By Krista Scroccaro-Fry

Ashamed and angry. These two words sum up the reflection that has occurred in completing the collage above. Religious discrimination is a social justice issue that, unfortunately, has been present throughout my education path and is one that there has not been enough change (in my opinion) throughout Canadian history. Education is a human right.

After reviewing Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, n.d), the Catholic School Board displays violations of this declaration, and I began to examine further how and why this is happening: two publicly funded options. Ontario education sectors provide citizens with only two free education options (Bayefsky & Waldman, 2007) and other minority religious groups are overlooked. I recall mandatory religion lessons were embedded every day, prayers were monotonously spoken throughout the school day and attendance at all monthly school masses was expected. After working in the Catholic School Board as an Educational Assistant, not much had changed. Students are still expected to follow, learn and meet the expectations of Catholic beliefs. The Catholic school board can discriminate and be denominational when hiring educators and when enrolling students (Urback, 2022). This in itself is shocking because in any other workplace setting there would be an uproar as discrimination towards religion should not determine job stability or student enrollment. How are they getting away with this? After everything we know about colonization, the connection to how the structure of education in church-based education was developed to reinforce colonial-settler ideology (Masta, 2018), and the history of residential schools implemented by the Catholic church; how do Catholic Schools systems still have all of this power? Education is a human right. Religious discrimination continues to happen. Bringing awareness to this social justice issue is essential. Not enough has changed and I am angry and ashamed.

References

Bayefsky, A.F & Waldman, A. (2007). State support for religious education: Canada versus the United Nations. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. https://books.google.ca/books/about/State_Support_for_Religious_Education.html?id=dAE5Bmw2qrEC&redir_esc=y

Beier, T.S. (2021, July 9). It’s finally time to dissolve Ontario Catholic schools. Rabble. https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/its-finally-time-dissolve-ontario-catholic/

Masta, S. (2018). Settler colonial legacies: Indigenous student reflections on k-12 social studies curriculum. Intersections: Critical Issues in Education, (2)2. 76-88. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=intersections

United Nations. (n.d). Universal declaration of human rights. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Urbark, R. (2022, October 27). Why do we allow Ontario’s Catholic school system to violate the Charter? The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-do-we-allow-ontarios-catholic-sc