One family fight

Dear Editor, My husband and I were very interested in your article concerning religious exercises in public schools. We have a personal interest in this issue as we have spent years challenging our children's administrators, superintendent and school board to make the necessary ethical and legal changes on that front.

While we have seen some positive results in some schools in our division, we are still battling the issue in our daughters elementary school where the administration and staff insist on delivering their exercises in the classrooms at a time when all students are to be there. This has resulted in the exclusion of non-participants because they are told to go stand in the hall, which is psychologically damaging.

Alternatively, our school now gives non-participants the option of sitting at their desks during religious exercises which makes them appear defiant and immoral to their participating classmates which amounts to coercion and institutional bullying.

Our child is only one out of a handful of yearly non-participants which makes the issue of division along sectarian/non-sectarian lines all the more prominent and potentially damaging. She has also been the target of incessant psychological bullying and social exclusion by the majority of her classmates who, among other things, have told her she will go to hell if she does not believe in god.

Yet, the school often ignores or bends the rules and guidelines of the Manitoba School Act in order to cater to the wishes of the sectarian majority in the town. For example, they still use ballots to collect the signatures and names of students who wish to participate even though the guidelines clearly state that schools must not be involved in any way in the process, not even out of convenience.

By ignoring these guidelines they are insidiously recruiting participants and pressuring parents, who might otherwise choose to opt out which would naturally balance out the numbers of participants to non-participants. It seems the school would rather create a climate of sectarianism over diversity, which has indirectly created an attitude of social intolerance. We have been following many court cases, some resolved, some in progress, which support our conclusions about the exclusionary and discriminatory way in which exercises are still being held in public schools today even though the law prohibits it. We have been looking for a provincial or national support network in which to tackle this monstrous injustice and are keen on getting involved somehow. We reside in a rural area of Manitoba. Any advice or direction that you can give us would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and help,Christine Matejka Minitonas, MB