Text Ticker: Religious literacy runs into trouble in Quebec
In Quebec, an attempt to require a high school course on world religions has run into trouble—student boycotts, parent protests, and ire from advocacy groups.
The course "is forcing children to learn the content of other religions," Jean Morse-Chevrier, president of the Quebec Association of Catholic Parents, said yesterday. "Therefore it is the state deciding what religious content will be learned, at what age, and that is totally overriding the parents' authority and role."
God forbid, that is to say, a student might freely be allowed to learn about what others believe. This comes at the end of a process of "secularization" in Quebec's schools, which, as recently as 1997, were officially denominational.
This outrage, actually, is pretty consistent with what Daniel Dennett has predicted would happen if classes in world religions were required in schools. It is a threat to intolerance. [go!]
