Religion in Schools

This video contains three short commercials, which are part of a political campaign for the Freedom party of Ontario. It starts out singling out certain schools that allow their students to practice religious faith in school. It goes on to say that the Progressive Conservative party aims to use taxpayer’s money to organize religious public schools.

Their argument is that they are the better party to vote for because they want to keep religion out of the schools and use taxpayer dollars for other, more productive things. Each video more or less has the same message as the one before it. This has been an ongoing debate between religious and nonreligious families for an extended amount of time. While parents of religious children want them to be able to practice their faith whenever and where ever they feel necessary and non-religious families feel the opposite. They do not want their children being subjected to something, they themselves do not believe in and believe that religion is not something that should be forced upon their children.

While I cannot say for sure whether such allegations made toward the Ontario PC are true or not, I can weigh in on the debate of whether or not religion should be taught and promoted in public schools. I think it is a complete personal choice, just as any belief system it should not be pushed on anybody. As far as banning or not banning it from schools, again I think it comes down to personal choice. I do not think that anything should be banned from being taught and learned (within reason) if a student is interested in it. In the later grades when electives become available I can see no reason why a religious course could not be introduced, as long as it did not become mandatory to the education program. Also, in my own high school, there were religious extracurricular groups you could join or take part in. These seems as though it is a perfectly acceptable incorporation of religion into the everyday school life, but in circumstances which the video detailed, where schools are using school resources and class time to perform religious rights, then it may become an issue. Just as any other belief system, it should be left out of the mandatory classroom nor should it impede on any other students learning, if they so wish it not to. If a parent wishes their children to get a religious education there are private school options that would likely better suit their needs than a public school. The mandatory curriculum should not have to incorporate religion into their program because a certain percentage of people might like it to be so.