Re: Father teaches his son a lesson in entitlement, Oct. 26

Father teaches his son a lesson in entitlement, Oct. 26

Rosie DiManno’s latest article is full of contradictions. Setting out to question and criticize a father’s sense of entitlement, she missed what seems to me to be the bigger issue at hand: why, in 2013, does Ontario continue to have two separate public school boards?

DiManno writes, “Many parents who aren’t Catholic ... consider the Catholic system preferable to the public school system, with higher academic expectations.” Surely this has to be going against every sense of equality. Shouldn’t all children within Ontario experience the same opportunities when it comes to their education? The same funding, course content, and dedication from teachers regardless of their religious beliefs?

“At Catholic schools, non-Catholic students are expected to be present for religious courses and — I don’t think this part is appropriate — attendance at mass,” DiManno explains. She is right; it isn’t appropriate, not because the children at that school aren’t Catholic but because the majority of children in Ontario aren’t Catholic.

With Canada’s increasing multicultural society, a Catholic public school system defies logic. How can we justify a public Catholic school, but not a public Muslim school? Or even Christian school? Or Jewish? P

ublic schools should be institutions for education, not passing on religious beliefs. That is what churches, synagogues, temples, etc. are for. It’s time for Catholic schools to become private like all the other religious schools, and leave funding and passionate instructors to be accessed by all children, regardless of what god they they pray to.

Nicole Bayes-Fleming, Toronto

It is unfortunate that Rosie DiManno did not contact me or my lawyer before painting a caricature of “helicopter parents” seeking to undermine “the soul of Catholic-based education.” If she had done so, she would have discovered that she supports my position. After all, I sent my sons to a Catholic school, and readily acknowledge that God will be mentioned, prayers will be read, and Catholic values will be referred to.

I asked only that my sons be free to absent themselves from religious courses, rituals and retreats. Subsection 42(13) of the Education Act provides for an exemption from “programs or courses in religious education.” I believe that programs include rituals and retreats (i.e., field trips to a church). As Ms. DiManno ably puts it, “surely participation in some religious rituals should not be demanded of the non-Catholic students.”

Of course, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board disagrees. When I first applied for the exemption, my request was denied and the superintendent advised that it would cost me a fortune to litigate the matter.

Since that time, I have obtained the exemption to religious courses. The question now before the Divisional Court is whether the board can compel students to attend religious rituals and retreats.

I do not know how the Divisional Court will decide. Whatever Ms DiManno may think of my parenting, I do know that my sons will have learned how to stand up for themselves.

Oliver Erazo, Toronto

Why did Ms DiManno choose to spend an entire column attacking the characters of a Brampton teen and his father? Their only sin, according to Ms DiManno, is holding the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board accountable for not obeying the law.

There are any number of reasons that a family may prefer a local Catholic school to a distant public one — but Ms DiManno makes no effort to discover what motivates the Erazos.

Instead, Ms DiManno characterizes the Erazos as “helicopter parents,” “incubating a couple of claim-to-blame whiners,” who are “selfish” and “holier than thou.” These smears are not justified in any way in the text of her column.

Leaving teens without oversight during school hours perhaps could be unwise. Furthermore, ensuring supervision for those exercising their legal right to be exempted from Catholic liturgies seems a small price to pay to maintain special status in Ontario’s blatantly discriminatory educational system, wherein Catholics (and only Catholics) receive billions of dollars every year from the provincial government to educate their children according to their faith.

I realize that Ms DiManno’s is an opinion column; nonetheless I was disappointed to find it utterly devoid of facts.

Leslie Rosenblood, Toronto

Once again the public has been misinformed. This time by a well known Star columnist, Rosie DiManno, who should know better.

It is the Roman Catholic Church that is getting the entitlement. All Ontario taxpayers are funding Catholic schools at the exclusion of all other faiths.

Rosie DiManno failed to realize that when former premier Bill Davis extended public funding in 1984 to include high school grades 9 to 13, the conditions were that non-Catholic students may be admitted.

In addition, the Education Act section 42(13) stipulated that Students can opt out of religious courses. Most Catholic school boards elect to ignore the Education Act and convince parents that students must take religious courses.

When one parent rightfully takes the issue to court, Rosie DiManno balks that this parent is teaching his son entitlement. Nothing is further from the truth. Separate school boards want it both ways: have the public fund their faith-based school and be able to call the shots.

In Ontario, Catholic separate schools are publicly funded and therefore are public schools, which should be accessible to everyone with the choice of taking religious courses.

Peter van Tol, Mississauga

Rosie DiManno criticized a father who wants his son to avoid religious indoctrination as teaching entitlement. She asks “Can we all just please drop the ungodly nerve of our own entitlements?” Agreed!

Public school funding of one religion is the best (worst?) example of entitlement in Ontario today. Public school Catholics expect taxpayers to support the Catholic religion, but Ontario taxes do not support the education of other religions.

Without the entitlement of publicly funded Catholic schools, Oliver Erazo’s son would not have to endure religious indoctrination. Public Catholic (an oxymoron!) school children are inherently taught entitlement, inequality, and discrimination. Non-Catholics wanting a religious education pay for private schooling and, in all fairness, Catholics should do the same.

People in Ontario want all religions to be treated equally. This clearly motivates a one school system that provides equality, inclusivity, and fairness to all religions.

David Clausi, Waterloo

I don’t know whether to pity Rosie DiManno’s sheer ignorance or to deride her willful neglect of the facts. For when she criticizes Mr. Erazo’s fight with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board as a fight for an unjustified entitlement, she totally misses (or ignores) the fact that Catholic schools themselves are an unjustified entitlement.

At present time, Ontarians are paying for a separate Catholic school system that privileges adherents of that particular denomination with special privileges the rest of us don’t enjoy. In fact it is even worse: Catholic schools discriminate against other faiths on the job market (the jobs are given to those with a parish letter) and use public transportation to send students to pro-life rallies (on the public purse, again).

As such, it is hypocritical to the point of almost being laughable when DiManno chides Mr. Erazo for wanting the relevant exemption (which, by the way, is codified in the Education Act).

The rest of the province is getting tired of feeding this segment of the population with a silver spoon.

Nathan R. Cockram, Ottawa

Rosie DiManno’s opinion on non-Catholics exercising their right to an exemption from religious studies in publicly funded Catholic schools was breathtaking in its ignorance, arrogance, and irony.

The Education Act states pretty clearly that anyone attending a Catholic secondary school who is qualified to attend a public secondary school – which is everyone including Catholics – can opt out of the religious programs. It is the law in this province — and a whole lot less objectionable than the law that awards one supremely favoured faith with a segregated sectarian school system denied to every other faith — but paid for by all.

Catholic schools do not have higher expectations with respect to academics or conduct. Those are pretty universal system wide. When a Catholic school does outrank a nearby public school on standardized testing, it is frequently because they have lower numbers of special needs students, English language learners, immigrant children, and children whose mother tongue is not English. Test results include such contextual data to allow real apples to apples comparisons. According to the 2001 Census (the last long form Census to have credibility), Catholic Ontarians also suffer lower unemployment and enjoy a higher level of educational attainment than Ontarians at large. Catholic schools typically have a whiter and more socio-economically advantaged population than their public counterparts and the usually slight differences in test results often reflect that.

It is supremely arrogant to suggest that a non-Catholic parent should move his children down the road to a truly public school if he wants them to have a non-sectarian education. A consequence of Ontario’s fractured school system is that hundreds of thousands of children are bussed past their nearest publicly funded school every day to attend another one farther away. Many are bused to distant communities. All schools are open to Catholic children, so they need only suffer such inconveniences voluntarily. Non-Catholics, on the other hand, often have no choice. Where they do – at the high school level where “open access” is supposed to apply – having the right to withdraw from the overtly sectarian components of the program is a small consolation for having to attend a sectarian school in order to be educated in their own community.

It is ironic that a Catholic schools apologist like DiManno would speak of “entitlement, privilege and prerogative” when deriding a non-Catholic parent who only wishes to have his kids receive a good non-sectarian education near their home. There is no greater “entitlement, privilege and prerogative” in Ontario than that granted to Catholic Ontarians exclusively in the form a wasteful and discriminatory sectarian school system, but DiManno would instead demonize a man trying to mitigate the consequences of that privilege on his family. Missing the forest for the trees, she is. Our Charter of Rights effectively prevents the award of real privilege to anyone other than Ontario Catholics, whose publicly funded sectarian schools are exempt from the force and effect of its equality provisions.

What lessons does Ms. DiManno believe are taught by giving segregated school “rights” to the members of the Catholic faith exclusively? Love thy neighbour as thyself? No. It teaches otherwise good Catholic children that some animals are more equal and more entitled than others – and that “love thy neighbour” is a slogan to be used only when you are getting the short end of the stick. That is a lesson she might want for her children, but not me for mine.

Leonard Baak, president, OneSchoolSystem.org, Ottawa

Freedom of choice is not entitlement. Let me guess: Ms DiManno went to a Catholic school? Entitlement is a strong word to use for someone who wants to opt out of all forms of religious training at school.

I was raised in the era of denominational school boards in St. John’s and in a household staunchly agnostic (this in fifties and sixties). The churches had a lot of power. For years I was force-fed religious training that was irrelevant to me.

In junior high school I announced to my father “I was mad as hell (which doesn’t exist) and I just won’t take it any longer.” He said “fine by me, but you gotta fight that fight yourself. However if they call me, I will tell them I back you 100 per cent.”

So fight I did, and I was sent by the minister teaching religion to the library to study every religion class. Made to walk out in front of my fellow students. I felt like a weirdo during that 1 minute walk in front of the class, not entitled. I did feel that I was exercizing my freedom to choose. I was sent to that school system for all the reasons the Erazos have for sending Jonathan to his school.

School libraries are usually staffed, so the argument of added costs is really nit picking.

Ms DiManno is just being a good Catholic School team player in going after a man for sticking up for his son’s right to choose.

By the way, Newfoundland eventually did away with the denominational school system. Thank God (if she exists.)

David Ferry, Toronto

“From the mount of entitlement, privilege and prerogative.” Really, Rosie?

How about the mount ... or should that be mountain, of tax dollars pried out of the pockets of me and every other non-Catholic schmuck in the province, to pay for two parallel school systems?

How about the entitlement and privilege that allows the Catholic Church to be the only sect, of all the world’s religions, to use public funding to support their own religiously tainted education system in Ontario?

Again with entitlement and privilege, Rosie, let us speak of your egregious, and, if one might say it, pompous, pronouncement from on high, that Mr. Erazo should lump it or leave it.

I would suggest to you that a reasonable compromise would be to “skip the religious part” for this taxpayer’s son and to fill that time with useful educational content, instead of having him sit at home twiddling his thumbs.

To your qualms about forcing non- catholic students to attend catholic mass and “receive the blessing” I say too little, too late, Your Eminence.

To this taxpayer, your column, with its paternalistic arrogance, and yes, its sense of privileged entitlement, speaks to me of the Residential schools, and the Madelene Laundries and the thousands, upon thousands, of children whose lives were wrecked by a church still in self-denial.

Let us leave the topic of your other privilege, that of being allowed to regularly proselytize for your religion in the pages of the Star, for another time.

Spare us your blessings, Pope Rosie.

Jim Conchie, Toronto