Even in Manitoba, Canada, public schools are expected to be secular. (Though, for some reason, if 75% of parents sign a petition to have religious exercises in school, they can have them.) The department of education has guidelines that schools are supposed to follow.

However, lawyer Chris Tait has found violations all over the place:

The Lord’s Prayer is being read over the intercom by the principal or in classrooms by teachers. Schools allow parent councils to organize petitions for religious exercises through the schools, and in a few cases, directly help organize them. Parents receive yes-or-no ballots and are told they must fill in and sign forms if they do not want their children to pray in a supposedly secular school. And there are even schools in which non-praying students are expected to stand quietly in their classrooms while their classmates recite the Lord’s Prayer all around them. … More than 20 Manitoba school divisions are violating the province’s guidelines on religious exercises, said Tait… “I think it’s very deliberate that they ignore (the guidelines),” Tait said. “They’re on a project to push through a religious agenda. They’re getting people to co-operate that aren’t of the Christian faith.”

The government is lazily sitting back, not pursuing any of these violations.

I suspect if enough parents complain, though, the schools might start to listen. It all starts with a brave individual or two willing to speak out against this religious indoctrination and waste of classroom time.

(Thanks to everyone for the link)



