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Imagine your child running home from class one day and telling you about the Advent prayer they recited in class that day. Or the menorah they lit for Hanukkah. Would you say, “Isn’t that nice and progressive and inclusive?” Or get on the line to the principal and ask what the hell religion is doing in a secular classroom in 2016?

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What if the prayer were indigenous in origin? Does that make it any less spiritual, any less an infringement on our secular schools?

In B.C. apparently that’s the case. A Port Alberni mother is taking her local school board to court for forced participation in a spiritual smudging ceremony in her children’s school.

It’s not the education of indigenous culture that’s the issue — that’s important, there’s still too little of it and we can continue to do better to educate our children about the darkest corners of Canadian history and the bright light of indigenous cultures. The problem is requiring children to participate in a spiritual or religious practice. It’s wrong, plain and simple, and an infringement of their freedom of religion, which also means freedom from religion.