Equal Education In Canada

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According to DeLaet’s definition of human rights, one is morally entitled to equal education because one is human. However, in Canada, especially Ontario, denominational rights in education have faced many challenges and have a long and controversial history. Currently, Ontario does not provide any funding for education of other religions, but it provides full funding to Catholic education systems. This paper will critically examine the issue that one should be morally entitled to equal education because one is human. Funding for only Catholic schools but no funding for education of other religion is clearly a human rights violation, because human beings should have the right to decide for themselves in what kind of faith-based education system …show more content…

Ontario has faced many dilemmas for maintaining a ‘separate school board’ that allows for a Catholic education system, which is separate but publically funded. Today, while everyone pays for equal tax, only Catholic Ontarians can enjoy the privilege of publicly funded school choice. According to the Education Act, s 33(3), (4), “At the elementary level, only Roman Catholic parents or guardians have the right for their children to attend separate schools. The admission of others to Roman Catholic schools is entirely at the discretion of the separate school board”. On the outside, this might seem like a religious choice, that people may want to attend a school based on their religion. According to the Education Equality in Ontario, a non-governmental human right organization, three-quarters of families that use the privilege of publicly funded Catholic schools are not very religious, while some are agnostic or atheist. When it comes to making a choice between two school systems, religion is rarely the determining element. One significant reason why most families choose to send their children to separate schools is because of secular factors such as facilities, locations, programs and transportation. This illustrates how people’s faith allows them to have the privilege of better publicly funded school. Furthermore, by looking at this, one can counter argue that now some Catholic based schools are …show more content…

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 26, “everyone has the right to education. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”. Parents should have the luxury of selecting the correct type of education for their children without the stress of financial factors. However, the effects of conformity are enforced on individuals because of the government’s failure to fund other religion-based schools. Parents have no choice but to enroll their children in publicly funded schools because for some families, faith-based private schools are excessively expensive. According to Fahmy, this non-funding policy is an indirect coercion. This can be countered by arguing that public schools are neutral with equal opportunities to everyone and the funding of faith-based schools would affect this element. However, it is not very clear whether the publicly funded schools are really

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