Our local upper-right-quadrant-WingNut (Lowell Green) has decided to offer a new take on the (not so slowly, and thankfully, dying) provincially funded faith based school system Conservative leader John Tory is pushing — it’s all to benefit the kids.

According to Lowell these faith based schools already exist in an unregulated environment with no provincial over sight… Muslim schools even, where the poor kids are being taught who knows what by unaccredited Muslim teachers not following the provincial curriculum.

Faith based schools are therefor an absolute necessity if the province, and the people, are to have any idea what is going on, and, of course, to make sure that the children attending these schools are to have any hope of graduating from them with a decent education.

This is enough for many of his callers, but the question is, is there any truth in his statements?

Are there really a bevy of unregulated, faith based, private schools, in the province that do not follow the Ontario curriculum?

Are students, in any school, being given certificates of graduation that do not meet provincial standards?

Or is the simple fact of the matter that all schools (be they private, faith based, secular, or otherwise) are subject to the approved provincial curriculum…. as are parents who decide to home school their children.

And is it not also another simple fact that people like Lowell Green are, once again, trying to push a a fear based agenda?

I am willing to be swayed here; all some one has to do is point me in the direction of one private faith based school (Muslim or otherwise), that issues certificates of graduation or completion, that is not required to follow the Ontario curriculum or meet provincial education standards.