Keeping the faith, the Jewish response to compulsory religious education in Ontario's public schools, 1944-1990

grantor: University of TorontoIn 1944 Ontario Premier George Drew's minority Conservative government introduced compulsory religious education into the Province's public schools. The enabling legislation, the "Drew Regulation," prescribed two one-half hour periods of religious instruction per week. A response to world-wide godlessness symbolized by Nazi Germany's crimes, remarkably, the Drew Regulation remained in place in Ontario for forty-six years. The wholesale implementation of the Drew Regulation throughout Ontario's public school system went beyond the need to balance the evil of war with the goodness of faith. Over time it became clear that the Regulation's benign terms which prescribed no specific religious preference was being used for decidedly doctrinal Protestant purposes. When predominantly Protestant Ontario issued little protest, by default, the task of opposing the Drew Regulation fell to the Jewish community. There was no realistic alternative. Other minority faith groups were small in number. Human rights organizations were only just beginning to appear. Moreover, after some initial anxiety, the general community's concern about the discriminatory aspects of the Drew Regulation rapidly dissipated. Emerging from an erstwhile immigrant persona, only a vigilant Jewish community was sensitive to the abuses visited on Jewish and other minority children by this Regulation. At times, hamstrung by its reticence to assume a high public profile, especially when this meant clashing with deeply-felt convictions of the general community, the Jewish community stayed the course. Finally, unable to balance its opposition to the Drew Regulation with increasing internal demands for Provincial funding of Jewish Day Schools, the Jewish community gratefully relinquished responsibility for determining the place of religious education in the public schools to the judicial system.Ed.D