Catholic Problems in Western CanadaDaly, George Thomas
Religion
Catholic Problems in Western Canada
Daly, George Thomas
Catholic Church -- Canada
The "Separate schools" in Saskatchewan and Alberta stand on the solid
granite of our Constitution. The highest tribunals of the land and the
Empire have implicitly recognized the principle of the minority-schools
in many of their decisions. Moreover, let us not forget it! the
separate school system in Canada is "_protestant_" in its origin. It
was to protect the protestant minority of Lower Canada that this
system, Catholic in Ontario, Protestant in Quebec, was adopted on
September 18th, 1841. In the West the minority school-law was also
enacted to protect the protestant minority of the Territories. Our
Non-Catholic opponents should not forget this origin of our separate
schools. What their fathers appreciated then for their children, we
appreciate now for ours. The principle remains unchanged.
Some may be surprised at our contention to make an argument in favour
of separate schools out of the very point on which rests the
scaffolding of those who oppose them. They claim that the minority
school principle is the greatest enemy of Canadian Unity. What we
need, they say, is to standardize our schools, and bring all Canadian
children under one system. No genuine "Canadianization" is possible
without this unity of education. The advocates of these ideas are now
at work promoting through the country the "nationalization of schools."
The Conference of Winnipeg, 1919, was the first tangible result of this
movement. A National Bureau of Education--a non-government
institution, at least for the time being; a survey of school text-books
throughout the Provinces, a study of matters affecting the status of
the teaching profession--such are the duties that this National Council
of Education has assumed at its first gathering.
This movement towards Federal control of schools involves the denial
and the eventual suppression of the minority-principle in our system of
Education. This nationalization of Education, we claim, is erroneous
in its principle, anti-constitutional in its operation, and dangerous
in its consequences. Uniformity in education, as a source of
efficiency, is one of the fallacies of our materialistic age. Schools
to be successful have not to be submitted to the same laws of a
commercial or industrial combine. Ethnical and moral values do not
follow the laws of the mart and the stock exchange. If in our
extensive Dominion even a unity of tariff, readily acceptable to the
East and to the West, is Utopian, how much more so would be the unity
of the school system? Education, to be effective, must take the colour
of the environments to meet the needs of the community. The levelling
process would be most detrimental, for uniformity in education is the
seed of decay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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