School patronage

recedite

Absolam wrote: »

Well, for a start it's ignoring the fact that it's not the governments responsibility to provide the service; it's the peoples. The government is responsible for providing for the service. That's a fact that's readily acknowledged by those prepared to shoulder their responsibilities, which by and large has so far been religious communities.

The Constitution was deliberately worded like this in the 1930's to allow for the State to fund religious schools. DeV and McQuaid colluding together. Its time that sneaky wording was changed.

Absolam wrote: »

.. But if she wants the Faithful Companions of Jesus to hand over the school they built with money from their community so that she can have the kind of school she wants, I'm a little less inclined to heap praise on the endeavour.

Without State funding, the Faithful Companions of Jesus school is untenable, and is only worth whatever the site itself is worth to developers. And whatever that is, it's probably already owed to the State in unpaid redress payments.

Absolam

silverharp wrote: »

Peer pressure is a tiny part ,its the fact that now they are less likely to be surrounded by religious adults including parents or family or any pretence that they live in a catholic country.

How much less likely exactly? According to the census, not much at all; in 2011 7.63% identified as not religious (including, generously, unanswered), in 2002 it was 5.5%, in 1971 it was 1.8%. So in 1971 less than one in ten adults 'surrounding' children was religious, and in 2011 less than one in ten adults 'surrounding' children was religious. As for pretending (or believing) they lived in a catholic country; they certainly wouldn't be wrong in saying (then or now) that the majority of people in the country call themselves Catholics, would they? Not that I imagine such a notion would make many people want to be Catholic... unless they were particularly susceptible to peer pressure :-)

silverharp wrote: »

The control is gone and it simply isn't a relevant part of their lives now. 10 year olds having access to information doesn't mean much in this context ,they are unlikely to even be curious about asking if there is a god or not , a minecraft video Is far more interesting.

I can;t say I noticed the control when I was growing up, or that it was a relevant part of my life either. But I know I probably would have read the bible less and the minecraft construction and combat manual more, if both had been available to me.

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

The Constitution was deliberately worded like this in the 1930's to allow for the State to fund religious schools. DeV and McQuaid colluding together. Its time that sneaky wording was changed.

Well of course; there was already a structure of religious run national schools in place since British rule, and the nascent State was in no position to (as Swampgas would have it) 'set up a parallel educational system'. I don't think there's anything at all sneaky about the wording; it specifically calls out that parents can and should provide the kind of education they want for their children. That kind of personal responsibility may not sit well with advocates of an all providing welfare state, but the notion of someone else taking care of your problems for you wasn't very common currency at the time.

recedite wrote: »

Without State funding, the Faithful Companions of Jesus school is untenable, and is only worth whatever the site itself is worth to developers. And whatever that is, it's probably already owed to the State in unpaid redress payments.

Without State funding, the overwhelming majority of schools are untenable, so that hardly seems a worthwhile observation?
How much do you imagine the FCJ owe in unpaid redress payments? Imagine it's ten million (in fact it's zero, but anyways..); what makes it right to take that ten million compensation from the victims of abuse to pay for schools other people want?

silverharp

Absolam wrote: »

How much less likely exactly? According to the census, not much at all; in 2011 7.63% identified as not religious (including, generously, unanswered), in 2002 it was 5.5%, in 1971 it was 1.8%. So in 1971 less than one in ten adults 'surrounding' children was religious, and in 2011 less than one in ten adults 'surrounding' children was religious. As for pretending (or believing) they lived in a catholic country; they certainly wouldn't be wrong in saying (then or now) that the majority of people in the country call themselves Catholics, would they? Not that I imagine such a notion would make many people want to be Catholic... unless they were particularly susceptible to peer pressure :-)
I can;t say I noticed the control when I was growing up, or that it was a relevant part of my life either. But I know I probably would have read the bible less and the minecraft construction and combat manual more, if both had been available to me.

The census is not a good guide , someone who never sets foot in a church on a regular basis might still tick the catholic box. The reality on the ground as I see it is that the majority of kids today are growing up in households that mainly see religion as a kind of ceremonial thing , or you might have one religious parent and one that is basically atheist but will go along with to keep grandparents happy and the like. But even those days are nearly gone where grandparents would be deeply upset if their kids weren't christened (for religious reasons). its a world away from the 70's

swampgas

Absolam wrote: »

I can't say I noticed the control when I was growing up, or that it was a relevant part of my life either.

That just goes to show how insidiously effective it was :pac:

recedite

Absolam wrote: »

...the nascent State was in no position to (as Swampgas would have it) 'set up a parallel educational system'...

I don't see much difference in terms of the cost to the State, between funding a secular school and funding a religious school.
The RCC are known to have profited from some of their "charitable" enterprises, such as the orphanages and magdalene laundries. In other words, if the State had run those orphanages directly, without employing the RCC as middleman, it could have saved money. Or else provided better care to the kids for the same money.
And that's without even taking into account the hidden (future, as it was then) costs of the redress payments.
The reason that the State left schools, orphanages and hospitals in religious control was not because of the shortage of public money. It was because the RCC controlled the politicians, and indeed the people, in a vicious circle of indoctrination, and it all started at 4 years old with primary school enrolment.

Absolam wrote: »

I don't think there's anything at all sneaky about the wording; it specifically calls out that parents can and should provide the kind of education they want for their children. That kind of personal responsibility may not sit well with advocates...

I've no problem with parents being the primary educators, and having the right to responsibly home school their kids.
In practical terms though, the vast majority of parents want to send their little darlings out to school. Therefore, a civilised state provides a local school.
The sneaky bit in the Constitution is "providing for" education instead of "providing" it. This extra "for" was no doubt inserted at the behest of the RCC to allow the State to fund their educational establishments.

Absolam wrote: »

Without State funding, the overwhelming majority of schools are untenable, so that hardly seems a worthwhile observation?

Why should the State fund other peoples schools instead of providing its own? Why should we allow foreign states such as the Vatican and Saudi Arabia to have an input into publicly funded Irish schools?

Absolam wrote: »

How much do you imagine the FCJ owe in unpaid redress payments? Imagine it's ten million (in fact it's zero, but anyways..); what makes it right to take that ten million compensation from the victims of abuse to pay for schools other people want?

Redress payments have mostly been paid out already by the State to the victims of clerical abuse. So that €10 million represents a shortfall that the State has already diverted from other uses. If the State collects the money, it can now put it to good use. Building a new school for example. One that is not permanently hostage to a vested interest.

Absolam

silverharp wrote: »

The census is not a good guide , someone who never sets foot in a church on a regular basis might still tick the catholic box. The reality on the ground as I see it is that the majority of kids today are growing up in households that mainly see religion as a kind of ceremonial thing , or you might have one religious parent and one that is basically atheist but will go along with to keep grandparents happy and the like. But even those days are nearly gone where grandparents would be deeply upset if their kids weren't christened (for religious reasons). its a world away from the 70's

I imagine you think you spend enough time in greatly varied households across the nation to get a real sense of 'the reality on the ground' but you might excuse me thinking that at least a census has some methodology as its basis; dismissing it in favour of apocryphal observation seems a bit hasty.

swampgas wrote: »

That just goes to show how insidiously effective it was :pac:

Yes, it doesn't escape me that only those who claim it was there were able to detect it

Absolam

recedite wrote: »

I don't see much difference in terms of the cost to the State, between funding a secular school and funding a religious school.

Well as discussed on this thread already; it's cheaper to fund a religious school because the religious orders pay towards the running cost. But I think we were really talking about establishing schools, and as we know religious schools were often built on land belonging to the religious orders, with money from the orders and parishes. That made quite a difference in terms of funding, both for the British and Irish states.

recedite wrote: »

The RCC are known to have profited from some of their "charitable" enterprises, such as the orphanages and magdalene laundries. In other words, if the State had run those orphanages directly, without employing the RCC as middleman, it could have saved money. Or else provided better care to the kids for the same money.

Funny how whataboutery stops being a bad thing when directed against the religious... But realistically, so what? Had the State profited from torturing people instead of allowing the Church to do it,would it have invested the money in secular schools and replaced the religious ones? I doubt it.

recedite wrote: »

And that's without even taking into account the hidden (future, as it was then) costs of the redress payments.

So the State could have saved loads of money by doing things differently? Without a time machine that's not a terribly valuable observation.....

recedite wrote: »

The reason that the State left schools, orphanages and hospitals in religious control was not because of the shortage of public money. It was because the RCC controlled the politicians, and indeed the people, in a vicious circle of indoctrination, and it all started at 4 years old with primary school enrolment.

Well, no. It's a great soundbite, but you know it's pure polemic. Schools, orphanages and hospitals were in Church control becuase the Church built them. They stayed in their control because then as now the State had no appetite for nationalising private assets, particularly when it would actually result in a net loss to do so. Certainly the Church exerted an extraordinary influence, just as it did it many other countries. But pretending everyone was mind controlled to comply with their nefarious scheme to control care institutions is just childish.

recedite wrote: »

I've no problem with parents being the primary educators, and having the right to responsibly home school their kids.
In practical terms though, the vast majority of parents want to send their little darlings out to school. Therefore, a civilised state provides a local school.

Which the State has done; just not the way you like it.

recedite wrote: »

The sneaky bit in the Constitution is "providing for" education instead of "providing" it. This extra "for" was no doubt inserted at the behest of the RCC to allow the State to fund their educational establishments.

No doubt, or actually? There's a pretty big difference. If the RCC purely wanted the State to fund their educational establishment, bearing in mind the extraordinary mind control they exercised over the entire population, surely they would have inserted something a little more favourable, that forbade secular education entirely, and prevented children being educated in any manner other than a religious school. After all the effort of writing the Constitutional provisions to suit themselves, they really seem to have dropped the ball.

recedite wrote: »

Why should the State fund other peoples schools instead of providing its own? Why should we allow foreign states such as the Vatican and Saudi Arabia to have an input into publicly funded Irish schools?

Why should the State provide its own schools, rather than leaving it entirely in the hands of the people who want them? Is State mandated education not an unwarranted interference in the private lives of citizens?

recedite wrote: »

Redress payments have mostly been paid out already by the State to the victims of clerical abuse. So that €10 million represents a shortfall that the State has already diverted from other uses. If the State collects the money, it can now put it to good use. Building a new school for example. One that is not permanently hostage to a vested interest.

So rather than put the money back towards the proper uses it should have gone to, you want it diverted to pay for something you want? It's ok, the clerical abuse victims have been paid, someone else can suffer instead? That's pretty callous.

silverharp

Absolam wrote: »

I imagine you think you spend enough time in greatly varied households across the nation to get a real sense of 'the reality on the ground' but you might excuse me thinking that at least a census has some methodology as its basis; dismissing it in favour of apocryphal observation seems a bit hasty.
Yes, it doesn't escape me that only those who claim it was there were able to detect it

Sure my observations are south Dublin burbs, I've no doubt some rural areas are able to keep up the pretence a bit better. But i would suggest to you that year on year the trend is going to be more dilution of religious values in Catholic schools because kids are more free and less conditioned to tow the line.

Absolam

silverharp wrote: »

Sure my observations are south Dublin burbs, I've no doubt some rural areas are able to keep up the pretence a bit better. But i would suggest to you that year on year the trend is going to be more dilution of religious values in Catholic schools because kids are more free and less conditioned to tow the line.

I've no doubt there are plenty of rural and urban areas where religious sentiment is no pretense at all. I think if Catholic schools admit children that don't conform to their ethos it's fairly evident that their ethos will be diluted; but the notion that that's because kids are more free and less conditioned to toe the line is debatable; after all, if it's supposedly the schools doing the conditioning, then kids being less conditioned when they go is isn't really an issue.

silverharp

Absolam wrote: »

I've no doubt there are plenty of rural and urban areas where religious sentiment is no pretense at all. I think if Catholic schools admit children that don't conform to their ethos it's fairly evident that their ethos will be diluted; but the notion that that's because kids are more free and less conditioned to toe the line is debatable; after all, if it's supposedly the schools doing the conditioning, then kids being less conditioned when they go is isn't really an issue.

Its the lack of consistency which kids are good at focusing on ,if a teacher is saying one thing in school but its not fully backed up by peers and family and there is nothing in it for the kid except the possible downside of being dragged to mass occassionly then the current system won't benefit anybody and will just create resentment or ridicule.

Brian Shanahan

silverharp wrote: »

Sure my observations are south Dublin burbs, I've no doubt some rural areas are able to keep up the pretence a bit better. But i would suggest to you that year on year the trend is going to be more dilution of religious values in Catholic schools because kids are more free and less conditioned to tow the line.

In rural areas catholicism is as dead as in South Dublin, if not more so. For example in my parish, Pallasgreen & Temblebraden, we had a funeral last month of a well respected and well known local, who was heavily involved with the GAA, the parish council, the GAA in Emly (where he was from originally) and many other organisations, the church was half empty for his Saturday funeral. Three times more turned up for his wake the previous night in the middle of a storm. When local teacher and politician Mary Harty died last year the church was full, but that was mostly because it was major news locally (due to her dying of motor neurone disease and her work in her last few years to help publicise funding to fight it), and even made the Irish Times the church was full, but I'd have to go back to when my brother's class did their conformation (along with the class above) to recall the previous time in my experience that it was so full (and I was a regular going believer until college, and I still go to funerals regularly).

The paucity of the numbers going to mass in the parish regularly is shown up in the accounts. With two churches and between four and five masses per week (not including feast days, funerals and weddings) the church collection is a shade under €2,000, meaning about €500 per mass. If we take an average of €5 paid per adult parishoner* that means we have an average weekly attendance of 400 out of a parish with 5,815 residents as of the 2006 census. That is a paltry figure for a supposedly catholic area.

So rural Ireland is probably less catholic than urban Ireland.

*I'm not including kids in these figures, because frankly they're not going to mass because they want to, but because they have to.

silverharp

I'd take your point , an article I googled came back with 18% regular mass attendance in 2011 compared to 90% in 1984. I'd wager the age profile is higher too. Then again its been a while since we have had a blessing of the roads on the Rock road....

PopePalpatine

I wonder, is it just hardline Catholics that are joining the priesthood/religious orders nowadays? Maybe school patronage would become more of a pressing matter if these hardliners become more involved in schools' BOMs.

lazygal

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder, is it just hardline Catholics that are joining the priesthood/religious orders nowadays? Maybe school patronage would become more of a pressing matter if these hardliners become more involved in schools' BOMs.

I've heard several reports of schools being told by the bom that the Catholic first policy needed to be more rigorously enforced as too many were opting out and managing this was diluting the ethos. I would imagine the newer crop of priests are more evangelical about their faith given that there's not the same expectations of having a son become a priest regardless of how he felt about it in years gone by.
The other thing is that a school can have been ticking along nicely with a relatively inclusive bom and then a change of priest on the bom or other member who's more dogmatic can change the religious dynamics completely. Happened in a secondary school I know of where the laid back approach to religion has been replaced with a weekly mass that pupils find it difficult to opt out of and prayers during classes. All because a fresh new priest decided the school wasn't Catholic enough.

Hotblack Desiato

lazygal wrote: »

I would imagine the newer crop of priests are more evangelical about their faith

Both of them?

Brian Shanahan

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder, is it just hardline Catholics that are joining the priesthood/religious orders nowadays? Maybe school patronage would become more of a pressing matter if these hardliners become more involved in schools' BOMs.

Not even I believe. There was only 13 new entrants into the seminary school at St. Patrick's college, Maynooth (the only place on the island left to study for the priesthood), and private word is that most of the students drop out without completing studies meaning those years there are no Irish priests ordained.

Expect most priests in the country to be Polish or African in the very near future.

RainyDay

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Expect most priests in the country to be Polish or African in the very near future.

One of the three priests in St Johns Ballinteer is African. Not too popular with the local old folks, who can't understand 2/3rds of his preaching. Then there is the 'young' PP (late 60s) and the 'old priest'.

SpaceTime

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Funnily enough, I remember from my history classes how the Catholic hierarchy despised the Queen's Universities for being non-denominational.

It wasn't just the Catholic Hierarchy the protestants and Catholics were busily condemning them back in the 1800s. Thankfully sense and logic prevailed and UCC and NUI Galway are still secular institutions.

Cabaal

Catholic ethos schools might be creating ghetto schools

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/census-figures-raise-concerns-of-ethnic-segregation-in-schools-1.2114559

The high concentration of immigrant children in a comparatively small number of primary schools has led to warnings about segregation developing in the education system.

Four out of five children from immigrant backgrounds were concentrated in 23 per cent of the State’s primary schools, the annual school census for 2013-14 shows.

In 20 schools, more than two-thirds of pupils were recorded as being of a non-Irish background.....

Colette Kavanagh, principal of Esker Education Together in Lucan, Co Dublin, said admission procedures, including waiting lists and policies which favoured pupils of a particular religious ethos, had led to a situation where children of migrant families were “disproportionately at the bottom of the queue for access to schools”.

She said Ireland needed to introduce a State-run national school system which guaranteed equality of access to all children if it was to avoid “ghettoisation”.

“Unless urgent measures are taken to prevent this happening, Irish schools will continue to sleepwalk into segregation, an eventuality that may be impossible to reverse,” she said...

silverharp

Cabaal wrote: »

Catholic ethos schools might be creating ghetto schools

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/census-figures-raise-concerns-of-ethnic-segregation-in-schools-1.2114559

Its an interesting one , would like to see the performance of these schools? I clicked on one of the icons for Dublin and it was on Marlborough st dublin1. 30% Irish and similar for European and Asian . given the area it would probably mean the school has less disfunctional families.
Interestingly the Islamic school in clonskeagh came in at 82% Irish , I only clicked on it as its near my kids school. But it seems high in context.

lazygal

Being Irish and Muslim aren't mutually exclusive surely? The POD forms were pretty awful though, giving no options for Irish people being black etc.

silverharp

lazygal wrote: »

Being Irish and Muslim aren't mutually exclusive surely? The POD forms were pretty awful though, giving no options for Irish people being black etc.

Absolutely it isnt , I don't know what definition they are using but I assumed they meant the parents born outside the county and not the kids who are Irish.

lazygal

My husband wasn't born here even though he holds an Irish passport now and has spent most of his life here. But he'd be in the Not Irish category for many things as the state forms are quite crude in terms of categorization.

silverharp

lazygal wrote: »

My husband wasn't born here even though he holds an Irish passport now and has spent most of his life here. But he'd be in the Not Irish category for many things as the state forms are quite crude in terms of categorization.

I'd agree but it also calls into question of the term "ghetto" school in the pejorative sense. My own kids go to an upmarket "ghetto" school where I'd guess half the kids have one or more non Irish born parents, its all positive though.

recedite

silverharp wrote: »

Interestingly the Islamic school in clonskeagh came in at 82% Irish , I only clicked on it as its near my kids school. But it seems high in context.

I suppose there are different definitions of "Irishness". "Origin" is mentioned in the article, whatever that word means.
One former pupil is currently in an Eqyptian jail, accused of being involved in a riot to allegedly overthrow the government there, and install an islamic state run by the Muslim Brotherhood. The father of this Irish teenager is currently an Imam at the Clonskeagh mosque/school complex.

expectationlost

recedite wrote: »

I suppose there are different definitions of "Irishness". "Origin" is mentioned in the article, whatever that word means.
One former pupil is currently in an Eqyptian jail, accused of being involved in a riot to allegedly overthrow the government there, and install an islamic state run by the Muslim Brotherhood. The father of this Irish teenager is currently an Imam at the Clonskeagh mosque/school complex.

one could also choose to describe that he was protesting the military take over of president elected just a year before that.

recedite

expectationlost wrote: »

one could also choose to describe that he was protesting the military take over of president elected just a year before that.

Indeed one could; that is also true.
At the heart of this is the issue of whether a majority have the right to impose a regime on everybody else that is based strictly on the religious values of one set of people, and which fails to respect the rights of the minority.
Its the same kind of thinking that historically allowed religion to control schools in Ireland. In philosophical terms its called the "tyranny of the majority".

Brian Shanahan

recedite wrote: »

Indeed one could; that is also true.
At the heart of this is the issue of whether a majority have the right to impose a regime on everybody else that is based strictly on the religious values of one set of people, and which fails to respect the rights of the minority.
Its the same kind of thinking that historically allowed religion to control schools in Ireland. In philosophical terms its called the "tyranny of the majority".

1) Tyranny of the majority is a weasel word phrase used by regimes who want minoritarian rule in order to try and give a legitimate justification for their regime. Any true democracy will have the proper checks and balances and individual rights built in, yet still rule to the majority's wishes. It is interesting to not that "tyranny of the majority" is an American phrase, a country well noted for designing its constitution and power structures to create and enhance rule by oligarchy (even now the political system is massively skewed in favour of the rich in the US, just like with the rest of the western world, only more blatantly so). The perfect encapsulation of the true meaning of "tyranny of the majority" is what the White House officially said in the aftermath of the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela: "[Chávez] was democratically elected [but,] legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters." Essentially saying that democracy is only legitimate when the vote goes our way. That is the reality that "tyranny of the majority" masks.

2) The situation in Egypt was that the military engineered a coup, with astroturf group protests and a violent overthrow of the democraticly elected government and head of state (now I've no grá for the MB, but Egypt did vote them in), with support for the US and EU. They then set up an illegal, lawless and mass murdering regime using weapons and training supplied to them by the west and the Gulf States, simply because the army generals didn't want to face trial, their political stooges didn't want to go to the people (because even though the MB would probably have lost the next election, nobody was going to vote for a bunch of Mubarrak cronies) and because the US and EU were being put under pressure by Israel to stop the, minimal, help being given to Palestine and its people by the MB government. So even if "tyranny of the majority" was something other than weasel words, it would not have applied in the Egyptian situation because a deeply unpopular (and unsavoury), yet legitimate government was overthrown by a brutal, murderous and tyrannical military regime.

recedite

Well, as I remember it, the Egyptian army stayed out of it for a long time, and only stepped in after a large number of people had already been killed in the factional rioting.
Here's what wiki has to say;

Mohamed Morsi was elected president on 24 June 2012. On 2 August 2012, Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35 member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers including four from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Liberal and secular groups walked out of the constituent assembly because they believed that it would impose strict Islamic practices, while Muslim Brotherhood backers threw their support behind Morsi.
On 22 November 2012, President Morsi issued a declaration immunising his decrees from challenge and seeking to protect the work of the constituent assembly.
The move led to massive protests and violent action throughout Egypt. On 5 December 2012, tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of president Morsi clashed, in what was described as the largest violent battle between Islamists and their foes since the country's revolution. Mohamed Morsi offered a "national dialogue" with opposition leaders but refused to cancel the December 2012 constitutional referendum.

On 30 June 2013, massive protests were organised across Egypt against Morsi's rule, leading to the ousting of Morsi by the military on 3 July 2013, where the military removed Morsi from power in a coup d'état and installed an interim government.