On the Front Lines: A Teacher's Experience with Québec's Ethics and Religious Culture Program

Abstract

The Ethics and Religious Culture Program (ERC) presents several practical challenges. Many public schools are ill-equipped to effectively teach about religious culture, whereas private schools tend to see the program as potentially undermining their tradition of confessional education. Despite these constraints, some public schools have found creative ways to integrate the religious culture aspect of the program in a secular setting and some private schools have found ways to teach the ERC course while respecting both the ministerial obligation to teach the program and at the same time respecting the religious character of the school. This article is an account of one teacher's private and public school experience working with the ERC program.

KEYWORDS:

• competencies
• culture
• ethics
• private education
• public education
• religion
• sacred

Notes

Ministère de l'Éducation du Québec, Les états généraux sur l'éducation 1995–1996, Rénover notre système d'éducation: dix chantiers prioritaires (Québec, Canada: Gouvernement du Québec, 1996).

See the article by Spencer Boudreau in this issue.

The word moral seems to have a more pejorative connotation. It is often associated with the words moralistic or moralizing. The word ethics seems to have a more academic ring. It sounds like something that serious professionals do. It also sounds more neutral. For a discussion of how the words “religion” and “religious” also illicit very different interpretations see: B. Grelle, “Defining and Promoting the Study of Religion in British and American Schools,” in International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education, eds. M. de Souza et al. (The Netherlands: Springers Academic Publishers, 2006), 461–474.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, Québec Education Program: Ethics and Religious Culture (Québec, Canada: Gouvernement du Québec, 2008): 20–23.

Ibid., 12.

P. J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007), 74.

M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 10.

Ibid., 12.

Ibid., 22.

Ibid., 13.

Ibid., 26, 63.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport 2008, 22.

Ibid., 12–13.

P. J. Palmer, 2007, 76.

Ibid., 77.

K. Armstrong, “Prayer Helps Us Chip Away Our Egotism,” Washington Post, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/karen_armstrong/2007/02/i_always_had_difficulty_with.html.

P. J. Palmer 2007, 77–78.

Ibid., 78–79.

Ibid., 78.

Ibid., 79.

Ibid., 79–80.

Ibid., 79.

Ibid., 80.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport 2008, 27.

Ibid., 25.

One other mention further emphasizes the point made: When a group of girls who were concerned about their friend's eating disorder wanted to organize an intervention with the help of the school psychologist, they asked “Can we use the Centre? It's the only place we can talk to her about this.”.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport 2008, 16.

Dead Man Walking, directed by Tim Robbins (Los Angeles, CA: Polygram Pictures Inc., 1995), DVD.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport 2008, 24.

Ibid., 52.

Man Alive, Episode no. 157, first broadcast November 6, 1990 by CBC.

D. Maguire, Death by Choice (New York: Bantam Dell Doubleday, 1984), 67–76.

Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport 2008, 16.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Van der Wee

Eric Van der Wee has been a teacher in the Québec education system for over 14 years, in both the public and private domains. He began working with Québec's Ethics and Religious Culture Program in 1999 when he was chosen to be the only teacher to pilot the program in the English sector. Since then, he has taught the program in a confessional private school as well as a secular public school. After thirteen years teaching in the secondary school system, Eric is now a professor of Humanities at Dawson College in Montreal.