In Defence of Religious Schools and Colleges

In Defence of Religious Schools and Colleges. By Elmer John Thiessen. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2001. viii + 368 pp. CDN and US $75.00 (cloth); CDN $27.95 (paper); US $22.95 (paper).

Thiessen's general purpose is a philosophical defense of religious schools and colleges. His methodology is traditional and familiar: to delineate the arguments against religious schools, and then to show how they are, for the most part, built on liberal-democratic values that have been distorted, and therefore require reconstruction. Part of the strength of his approach comes from the careful manner with which he analyzes and responds to the arguments against religious schools, and the manner in which he employs concrete examples from Canada and the United States to support his thesis.

The arguments against religious schools and colleges are as familiar as Thiessen's methodology. Religious schools, it is claimed, promote divisiveness and foster intolerance. They should not exist "because parents do not have the right to determine the religious education of their children" (p. 64). The latter is a specious argument that the author handles deftly. Religious schools, and especially religious colleges, violate academic freedom. They obscure the principle of the separation of church and state, an argument often proposed by those who would like to replace Canada's Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982 with the Constitution of the United States of America. Religious schools are only within reach of, and are sustained by, an economic elite; and they are instruments of indoctrination. These arguments are born out of a culture of liberalism and modernism. And each, in turn, is analyzed through the prism of a balanced dialectic between liberalism and modernism on the one hand, and communitarianism and postmodernism on the other. This engaging dialectic is the greatest strength of Thiessen's work.

The resolution of the apparently opposing positions between modernism and postmodernism, between liberalism and communitarianism is, according to Thiessen, to be found in their reconciliation. That is to say, Thiessen envisions a plurality of schools operated by different cultural and religious communities, all of which are committed to both the discovery of individual identity in the particulars of one coherent world view, and then the subsequent universalist component of education, through which students cultivate universal values and liberal skills. Any education that does not include both of these components, in their proper order, is inadequate. Children must first develop a logically consistent and integrated worldview before they can develop the universal and civic values that are at the heart of the just, tolerant society.

Thiessen's argument is thorough, logical, and the most comprehensive treatment of the matter to date. It is only occasionally weakened by the practical consequences of his argument that occasionally cry out for further consideration. An example is his desire to distance himself "from any position which gives the church a stake in the schooling of children. . ." (p. 225). This seems to fly in the face of the reality of Roman Catholic education in Canada and the United States, where that church presumes (correctly, in this reviewer's opinion) to possess a significant (but inferior to parents') stake in the schooling of children.

Philosophers of education, educators at all levels, and those with a sophisticated interest in the idea of religious schools and colleges will find this work indispensable. No further discussion of the topic will be complete unless it includes extensive reference to this important contribution.

GEORGE T. SMITH

St. Thomas More College

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2003
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