A while back, I wrote this piece about non-Catholic kids in this small Alberta community being forced to attend a Catholic school.

The Alberta Education Minister, Dave Hancock, seems to agree that a way must be found to provide a secular education to families on the area.

They have a legitimate beef, says Hancock. “I think that they’re entitled to a public education that doesn’t include religion,” he said in an interview.

The columnist goes even further and notes:

Frankly, I think the denominational school system should be relegated to the dustbin of history. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario are the only provinces that still maintain publicly funded separate schools. Quebec got rid of the denominational system years ago with very little fuss.

Newfoundland replaced its church-run schools with a public system about a decade ago after a referendum. The world didn’t fall apart there, either.

Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and any other religious group has the right to educate their children in a faith-based system if they choose – but it should not be on the public’s dime.

In the meantime, it is encouraging that the Alberta government is on its way to correcting this injustice.

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Tags: catholic school board, morninville, secular education

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 20th, 2011 at 9:21 am and is filed under education, Religion, school board. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.