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Look, if it's all that complicated, then just abolish it overnight. Any parent that feels their child needs the Pope overseeing biology and math class can work the extra overtime shifts and force their kid into some private school - the way all the other non-equal religions do.
What is the problem here? Is there actually 1% of voters who would vote for someone who promised to maintain this medieval system?
Wilf, you say everyone gets along fine. That's what every beneficiary of inequality and supremacy has always said. Ontario Catholics must learn to live like other folks. You'll see, people will get along even finer - I guarantee it.
They do. Our kids all play hockey and soccer together, and go to movies togther. Kids in the east half of town go to one school, the west half to a different school, the Catholics to a third school. It bothers no one. You're trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
Catholics pay taxes too.
If Catholic schools get subsidies from non-Catholics, the only reason would be if Catholics have lower incomes and pay less taxes.
In which case your taxes are subsidizing Catholic hospitals too. Does that bother you?
Why don't you worry about real social issues that affect most people. Not your little religious wars. I'm restraining myself here.
Of course Dan Heap was right, as at the time the so-called public system was actually strongly Protestant - but that has to be abolished as well.
Secular education and an elimination of any religion's influence on public or publicly-funded education is a very real issue. It should have been settled in the 19th or early-20th century, true, but there are obvious historical reasons (including reactionary anti-"Papist" bigotry, mostly against French and Irish) among the non-less God-bothered Protestants and Orangemen). The elimination of the influence of any Church, Temple, Synagogue or Mosque on public education - and on funding for sectarian schools - is a fundamental of democracy and equality.
And I definitely am of the opinion that Catholic - and any other religion-based hospitals receiving public funding - must become secular.
That does not mean there can't be accomodations to people of a given religious faith - a chapel, a chaplain, kosher or halal food, etc. It means that there will be no religious busybodies trying to control women's private parts, for one thing.
The hospitals, mostly Catholic, were nationalised here during the Quiet Revolution. So were the universities and the former Collиges classiques.
I don't think it is a false issue - it would also eliminate a wasteful duplication of school boards.
Progressive people have big hearts - lots of room to worry about lots of things. Like segregation and ghettoization and dating and marrying "one's own". That's a real social issue. It should be publicly discouraged, not funded.
But now, we're all a lot more enlightened than we were 30 or 40 years ago, we've eliminated all religion (including Protestant) from our public schools, and it's time to get rid of publicly funded Catholic schools.
It doesn't surprise me that the NDP doesn't support such a measure. They don't have a very good track record on this issue, unfortunately.
That's not for me to say, since I'm not a Catholic. Would you like me to tell Montreal Jews that they shouldn't send their kids to anglophone schols, and shouldn't be so concentrated in TMR and other neighbourhoods, but should integrate themselves into the majority culture? Do you propose anglophone schools should be de-funded, to discourage segregation and ghettoization?
If a Catholic family doesn't want to send their kids to a Catholic school, they don't have to.
What gives you or me the right to abolish their school system? Sounds pretty arrogant, sorry.
[ 20 July 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]
Many parts of Canada are still incredibly backward on the issue of secular schools. There are a lot of countries viewed as strongly Catholic - such as Mexico - where all public education has been secular since the Revolution 100 years ago.
In most of Ontario the school boards are too big, courtesy of Mike Harris. My sister just retired from teaching in Bracebridge and her board offices were in Lindsay. We can use this transformation to start rationalizing the board areas.
As in not wanting public money to fund any religious dogma?
Also sounds like the only fair system in a society where there are people of many faiths, and of none.
Vive la rйvolution!
AFAIK there are only 2 things that need to be done to the current system. Remove the requirement for a letter from a priest to get a teaching job and move religious classes out of the regular school day, and I'm not even sure if the latter problem exists.
Anybody know if there are any other issues?
As really, what you did with that sentence was juxtaposition religion and language and created a conceptual framework that the 2 are equal within the functioning of the state.
The 2 cannot be compared, as such your questions have no basis in the reality of the situation, nor can they be factored into any deliberations.
There is NO state religion, as such there should be no funding of any religious schools. There ARE state language requirements, thus funding must exist for them. You see how that works?
In order for your framework to be valid, we would have to get rid of state language requirements.
No, actually, the opposite should be true, if they do not want to send their children to the state's publically paid for schools, then they should be paying for it themselves, just as other private school parents do.You see how that works public vs private?
Private is one's own religious choice, public is secular with NO funding for private religious choices, as it is a secular state.
Uh, that is really a self-evident question, no? We, the Canadian public, are the ones funding a school that contains their private religious beliefs. I would say that fact gives us the foremost right to petition to withdraw public funding from their private religious schools. If they cannot operate their private belief schools, on their own, it would be their problem, not the general publics.
No actually, what is arrogant, is the Catholic Church's belief, or anyone else's, that the general public of Canada, should fund their, or any religious, schools.What you are hearing the sound of is empowerment of the general public, in realizing, and saying; public money must not go to an organization that operates a school from a position of private religious beliefs.
[ 20 July 2008: Message edited by: remind ]
We could add, things like:
1. No adequate sex education
2. Heterosexual family teaching only
3. Systemically entrenched sexism
But does it really matter what issues there are? The reality is there are too many issues to try and eradicate, in order for public funding to apply. As religion, their religion, is entrenched into their school systems. Period.
etd to remove creationism by popular consensus, though I know Catholics who believe whole heartedly in it.
[ 20 July 2008: Message edited by: remind ]
I don't have much but at least one thing on that list is almost certainly false.
The church doesn't control the system. The democratically elected school board trustees control the system. Well, except to the extent that the provincial government controls the system.
This is incorrect.
I attended Catholic high school many decades ago, and it was made clear to us that the church had no position against evolution, and the nun who taught the course indicated that she believed the Adam and Eve story was 'symbolic'.
They also taught that gay people weren't sinners, gay sex was the sin. So it was okay that people were gay, they just could never EVER have sex. The reason that they gave was that they could not produce children when they had sex. I asked, what about a married hetero Catholic couple that is infertile for some reason. That sent my religion teacher into an ethics/reason glitch. I took a lot of enjoyment in asking those questions in religion class, mostly 'cause I was a little punk who enjoyed watching my teacher squirm. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]
While I do agree with some of reminds other points this is one myth about Catholics that I do wish could be laid to rest. Catholics whether in school or church are for the majority part not creationists and haven't been for some time. I've seen some pretty dogged out battles between Catholics and creationist/iders on this subject.
Having asked that, I will point out that we can see from your, and others, examples, they mixed religion and evolution, notwithstanding is the most important and sole fact they teach/indoctrinate religion, their religion.
I would beg to differ that just the religion classes need removal, to be acceptable for public funding.
That is to say that the story symbolizes the creation of the universe, much in the same way creation myths from other cultures do.
I imagine that the Adam/Eve story is probably some kind of Sumerian myth that was handed down anyway, so our culture probably inherited it from some long-dead peoples...
Uh, so what do you not get about "creation" vs evolution? As you just said above it was a creation myth.
But Catholics, I would say, tend to think that God's creation involved lighting the fuse on the big bang. This is what my kindly teacher believed, and why Adam / Eve wasn't taken literally [by her].
Excellent point, bears repeating.
Anyways, the separate boards are all crazy anyways from what I hear, so personally I'm just as happy not having to deal with some of those people. Went through enough of that nonsense before I switched myself out of Catholic high school in grade 10.
A bigger issue of concern to me is the siphoning off of many of the most advantaged students to private schools as well as specialty schools within the publc and separate boards -- French immersion, arts, or my brother also works out of a tech school. There is also way, way too much reliance on fundraising, which leads to a huge disparity in the amount of money that the different schools have even with the same publicly funded boards.