Advertisement 1

Opinion: What teaching teachers has taught me about Bill 21

You don’t need to strip people of their religious symbols to get them to be good teachers, just to teach them to be good professionals.

Article content

I have been teaching in the Department of Education at Concordia for over 10 years, and Bill 21 — the law that will ban teachers from wearing religious symbols — has hit me and my colleagues hard. While it may be popular with some constituencies, it’s an unjust law that will have no beneficial impact.

Over the years, I’ve had many future teachers come through my classes. The teachers I have taught, including those who wear religious symbols, are ambassadors for broad-mindedness and tolerance. Some supporters of this bill think that it will make the classroom a neutral space that is free from religious influences. But from my standpoint, all it will do is force a handful of promising young people to teach elsewhere.

Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content

Secularism, the concept underlying this bill, is something we’ve been concerned about for a long time in Western societies. Being committed to secularism means buying into two ideas: first, we don’t want our government to endorse one religious view over another, and second, we don’t want particular religious views having an undue influence on government. An overwhelming majority of Quebecers support secularism in this basic form, but the consensus breaks down when some argue for a stricter form of secularism that bans religious symbols from some parts of public life.

Article content

The aspect of Bill 21 that prevents teachers from wearing religious symbols is in keeping with this stricter form of secularism. Premier François Legault argues that just as we wouldn’t want teachers wearing a T-shirt that says, “I love the Liberal party,” we wouldn’t want them wearing any symbols of religious commitment either. Our teachers are authority figures, Legault says, and we want them to be neutral among all religious perspectives.

But the problem is that someone’s religious symbol isn’t like a political T-shirt. For many teachers, wearing a religious symbol is a critical part of their identity. And for some teachers, religious symbols are so important that they would rather change careers than be forced to remove them. Few people feel this way about markers of political commitment.

Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content

Another problem with Legault’s view is that it implies that teachers who wear religious symbols can’t possibly be neutral. This, however, mixes up what teachers do and say in the classroom with what their personal beliefs are. For example, growing up in small town Nova Scotia, I knew a lot about my teachers’ personal beliefs. I knew what churches they attended, and I could usually guess their political affiliations. But whatever their personal beliefs were, I knew I could count on my teachers to be evenhanded and to teach the official curriculum. My teachers taught the curriculum as fairly as they could because they were ethical, professional people, and they did it regardless of what symbols they wore.

The students that I have trained over the years are good professionals, just like my Nova Scotia teachers were. They come from diverse backgrounds, and there are some who wear religious symbols, but they all share a strong commitment to teaching the Quebec curriculum. They want their classrooms to be tolerant and caring communities.

Recently, one of my colleagues was interviewing applicants for our teacher education program. During the interviews, a young woman who was wearing a Star of David asked if her religious symbol would count against her in the admissions process. It really saddens me to think that this student may have to choose between her religious commitments and her desire to teach in the place she grew up.

After years of teaching teachers, my colleagues and I have figured out a thing or two, and one of them is this: you don’t need to strip people of their religious symbols to get them to be good teachers. You just need to teach them to be good professionals, and that’s what we already do around here.

David Waddington is an associate professor in the Concordia University Department of Education.

Article content
Comments
You must be logged in to join the discussion or read more comments.
Join the Conversation

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

This Week in Flyers