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 religious education as critical to the maintenance of their respective groups’ identities, multiculturalist policies may provide the best outcome. The likely result to liberal policies would be the situation in Scotland between 1872 and 1918 in which Protestant schools were state- funded, but the Catholic equivalents cost dioceses and parents additional money, an arrangement Wolterstorff identifies as fundamentally discriminatory and preventative of parents’ ability to freely exercise their religion. The application of the impartiality interpretation - or, at least, of Audi’s less rigid conception of the separation interpretation - therefore seems reasonable. Again, it may well be. This paper’s concern with multiculturalist education policies, however, regards their longevity. When the period of time in which multiculturalism may be most beneficial expires, the entrenchment of the religiously divided system does not. Therefore, while multiculturalism may be better suited to a society than liberalism at times, it should have to withstand the arguments of its critics both during that period and after - when multiculturalist policies have little or no justification - to be implemented.
V. CONCLUSION
VVWhen potentially implementing multiculturalist religious education policies, one must consider those that the policy would disadvantage. Particularly, one must apply Audi, Okin, and others, weighing the ramifications of defining “group rights” and empowering religious leaders, especially for the disempowered minorities within these sects. This paper has found, when considering the cases of Scottish state-funded religious schools and mandatory religious observance, that downward patterns of religious identification and discrimination have placed a time-based boundary on the justifications for—and, indeed, necessity of—these multiculturalist education policies. The manifestation of this time boundary is seen in fewer patrons for Catholic schools, parental protest at the opt-out religious observance system, and other indicators of
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