Loyola: Let’s protect the freedom to choose

Since Quebec has decided to appeal the decision in the Loyola High School religious education case, some reflection is in order as to what our government is trying to achieve.
Too often Quebec's policies, under whatever party, are characterized by too much coercion and compulsion and too little compassion and persuasion. Even those who agree with the goal of public monies in education  never subsidizing the teaching of religious doctrine, would not submit to a new secular ethical theology dictated by the state and enforced by yet another brigade of inspectors. And they would also agree that any change takes time and acquired rights must be respected not just for social peace but for social justice. That is the case here.
Loyola has no problem with the historical religious part of the government's new course on religion and ethics. What the school does not want to do is to teach only the sanitized ethics of bureaucratic dictat without reference to the school's historical traditions which parents expect to be transmitted to the children they send there.  All it is asking is that the state not invalidate its particular character and not negate its acquired rights.
Just as we accommodate so many different traditions in our private school system, Loyola asks no more and no less.
Allowing private education with a religious component is less a matter of freedom of religion than it is one of freedom of choice. The parents of Loyola are taxpayers. At a time when so much of our money is wasted through central control state planning, surely at least the freedom to choose the education of our children is something that can still be respected. Loyola has a tradition of producing some of our most vital, engaged and progressive citizens. Its ethical traditions of service and sacrifice have a lot to do with that. Loyola succeeds at the very thing the state fails at. The dropout figures in public high schools are eloquent testimony to that.
There is no problem here that needs state fixing. Loyola is a success story. Perhaps the government should consider that there is no battle here to fight. Perhaps Quebec should think twice about wasting public funds in a long and protracted legal battle over nothing.
It strikes us that what the Education Ministry should spend its time and our money doing is to co-operate with private schools and develop a curriculum in this area  that would be acceptable to the private school sector. Confrontation, compulsion and coercion has never, and will never, work. And public monies should not be wasted on social engineering. We have very real problems to solve first.
Let us teach children about all religions. And it is right and proper that Quebec wants to encourage the teaching of our secular laws and varied cultural traditions along with it. Let's teach kids how we got here. Let our pedagogy inform our young people about their Charter Rights but also about their social responsibilities. They should be taught to respect differences within the context of Canadian values. But as we raise their spirits with positive messages, let us not demonize faith nor its ethics.
Religion is not going away, and there is nothing wrong with that.There is no need for a secular-religious social war. Just as we do not tolerate collectivist or state prejudice against individual choice, how can we tolerate state demonization of a community's choice?