Catholic school funding III

Lord Palmerston wrote:

Continuing the old thread, I think Catholic school supporters have got to do better than separation of church and statei is the "American way" and funding Catholic schools is the "Canadian way."

I understand the Catholic Church making those arguments (as we saw from quotes in the previous thread), but not progressive people, whether Catholics or not.

You know, LP, there's an interesting contrast between Québec and Ontario on this issue.

Québec society suffered under the dark rule of the Church for generations, until the Quiet Revolution lifted its dictate almost overnight (in historical terms). The abolishment of Catholic and Protestant public schools in 1998 met with some laments from the bishops, but no one else.

Today, not a single political party - not even the most sinister wing of Dumont's ADQ - dares call for a return to Church-run public education.

Yet, in Ontario, it seems that even some supporters of the NDP are afraid that the population would rise up in revolution if the priests were shown the door!

How would you translate "Quiet Revolution" into Ontarianese? Methinks yours is long overdue.

In Newfoundland, the horrors visited upon children by the Roman Catholic "brothers" at Mount Cashel obviously helped the province rid itself of the anachronism of religious public schools:

Quote:

Until the 1990s, this province had four religious school systems that were government supported and run by various Christian denominations. The province had no secular public school system. This was a legacy from two centuries of British rule. The systems were Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, and inter-denominational. The latter was a merger of previously existing Anglican, Salvation Army and United Church systems.

Two public referendums and a constitutional amendment finally terminated government support for religious systems. Public schools in the province are now secular. The most recent referendum was held in 1997 when [b]73% of adults voted in favor of the change[/b]. Some of the support for secular schools might have been a backlash originating in horrendous physical and sexual abuse experienced at the Roman Catholic Mount Cashel orphanage that was run by the Christian Brothers.

Read more about the Newfoundland experience [url=http://www.religioustolerance.org/relschnf.htm][u]here[/u][/url].

I don't suppose the ONDP would even support a referendum? Too risky? Might drop from 3rd to 9th place?

More hilarious reading - [u][url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6936/is_3_9/ai_n28381672/print]a review[/url][/u] of a book lamenting the decision of the people of Newfoundland to abolish religious public schools:

Quote:

Any religious school system that has to work with government to get
full or partial funding (a number of Canadian provinces do provide such
funding), to develop curriculum, to obtain vouchers, or garner any type
of support for students and parents, ought to sit up and take notice of
the story that Bonaventure Fagan tells here of the battle to save
Catholic education in Newfoundland in the 1990s. [b]This is a tale of
intrigue, subversion, and unbelievable shenanigans on the part of
government to take control of all schools, for no financial, moral, or
educational good reason that anyone can figure.[/b]

It's $19.95, and it sounds like a great read!

.

Phony phriends of democracy for sure

unionist wrote:

These may well be "U.S." notions. But progressive and democratic people worldwide have long since adopted some of them. The U.S., meanwhile, has been forgetting them.

One day, it will be Ontario's turn.

Ontariario already gets most of the important second-hand ideology sloughed off onto us from the US as it is beginning with Mike the Knife and carried over with McGuilty's Liberals. No need to wish more of the imperial master's ideology on us, it's happening soon enough with our two pliant old line parties hanging on to their every word from Warshington like it was manna from Heaven

Separation of church and state is hardly imperialist ideology.

unionist wrote:

peterjcassidy wrote:

Can you undeerstand francophones in Canada, whether progressives or not, wanting to speak French  and to have service in French from public institutions?

Very very poor analogy.

Every state needs a lingua franca. All human beings need language in order to communicate. Religion or lack of same is a matter of individual choice. And no one has yet convincingly argued that a society needs a religion (or religions).

The American revolution introduced other notions besides separation of church and state. One was freedom of speech. Another was an end to foreign colonial rule. There were others as well. These may well be "U.S." notions. But progressive and democratic people worldwide have long since adopted some of them. The U.S., meanwhile, has been forgetting them.

One day, it will be Ontario's turn. One can only hope that progressive Ontarians will be in the forefront, not gnashing their teeth in the rear guard.

ETA: Lord Palmerston and I cross-posted. As usual, he put it more succinctly than I did.

Same questions s to Lord Palmerston. I note you argue evrey state needs a llngua franca which means one common language. It would be more modern and cheaper by far to hve only one official language. The french or chinese can speak what they like at home or among their own kind but otherwise "speak white" is the saying of the moderns..

 

Unionist, it has been said the politics of the USA are best seen thourgh the prism of race, the politics of the Uk though class, and the politics of Canda though the prism of language and religon.  Canada was a French speaking Catholic area conquered by English Potestants who have sought since sought tokeep down or assimilate les Canadiens. to rid them of their language, culture  and religon. A good example of that is the Riel rebllion and the Manitoba school qeustion which most historians recognize as the English Protestant Orange Order type shutting dsown Catholcis and Fench and one of the main events leding to the rise of Quebec separatism in the 2oth centry and today,

I may be over sensitive but I suspect many people  wanting to cut funding to Catholic schools are the same Orange order tyoes who  take me and other Catholics as slitghly backward, preist -ridden lesser folk  who should learn to "speal white", be modern be civilzied , be English,  be protestant.

a Schools Question was a political crisis in Manitoba and more generally in Canada in the late 19th century involving publicly funded separate schools for French and English and the deeper question of whether French would survive as a language or a culture in Western Canada.

The end result of the question was that by the end of the 19th
century, French was no longer supported as an official language in most
western Canadian provinces which in turn led to a strengthening of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec.

From Wikipedia.

"Speak White" is thought to have been an insult used by
English-speaking Canadians against those who spoke other languages in
public.[5][6] In his controversial Dictionnaire québécois-français,[7] Lionel Meney quotes a Maclean's
article from 1963 that for "every twenty French Canadians you encounter
in my house or yours, fifteen can affirm that they have been treated
with the discreditable 'speak white'".

The earliest allegation of the slur was recorded in the Canadian Parliament of 1899 as Henri Bourassa was booed by English-speaking Members of Parliament while attempting to address the legislature in French against the engagement of the Dominion in the Second Boer War.[citation needed] André Laurendeau recorded anecdotal evidence in his 1963 journal during the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission
that English Canadians would hurl the phrase at French Canadians
outside Quebec, and speculated that it was borrowed from the Southern United States,[8]. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the phrase was used against immigrants.[9]

Although the expression has never been directly quoted and
attributed to an individual, the expression continues to enter the
public sphere in the course of rhetorical political debate.[10]

peterjcassidy wrote:

Unionist, it has been said the politics of the USA are best seen thourgh the prism of race, the politics of the Uk though class, and the politics of Canda though the prism of language and religon. 

Conservatism in that country was born of the deep south, and it was based on religious revivalism, but mainly racism. Yes there were markets in religious slurs at the same time, but racism  was the most profitable free market. Every so often the Klan would get together to burn barns and churches designated for blacks. 

An old neighbor of my parents was a Klan member in Northern Ontario where I grew up. He murdered his wife. There were a few cross burnings into the late 1950s. Many Francophones Anglicized their family names in the Manitoulin Island area to obtain better jobs and avoid barn burnings. My great uncle trained a European immigrant to work on cranes at the steel mill before losing his job to him. Nepotism was rife. Last name spellings were so important in those days, and if yours wasn't English or Irish or Scottish or German you were done for. The APECkers were still at it in Sault Ste Marie with declaring English-only not so long ago. A city was divided for years while learning to love to hate all over again

What pearls wisdom from the USSA will you have for us in future? We know our two old line conservative parties have wanted to hitch our wagon to that luney bin south of us for a long time.

Peterjcassidy, is there a good reason why Catholics who want religious education for their kids shouldn't set up and pay for private schools, the way they do everywhere else?

.

Well, I'm not a Catholic and haven't lived in Ontario in years so I'm probably somewhat out of touch withh the politics there. But I would be shocked if promising to abolish catholic schools owuldn't obliterate any aprty's chances of getting elected. People who CURRENTLY send tehir kids to catholic schools or grandparents of such kids would probably be more pissed off than anything at teh inconvenience. If someone were to have tried to close down MY school that we were happy with (though MY PARENTS paid for my education), tehy'd be damn pissed. People get comfortable. People like the status quo. I remember the alst Ontario election, even as McGuinty was defending the status quo of funding only catholics and not otehr religions, he seemed to acknowledge that it was outdated and absurd and had trouble with the intellectual contortions to justify it. But the overall sentiment was jsut "hey, it's not hurting anyone. it's here. let's jsut elt it be." People are complacent.

 

As for Quebec and Newfoundland, I know lessa bout Newfoundland but Quebec, while nomianlly Catholic, isn't particlarly religious and seems to really value public secularism, similar to France today. Ontario Catholics tend to be more devout, at least fro my experience and there are a lot of ridings, particularly in teh GTA with alrge communities of immigrants from Italy, Portugal, teh Phillipines and elsewhere who are strongly Catholic and the NDP can't afford to lose them.

Look, I'm the last guy who will defend the status quo system we ahve today. (I actually would much prefer John Tory's plan to the status quo but that's another story). But sometimes you just ahve to pick your battles. Put to a referendum, I'll vote to change it. But i jsut don't see it as SUCH a big deal that i'd squander any electoral hopes and go down with teh ship as some sort of principled stand.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Look, I'm the last guy who will defend the status quo system we ahve today. (I actually would much prefer John Tory's plan to the status quo but that's another story). But sometimes you just ahve to pick your battles. Put to a referendum, I'll vote to change it. But i jsut don't see it as SUCH a big deal that i'd squander any electoral hopes and go down with teh ship as some sort of principled stand.

Which brings us full circle, to my first post in the first thread on how to deal with the topic, beginning with Michael Prue's quote:

Quote:

"All I'm saying to this party is that if the members want to discuss this issue, then the members should have the right to put it on the convention floor and to vote on it."

I agree with Prue on this. That doesn't mean it's a frontburner issue. Indeed, when we discuss it (as we should), it should be pointed out that it is a matter of principle, and not priority...

Give us two consecutive majorities, and we promise to get to it by the end of the second one.   

So in priority terms, it would be ranked roughly where? With public auto insurance? Complete and permanent elimination of child poverty? Restoration of anti-scab and card-check legislation? Respect for First Nations and no more dispossession, poverty, and murder?

Not being a professional politician, I've always had some difficulty knowing what has to be done first and what comes last. I do, however, recall Howard Hampton lamenting to the media that no one was listening to him. I just can't recall what his really important message was.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Look, I'm the last guy who will defend the status quo system we ahve today. (I actually would much prefer John Tory's plan to the status quo but that's another story).

No, you don't defend the status quo.

You would prefer something much worse. 

.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

just saying I wouldn't be particularly eager to knock on doors in say, Davenport and tell them that if we get elected, we'll shut down tehir kids' schools. 

Do we need to point out a couple of dozen more times that no one is talking about padlocking schools?

unionist wrote:

Who is shutting down schools? The plan would be to allow all current students to complete their free Catholic education right up to graduation. New cohorts would be integrated, no religious courses, in the single public system. Do you think the immigrants will go for that? How about the rest of the electorate? What about Muslims, Protestants, Jews, etc.?

I didn't realize the specifics of the plan. THAT would probably go over much better. There will probably still be a backlash from people who jsut think it is an entitlement to have govt pay for their catholic education but it eases things a lot. There could also be some logistical problems for families. If your oldest child is in a Catholic school and you ahve to then send your younger kids to a different one, it could be a hassle, etc.

 

As for what people of otehr faiths will think of it, I imagine msot would be happy that at elast things are going to be on an equal footing. There will obviosuly be more religious members of each community who wants funding for their aprticular christian/jewish/muslim/hindu school and while they may be disappointed not to get it tehy will probably at least be less resentful over what tehy see as discrimination.

Lard Tunderin' Jeezus wrote:

You've completely lost it, Fidel.

Seriously, take a break and think about what you're doing.

No I really meant that one. I loathe the old hypocritical bastard

unionist wrote:

Star-Spangled Canadian, to LTJ's point, I don't know if you followed the discussion on this issue during last year's election, but there's certainly no issue of closing schools. This is about kids learning and playing together during the week, while after hours and on weekends, their parents can induct them into whatever faith they like - or even fulltime in a private school.

If that's teh case, it's gonna be very important to communicate this early and effectively exactly what it is. it seems whenever anyone tries to propose changes to education (whether funding other faith based schools, creating afrocentric schools, etc.), it erupts into a shit storm of everyone misinterpreting what it actually entails. (see my previous posts as exbibit A).

 I did follow (albeit from a distance) the faith-based schools debate last election and I ahve to say, I'm not entirely convinced of teh argument that NOT funding such schools ensures that kids of all walks of life will learn and play together. Based on where you live, tehre's already a pretty good  chance that your school won't be all that diverse. By attending a private school, I think my school experience was probably more diverse than had I gone to the public school in my neighbourhood (Forest Hill). And, beyond that, fund them or not, some aprents are STILL gonna send their kids to independent private schools. It's not like if they're not funded, people in these communities will simply send their kids to public schools. They'll jsut work an extra job, take out an extra mortgage, go into debt, etc. in order to apy for it.