Last month in Ottawa, Cardus senior fellow Deani Van Pelt delivered a public lecture on trends in education in Canada in 2023 in which she also reflected on the leading edge of change in education today. An adapted version of her talk was published by Cardus under the title Charting New Horizons for Independent Education in Canada.
Van Pelt introduced her presentation with the clarion assertion that “education matters for our individual well-being, our civic health and our national and global stability.” Against the current unsettling backdrop of increasingly brazen manifestations of hatred – directed against Jewish Canadians – in our public spaces and even in our public schools, Van Pelt’s statement is more a pressing prescription than it is a lofty description for the system of education in Ontario that is essential for shaping and protecting our society.
Mobs pretending to be protesters with hurt sensibilities, threaten everyone who stand in their way. The objects of the mob’s scorn are Jews, but the victims of the mob abuse are all peace-loving, law-abiding Canadians.
Noted thinker and columnist, Bret Stephens, expressed the threat posed by the bullying, dangerous mobs quite succinctly: “Antisemitism is a problem for democracy because hatred for Jews, whatever name or cause it travels under, is never a hatred for Jews only. It’s a hatred for distinctiveness: Jews as Jews in Christian lands; Israel as a Jewish state in Muslim lands. Authoritarians seek uniformity. Jews represent difference.
“Whenever antisemitism rears its head, it isn’t just Jews who are in the cross hairs. It’s freedom, education and human dignity — values all of us should share, whether you’re Jewish or not.”
And so, if we are to fight for our society – as we must – a society, in Deani Van Pelt’s words, whose educational system aims at achieving “individual well-being, civic health and national and global stability”, it is imperative that we impress upon the government the need for a new, better system of educating Ontario in this day and age.
Van Pelt’s prescription is an excellent starting point. She calls forth evidence of best educational practices throughout western jurisdictions and concludes “that we are …entering an era of education plurality, evident through a diversity of providers, approaches, learners, and funders.
She is also careful to allay the concerns of doubters and skeptics that pluralism in education is simply a formula for heightening communal differences, leading to ethnic or balkanization within our society and the retention of inter-communal enmities and/or grudges.
“Pluralism, by definition,” Van Pelt writes, “does not prioritize or prize one version of education over another. Rather, all are expected to be excellent spaces. What is key is that a variety of secular, philosophical, and religious schools can all contribute to the common good, to flourishing students, and to healthy civic formation.”
Van Pelt insists that a pluralistic approach in educational funding must focus on the common good. Pluralism in education does not simply mean freedom for communities to teach according to their respective differences, values and needs. It also means teaching with regard to the shared responsibility for the common good of civil society.
“Educational pluralism insists on quality,” Van Pelt writes. “Education is a common good in which neighbours care about the civic outcomes of schooling for one another’s children and thus includes accountability for structures for education. This civic responsibility includes strong curricula and healthy school culture, both of which are key to student success… The core of what can hold diverse communities together in pluralism…is agreed-on broad curriculum standards, a shared understanding of which core concepts are necessary to know.
“… It is a system of education in which the government funds and regulates, but does not deliver, all education options.”
“Pluralism allows for moral difference, encourages civil society to play a role in education, and insists on equity and quality.”
GAJE supports Van Pelt’s prescription for a new approach in funding and in the delivery of education. Funding will be fair, for the benefit of all Ontario families. And the curriculum will be regulated and monitored for the benefit of the common good of a society that strives without cease, to advance individual well-being, civic health and national and global stability, where anti-Semitism is overtly and publicly shunned and as Bret Stephens would therefore say, in which democracy flourishes.
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The adapted text of Van Pelt’s Ottawa presentation is available at:
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Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.
Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
December 22, 2023
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 