Jan stated:
If my Public school board amalgamated with our neighbouring Catholic
school board, we could reduce capacity of 5,500 student surplus spaces
that we share between us. Not only would we be able to get rid of
partially filled schools, but also we would be able to eliminate the
redundant administration and duplicated services that these two boards
prop up. Doing this, we would free up over 3.6 million dollars annually
and another million dollars if we calculated according to our smaller
Catholic board’s per pupil funding allocation.
If these are the millions saved in amalgamating these two small boards,
imagine the millions saved across the province by ending this overlap?
Enough is enough. Instead of dividing, we should be measuring and
aligning our legacy. We should be calculating the potential savings
across the province.Imagine what we could do together in education, for all kids, from all
faith and non-faith communities alike, with a single public school
system for each official language only. We could direct our savings
into effective and sustainable student programs, services, and school
classrooms.Therefore, re-investments in student programming becomes the priority over investment in organizational structures.
A student-centered funding strategy will enable us to provide quality
educational programs and better-specialized supports with more overall
choice for all students, as well as better overall supervision to
increase safety and to optimize education outcomes. Smaller class sizes
for all could become the norm. A properly funded transportation system
would treat all student riders equally and provide better bussing
service. We could clear the air by upgrading and retrofitting our
remaining school buildings, do much needed capital repairs and complete
long overdue maintenance orders to make our schools healthy and
environmentally friendly. By properly funding music, art, drama, sports
programs, and popular extracurricular activities, we could finally
dispense with student fees and fundraising for these essentials.
I believe that her information was short shifted and tokenized by following responders, for a variety of reasons. Nor is it a red herring to the argument of not funding Catholic schools. It is an additional factor to that of stopping the funding for separate schools, whilst both schools have empty seating and thus are a drain on the entire system.
I too agree that Jan's argument is indisputable - which is probably why it went unaddressed. Those of us who agree saw there was nothing more to add, and those who disagree could not counter the logic.
And if we think the UN and international organizations are unsympathetic to the vicious empire now, wait a few years until a semi-Islamified Europe exists. I think we'd best forget about old white men and their ambitions to achieve separation of church and capitalism. Let today's powerful white men get out of the road, if they want to grow old. The future is not their's to decide.
Some children grow up, move out, and choose their own beliefs. I know that's hard to believe about immigrants to Europe from colonized countries, but try hard. It even happens in Canada. That's why some parents are desperate to not let their kids mix and mingle with the "other". You might lose control.
Your posts, though most often off topic and blathering, usually do not contain the overt sexist and racist content, proclaimed in this sarcastic irony, or attempt at it, I should say.
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"watching the tide roll away"
That's right, so many millions of Asians want to leave those countries because Washington consensus forced on them has created intolerable living conditions for tens of millions of people. So they emigrate to Europe, and they are here already and will be growing in numbers. So why should we think it democratic to set up society according to the ideals of a 22 percent phony majority government in Toronto who are mainly white males? And yes, there will be an estimated quarter billion more Muslims in 90 years. The Asians and Africans are coming, unionist. And some day in the future, one of them will copulate with a relative in your family tree at some point. It's inevitable. So why get all worked up about deciding for them before they even get here? We don't even have a modern electoral system in place yet. My goodness, we're running out of white babies!!
I'm disgusted that some in the NDP believe that Catholics have special rights and actually say Tory's plan was "dividing Ontarians" and "segregation." As much as I disagreed with John Tory's proposal (and for those in the Jewish community for instance who supported it) it was no more disreputable than the status quo advocated by McGuinty and Hampton.
News flash: Catholics are no longer an oppressed group in Ontario. They may have been in the 19th century, but not today. If it's about oppression - then Muslims deserve funding before anyone else given how Islamophobic Ontario society is (I'm not advocating this and believe fighting intolerance means bringing children together and not segregation just that the "oppressed group" argument doesn't hold water). However Catholics were here in large numbers in the 19th century and represent a large voting bloc, but Muslims are not. Why is it fair that a more established, non-oppressed group deserves school funding most?
They'll prolly end up funding their own religious schools with money borrowed from a Muslim bank not charging them usurous rates of interest. Brown people are coming. Better lock up your daughters and granddaughters. Their way will displace ours in large parts of the world. Resistance is futile!! Church and capitalism! Perhaps more church than capitalism. It could prove to be an improvement over this neoliberalized deregulated mess. Sounds good to me. I'm not worried for some reason.
All this blablabla just to let the bishops keep siphoning public taxes to perpetuate their kind? Lot of emotion there, not much sense. It's a good example of why public religious education must be abolished and forgotten.
News flash: they were oppressed until 1984 by an educational system that told them "when you turn 16 and finish Grade 10 you can either go get a job like your dad did at your age, or try to persuade your parents to pay tuition fees for you if they can, or leave all your friends, switch schools, and go to a school where everyone sees your parents were too poor to keep you in your own school."
double post
This thing about saving taxpayers money is absolutely ridiculous. And especially if we consider the ridiculous amounts of taxpayer's money that is siphoned off and carted away by special interest groups without a religious bone in their ample bodies. They worship money, and I don't care for their ways a lot moreso than I am uncomfortable with witchdoctors infiltrating capitalism. It might even be an overall improvement
Wilf, that's the oddest example of "oppression" I've ever encountered.
In Toronto? I can't comment. I can only say there was in Peterborough in the fall of 1958, and I don't know of anything that would have changed that situation between then and 1984.
Well Wilf, what do you think of my proposal to let everyone now in the system graduate - but no new entrants?
That would solve your "transition discrimination", wouldn't it?
Or do they all need to go on to Catholic university?
As I said when you first raised this, where would the younger kids go, physically? No room for them in the public elementary school, while the Catholic elementary school would be part-empty. Obviously they would still be in the same building, which would be two schools in one, with a Catholic Board principal running the older (shrinking) section, and a Public Board principal in charge of the younger kids. Teachers would have to transfer gradually from the Catholic Board to the Public Board, likely while remaining in the same building. The custodian and secretary would need split personalities. Nothing much would change except a double-barrelled sign outside: "St. Mary's (Grades 4 to 8) / Laura Secord (Grades JK to 3)," with the grade demarcation shifting up each year. Each bargaining unit would get the best of either collective agreement. This would continue for 10 years. Before the ten years was up, someone would surely say "this is nuts."
And we know the model country has none of those
And we know the model country has none of those
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And we know that in the case of model systems, countries or Utopias, it's the getting from here to there that's difficult, eh Fidel?
But it's the relative ease with which private school students go on to university that is most unsettling to this citoyen Canadien . Should we not promote the idea of the end of private secular schools with at least as much vigour as the emancipation of the "priest-ridden" ones, in the name of equality of opportunity?
Much easier to make that case. Less suspicion about motives. More meaningful outcome if successful.
Seems to me that the two objectives were bound together in the case of Quebec, and we only make things more difficult by separating them, elsewhere.
We already have several Catholic universities. And Catholic hospitals. and Jewish hospitals, etc. These are all religious institutions receiving taxpayer money. Is this inherently worse than religious elementary and secondary schools?
Are you being serious in suggesting the abolition of private schools?
Yes, Wilf, the new non-Catholic cohorts would obviously be in either the public or Catholic building, depending on location and capacity. Is that a problem? Are the current Catholic teachers not qualified to teach the syllabus?
And I don't think people would say "this is nuts". I think they'd say: "this is a fair and sensitive solution to inequality among faiths and segregation in public school."
Another option could be the Québec one, where religious public schools were abolished overnight as a category, but optional religious courses continued for 10 years until being ended (to zero public outcry) this year.
Note that the transition covered the same approximate time frame as my suggestion for dumping religious public schooling as per above.
Even the caretakers and secretaries accommodated to the change, Wilf, and they didn't even have to convert.
From SSC:
Are you being serious in suggesting the abolition of private schools?
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In my studies of social justice, it has always seemed to me, SSC, that serious talk about equality of opportunity in a meriticracy had to mean a really level playing field to begin with. If one is serious. And I am being serious.
You see, I don't believe we are going to get anywhere on any of the subject areas being seriously discussed here - economic, social, environmental, until we are able to bring about a Cuban-style "model". (And Cuba's exploits in the medical field are clearly something to be emulated. Just think of what they could accomplish for humanity in a world free of political and economic suppression).
One reason I keep mentioning the folk in the hills above you, there in Virginia, is that they, too, would be amazed at mention of true equality of opportunity - and a majority of them are descended from people who came to America a couple of centuries back in search of that very thing. They would react in disbelief at the mention of the concept, as you have.
"Humanity" is supposed to accomplish social and economic miracles but without any real belief in miracles. Just some kind of misbegotten hope.
School administrators already do things as bizarre as this. For example, split grades, when the overall population of students does not balance properly and individual teachers end up teaching two grade levels at once. Two set of curriculum for the same class, two sets of grades, two rubrics, etc. etc. for one teacher. This was fallout from the Harris years.
I don't think this topic has ever come up babble, nor in the papers even though it is kind of nuts.
Oh, we certainly don't have a pure meritocracy. I'm not where I am because I'm the smartest guy out there and people who are struggling are hardly all stupid.
But you can try to achieve meritocracy by trying to build some people up or by trying to tear others down adn I think attacking private schools fall into the latter.
And there are so many areas where people enjoy privelege. I'm not privileged jsut because my parents had enough to send me to private school. I'm priveleged because, for example, I'm physically healthy and fit which gives me certain advantages which gives me certain advantages over people with physical challenges. The solution is to knock down barriers for such people and create a more wlecome world for them. it's not to amputate my legs so that we're all at the same level.
It's not jsut private schools that give some an advantage over others. it's aprental education levels, it's the time they can spend helping you, it's financial security, it's personal safety. Unless you're advocating handing children over to the state, you will never have this level palying field. I don't know what attacking private schools which deliver great educations, albeit not for everyone, achieves.
Are you from Virginia, by the way George, or ahve some connection to Appalachia? Just curious since you seem pretty familair with and interested in teh area...
This is the crux of the matter.
Other than the fact that it was part of a political deal brokered in the 1860s to achieve Confederation, what justification is there for public funding religious school systems in the 21st century?
Sounds democratic to me, just abolish things with a stroke of the pen. Like abolishing poverty could be achieved in the same way. I don't care much for these kinds of abolishers who are so careful to abolish some things and not others. Henry the eighth was an abolisher of monasteries and abbeys, and razed some impressive buildings to the ground. And with the destruction of abbeys and firing of monks off the job went England's only social services, and valuable real estate seized and redistributed to people who really didnt need enriching. And there was no tax relief. Quite the opposite. It doesnt hurt to question the king's motives. How GATS threatens post-secondary
Oh for pete's sake! Likening getting rid of tax payer funding of religious schools, to actions of Henry VIII is more than a bit out there.
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"watching the tide roll away"
Are you from Virginia, by the way George, or ahve some connection to Appalachia? Just curious since you seem pretty familair with and interested in teh area...
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I'm vitally interested in the future of the U.S. as a democratic state, because, as you demonstrate and as Bageant tells us, the priveleged of 'Merica have no foggy idea of the folks feelings up in Appalachia and other redneck areas.
They will prevail and bring the Palins to power and you will wonder what in hell happened.
I will leave off inviting you to read Deer Hunting. That's now a broken reed.
So Sister Jan let us show them the peace between the orange and the green. Let's agree that thewr needs to be a lot more co-operation between the school boards/ systems. Brother Barlow talks bout buses a lot. But is it not also true to say that demographic factors are the roots of many of the problems,sich as delcinig enrolment and busing problems and that, even a one school or two school system would have to go through changes in catchment areas, closurestc?
i believe ther has been a decades long pattern in large citis like Hamilton of population in the downtown, while some sectors , maybe east, west and south, are growing. Then there are variations of generation X, Y and Z . Add migration of kids and their care-givers moving from one neighborhoold to another, one province to another, or one csuntry to another.
To use a model, imagine 10 schools, each capable of processing 500 kids between Grades 1 to 8. That might mean one year 60 kids leave Grade eight and 4o kids enter grade n school A while schol B gradtes 3o from 9 and enrols 80 in 1,, and so forth., Say 5 of the schools have for this school year a catchment population around 500, so the schos are operating close to capacity. 3 of the schools have a catchmetn population over 600, so are operating way over capacity. 2 of the schools have a catchment population below 300. so there are ineffiiciences. Then project the cathcment poputation over the next ten years, dkids entering or leaving the system at different points, and try to figure which schools could be closed and which could be opened.
Add the wide varieties of special ed needs, collective barganing with a wide range of staffs, and funding formula problems and we see why trustees get the big bucks. .
solidarity, Peter
Not as far out there as suggesting that taxes will be reduced in Ontario, or that separate school funding stands in the way of solving child poverty. Those people are so far out there that they can only meet themselves on the way back. And GATS is key to the modern day movement for enclosure.
remind - I don't think Fidel really knows why he's here, except for the opportunity it provides to try to piss off unionist. I've decided to ignore him here, myself.
A shame, really - on occasion he adds so much...
The civil rights movement, perhaps? Or the sixties and a whole new generation might have had something to do with it. And it wasn't just Toronto - as we moved around, it was the same in Oakville, Burlington and London in my experience. In many Catholic boards, the schools did not have senior grades at all - they automatically streamed into the public system after grade 10.
That's okay, I was thinking the same thing about them.
Sorry, can't find the old thread on this - just a reminder of book-banning by Ontario Catholic school boards:
[url=http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/1417/855/]Golden Compass banned[/url]
These people receive public funds to talk this way.
That's outrageous. Who are those kooks? I've never read that one, but I think now that I must. Perhaps the movie will do. With movies I'm in, out, and Opus Dei agents may never find out about it. Anyway, we should know that the Church isnt the only group that isnt completely down with quantum theories suggesting parallel universes exist. Some mainstream scientists don't enjoy it either and consider it heresy to even talk about it. Galileo Galilei was a devout Catholic, and they arrested him for heresy.
I loved the Golden Compass, it is a wonderful wonderful learning tool. Idiot asshats anyway.
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"watching the tide roll away"
[url=http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/2304/855/]Catholics schools threatened by hostile secularism, bishop says[/url]
We're comin' to get you, Paul-André!!
You betcha!!
Ok, slow down, I'm losin' ya...
Sorta like the Roman Empire! Good stuff!
O Lord, rid us of these trade unions who imperil our balance sheet! Give strength to these thy management negotiators and right-wing governments to hold the line on thy divine expenditures!
Another good reason to get the priests out of there.
Like I was saying before, the separate school I went to welcomed native kids from some pretty poor families who were turned away from public schools nearby. Those upper class snobs' kids used to torment some of our co-students on the way home from school. I hated that and began escorting one of them home because of the abuse he was experiencing. Public schools aren't all they're cracked up to be sometimes. My sister worked in one for a few years and said the separate school system is where her and her friends preferred to be.
I think the NDP have to take this very seriously...
Is it supposed to be that only rich people can afford to send their brats to private schools? What about choice? Why do we have to Stalinize/Neoliberalize everything for the sake of a few bucks saved? NeoLiberal ideology is dead. Only our two second-hand old line parties still follow that old time religion
As the legs are chopped from our manufacturing and finance systems, as unemployment mounts, with increasing demands on charity (see the ONtario Liberals gathering to try to deal with the mounting crisis) there certainly can be no better time to advance the case for cost-saving on education by twinning the Catholic and public systems.
But I see no argument coming from a separate school ratepayer. One peeped in briefly, but was silenced with a telling bit of quippery before we could learn anything. Par for the inviting atmosphere for open discourse here, the quest for knowledge.
What's it like "on the ground" out there, beyond the sophistry? To repeat an earlier post:
As for the parent of your public school child...they are desperately hoping that with private schools skimming off the upper middle class kids, and with other demands on their taxes for health and welfare, there might be something left over to support a decent education for their kids.
Strange how the great carrot, equality of opportunity becomes such a threatening idea in a "meritocracy", where failure often means a terrible future indeed.
That, folks, is the real world of parent and student, not an ideal construct. That is what is on the mind of the parent and teacher. And it leaves out all sorts of even more terrible possibilities facing the kids today, resulting from our squandering Earth's resources.
Just so we don't become too far removed from the classroom in our thinking of "what is best".
George, your posts might be punchier if you just expressed your viewpoint and omitted the de rigueur sweeping attacks on the "babble atmosphere" which you consider to be so "unwelcoming".
Fidel, I thought the demand for a single secular public school system was dictated from Washington. I'm glad to hear it is also Stalinist. When will Hitler be making his appearance?
You are now repeating your story about your nurturing ecumenical Catholic school embracing Aboriginal children where the public school allegedly shunned them. Is this the same Church which accompanied the conquistadors, determined to commit cultural genocide on all those lucky enough to survive the physical genocide?
The residential schools also "welcomed" these children. What you need to understand is that society has belatedly come to the realization that this was the embrace of death.
The priests of all shades need to be expelled from our public schools. And Ontarians who support the NDP need to take the lead, rather than making feeble faux-"progressive" excuses for this fossilized remnant of a shameful past.
Seems to me the Jesuits sometimes arrived on war ships along with a few soldiers and financed by European royalty. Jeez, now I understand why we're so offended by the mere mention of good king Henry VIII. I think we can blame good king Alfred I for wanting to re-create Roman empire for England's sake. I suppose Henry didnt have enough Catholics slaughtered to suit some. One doesnt have to necessarily be a Catholic in order to have abused natives and school children in Canada then or now. It also seems to me that First Nations people(and Chinese as long as they paid a head tax) were the charges of Queeny in London delegating to her loyal subjects in Canada (our two old line parties sharing power in Ottawa) It also seems to me that Canada was one of only three or four countries out of 150 or so which refused to sign a UN declaration of Indigenous peoples' rights in recent years. I guess our stooges in Ottawa and the other two or three other Anglo-Saxon country holdouts were influenced by Rome when deciding to forego that one? And First Nations people continue to live in conditions of thirdworld poverty across Canada no matter which of the two old line parties rules the roost in Ottawa, whether Whigs or Tories and vice versa.
There's a genocide I must have missed. Time for Queen Elizabeth II to apologize to Rome?
No, but one has to be rather perversely one-eyed to praise the Catholic Church for being "multicultural" and "inclusive" in "welcoming" all kinds of students into its schools. The same would be true for Anglicans and others.
No, if you take some lessons in logic and reading comprehension, you'll note that I never said that the source of anti-Aboriginal behaviour is the Catholic Church. I merely noted that the Catholic Church was one of the worst offenders. All of settler Canadian society is culpable. But to suggest that Catholic schools have been nicer than the others, based on your alleged experience, is bizarre. I think it shows the nefarious influence of religion on a youthful mind which otherwise harbours progressive sentiments and strivings.
When I quote some bishop vaunting Catholic education as being more "inclusive" than secular public education, I do expect everyone here to laugh along at the joke. Sorry if you didn't get it.
The "Windsors" are illegit as far as I'm concerned. Saxe-Coburg-Gothas was a made up name. The jackals are only there through a weak marriage with James III's daughter. William and Mary should have stayed home in Holland where they belonged
The Church wanted to spread the word, that was their mandate. And for centuries after the fall of Rome, priests and monks were keepers of the written word in the then western world. They didnt ask for such power, it was the result of the failure of warmongering imperialists. High finance and usury caused empires to consume themselves then as it does today. We could be headed for a modern equivalent of the dark ages even today.
I sense a reluctance on your part to place very much blame with ruling imperialists then or today for the genocides and impoverishment of First Nations. If ever I become as slavishly devoted to old line imperialism and now this 19th century Westminster contraption made new again every four years, I think I will consider cashing in my chips. While separate schools are on the wane in Quebec and Ontario, native poverty and thirdworld conditions are still the rule after all this time.
Not everyone who works in the all public system admires it as much as you. Now there's a thought.
If he's not, I am. We're supposedly opposed to two-tier health care; two-tier education is arguably even more pernicious. Perhaps this deserves a thread of its own, though.
(By the way, SSC, I know you weren't asking me, but as it happens, I *am* from Appalachia -- grew up in East Tennessee, and moved to Montréal about five years ago.)
unionist:
George, your posts might be punchier if you just expressed your viewpoint and omitted the de rigueur sweeping attacks on the "babble atmosphere" which you consider to be so "unwelcoming".
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Brave to the point of gladiatorial is he/she with the nerve to go from watcher to contributer around here. What thick hides we must have, u. Just read a few posts in this thread, the sarcasm dripping from each riposte reaching for the "opponent's" vitals.
It may be entertaining, but can it all be made more inviting. Particularly pathetic is the pack attack on some poor bastard who unsuspectingly pushes forward a dumb position. Not the slime of a troll. Just ordinary dumb, as in unread. Could we establish a code of conduct aimed at giving newbies some quarter, breathing space, a chance at, er... redemption?
I've just made my apologies, in another thread, for my tendency to e sarcastic, and am going about looking for converts like the newly confessed sinner.
Consider this post as an attempt at levity (including the language of the church) before selecting another verbal lance. Please.
George, I love you dearly, but don't be supercilious. Attack people's style one individual at a time. Don't attack babble. It's our home. Make it better.
Having said that, the question (raised above) of whether or not there should be private schools is important, but different. The issue here is whether the public school system should be divided along religious lines. We can answer "no" to that question quite straightforwardly as progressive people, as have several provinces, without being distracted by a separate and perhaps longer-term debate.
Oh, say it isn't so Fide,l that you would dare bring up this note, in long ago history, as if the Catholic Church did not have 100's of years of the blood of 100's of thousands, at least, of innocent women/people on it's hands. Say nothing of the Crusades, nor indeed of the 1000 years of heretic killing prior to formalizing it the Inquisition and witch hunts. Notwithstanding, is today's continued desire om the part of the Catholic Church to control and oppress women, and indeed all others.
Here is a quote regarding the imperialistic bent of the Catholic Church in the time of the Tudors, and this is about Elizabeth I
"She is certainly a great Queen and were she only a Catholic she
would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs! She is only a
woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by
Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all....Our children would have ruled the
whole world." Pope Sixtus V c1588
And IMV, what a terrible terrible world it would have been.
Especially considering:
"It has served us well, this myth of Christ." Pope
Leo X
said he who was a de' Medici. And the reality is that the Catholic Church had always been the arm of Imperialist rulers, from the time of Constantine until Henry VIII. Thank God for the Reformation.
It all started to go bad with the Arian controversy 325 CE leading to the Council of Nicea later that year, and got even worse in 502 CE when "ordinary" Catholics were deemed not worthy of choosing the Pope.
So, please do refrain from trying to create a conceptual framework that the Catholic Church is not imperialistic in nature from 300CE forward and that its history is a good one. It indeed, has more autrocities under it's belt than Henery Tudor could have ever conceptualized, let alone undertaken. And I won't even go into the pogroms against Jews that it fermented in Europe.
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"watching the tide roll away"
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