? Canadians are attempting to educate it’s citizens about the fact that there are several other religions and that folk who belong to a different religion aren’t irrational or deserve to be stereotyped. It’s likely that Canadian citizens saw the post 9/11 paranoia of members of Islam and wanted to educate the public to avoid religious hate crimes.
It is, after all, the belief that “those who belong to a different religion are inferior” which leads to such terrorist acts.
March 11th, 2012 | 11:03 pm | #7
But the fact that it’s folly to try to promote tolerance by denying that there are differences to tolerate does not make it less likely that that is exactly what is going on. You see this in various campaigns in the schools as well — rather than teach kids to treat everybody with respect and basic standards of interpersonal treatment regardless of how important or unpleasant any perceived differences might be, they attempt to persuade the kids that the differences don’t exist or don’t matter, or are to be embraced, or what have you. That’s the opposite of tolerance, which actually depends on a certain level of distaste for the difference in order for the need to “tolerate” something at all (otherwise there’s nothing to tolerate, it’s all good from the beginning), but it’s far from an unknown error or folly in public life.
March 12th, 2012 | 1:31 am | #8
There is nothing soft about a tyranny that denies the fundamental tenet of many religions, that their doctrines and prescribed behaviors are essential to eternal happiness. This is not a program to accommodate religious differences and respect the sincerity of each faith’s members. It is a program to indoctrinate children into thinking that they must behave as if they are secular agnostics, and that peer acceptance is more important than divine acceptance. That is an “establishment of religion”, a particular viewpoint endorsed by government and supported by coercion.
March 12th, 2012 | 11:12 am | #9
Pentamom, you’ve nicely articulated the central paradox — or perhaps outright incoherence — in the current campaign for “tolerance.” Tolerance is not the same as affirmation, a truth that is lost on many people.
March 12th, 2012 | 11:46 am | #10
Would anyone object to a state curriculum aimed at teaching religious/cultural appreciation?
That is, students might be required to explore the many undeniably positive aspects of Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism, etc. without having to assess the more controversial truth claims that particular religions make–and without having to make the claim that their differences don’t matter.
March 12th, 2012 | 12:53 pm | #11
Ancius, a good education should include knowledge of the world’s religions. However, it is not clear to me that the state has the normative competence to equip students to assess “the many undeniably positive aspects” of these religions. What sorts of criteria should be brought to bear for making such judgements? Are such criteria religiously neutral? or are they inevitably coloured by the worldviews of those making them? If the latter, then it is not clear to me that government can do this without in effect establishing a religion, even as it fails to recognize this.
March 12th, 2012 | 1:52 pm | #12
Ancius,
I’m with you on that desire, but the problem is too many governments swing the pendulum from “cultural appreciation” to “cultural relativism,” the latter informed by Jeffersonian “strict separation” dogma. I think David is correct in raising these questions:
Too often, when people assert that the state should be “neutral” what they really mean is “anti-religious, pro-secularism.” This ignores the fact that secularism is just as much a worldview as any religious faith. I would love a curriculum like the one you cite, Ancius, but I do recognize the difficulty of such a curriculum being implemented in the current political environment. Plus, I’m not sure that would blow over so well with some of the pro-secular groups like the ACLU, who seem to have an aneurysm any time religion is mentioned to great extent at all in a government-supported sphere.
March 12th, 2012 | 2:27 pm | #13
Dr. Koyzis, offhand, two strategies strike me as promising.
First, there is the overlapping consensus approach, whereby a value is recognized when nearly everyone, regardless of their own particular ideologies/traditions, can recognize the value in question. Possible examples: how the Christian faith led early practitioners to oppose the Roman entertainment of gladiator combat; how the faith inspired the scientific achievements of Bacon, Newton and Kepler; how Islamic scholars kept alive and advanced the learning of the ancients through the middle ages.
Second, there is the approach whereby outsiders try to understand the value as it is perceived by the practitioners of the faith themselves. When we put ourselves in another person’s shoes we can gain an appreciation for why they hold dear the things they do–even if, from our own perspective, such things aren’t so dear. Such an approach requires and motivates deeper understandings of other people’s points of view, especially points of views we may continue to disagree with. Part of this might be accomplished by sympathetically listening to the actual practitioners of the faith (I recall the parents of a Jewish kid in my elementary school helping us to understand the significance of Hanukkah and how it is celebrated). Possible examples: learning to appreciate the far greater value that Muslims tend to place on the physical text of the Koran, by understanding the Islamic doctrines and the cultural practices surrounding the text; learning why some Christians place great importance in affirming, as literal, the accounts in Genesis.
March 12th, 2012 | 3:51 pm | #14
Nikolai, it may be that, as you say,
But the best modern liberal thinkers, who have given the most thought to this very issue, seem to be aware of the concern you have in mind. Consider Rawls:
From “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”
March 12th, 2012 | 4:00 pm | #15
Rawls is a smart guy, and I agree with him there. Unfortunately, that’s not how things have always played out in the public sphere. There have been discussions or actual legislation put into law that has tried to create a “neutral” public sphere, for instance the banning of the Hijab/Burka in some countries. The purported reason for this is that public spaces should be “secular,” as if “secular” were some sort of fair middle ground.
Plus, in notable instances, organizations like the ACLU haven’t shared Rawls’ view. Take the case of the Mojave Cross, where the ACLU tried to argue that the presence of a cross (erected in tribute to veterans’ service) on government land constituted a violation of the First Amendment. That’s not thinking like you or Rawls suggest.
March 19th, 2012 | 7:17 pm | #16
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