Michael Prue says it's time to reconsider Catholic school funding

[King of Kensington]

Way too tepid, but this is good to hear.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/462889

 

[Dichotomy]

The posted comments are far more interesting than the brief article. I wonder how this issue resonates outside Toronto.
There are an awful lot of laws and treaties from other eras that are haunting us today.
The Catholic Church helped build the education system in this Province? Okay. Point taken. And that concerns us today because?

Whether we like it or not, this is going to be a serious election issue one day soon. John Tory got stung on this issue, but it won't go away.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

too bad he's a dipper. people are going to refer to him as stalin or say he has a stalinist agenda. they'll call him a godless commie and "false dichotomy" will refer to him as a bloody socialist!!!


i'll throw this quote out there before we get people playin' the reductio ad stalinium fallacy....

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people."

- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

don't anybody (by anybody i mean typical god fearin' folks who support state sponsored indoctrination) try to make these arguments. you will epic fail. believe me like you believe in god.


-argument from constitution

-argument from morality

-argument from majority

-argument from god's chosen people

-argument from we have a right to put whatever ideas we want into our children's heads no matter what

-argument from you're going to hell

 

[King of Kensington]

Whether we like it or not, this is going to be a serious election issue one day soon. John Tory got stung on this issue, but it won't go away.

I agree. The problem was not that Tory questioned the status quo, but the fact that his plan was ridiculously unpopular. There's always been a lot of support for one secular system when people are asked and given the state of the ONDP these days, what a way to make an impact. It's true that the Catholic school supporters may be much more adament about defending than the general population is about one system, but it is state-sponsored discrimination and needs to go.

But certainly the PC's won't be talking about it next time, and the people of Thornhill are stuck with an MPP whose main contribution to Ontario politics is to rant and rave about McGuinty's pesticide ban for the next three years.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

it's not only state sponsored discrimination, it's also state sponsored psychological torture.


kindergarten & early grades; "believe in god or you will go to hell"

mid grades to approaching high school; "believe in god or spend eternity in purgatory"

high school; "it doesn't matter which religion you are, as long as you believe in god you will go to heaven" and then "as long as you lead a good life, you will go to heaven"

guess which one really sticks with you and which ones you believe are justified lies to make god & and the catholic faith look attractive to people who need to be saved so that they can be saved?

actually, don't guess. i'll tell you. deep inside you believe that "hell thing" is the reality and that "god loves us all as long as you are good" is the little lie because a hippy attitude will attract more followers than the fear game. you see, children can be easily spooked with eternal damnation but when you're an adult, you have to employ different sales tactics. you have to catch flies with honey but when they're in the maggot stage, you need really no effort at all.


we must love the man upstairs because he is ultimate goodness but we have to fear him to death at the same time. i was put through literal hell.

why would a good god dish out punishment like a common human? is god not better than a common man? how petty and childish. anyone can be good to their friends, it takes real goodness to be kind to your enemies. why burn your enemies in eternal hellfire? why not fix their brains and change their attitudes? even humans attempt rehabilitation of others. doesn't always work for us but hey, god is supposed to be able to do and accomplish anything.

 

[afransen]

I think Catholic school isn't all that bad. They don't use the sophisticated brainwashing techniques you see employed by evangelical christians.

I think my atheism/agnosticism is not based solely on my capacity for critical thinking. I'll credit my religious education to familiarizing myself with the logicial inconsistencies of theism. I know christianity/scripture a lot better than several believers whom I know and I think they find it unnerving.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Catholic schools are typically more diverse than public schools, and they make do with less money per student than the public boards (they used to, anyway...the funding formulas are always changing). You certainly do not get a 'religious' education in Catholic schools these days.

 

[ShonTron]

Catholic High Schools aren't bad, they open it up to anyone, as a result of Davis fully funding upper year Catholic education back in 1984. But K-8 schools require a Baptismal Certificate. And sex-ed is not the same in the Catholic system. I do recall, even in high school, having to watch a video on "born-again virgins", and the curriculum pretty much sums up "safe sex" as DON'T!

We called it "Family Life".

At least the Catholic Church don't have qualms with science (they have made their peace with Darwin), and apart from the religion/"Family Life" texts (approved or published by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops), the curriculum is the same. And maturing, I had no problems questioning things, especially religion, as long as the teacher also appreciated it. I feel like I got a good education at my Catholic schools.

One thing I disliked in the Catholic system was that you lost a credit each year to "Religion" courses, instead of an option you actually want to learn. But even with that, there were Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Protestants and others who went to my Catholic high school. It was in high school where I became a devout agnostic, so go figure. Also, the alternative was Brampton Centennial in my area, not a school with a good rep (this was long after the infamous Columbine-like shootings there in 1975, though that had little to do with it).

I'm in favour of scrapping the Catholic system, and good to see a possible and mainstream NDP leadership candidate saying this as well, perhaps going beyond just the Eco-Cons (Greens) next election. More students will be closer to their local school, saving so much on busing, fuel, and efficiencies with less neighbourhood disruption. Sunday School is where Christianity should be taught.

 

[ShonTron]

Catholic School Sex Ed:

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Yeah, but gr.11 religion was World Religions, and gr.12 religion was mostly about evolution and psychology. Between videos and guest speakers and retreats and journal responses and stuff like that, gr.9 and gr.10 didn't include any real religion, either.

I remember watching a fully explicit sex-ed video at some point in high school that included a live birth; the teacher rewound the video so that the baby 'popped' back in where it came from. But that's what happens when gym teachers do sex-ed...

Actually, the funniest thing about gym was how the class was split for a few weeks, where the girls were taught self-defense and the boys were taught wrestling...

Catholic elementary schools are also more diverse than public elementary schools...public schools draw from one or part of a subdivision so the kids tend to be completely homogenous, while Catholic schools, since there's fewer of them, draw from wider areas, thus drawing in more diverse people (different incomes, different ethnicities, etc.).

 

[ShonTron]

Yep, I remember the split gym classes, except it was wresting or gymnastics, and the option was open to both genders. I now also remember how it was done - gym was only a half-credit, so had to take it in 9 and 10 before dumping that dumb requisite course.

The Catholic school I went to from K-4 was the closest to me (and right next to BCSS), much closer than the public school, go figure. Kids had to be bused from my area up to grade 6, that was bad Peel Board planning. And in grade one, I had to take a taxi to school with two other students because of subdivision construction that was a "danger" between my older subdivision and the school location. It was diverse, but most kids from the rental towers nearby loaded up onto buses for the public school.

 

[Dichotomy]

Even without declaring which side of the issue you are on, it is pretty clear that the increased number of Muslims, Jews, etc. are eventually going to make this a stronger issue, at least for the GTA.

Canada of 1850 is different than today for a lot of reasons. It doesn't take a lawyer to understand it isn't 'right' (whether legal or not, is a different matter) to fund Catholics but not the others.

Then again, Canada really has 4 solitudes these days: Quebec, Vancouver, Toronto and The Rest Of Canada.

 

[King of Kensington]

Catholic elementary schools are also more diverse than public elementary schools...public schools draw from one or part of a subdivision so the kids tend to be completely homogenous, while Catholic schools, since there's fewer of them, draw from wider areas, thus drawing in more diverse people (different incomes, different ethnicities, etc.).

So by your reasoning, Catholic and Muslim schools should get funding (because they're diverse), but Jewish schools should not (since they're about 99.5% white)?

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

name just one good thing that a catholic school could offer to its students that a secular school could never offer to its students.