Reminds me of a song by Blind Faith
“De-” from the Latin prefix to imply “out of” (among other things). Have you noticed that when the prefix is used in English, the words tend toward the ominous end of the language spectrum. Words like “detoxify”, or “decontaminate”. How about the word for today, “deconfessionalize”. I’ve just returned from a meeting that stretched on for hours, with the set purpose of trying to “demystify” the latest educational direction of our provincial government. Nothing like that happened.
Over the last decade, the province has been moving (slowly) towards the laicizing of the public school system. From one where religious belief was “first among equals”, to a system more closely resembling the pluralistic society that has evolved. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, though; if you asked the average citizen if they though that schools should be “without religion”, the answer was affirmative. Exception; their own religion should still have a place. A difficult mandate for any society. The government reflected deeply and passed a law.
A final tweak remains, to be in place for next year (just over a hundred days away). The existing religious courses will be replaced by a unified overview of religions, with the emphasis on the plural. As in pluralistic… and not everyone is ready to make the little step to the right/left to accommodate their neighbour.
Tonight, we held a public meeting involving invited representatives of that public. Joined together through the wizardry of a province-wide videoconference. Technically, all went pretty much as planned. On the educational side, less so. Any teacher could have warned us; if you put a groups of strangers together, they will not listen to one another. After the third reiteration of the question “What course will this replace?”, a sense of despair entered the moderator’s voice. Her reminder that “We still have six other centres to hear from” spoke to the real problem. Too many people, too little time, too much new information.
It didn’t help that while we were “in conference”, someone was placing leaflets on car windshields, inciting us all to reject this latest polical blasphemy, or fear for our souls. After all, the public wasn’t exactly present, and there was a security guard on hand in case things drifted out of control. We’re not discussing math, folks; this is faith.
Well, all is over for this evening. Now we get to wait for the general public to catch on that a new law is on the books, and things aren’t going to be like they were “in the good old days”. During the bus ride back home, the best song on my personal hit parade was In The Presence Of The Lord performed by Eric Clapton. That used to be a great final waltz at any dance I attended.
