Posted on 02/23/2012 2:24:15 PM PST by Morgana
EDMONTON, Alberta, February 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Under Alberta’s new Education Act, homeschoolers and faith-based schools will not be permitted to teach that homosexual acts are sinful as part of their academic program, says the spokesperson for Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk.
“Whatever the nature of schooling – homeschool, private school, Catholic school – we do not tolerate disrespect for differences,” Donna McColl, Lukaszuk’s assistant director of communications, told LifeSiteNews on Wednesday evening.
“You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” she added.
Reacting to the remarks, Paul Faris of the Home School Legal Defence Association said the Ministry of Education is “clearly signaling that they are in fact planning to violate the private conversations families have in their own homes.” “You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” a government spokesperson told LifeSiteNews.
“A government that seeks that sort of control over our personal lives should be feared and opposed,” he added.
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The HSLDA and other homeschooling groups warned this week that the new Alberta Education Act, which was re-tabled by Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative government on Feb. 14th to replace the existing School Act, threatens to mandate “diversity” education in all schools, including home schools.
Section 16 of the new legislation restates the current School Act’s requirement that schools “reflect the diverse nature” of Alberta in their curriculum, but it adds that they must also “honour and respect” the controversial Alberta Human Rights Act that has been used to target Christians with traditional beliefs on homosexuality. ‘School’ is defined to include homeschoolers and private schools in addition to publicly funded school boards.
McColl emphasized that homeschoolers were already included in the current definition of ‘school’ in the School Act, going back to 1988 or longer. And Section 16, she said, “is specifically with regards to programs, courses, and instructional materials.”
According to McColl, Christian homeschooling families can continue to impart Biblical teachings on homosexuality in their homes, “as long as it’s not part of their academic program of studies and instructional materials.”
“What they want to do about their ideology elsewhere, that’s their family business. But a fundamental nature of our society is to respect diversity,” she added.
Pressed about what the precise distinction is between homeschoolers’ instruction and their family life, McColl said the question involved “real nuances” and she would have to get back with specifics.
But in a second interview Wednesday evening, McColl said the government “won’t speculate” about particular examples, and explained that she had not yet gotten a “straight answer” on what exactly constitutes “disrespect.” She did say that families “can’t be hatemongering, if you will.”
In the first interview, she justified the government’s position by pointing to Friday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the Quebec government’s refusal to exempt families from its controversial ethics and religious culture program. That program, which aims to present the spectrum of world religions and lifestyle choices from a “neutral” stance, is required of all students, including homeschoolers.
“Just last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada released a unanimous decision on – now it’s S.L. v. the Commission scolare des Chênes 2012 – and that’s the same, section 16 has to apply to everyone, including home education families,” she said.
Pro-family observers warned that the ruling risked emboldening other provincial governments in their effort to impose “diversity” programs. The last two years have seen major battles in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and now Alberta over the increasing normalization of homosexuality in the schools.
The Supreme Court’s narrow ruling did not specifically address homeschooling, however, and left the door open to further court challenges. The court argued that the Quebec family seeking the exemption had simply failed to meet the burden of proof necessary to show that their children’s participation in the course would impede the parents’ ability to raise the children in their Catholic faith.
Patty Marler, government liaison for the Alberta Home Education Association, said she was surprised at the Ministry’s straightforwardness, and questioned how they are going to be able to draw the line between school time and family time.
“We educate our children all the time, and that’s just the way we live. It’s a lifestyle,” she said. “Making that distinction between the times when we’re homeschooling and when we’re just living is really hard to do.”
“Throw in the fact that I do use the Bible as part of my curriculum and now I’m very blatantly going to be teaching stuff that will be against [the human rights act],” she said.
Marler pointed out that the issue has direct implications on how families teach their children about marriage because the Alberta Human Rights Act was amended in 2009 to define marriage as between two “persons” instead of a man and a woman. “When I read Genesis and it talks about marriage being one man in union with one woman, I am very, very clearly opposing the human rights act that says it’s one person marrying another person,” she said.
According to Faris, the issue with McColl’s statements “isn’t about sexuality or anything else on the gay issue, it’s about the government trying to control how we teach our own children in our own homes.”
He said her comments are “particularly interesting in light of the - at the very least - misleading information that a lot of homeschoolers have been getting when they’re calling the Minister’s office, saying ‘Look, there’s no changes here. We’re not going to do anything differently’, and other things like that.”
“The long arm of the government wants to reach into family’s homes and control what they teach to their own children in their own homes about religion, sexuality, and morality,” he said. “These are not the words of a government that is friendly to homeschooling or to parental freedom.”
The Progressive Conservative government has 67 of the 83 seats in the province’s legislature, so the bill’s passage is essentially assured. But an election is imminent and the new right-wing Wildrose Alliance Party is expected to have a strong showing. A Forum Research poll last week showed the upstart party polling at 30% behind the government’s 37%.
The Home School Legal Defence Association is calling on Alberta citizens to contact the Education Minister and their elected representatives.
Contact Information:
Hon. Thomas Lukaszuk, Education Minister 423 Legislature Building 10800 - 97 Avenue NW Edmonton, AB Canada T5K 2B6 Phone: (780) 427-5010 Fax: (780) 427-5018 edmonton.castledowns@assembly.ab.ca
Premier Alison Redford Office of the Premier Room 307, Legislature Building 10800-97 Avenue Edmonton, Alberta T5K 2B7 Phone: 780-427-2251 E-mail: Use this form.
Contact info for Alberta MLAs.
Yes, I lived there and am aware of that. But as far as I know long gun restrictions are not to onerous and the gun registry is history (supposedly). But, yes, I would miss my handguns!
to=too
Troubling news, but not entirely unexpected coming out of Canada.
Canada: The country where the sister site Free Dominion received so much abuse for it views. Canada: The country where Laura Schlesinger could not air radio programs because of her belief that homosexuality was wrong. Canada: The country where individual Christians have been fined thousands of dollars for their beliefs and have faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in court fines for those beliefs; where courts have ruled that schoolteachers may not publicly express their disapproval of homosexuality either inside or outside of the classroom; where Christians have elected out of necessity to abandon their businesses instead of submitting to court rulings which go against their religious beliefs. Canada: The country whose actions in the culture war have served as templates for homosexual activitists within the United States, where even now we have people being fired, fined, not allowed to graduate from college, or even jailed simply for stating that they believe that homosexuality is wrong.
Yes, Canada seems hopeless. But remember also that Canada has a disproportionate share of some of the greatest heroes of the culture war. Read up on people like Chris Kempling, Scott Brockie, Stephen Boissoin, Hugh Owens, the Surrey School District in British Columbia, Dagmar and Arnost Cepica, Bill Whatcott, John DeCicco, the Knights of Columbus in Port Coquitlam, Fred Henry, Dianne Haskett, Ted and Link Byfield, Brad Woodside, Bob Morrow, and numerous others.
while the 60's hippies were all about free speech, no draft, free sex...in reality, all they wanted was to stop everyone else's free speech and to interfere with everybodys' life...
I don’t like the word “conservative” any more, haven’t for some time. It really is subjective. I prefer “constitutionalist”.
Libertarians would say there should be no government schools nor any government involvement in education. I don’t agree with libertarians on everything, but they do not think people should be forced to associate (remember freedom of association? I seem to recall that being important in this country at one time) with people if they don’t wish to do so.
That is an excuse to permit political correctness to dominate society.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. The libertarian view is that people ought to be able to think and say whatever they want, and that it is none of the government’s business.
My reading so far is the Alberta Provincial Conservative Party which has had a virtual lock on the government elected a new very lefty leader in the person of Alison Redford. Everything I have read about her so far indicates she the antithesis of a conservative. Unfortunately a lot of conservative parties around the world are being infiltrated IMHO. Just look at some of the RINOs to get an idea.
LOL.
How can you claim it’s not your problem because you don’t beleive in public schools that exist, make you pay for them and indoctrinate most Americans (voters) throughout their childhood to be amoral/immoral, dependent, globalist, socialists. They come out hostile to the ideology of constitutional freedom if all goes well.
That is like libertarians saying “We don’t believe in rain”, and going about life without an umbrella and rain coat. How about “we don’t believe in taxes”...
It would do the children good to know that they live in a society that seeks to indoctrinate them, rather than in some kind of worldwide beacon of freedom. A lot of today’s problems is that the grown up generation today does not realize that they live under a government that is out to oppress them. Hopefully, the next generation has no illusions in that regard.
I understand that we are saddled with government schools, although I think more and more people are turning away from them every day. What I did was state the libertarian view of the problem. They would solve the fighting over what is taught in schools by doing away with governmet schools. As long as there is public education, there will be constant battles for control over them.
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