This fall, Sturgeon Heights Public School will reintroduce the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer. The Sturgeon School Board made the decision after surveying parents of the school’s students. The Board says about 75% of the parents were in favour of bringing back the Lord’s Prayer to start each morning.
However, other parents feel it’s a practice that denies their children their Charter rights.
“Essentially, in using the privilege of the 1905 School Act to conduct the school prayer, what the school board and the school is in effect doing, is denying a number of children in the school community their Charter rights,” explains Luke Fevin, a father who – come fall – will have 3 children enrolled at Sturgeon Heights.”
“In 1988 a senior panel of Canadian judges ruled on exactly this policy. They found that this policy was discriminatory, exclusive, that it coerced children, that it stigmatized children, and that it denied them their charter rights,” Fevin says.
“So the question seems to be why – even if you can, through a legal anomaly, adopt this policy – why would you chose to do so?”
Up until last year, the school played the Lord’s Prayer every morning over the intercom. Last year, they suspended that practice; saying the format made it difficult for a student to ‘opt out’ of the prayer if they wanted to since it was played over the school’s audio system. So, why bring it back in a different format?
“We believe in parental choice,” says Board Chair of Sturgeon School Division Terry Jewell. “75% is a lot of people that want to do something.” He adds, “we decided to go with what the principal and what the majority of the parents recommended.”
In order to accommodate the families that prefer not to pray, the students will be divided into separate classrooms while the Lord’s Prayer is being recited in the morning. It’s a solution that’s not going over particularly well with some parents.
“Yes, we’re segregating children based on religion in a public school,” says Fevin. “It’s not just two rooms; there are multiple ‘pray’ and ‘non-pray’ rooms.”
Fevin says there were other solutions presented to the Board. “Rather than segregate the children,” he suggests, “we could keep the children together in an inclusive manner… everybody share a moment of personal reflection, together. This would allow the Christians to silently say their prayer … people of other faiths can actually stand by their classmates and observe their prayer too.”
Jewell says the Board went with the solution recommended by most parents, and the principal. When the issue of students’ rights comes up, Jewell says the Board’s decision is “entirely within the Alberta Constitution.”
“We looked at numerous policies around the province; we consulted with various lawyers we read the Constitution to make sure what we were doing was constitutionally correct.”
Although a decision has been made, some parents hope the Board – and the parents supporting this move - will take another look.
“When they understand that a Canadian court has already ruled this to be so detrimental to the children of other parents, they may chose to do the right thing optionally.”
Fevin says his children (aged 4, 6, and 7) have been told by their classmates that their dad is “trying to take God out of their school.” It’s not an issue Fevin anticipating discussing with his children.
“One of the sad things is that we are going to be asked to say whether our child is a prayer or a non-prayer, and even though I have my lack of beliefs, I’d actually prefer to give my children a choice, I don’t want to define them myself.”
If the issue continues to be a contentious one, the Board says it will re-evaluate the prayer policy.
“We review all our policies on a regular basis,” says Jewell. “If something is causing a lot of problems, we’ll probably review it a lot sooner.”
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