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World Religion in Quebec Schools
The Canadian province of Quebec will now require an ethics and world religions course to be taught in all high schools, including separated Catholic and private schools. The new curriculum replaces three other courses on ethics and religion taught in Quebec high schools: moral education, Catholic religious and moral instruction, and Protestant moral and religious education.
Some parents are boycotting the course, stating it threatens their children’s Christian faith. Meanwhile, the private Loyola Catholic School disagrees with the course because of its ethics content. The new course seemingly teaches ethics from a relativistic standpoint, which contradicts Loyola’s take on the classic problem of ethics, summarized by Principal Paul Donovan: "Is there a way to determine what’s right and what’s wrong, or do we just say that everything stays status quo, and nobody can ever know?"
Quebec schools can request an exemption from the government if they still don’t like the course, although from the news article, it seems most are being declined. Parents may also request individual exemptions for their children.
Similarly tagged OmniNerd content:
- Texas Bans Discrimination Against Intelligent Design, by VnutZ about 2 years ago
- Beauty and the Golden Empress, by Bambootiger about 4 years ago
- A Question of Morality, by NomadSoul over 4 years ago
- What the New Atheists Don’t See, by LordDilly over 5 years ago
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I'm curious by scottb
I’m curious as to what the actual ethics curriculum looks like, that it’s being called "moral relativism". My guess is that just about anything that didn’t assert that moral guidance originates with the gods would be painted that way.
Interesting, Dawkins (and others) have actually suggested such teachings as a way to help erode the corrosive effects of Religious thinking by rancor
Which would very much help the world at large. I also agree that there should be no exemptions granted for any accredited private school or home teaching program.
As for as absolutism vs. relativism in ethics or morality, that is not a straight-forward thing. Firstly, the notion of absolutism really isn’t that there are absolute frames of reference that determine "rightness" or "wrongness" that arise from some arbitrary "first principles", but that there is a way to arrive at conclusion of "rightness" or "wrongness" based on critical analysis and rational thought that is informed by various schools of thought, but assumes as small a basis for argument or thought as reasonably possible. As opposed to "relativism" which takes various cultural norms as independent bases that need to take primary consideration in computing a moral or ethical judgement.
E.g. that "absolutist" can, and likely will, argue that sexism is both unethical and immoral based on the fact that there are no good reasons for such behaviour, and such behaviour is, in fact, harmful, a "relativist" would take into account various culture and religious viewpoints as part of the computation and potentially arrive at conclusions where it is "ok" for female repression or bias in various cultures (Islamic nations, Mormon communities, or orthodox Judaism, for example) but not in others (most of Europe and the Americas, for example).
The comparative education program, as proposed, will help undermine the efforts of various religious groups to damage the minds of future generations by providing the information needed to see how all such thinking is dangerous nonsense.