Toronto Daily Questions Religious Classes in Ontario’s Public Schools

Strong support by a leading Toronto newspaper for an end to the holding of religious classes in public schools, the first such stand taken by an important daily newspaper, was welcomed today by Canadian Jewish circles.

In 1957, after submission of a brief by the Canadian Jewish Congress to the Ontario Government against such public school education, the Toronto Daily Star declared editorially that “on the whole, considering the exemption safeguard for minorities, religious education in the public schools was ‘a good thing’. “

But the newspaper changed its position and in a current series of editorials warned that such classes “could balkanize our school system. ” The daily said that the time had come “for a reappraisal” of such teaching– “not only the methods and provisions for it but even the desirability.”

Dissent and disunity are in the air” over the issue, the daily said editorially, “and not only because of Jewish citizens’ objections that the religion taught is Christianity.”

The daily warned that “the critical danger is that so much stress and discord could develop that the public school system itself might be destroyed” with “each denomination setting up its own parochial schools.”

The daily agreed with the stand of the Canadian Jewish Congress that arrangements to excuse Jewish or other non-Christian pupils from attendance, at the request of the parents, in effect involved such pupils in discriminatory treatment.

In a second editorial, the Toronto daily asserted that “when even Christian parents of different denominations object to certain kinds of teaching and interpretations in the schools, how much stronger must be the objections of Jewish parents, or Unitarian, or agnostics? They also pay taxes.”

The daily reported that “fully one-quarter of ail the public schools” in Ontario “avoid having any formal classes in religion.”