Re: ‘Former minister says axe separate schools,’ Dec. 11 Gazette.
As a 70-year-old man who was subjected to separatism as a boy, I can say with experience that David King has a very good idea. There’s no need for ‘protesters’ and ‘catlickers’ to be going to separate schools any longer. Separatism teaches bigotry.
To believe in God is easy. But to believe in people is an entirely different matter. People are wrong far too often and separate school systems serve to prove the fact. Does God hate Protestants, or does He hate Catholics? As a child, I was taught by nuns that Protestants were bad and would never go to heaven. That awful lesson was given to me during my seven years at the St. Charles Catholic separate school in Mearns. The ‘bad’ Protestants went to school in Alcomdale, only two-and-a-half miles away. As a 12-year-old altar boy, who was I to say that the nuns were wrong?
For two years after that I was taught by priests at a private school. It was the College St. Jean that’s now part of the University of Alberta. That private school for francophone Catholic boys was very good. My English teacher had his doctorate in the language. However, it was still separatism and I had not yet gone to school with Protestants or students of other faiths. I was still very poorly prepared for the realities of life in our mixed society.
I took my final three years of high school to graduate at the Camilla public school in Rivière Qui Barre, where many of my classmates were very decent ‘bad Protestants’ from Alcomdale. Oh sinful me! I even rode on the same bus with them! It all proved to be one of the best lessons of my life. And I’d like to pass it on to all others who might not yet have had the blessing of getting it too.
Proper schooling should never be a source of bigotry. And the teaching of bigotry and bad discrimination should never be a part of proper schooling. For this very good reason, the bad segregation of separate school systems has been wrong since first created by bigots who obviously felt that God was a bigot too. Separate schools should be axed!
At the age of 70, I still deeply believe in God. But I had to quit believing in people and their bigoted religions long ago.
Richard. G. Nobert, Morinville
