away from religion occupying a large role in individual’s morality and personal lives and toward a more secular society indicates again the time-bounded nature of multiculturalism. Where daily periods of religious observance were, at their inception, considered critical to the ethical development of students, some parents and teachers now wish to either abolish or change the program to opt-in rather than opt-out.30 The shift in perception of the program mirrors the downward shift in societal identification with religion and begs the theoretical policy-maker to consider the more limited nature of time-bound multiculturalist gains when ignoring Audi’s principle of secular rationale and its concern with individual religious liberties.
IV.I Counterargument
VVThe arguments put forward above with regard to Scottish Christian schools and religious observance policies stop short of condemning the implementation of multiculturalist programs. Rather, the paper is concerned with the current dynamic in which Scots certainly no longer identify as strongly along sectarian lines, but religious leaders cling to the state-funded schools they operate, and this trend’s implications for the relative weight that should be assigned to multiculturalist and liberal arguments. While the paper stops short of arguing that multiculturalist education policies were a mistake in Scotland, it finds their justifications weakened as a result of their time-bound relevance.
VVAs such, the most obvious counterargument is that which states that, despite the time constraint on multiculturalist policies and the resulting limitations on their justifiability, they were still, for much of the period in which they were in place, better than more liberal options. That may well be true. When a society experiences strong identification and pervasive discrimination along religious lines, when those religious groups feel threatened by one another (particularly the minority Catholics feeling threatened), and when the religious leaders see
88830. See: Andrew Denholm, “Parents call for an end to religious observance in schools,” The Herald Scotland, 25 October 2013, and: Religious Observance in Public Schools: Report on the Consultation, Scottish Council for Research in Education (2004), 30.
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