Anyone seeking a hint of the headaches that loom from the Prentice government’s bid to square circles in Alberta schools this week would do well to consider Quebec.

In the middle of the last decade, the Quebec government imposed a program called Ethics and Religious Culture on all schools in the province, including home schools. A Supreme Court judgment in the legal battle that resulted is expected any day now.

The Quebec government’s scheme did not even venture into the sensitivities of sexuality. It dealt only with religion. Having dismantled its denominational school system in the 1990s, Quebec’s education ministry sought to treat religious faith as a hybrid of sociology and a Miss Manners instruction manual. The first howl of opposition came from atheist parents incensed at the idea of ethics and religion being taught in the same course. A second outcry instantly followed from parents and religious schools concerned they would be forced to accept pedagogy antithetical to their deepest beliefs.

Read the rest of this article at the Calgary Herald website.