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In recent weeks, some letters and articles have been highly critical of proposed public support for faith-based schools. Thankfully, the arguments have been moderate and consistently well-intentioned. Some people, though, mistakenly think that those of us who favour such funding are not supportive of public schools.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that faith-based schools need to be included in the public system, to finally make it genuinely public.

During this debate, many myths have been perpetrated. They need to be confronted and factually addressed.

1. Liberal-democratic principles permit public funding of religious education. In Canadian provinces outside Ontario, as well as France, the U.K., Sweden and most Western jurisdictions apart from the United States, faith-based schools receive public funds. In fact, even in the United States, where the separation of Church and State is a constitutional principle, there is a great deal of government assistance to faith-based schools, in differing modes in different states. "Religious education" need not mean the actual teaching of a specific religion, its languages, its values and its history. As part of inclusive public education, it means the teaching of general studies in an environment that is comfortable for adherents of a certain religion.

In almost all jurisdictions where there is government funding of religious education, parents pay separately for the actual instruction in religious practice. In Ontario, for example, the Jewish community pays for instruction in Hebrew, the Bible, Jewish law and literature, and will continue to do so, even after the provincial government enters the 21st century and funds general studies in an all-in-one inclusive system.

2. No one is proposing to grant "any benefits to religious organizations that are not available to non-religious ones." The demand for inclusive public education is quite the opposite. It is that the benefits of general education that are available to the non-religious be equally available to those for whom religion is all-important. No academic reasoning can do away with the fact that a small percentage of faith-based parents are not receiving the full educational rights they are paying for with their taxes. In 2007 we cannot discriminate against faith communities. As a responsible, pluralistic society that honours and treasures our faith communities, we cannot simply "grin and bear" such a serious inequity.

3. Some believe that Ontario already accredits private education. That is simply not true of elementary education and only partly true of secondary education leading to a provincial diploma.

At present, a private elementary school in Ontario does not have to do much more than obey certain fire codes. Provincial inspection of private secondary schools offering a diploma varies greatly in intensity and depth, mostly at the school's own discretion. Universal accountability in an inclusive public system is the very best that the Ontario education system can achieve. There is no evidence that government-funded religious schools tend toward mediocrity, either here in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

Clearly some fear religious education goes against the grain of liberal society, in dividing more than it unifies. For this, too, there is no empirical evidence. Those of us who believe in and support public education but also wish it to be completely inclusive of differing lifestyles and beliefs are convinced by what we have seen elsewhere, namely, that children reared in one specific environment can more easily appreciate the values of another.

As a Jewish educator deeply rooted in my own culture, its literature and its values and equally devoted to Canadian pluralism, I believe that my perspective allows me to look in the eyes of any other Canadian or citizen of the world and appreciate profoundly how they see the world from their own perspective. This is called Buberian mutuality, after the philosopher Martin Buber; it works only if you first know yourself very well. Canada has long been proud of its mosaic, as distinguished from than the melting pot, and in a mosaic each colour is enhanced by the others around it.

Seymour Epstein is the senior vice-president of the Centre for Enhancement of Jewish Education, UJA-Federation of Greater Toronto.