NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
June 6, 2012
Let's defund everything
It is interesting to watch Ontario's bogus campaign against schoolyard bullying unfold. Not "interesting" in the sense of edifying, or even entertaining, for it is a grim business from start to finish, as ever when activists use the political system to demonize, then destroy their opponents. I was instead alluding to the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times!"I wrote previously on this topic, Dec. 11, and for my trouble, got a good taste of what anyone who resists the "progressive" juggernaut can expect. Read, for instance, Warren Kinsella's attack on me in the Toronto Sun, a couple days later which, in addition to misrepresenting what I wrote, added casual insinuations about "homophobia" and the like. His rumbling train of non sequiturs concludes in a gesture of self-adoration, as he fantasizes about rescuing me, and my colleague Christie Blatchford, from some mob of bullies, "just to see the looks on their faces." Question: who would those bullies be? My first guess would be the commenters on his blog, who after uttering their ritual "amens" to at-tacks on me and every other writer Kinsella says is not worth his attention, pour their own aggression and obscenities into the broth. For something more recent, try Janice Kennedy's Saturday piece. In a nutshell it rants against "Ben-edict-type Catholics." (Imagine: Catholics loyal to the Pope!) To my reading there were no arguments, only smears, but an agenda was nevertheless being advanced. We are getting beyond imposing "Gay-Straight Alliances" on Catholic schools that don't want them, for the obvious reason that they are de-signed to subvert Catholic teaching on sexual morality. We are now in-stead discussing the defunding of the whole Catholic school system - because it is Catholic. Or rather, "Benedict Catholic." Which it isn't. As Kennedy herself elsewhere acknowledges, the difference between the Catholic ("Separate") and Protestant ("Public") provincial school systems, which was significant in the past, is only nominal today. The provincially-imposed curriculum is the same, and the approaches to teaching are interchangeable. Indeed, for reasons I have vouched over the years, I should like to take Kennedy one step farther, and defund both catastrophically failed systems. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, other "socially conservative" institutions, and various semi-organized groups of concerned parents are also among the opponents of Ontario's Bill 13, being pressed home by the minority Liberal government with the enthusiastic sup-port of the NDP. But they were not the immediate targets of this activist legislation, which conflates schoolyard bullying with the tiny minority of cases in which the victim can be presented as "LGBTTIQ" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, intersex, queer and questioning). The bull's-eye target is the Roman Catholic Church, and its nominal control over Catholic schools, as the media assault has made clear. Witness for example a main headline in the Toronto Star, "McGuinty tells Catholic Church he's in charge." Those others will be left to the mop-up operation. That is why their testimony has been ignored, while an extremely reasonable, consistently under-stated statement from Toronto's archbishop, Tom Collins, explaining why the legislation was unnecessarily divisive, was singled out for a show of fake outrage. Nobody, absolutely nobody, has proposed to tolerate schoolyard bullying in any form; and anyone who has the patience to consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church - that manifesto of 20 centuries of "Benedict Catholicism"- will discover that the abuse of homosexuals, or persons of any conceivable sexual orientation, at any age or in any circumstance, is explicitly condemned. The issue was rather over the use of the bureaucratic sledgehammer of state power, to intervene in an issue that is by its nature entirely local, and requires tactful human judgment. It is the same sledgehammer that has been used to impose uniform mediocrity throughout the province's schools, crushing the teaching vocation under the constantly increasing weight of "administration." The separate existence of a Catholic school system is a legacy of the past, under constitutional protection that has been consistently up-held in the courts. Getting rid of it is impossible. But defunding might be politically feasible as a way to obviate that legacy, and force a merger of the two systems in practice. Note what it would actually involve. The money for Catholic schools comes out of the pockets of Catholics and others who prefer it. This is appropriated by the province, which then declares its own unlimited authority, thereby politicizing every aspect of educational enterprise. "Policy" now rules, and one Procrustean size fits all. The policies are in turn increasingly dictated by the "experts" - in reality, the best organized lobbying forces, advancing agendas which often have nothing to do with education, and everything to do with ideology. The losers in this bargain are the parents, the children, and the teachers. All are now answerable to the edicts of the state; none trusted to the light of their own good faith and conscience. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top