ABSTRACT
This article examines Quebec’s lauded and influential Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) primary and secondary school curriculum from a much-needed and seldomexplored critical perspective. It asks a series of interrelated questions: what are the ideological foundations of the programme? What is its particular understanding of the study of religion as a pedagogical act? How does the ERC curriculum view the place and role of religion within the history of Quebec and its quest for a sense of collective identity? In what ways does the ERC programme reflect and support a particular understanding of the common good? These and other questions will help focus discussion on the ERC programme as an interesting example of a specifically statesanctioned understanding of the role and place of the religious in a highly secularised yet culturally distinctive society.
