Education and the Manitoba Schools Crisis

Its always a risky topic to bring up education as a current event in Social Studies class, especially considering the current job action. This particular article may not be the best to discuss in a classroom depending on the number of special needs students that you have. However, education has long been an important political issue in Canada. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, it was probably the most divisive issue in Canada that highlighted the fissures in our country at the time. Since then, it has been a deciding issue in several Provincial elections (and perhaps in the next BC election?). In my experience, students really engage well in this topic and it leads to good discussion and understanding of historical issues.

Today the issue is how to adress special needs in the classroom? A hundred years ago, the issue was how to address different forms of Christianity and different languages in the classroom?

In 1870, the Canadian government signed the Manitoba Act which created the Province of Manitoba and guaranteed the rights of the French-Catholics to their own schools and official language. In 1890, the Manitoba government signed the Manitoba Schools Act, which reversed this and made English the only official language and removed funding for Catholic schools, making public (protestant) schools the only option. Of course, this became a political issue not just because of education but because of the federal-provincial government relationship involved and that is a whole other topic in itself.

But the Manitoba Schools Crisis brought up questions that are still relevant today (and good discussion material for Socials class):
Should minority groups, such as French-speaking Canadians in BC or English-speaking Canadians in Quebec, have the right to school in their own language?
Should minority religious groups have the right to their own schools? To what extent should these schools be funded?
Should some students receive more funding than others? Why?
Is 'public' school really for everyone? or just the majority cultural group?
etc.