Religion in schools (Green Party of Ontario)

In another thread we were discussing whether the GPO has changed their position on faith in public schools, and it was off-topic so I'm starting a new one copying the relevant posts to start:

In my view, they've shifted from a staunch defender of secular schools to supporting and condoning religious worship in schools.

This accommodation has been done discretely to my knowledge. I don't recall a public discussion about this and in my view it is an inappropriate use of public property. The space devoted for this purpose should be used in some other manner.

It is condoning indoctrination, which is inappropriate. It normalizes religious devotion and prayer and tells the child that the state / school supports their parents/guardians efforts (intentional or otherwise) to pass on their religious faith.

The issue here isn't religious studies. A teacher instructing a religious education / comparative religion class is one thing. Such classes are like mythology classes, where the subject matter isn't being taught as true - that the student should believe or worship. Encouraging belief in and facilitating devotion to the supernatural by providing a space for such practices is another matter.

The state does, through the Charter.

I have little time for religions, but their right to worship is nicely safeguarded. Providing, say, a space for Muslim students to worship is one of those things that a school can only really deny on the grounds of hardship (eg: they have no spare rooms and no money to build more). They must accomodate that request if they can. They certainly can't refuse on the grounds that prayer = indoctrination.

I'm not so sure whether a Charter argument would succeed or whether there is any case law on point. It's been awhile since I took Constitutional Law 101, and it wasn't my best subject (I found it really boring at the time).

The GPO policy or position on education has not really changed.

It was never as anti-religion as some (hsfreethinker) would paint it, or would like it to be. It was (and is) mainly about doing away with the administrative waste of having two separate, overlapping/parallel systems. It was not "get religion out of schools", but rather "end the unfair practice of funding one religion to the exclusion of others" but without going to a fund-every-religious-board mess. The plan was to merge both into a single, secular administration. This would end the Catholic board's integration of religion into all aspects of education, but would allow space during the day (and in the school) for optional religous instruction and observance.

The secular aspect would mean that the public purse is no longer paying for one religion's (Catholic) education system. It would not bar the learning about or practice of religion; the latter would be handled by the community which the school serves, with access to the school as appropriate, and student (& parent) choice preserved. A balance would be sought whereby religious practice is not publicly funded, but is allowed. That could include things like the use of school facilities outside of regular classroom time. "Secular" would be interpreted as not fostering a particular religion, but not seeking to expunge it, either.

Although the member-approved policy has not changed, the issue has dropped from being a teir-1 election platform issue to tier-2 or tier-3. The likely policy direction after the next conference is, if elected, to create a stakeholder commission to study funding, charter/constitution, and other issues and make a recommendation, with the GPO single-board idea being one of the alternatives considered. That way there would be more people involved in making the decision than just GPO MPPs.

This isn't Canadian politics.  It's provincial and should be in the Central Canada forum.

GPO (ie its previous leader & small coterie) stands accused of having been used in the run up to and during the '07 election, to contribute to distracting from the main thing exercising the antidemocratic elite around that time re Ontario, viz the undebated re-introduction of nuclear power expansion here, since backed away from, making it all even more ludicrous. None, zero, of my arguments and questions had been properly addressed by GPO-ers, which demonstration of offensive ineptitude mostly led to my distancing myself from that hapless intellectually moribund party, sad to say, because there was so much energy, experience and capability on offer at this end.

The PCs were also recruited to fan the flames as they could only burn in historically xenophobic Ont. when it comes to public schooling. They were too good for their own good at the job, and GPO disgraced itself by piling on & profiting from the xenophobia. Notice how GPO #s minus that inflammatory issue out front have tumbled when tested at the polls. Byelections they were, to be sure, and GPC suffers similarly. But it was no accident that GPO did best based on this issue in historically the least Catholic area in Ont. NW of Toronto. Now that the issue is of little use, no need to push it, GPO served its silly purpose.

So many other crummy things around GPO, sad to say, it is a true squandering of political opportunity for capable opposition. The media would have paid attention, if only for novelty's sake, more easily on the grounds of Queen's Park than Ottawa to regular capable expression of "green"-oriented criticism of the Liberals et al. Energetic participation was waiting at the gates, but the gates were jammed shut.

The motivations that Erich puts forth here are false, I firmly believe from long experience having delved into the issue among GPO-ers. And his presentation of the issue is false as well. Leave the arch-secularism to the left. That is partly why they need a complemetary party like Greens could be, as they might be shaping up to be eventually federally, and the brand would ride to whatever success provincially on the coattails of that national brand. If GPC can hold together. Big if.

Also, as pointed out promptly post-election, to the incredulity and further incomprehension of GPO-ers, the fair inclusionist goals of independent schoolers in Ont. are more likely to be accomplished now that a black-focus school is having its trial in Toronto. GPO doesn't say anything against separate boards for French, or schools for black-focus, it's just the religion that stupidly sticks in the craw. The $ argument is irrelevant and even dumbly distracts from what could truly have been on "green" offer.

But why is this in a forum on national politics? OK -- NB that only in Ont. is all this a real problem, more evidence damning the GPO position. Spiritual inclusion into politics, however difficult, is at the root of "green" motivation, and sets it off against left politics in the main. From that standpoint alone the GPO ed. policy (itself an otherwise inexplicable reversal of a sensible inclusionist older policy, until just before the 07 election that is...) is "green"-ludicrous.

I can't see any issues with setting aside a room for religious students to worship.  Just like a sci-fi or drama club, If it engages the kids, let them do it.  

For the record, I object to that term anti-religion.

Instruction fine (if it's not indoctination), but "observance"? That's not what I understood the GPO to be promoting.

I'd like to see some evidence of that earlier policy. I thought it was pretty clear the GPO was endorsing the One School System approach, for example:

Here's the former GPO leader on the subject. It doesn't sound like religious observance in public schools is what he had in mind:

If anyone wants to discuss this issue from the perspective of other Provinces, please do so. Anyway, I suggest the phrase "from far and wide" be changed to "provincial politics" so it is clearer. I didn't realise there was an area for provincial politics.

Hi, hs'.

I can dig up a copy of the green-sensible older policy for you if you wish. There was even reference to the same UN commission condemning ed. inequality in Ont., where inclusivist PLURALISTIC (ie "green"-sensible) non-discrimatory funding was touted as remedy, the same UN
thing that was then turned around to bash Catholic schools with. And ed. "efficiency" arguments contra Catholics was particiularly ludicrous, since Catholic schools were "outperforming" by some standard measures regular boards, as well as having less violence. So comes out that GPO supports effectively more school violence, less competition, less diversity, modernist monolithism, and on & on it hurts, a more exact opposite to what a green policy should be could not be contrived. The laughable highlight for so many GPO defenders of the policy was in savings on gas for school bussing. What a joke.

Maybe if anyone cares this issue could be turned to show a potentially constructive left-green difference, how Ont. is at the very heart of empire and acts this out in part historically in ed. policy anti-Catholic & by extension in secularist religion approach to public schooling, how this compares with other provinces' distinct lack of problems just so, except Manitoba historically, where the Orangemen's animus held sway, you could tie in Riel & Quebec...education should be the absolute core green policy item, bar none, for all kinds of reasons theoretical and practical, and the severe stumbling of GPO on this puts it of a piece with a sorrier side of Ontario past and unfortunately ongoing, the latter esp. in how a supposedly dissenting movement can be used for imperial purpose.

How's that for broadening it to fit into a federal politics thread?

Yeah the efficiency arguments aren't compelling to me at all.  But they had the best stance of the parties on the question of religious school funding in the last provincial election. 

L.P., if you're a mainstream babbler, there's a higher probability to your admiration of that basic exclusion of religions.  That's part of what I meant by the comment above, "Spiritual inclusion into politics, however difficult, is at the root of "green" motivation, and sets it off against left politics in the main". Or should set it off against. But Canada and esp. Ontario seem particularly unable to get up a critical mass of "green" thinking in this vein.  It has to do with the regnant low spirituality (and non-intellectuality) of our country, as opposed to, say, churchiness tendency, and vs. the higher and more common spiritual expressions in the US, however loopily that comes out (partly due to their anti-intellectuality).

So "spiritaulity" per se needs to be judged on content, but to do that effectively it needs to be included in the "public square", which will most often naturally be via religions. Unfortunately, the way religions are dealt with in the public square mostly these days is in cheap Hitchensian or Dawkinsian &c veins. 

If the left is maybe the strongest heir of the humanistic "rational" turn that set in a few hundred years ago, and politically somewhat later, and if many of our drastic failings today are owing to deficiencies with this conceptual parent of modernism, it is precisely in what should be a constructive post-modernist politics, "green" supposedly, that corrective should be proferred, and that would include important pre-modern elements, like a re-assessment of the de-spiritualization that  some of feel strongly is what's at root of the left's inability in the main to challenge the worst of what's set upon us in deep earnest.

The ultimate adversaries understand the power of spiritual reference and exploit it for private gain at enormous public loss. Only by including spirituality under the governing umbrella, difficult as that can seem, can misuse of religion be confronted, and can leadership stem from the most deeply motivated of all.  Can't be done by treating religion with kid gloves or as a straw man, and certainly not by excluding it from education.  Canada and esp. Ontario because of demographic and relative peacefulness can be at the heart of such a political renewal, a quiet one.  But the natural vehicle for this, GPO, has been misused badly.

I suggest eliminating use of the term, "religion", from talk about these issues, like ed.   "Tradition" is better for one.  If it somehow comes out that an Armenian Christian or a Zoroastrian school turn out better citizens in some respect, even if is mostly inscrutable to outsiders, it deserves public support.  $ & # of boards is completely beside the point, is a subsidiary matter, one that GPO got completely wrong, and showed me how far under its previous leader it had strayed, to the point of apparently being used, a kind of charge NDP-ers are prone to make, no?

I don't think I'm all that popular around here, so I don't know.

Snert, do you know of any caselaw that establishes a duty on public schools to provide space for prayer? I'm not saying there isn't any, just that if there is (a) I'd like to know and (b) I'm interested in reading it. My understanding from this article is that indoctrination is not permitted in public schools: Education, Religion and the Courts in Ontario.

Excerpt from Conclusion:

Mention of the Adler case reminded me of what hs' showed interest in above, the old GPO policy, and since on my occasional check up on goings on on that GPC blogsite I abandoned (might not have were there more "freethinker" participants like hs') I noticed his linking to this discussion here, I looked up that old press release from 1999, from which quotes below.  I won't link back to that blog here because it is so ridiculous, but the GPC blogger involved is so laughably exemplary of what I was saying above about GPO and being out to lunch with little apparent hope of real "green"-authentic political value (he even went for that bussing garbage, it is so funny): [it is a bit kooky the press release as well, what i came to expect from the previous gpo leader, so i won't quote it in full]

...............

[...]

Green Party of Ontario supports UN Ruling to Extend Ontario School Funding

[...]

"[...] this government disguises its disregard for human values, religious traditions, and parental choices,"

[...]

The Green Party of Ontario calls on the Government of Ontario to
initiate a legislative review of existing policies to consider funding
for all qualified school systems and educational programs, (including
home schooling), and that these systems be administered by local school
boards with appropriate community involvement.

The Green Party believes that providing funding to a number of proven
educational systems will restore community-based, family-driven
education. Any given school would have a variety of systems under it's
roof.

[...]

.................

It is admitted that the seeds for policy reversal were sown then, but it only strangely came together just prior to the '07 election, and really was a reversal of what's stated in the quote. The appreciation of homeschoolers we can maybe claim to have been originating part of, as 1983 members who hosted on our farm an ed. policy meeting group.

But no matter, that '80s impetus to actually think towards a new politics floundered for too few people, which is why we focused efforts elsewhere, and we found that upon renewing involvement with Greens two decades later, the numbers had grown to make it interesting that way, but the thinking had mostly lapsed.

The doorway to real constructive dissent is still wide open, but too many Greens can't perceive the opening, keep bumping into old walls, although some at least hopefully hit the threshold or lintel.

I suspect the GPO's former position on a unified school system had more to do with leader Frank DeJong being a school teacher than with any inherent affinity between Green ideology and opposition to publicly funded parochial schools.

The social effect of separating children into religious-ethnic enclaves can only lead to the reproduction of intolerant ignorance witnessed daily around the world.

No, George, completely not so. (And despite my strong opposition to hs' view of independant schooling as well, let me add your name to his as another Green past whose thinking presence among Greens current might have encouraged me not to bolt.)  There are several extended discussions on the gpc blogsite where i argued this out pretty extensively, i dunno' if i should bother with links.

A few important points to bring here, though:

- children should not be made to do the conciliatory or whatever similar thing that adults don't bring themselves to do

- traditions (let's leave the term, as suggested, 'religions') can be of such outstanding breadth & depth that have treasures to bring for general use, to imbue with self-maintaining depth children must be steeped, often only attainable in more thoroughgoingly traditional surroundings

- these schools can show a superior quality "output" in literate citizens, so that alone demands some support

- such schools must be experienced close up to judge at all, it is forces exterior to them that can lead to negative outcomes that you predict as necessary, it is the interplay between what's within & what's without that can be positively productive or generative of trouble, precisely thus the recommendation to be conditionally inclusive under a public umbrella

- to feel comfortable about others' identities one must feel comfortable with one's own, only well achieved regarding traditions of depth by immersion

- be very careful not to generalize from a difficult Christian past

...did I say "a few points"...those are enough to dangle for to be snapped at argumentatively...

(n.b. before any of this repartee gets off the ground if it does, i argue as a non-(/"home"-)schooler of some 30 years, having 'lost" about a million dollars doing what we did, i am at severe odds as a "green" with much of the ed. approach of my co-religionist fighters for ed. funding equity, all that to say that i really feel i am arguing this disinterestedly and from long experience)

Why are all our political parties so out of touch with the people on this issue?

What could Max B. mean by that?

In Ont. GPO really was in touch with a xenophobic option that got them support in a regularly lesser or anti-Catholic area, giving an option for PC-supporters to flee to.

So they were in touch with that smallish group, as well with militant onebigfatboardmonolithers who captured the leader.

The PC-ers were in touch if incompetently with a significant and important group of independent schoolers.

The Liberals immediately post-electiion let the black-focus thing go on, which is a backdoor for other independent approaches. In their failure to really address the matters brought up by stooge PCs & Greens, they were in touch with the discomfort surely felt by very many if not most about this "can of worms" (GPO leader's awful words wrt religion and schooling).

NDP with Hampton esp. was the only party wanting to speak to the issue that was deflected away from by the stooge parties, against expanded nuclear. And he couldn't get a hearing even "walking naked down Yonge St.", as he put it.  They surely shared the sense of strangeness about the political distraction.

Note well that one closer advisor to the GPO leader during the period was one who had a proud Bay Street career in open enthusiastic support of nuclear!

It's all so very funny, esp. as I noted above about the eventual about face re nuclear, prob. on the basis of expected big interest rate increases in the medium term (not so much re the expected diminished electricity demand). McGuinty, whose body language during the leaders' debate mention of the topic gave himself away -- he actually turned his face away from the camera -- had apparently given assurances at a Bilderberger meeting in Ottawa that nukes were go for Ontariario, and then we got those billboards all over about nuclear being "in the energy mix". No better way to distract politics in Ontario than re the stupid Catholic/religious school board thing.

And they all were pretty much in touch with Ontarians' generally ignorant complacency.

Still, can't blame politicians too much for Ontarians' unreasonable or uncertain or inchoate feelings.

What does Max B. mean?

[edited just to add: now see me myself get distracted from what i am working on by this inflammatory issue, but i do wear it like an old shoe, so words come quickly, and i do think i have the "deeper green" take on it...]

Polls have shown a majority support ending Catholic school funding.  Must mean most Ontarians are anti-Catholic bigots right? 

Why ask that poll question?  Believe me, I am no defender of Catholics per se!  But what is essential to stress is the severely underexpressed point of view regarding traditions and diversity in education.  Asking that question these days in a fake-terror-stirred prevailing anti-muslim xenohpobia or unease with Islam, that is asking at the wrong time and the wrong question altogether.  And so you see a split largely corresponding to population proportions involved (and of course I know that some Catholic-schoolers would vote to eliminate the separate boards).  But why not focus on French, then? Why would they need independent boards?  The whole major positive historic point in old-Orange Ont. about Catholic schooling being privileged was precisely the accomodationist factor. Why would one ever want to mess with that?

Just keep all the kids together long enough so that they can later understand just how their oh so well-intentioned parents were actually pocket bigots and racists who were unable to climb out of their own acculturation...didn't even know the deadly work they were engaged in by drawing ethnic lines, erecting fences, often in the name of rationalization and efficiency.  Voltaire's pure Bastards. 

Well, George, I think I mentioned earlier that I thought JR Saul was way, way off with his comments on education, despite my agreement with much in A Fair Country.

In our day, there needs to be deep motivation to relocalize, to have community functions re-own everthing from power generation to local transport to food provision to alternative currencies to dealng well with their young.  It's what I've called "revalidation of the local". The deepest motivations of all are positive, sorry you have the opposite impression.  When religious-minded go awry and attack others, look first for hard-to-see manipulation. Include religious-minded under a public umbrella with partial conditional funding,  they will feel PART of the differentiated whole enough to not upset it. Some will feel that they will be compromised by having to meet conditions, and we must accept that keepers of purported traditional purities just need to keep somewhat apart, and the lesser devoted do depend on these.  My conditions would involve direct bodily contribution to communal public projects, a much-extended variant of the hours high schoolers have to put in in some community function or another already.  That is a way to foster togetherness, not to monolithically cram all under one roof, or, worse sometimes as is suggested, to have them under one roof then go off their own ways from each other for token worship or whatever.  That accentuates otherness in a possibly inappropriate fashion.  As schools have become replacement for home-based transmission of ideas & feelings (except us avant-garder non-schoolers out to reverse the trend, part of that "green" re-localizing), they are an extension of the very personal aspects of family, and where families transmit values -- which must be assumed as positive, unlike what you are saying -- that are comprehensive or demanding enough in their eyes to warrant differential schooling, so be it, with some support from the general collective purse as they turn out capable citizens.

What ugliness can you have directly witnessed to have such a sorry opinion of, say, fences? Caring about what one holds dear entails readiness to protect, so to sometimes fence off.  I largely shun "efficiency" as the rubric for relocalization, even as "greens" dumbly take it on.  Resilience via richness of community reassuming the functions as listed above, that is the heart of the matter, and traditional schooling is a to- be-encouraged seriously important part of that.  If modernists secularists still miss that by chucking traditions one loses much value, they are part of the grosser world-problems we are all in, more than they are useful critics.

DV:

"What ugliness can you have directly witnessed to have such a sorry opinion of, say, fences? Caring about what one holds dear entails readiness to protect, so to sometimes fence off.  I largely shun "efficiency" as the rubric for relocalization, even as "greens" dumbly take it on.  Resilience via richness of community reassuming the functions as listed above, that is the heart of the matter, and traditional schooling is a to- be-encouraged seriously important part of that.  If modernists secularists still miss that by chucking traditions one loses much value, they are part of the grosser world-problems we are all in, more than they are useful critics."

The "modernists secularists" that you fear are nowhere near as dangerous as the libertarian Green Party element to whom efficiency appeals very much indeed. You may dislike J.R.Saul but I'm left wondering why?

I found this resource guide intended for school boards: Education About Religion in Ontario Public Elementary Schools. The document discusses Ontario Court of Appeal's Elgin County decision. I wonder whether and how the principles from this case would apply to the GPO's revised policy of separating kids according to their parents' religion and facilitating indoctrination on public school property:

Geo. V.,

Sorry about the doubled plural, I meant "modernist secularists", but no matter really.

Danger can come from all quarters, as can constructive contribution. So I accept the benefit of "modernist secularist" (modsec, let me call it) melting away of pre-modern stuff that needed to be gotten over, even esp. wrt religion. But the dangers, eg, that stem from lack of humility in human endeavour derive more easily from modsec than from libertarian greens. Unless, ie, the latter have a cultural underpinning that leads them astray (will call them libeff), which I do see is largely the case among Cdn. Greens now, agreeing with you. They can more easily come to be untrue to questions of scale & design (a question of humility!), which untruthfulness I take to be anathema to "green" purpose. So they e.g. can unquestioningly support proliferation of hideous gargantuan wind turbines and be deaf to complaints about deleterious effect and too hasty big money behind it, and can want to steamroll over a delicate constitutional and historic balance wrt Ont. ed. But it stems from the culture rather than the libertarian element per se. In empire-central Ontario, Catholicism, or rather the political fact of accomodation to their schooling, is singularly of importance. The ugliest roots of that empire now trodding upon the entire world showed up well in trodding upon the Irish and in Catholic-bashing for hundreds upon hundreds of years, not to mention subversive use of religion to achieve goals of domination, the kind of subversion only available to the religiously indifferent, in such a manner as to be just those who are most in need of religious restraint. Catholicism worked politically differently in different places, but in the anglo world it still stands as prime current of dissent. That fact alone should encourage its embrace rather than its ejection as desired by hard-head (tête-carré...?) green efficiency-ists, libeff. Their cultural libertarian bent stems from a northern european male get-off-my-back kind of approach to "freedom", which they instinctively apply to restrictions, even good and humbling ones, that religious tradition could put on them.

But modsec assimilates, to continue the examples, to gargantuism or financial overlordship even more easily than libeff. So I disagree about your danger assessment.

And hs' should stop referring to "indoctrination". It really is wrong. If you want a stunning example of real indoctrination, look to what preavils in crass scientism. Thoughtful religionists have been properly humbled by the modsec wave. It's time for the wave to wash back over themselves.

D.V.: Indoctrination is the correct term. We are communicating with words, and it helps to be precise in our language, concise, and clear in our writing style. I still find your posts difficult to interpret, which is why I often don't respond.

"why I often don't respond"

hs', i'm not out to get your response

when i address you, it's just that i think you might find interesting what i say in response to something you said, however difficult the syntax can sometime get; it's for any and all interested readers, and if on the gpc blogs i figured maybe 1 in a 100 or more would be thoughtful enough to consider my heartfelt output, maybe on babble it's a better proportion, but i just pass by here now and then, and find myself tarrying...

i find most others, with simplistic syntax, simplistic conceptually -- it is tough to swallow a whole world in a sentence, which i am guilty often enough of trying to do

"indoctrination", since the word is offensive really, i'll shoot back is only employable as a term by someone grossly ignorant of what's being criticized -- how could you deign to declare absence of critical thought from what goes on in religious ed.? THAT is offensive, it is pejorative (i take no offence, but you should know what you're putting out, you are demeaning yourself, and a humanist perspective deserves a good hearing -- why not à la Austin Dacey I got to reading because of your suggestion, who, like myself, would invite religion, if provocatively ,into the public square)

you also seem completely oblvious to the grossly deleterious function of the "religion" of our time & place, what i called "scientism", science this science that referred to in the stupidest non-analytical and downright dangerous way possible

that is a gauntlet thrown down, i can lead to some raging examples about misuse of appeals to science vs real critical thinking -- the very kind fostered by traditional reference, the very kind ideally fostered in such ed. environments

ps nb that conning's persence among gpc-ers is a telling sign that dejong could be preparing for real to take over gpc leadership, with a cadre of unfortunate support, and i'll distance myself further still from them at that eventuality

D.V., if you find the Wikipedia definitions of "indoctrination" and "religious indoctrination" offensive, you have the power to edit them to make the necessary changes. About critical thinking - you don't start with an answer (e.g. God exists and created everything, etc.). You start with questions and look at evidence. Is there any evidence of God(s)? A: No. QED

i can't care about the wikip. entry, except that your quote itself refers to perjorative use, which you seem to be feeding off

as such you are being offensive, as well as of little logic and perception

when a Buddhist or a Confucianist would want a school for their own, they don't bother all that much or at all about your "God(s)" -- on what basis will you deny them then?

and how can you not admit that secularity or scientism functions for some as religions function for others? you'd do well to consider that one deeply

why not accept Dacey's point about admissiblilty of religions into the public square, exactly what i dare from my opposite corner? but maybe we he & i are not so opposite, if you'll recall what i said at the gpc blogs about his favourable treatment of my own tradition

how can you teach anything whatsoever in one of your secular schools (never mind the knifings in the background in some...) on a scientific basis, when such stuff gets regularly overturned constantly? as human endeavour, religion bids fair to be treated just as you would any other, like science, and expect failings and betterments based upon it

do you start with a question about everything you do? when you swallow your breakfast, do you make sure you've questioned it all beforehand, if it'll get digested the same useful way as the day before? see, that's as ludicrous a framing of it as you've made of a traditional enterprise

D V, I don't want to get into a discussion on some of the points you've raised, as I've had many such discussions. They go on and on, and they usually don't accomplish much.

good, neither do i, esp. not here where there is likely to be few participants -- but why evade the germane ed.-in-ontario points?

that is a cop out; i've made no digressions, all is tied in; the arguments have been variously boiled down or dilated upon, if you evade the latter, how can you avoid the former:

rel. schools produce upright citizens at a rate at least as good as non-rel

rel. parents wanting rel. schools pay taxes to uphold institutions for others producing upright citizens (and those that don't!)

ergo rel. parents should be able to fairly offer differential ed. for their own

(best to avoid framing as "religous", however, but i can accept a popular boiled version of low flavour for argument's sake for now)

re gpo:

if there is anything to authenticity, and "spirituiality" is at the stated heart of green political renewal

relgions are obviously the principal sources for learning of spirituality

religions need depth of transmission to prosper

such transmission occurs best in schools for children for very many people

gpo should revert to its original acceptance of differential schooling, incl. for religious

(but i do not care about them all that much, so this is for ideal political argument's sake)

I don't think I've avoided any of your arguments / views. I expressed my thoughts on those on the GPC blogs shortly before you left.

DV:

"if there is anything to authenticity, and "spirituiality" is at the stated heart of green political renewal"

And here I thought that the $/vote relationship was "at the heart of green political renewal."

ok, guys, looks like that ratio is about the same in these parts...

bye, hs', you've completely not addressed almost anything of what i said there nor here -- and you're one of the better ones!

geo., c'mon, snipe away, i see we see some things from the same angle, but what does your remark contribute to the discussion --

you're right, even gpc has gone off in a very wrong $-chasing direction, and in re ed., focus on $ is even worse!

but canadians don't generally do what's right politically for themselves, so if gpc and gpo are going in a wrong diection, maybe they'll see some "success" soon

look, why don't you address some of the more left-incisive stuff i've claimed, esp. about assimilation to a $ regime by the left? how is it that libertarianish critics of financial overlordship all too easily and often correctly lump leftish centralist governance patterns with addiction to central banking &c? the latter are the ultimate stringpullers, making manipulative use of religion that should be the ALLY of a confrontational non-assimilatory left

all you secular school defenders -- what has all your secular schooling taught everyone about basics of debt & money and who controls what? is it also lost on you that someone like Tommy Douglas must have been rather religiously motivated, and that he was tailed by secret services in the service of whom? religious people?

Tommy's socialism was of the social gospel variant. He got kicked out of his church for his overiding concerns for poor people. His socialism depended on the Sermon from the Mount as the source of principles.  More and more,"religious people" today are coming from a concern for self, wanting to be "saved", taking Revelations literally and looking forward to being raptured into the arms of their maker (and bugger the hindmost, men women and children).  There is no comparison between Tommy's religion and this  wingnut variety depending on a  pathetically self-absorbed humanity.

i'm sure there are similar proportions of decently motivated religious people then as now

there has to be at least a similar proportion of decent religiously schooled as non-, for me to argue (in a crude flavourless form of argument, that maybe i can abandon now that hs' is out of it) for rel. ed. funding (which, again, i argue not for as rel. per se, but for diversity, tradition , breadth, depth -- notice my avoidance of "choice"-talk)

part of my point about manipulation of religion is the preying on that grosser side of it by unseen interests -- poor bible-belters voting against their own interests inflamed by, what, anti-abortion stuff (cf xenophobe ontarians sure to stir up a political fuss about catholic singularities); a whole world riled up by framing fake terror on muslims; the extremes that are taken advantage of are nowhere prevalent among religionists, that they are made prominent is owing to manipulation by forces the left & greens should be more forceful about pointing at & shining the light on

It might be helpful for your understanding of why these poor, religious victims of manipulation are so much more malleable than the secular humanists if you read this book:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

"so much more malleable"

M.M., why the "so much"? and why "more"? i have had interchanges with sec-hums who have proved hopelessly naive and unaware of their own assumptions, kind of what i've berated hs' & others about re modsec generally, about their lack of awareness of its functioning often as religious surrogate, with sometimes even worse and more dangerous failings

why not just point to different possibly evil inclinations of different groups?

it is better to generalize about human propensities altogether, and include modsec/sech-hum/libeff/rel-trad... as data all, not single out one as "so much more", as if others aren't so much more something in their own way, kind of treating it anthropologically maybe, and find complementary foibles

the 'scientism' posture of a skeptic, eg, more readily allied to sec-hum/modsec, is demonstrably every bit as dangerous as an authoritarian religionist

Another side to this issue are all of the LGBT teachers and students who are harassed by publicly-funded catholic school systems. I am quite aware of this because I unfortunately am a gay male in Ontario's Catholic system. When a teacher signs a contact with a catholic system, they must sign a "catholicity clause" in their contract which essentially says they must be catholic role-models both at work AND in their private life, and if they violate this they can be fired by the board. The Ontario Human Rights Commission can do very little since denominational schools have rights very broadly recognized in the Charter.

First, D V, I must say that I find your writing very difficult to understand. That may simply be because I am an old fart. But to my mind, you seem to be willing to abandon clarity to save a few dozen keystrokes. I can see that when you type "sec-hums" you mean secular humanists, and "rel-trad" is probably supposed to mean religious traditionalist. But I have no idea what you mean by "modsec" or "libeff". Having said that, I will try to respond to what I imagine is the substance of your posting.

I am going to assume that you have read Bob Altmeyer's book, as I suggested. When I assert as facts conclusions which are justified in that book by scientific evidence, I will not feel compelled to restate the evidence that Altmeyer has accumulated.

Being "hopelessly naive and unaware of their own assumptions" is a venial sin in my view. A secular humanist with these faults, who has a low RWA score, will be able to respond appropriately, and learn something when his naivete and assumptions are pointed out to him. On the other hand, a high RWA religionist will resist to the death all attempts to point out his errors. He will prefer the "truth" told to him by his authority figure to the evidence of his own senses. He will in fact be happy to physically harm someone who is targeted by his leaders as "evil". I challenge you to come up with an example of an "even worse and more dangerous failing" of a low RWA skeptic.

While I, like most leftist inclined individuals, confess to being a "moral relativist" to some extent, I do hold some values as absolute. Most importantly, I accept the scientific method as the only valid approach to finding truth in everyday life. Evidence matters to me. I can accept that others disagree with my conclusions, so long as they have some reasonable, evidence based way to come to their different conclusions. But I regard the mind set of the high RWA individual, who rejects all evidence that contradicts his belief system, as an unqualified evil.

Please do demonstate this assertion. I don't believe there is any basis in fact for it whatsoever.

But "logic" and "evidence" are just as much "belief systems" as religion is.

Is this about to break into a "who is the most bloody-minded" , soppy kind of back and forth?   Not "religion in schools"?

Only if you are a solipsist. In which case, discussion is pointless.

Yup.

If you regard a philosophical discussion as "soppy", then I suppose it is that.

M.M., I guess I shouldn't figure a thread 'll be read top to bottom, somewhere up there i kind of invented those abbreviations (for fun, too, eh?) and stuck with it.

Altmeyer I'll have to try to get to later, I only just now could glance at that one webpage you linked, sorry.

(btw, look, i'm not staking out nothing here, i really was so into this greens & ed. stuff, theoretical & practical, for some time among "greens", it really does wear like an old shoe, so when i saw the topic revisited, i thought why not have some more fun...)

and i'm only just now acquainted with sdo & rwa (a whole lot more obscure than my short forms) -- but i hope i'm an old breath of fresh air (possible?)...let me read up a bit and maybe then go at it on your terms

as for the requested demo re "scientism", i'm right in the middle of battling maybe the most egregious example of rigid orthodoxy since...the Catholic Inquisition? (see, told you i was a disinterested defender of catholic schooling in Ont., see also above), vs the monstrous industry-abettor-regulator-"scientific" nexus behind what is fairly described as the most potent destructive health and environmental matter of our day, re "electrosmog", esp. re microwaves; it would be an example to thresh out in a renamed thread, but the examples i could bring of an "atheist" or a "skeptic" or a "scientist" -- the best among them have via that naivete i spoke about allowed themselves to be owned by that nexus, and it is every bit as bad as what being in lockstep with one's leader could be, nay, worse, because it is a rough equivalent of that cruder rigidity all the while claiming a higher more rational ground that is thereby spoiled ; and just as the manipulative know to manipulate religious attitudes for their unsuspected purposes, same for reference to "science"

"While I, like most leftist inclined individuals, confess to being a "moral relativist" to some extent, I do hold some values as absolute. Most importantly, I accept the scientific method as the only valid approach to finding truth in everyday life. Evidence matters to me. I can accept that others disagree with my conclusions, so long as they have some reasonable, evidence based way to come to their different conclusions. But I regard the mind set of the high RWA individual, who rejects all evidence that contradicts his belief system, as an unqualified evil."

That statement is just plain soppy. You may "confess" to being whatever you want, but your generalization about folks of the left is nonsense. It sure as shucks ain't from science.

D V, I feel your pain. There are certainly many bureaucratic officials who callously use "science" to enforce their whims. I have followed the controversy over the harm/not harm of low level radio frequency radiation. In my opinion, the question is still unsettled, but that is only my opinion. There is definitely evidence of harm, but not conclusive evidence. Still, I would not choose to live under a high tension power line. I suggest that if and when really convincing evidence appears, there will be little or no resistance in the scientific community to accepting this evidence. In contrast, there is abundant evidence of evolution, and Christianists still reject it and will continue to reject it, no matter what. That is the crucial difference.

OK, I confess to soppiness as well. Clearly you see things differently than I do, but in my own life experience, those with leftist leanings have been more likely to be able to accept that their own cultural norms are not absolute, and that people from different backgrounds may see things differently than they do, including some issues that are considered ethics. Of course it isn't science, it is just my own personal, fallible observation.

I started to type out a few things after reading a bit into Altmeyer, but too soon to post. So before I quit for the night, I see your comment about the "scientific community" and "evidence" and "resistance", and I think, communities (plural) not community, inadmissibility of evidence, failure to deal with something outside of one's comfortable paradigm making for plenty of resistance. And standing behind it all the manipulative few who dictate the unfortnunate ultimate language, $, dispensation of which mostly determines what too many of them "scientists" will say or even look at.