Varadkar accuses the left of "wanting to turn religious people into pariahs"

Wanderer78

nozzferrahhtoo wrote:

Or another option is you can write your posts your way, and I will write mine my way

That's fair enough I guess, the only problem is, neither of us might understand my posts

One eyed Jack

slavetothegrind wrote: »

But they still fight to control education?
That is the primary driver of most peoples objection to their control of schools.

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that that the Catholic Bishops of Ireland would want to control how education is delivered in their own schools, any more than it doesn't come as a shock to anyone that people who aren't Catholic want to gain control of how education is delivered in those same schools.

If we're going to have an honest conversation about why people want to control how children are educated, and we're actually going to have that conversation about secularism, then those opposed to a religious ethos schools have to recognise that religious bodies have the right to manage their own affairs without interference from the State. This puts them in the rather precarious position of having to acknowledge that it is the responsibility of the Government to provide more schools, which are not religious ethos schools. The stumbling block to the promotion of their ideology isn't the existence of religious ethos schools; it's the lack of the existence of schools which do not have a religious ethos.

The catholic schools of ireland still prioritise the baptised over the non-baptised, the same schools would shut down in the morning without state funding.

The reason why religious ethos schools prioritise school places for parents who share their ethos should be obvious - because it's far more likely that those people will support the ethos of the school and be more likely to be involved in promoting their children's education according to the ethos of the school, as opposed to parents who do not support the ethos of the school and not only do they not support the ethos of the school, they actively campaign against it.

Quite how that's supposed to benefit their children's education is a bit of a mystery to me tbh, because ultimately as far as I can see all it's doing is absolving Government of any responsibility to provide schools which are not religious ethos. Government can continue to thumb their noses at the small few who actively campaign for schools with no religious ethos because they can simply point to the fact that there are places available in religious ethos schools. Parents aren't obliged to enrol their children in schools which are in violation of their conscience, but understandably the current situation leaves them between a rock and a hard place. That's not the fault of religious ethos schools, it's the fault of Government.

The schools would indeed likely shut down in the morning without funding from the State, and if all 3,000 or so schools were to shut down, then where would the parents be able to enrol their children, and how long do you imagine it would take for the Government to start building schools, and at what cost? It's not like the Government hasn't had at least 70 years to think about these things and prepare itself for that eventuality.

I doubt there would be as many schools close down as you might expect tbh. I expect the number of exclusive private schools would rise exponentially though to take advantage of Ireland's new wealthy class, while the socioeconomically deprived class could languish in State schools and learn all about the joys of socialism, from first hand experience.

Let them have their religion and teach it in a class for the catholics, study hour for non but c'mon they can't operate an exclusionist policy anymore.

Of course they can, and they do, because they have limited places available so there has to be some criteria by which they can differentiate between parents who support their particular model of education, and those who don't. There's talks (there's always talks, very little in the way of action from Government on the issue) of attempting to force religious ethos schools to remove the 'baptism barrier' and thereby one of the criteria by which schools are currently permitted to determine eligibility for a school place, but again all that's ultimately doing is easing the pressure on Government to provide schools which do not have a religious ethos.

The people responsible for operating an exclusionist policy are actually parents who enrol their children in religious ethos schools, and then specifically request that their children be excluded from the schools fundamental reason for being. I can understand their reasoning is that their priority is their children's education, but for me education was always more than simply the imparting of facts according to a utilitarian philosophy.

Any time I think of such a philosophy, I'm always reminded of Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens "Hard Times" -


Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's novel Hard Times who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers.

In the story, he was the father of five children, naming them after prominent utilitarians such as Robert Malthus. He also ran a model school where young pupils were treated as pitchers which were to be filled to the brim with facts. This satirised Scottish philosopher James Mill who attempted to develop his sons into perfect utilitarians.

We all know a not arsed about religion family that got the kids baptised because they knew the school situation.

We do, and when you ask them why, they'll use the excuse that it was to get their children into a good school. They're more concerned with their own social standing and their own children's academic performance than they are about any socialists ideological beliefs and what they see as a society that they can only wish would conform to their beliefs, because they believe everyone in society would be much happier if only they would conform to socialist ideology. If that were true, socialism would have caught on by now, and it clearly hasn't, and likely won't ever catch on.

Franz Von Peppercorn

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Or another option is you can write your posts your way, and I will write mine my way Failing that, there is a perfectly serviceable ignore function.

No. You should write your posts better. Take time to edit them so they don’t kill the threads.

They are general banalities and received opinions anyway - what a standard middle manager in 2017 would believe - wrapped up in a gloss of pseudo radicalism.

Almost ever paragraph is wrong in fact (do we really push sexual fetishising into the background? I’ve seen plenty of parades that show the opposite) and in argument. Religious people have beliefs about society and thus allowing them their beliefs in private space rather than public space is anti democratic. Nor am I sure how it would be achieved

But to answer the walll of text by paragraph is to engage in a thread destroying (and soul destroying) process. Made that mistake before.

nozzferrahhtoo

One eyed Jack wrote: »

but for me education was always more than simply the imparting of facts according to a utilitarian philosophy.

Any time I think of such a philosophy, I'm always reminded of Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens "Hard Times" -

Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's novel Hard Times who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers.

That all seems rather contrived to me though. All based around this fallacious idea that "facts" are in some way "cold" and that "simply the imparting of facts" is somehow a lesser goal or unworthy if it does not also involve unsubstantiated fairy tale.

The beauty and wonder and emotional depth of the "facts" the world and the universe have to offer us blow religious narratives out of the water. It comes down to how we teach them, and what our goals are while teaching them. And all too often we get both of those things very wrong.

Facts are not cold and hard, but too often we choose to work with them like they are. Adding no depth and nuance to what we teach our children. Take for one single random example the topic of space. Talking to some students recently they seemed quite impressed with how they could recite by rote the planets, in order, in our solar system. When I asked them what a planet actually was however, they stared with a blank and vacant expression. How we teach a second or third language in Irish schools compared to how, for example, the Germans over here learn English.......... also leaves my skin feeling cold. And what the benefit to the world was of people coming out of biology capable of drawing a simple representation of the cell structure of an algae has yet to become clear to me at any point.

Many places, but sometimes especially Ireland, simply get education wrong. And I think we need to work on that. Not just removing unsubstantiated nonsense and hobbies from the main curriculum to an optional modular after school elective.......... but a complete revamp of what we teach, how we teach it, and our goals in teaching it appears long over due.

Facts themselves are not the problem however. Facts can be beautiful, engaging, exciting even awe inspiring. Reality has much more to offer to engage us and stimulate us and fill us than any empty and unsubstantiated religious narrative. Or any religious narrative as insulting and demeaning to the human condition as "the Resurrection" mythology. But somehow we manage to lose that when parsing it through an education curriculum and I think that is an issue we can address both inside AND outside of the agenda of divesting the curriculum and the system of religious indoctrination.

nozzferrahhtoo

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

No. You should write your posts better. Take time to edit them so they don’t kill the threads.

My posts are fine and do not kill threads at all. You are just making stuff up so as to attack the poster rather than the post. I also notice how you only have an issue with the length, or structure, of the posts you personally do not like while never seemingly taking exception to such things when you have no issue with the message the user is conveying.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

They are general banalities and received opinions anyway - what a standard middle manager in 2017 would believe - wrapped up in a gloss of pseudo radicalism.

Spaghetti at the wall tactics during which you neither address, let alone actually rebut, a single thing I have said.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Almost ever paragraph is wrong in fact (do we really push sexual fetishising into the background? I’ve seen plenty of parades that show the opposite)

Amazing how "wrong" appears to mean "pretend something was said that actually was not said" though because I patently and demonstrably did NOT say what you just described here. I said something very different in fact in that I said nothing about it being pushed into the background at all, rather I said that such people have developed an awareness of when it should, and should not, cross the boundaries between public and private.

Nor am I sure I know which parades you are referring to specifically as you contrive to be quite vague here. Could you maybe list which fetishes you have particularly seen parades for in Ireland? I think we in fact need MORE parades and festivals around such things in Ireland, and we have none that I am aware of.

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Religious people have beliefs about society and thus allowing them their beliefs in private space rather than public space is anti democratic. Nor am I sure how it would be achieved

Nothing I have espoused here is anti democratic at all though?

DickSwiveller

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Yes, but the state should be providing that kind of service itself as a routine matter of policy in providing essential services to the public. So it's a two-fold answer. Yes, state funding should be withdrawn for private organisations providing essential services like you describe - because the state should be nationalising such services and providing them itself, not because they shouldn't be provided at all.

And when the State doesn't. What then?

Permabear

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Subcomandante Marcos

Permabear wrote: »

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We're already paying for it...

Wanderer78

Permabear wrote: »

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the use of things such as sovereign wealth funds and the introduction of publicly owned financially institutions such as a public banking system, might just help

markodaly

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

But the thing is there is no real opposition to Fine Gael's extreme social conservatism

Yeap, a gay man who just successfully campaigned for the introduction of abortion is an extreme social conservative.

markodaly

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

We're already paying for it...

You mean, the state owns all the schools and associated properties, including those of health care providers?

Nope!

Subcomandante Marcos

markodaly wrote: »

You mean, the state owns all the schools and associated properties, including those of health care providers?

Nope!

The state paid for almost all of them and pays the vast majority of the ongoing costs of running them.
Like I said, we already pay for them.

markodaly

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

The state paid for almost all of them and pays the vast majority of the ongoing costs of running them.
Like I said, we already pay for them.

No, you are wrong.

If you pay rent, does that mean you own the house after a bit? Nope!

The property is not owned by the state, therefore the state has to buy them out fully if it wants to do what it wants.

Some people need a history lesson in how education and health was run and founded in this country.

So, again, how much will it cost for the state to buy this property?

Permabear

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Subcomandante Marcos

Permabear wrote: »

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But the state pays for them...

Which is what I've been saying.

Almost all of those school were built on land given in trust by the state, funded by the state and continuously financed by the state. The church's involvement is down to idiots like De Valera wanting to keep their tongues deep in the recesses of the bishops arseholes.

Permabear

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markodaly

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

But the state pays for them...

Which is what I've been saying.

The state pays for people living in emergency accommodation, it does not mean it gets to own the hotel or B&B after a bit.

Use your head.

Subcomandante Marcos

Permabear wrote: »

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Your question, verbatim, was "How much will that cost? And how will it be paid for?".

We know how much it costs, and we already paid and continue to pay for it.

Permabear

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Subcomandante Marcos

markodaly wrote: »

The state pays for people living in emergency accommodation, it does not mean it gets to own the hotel or B&B after a bit.

Use your head.

That's literally another example of the folly of paying private companies to provide social services. The state would save millions if it provided these services and built the accommodations themselves instead of using hotels for emergency accom and if they introduced a cost-rent programme instead of paying landlords market rates for HAP. Thankfully even FG have figured that out.

The question, again, was "How much will that cost? And how will it be paid for?".

The answer, again, is we know how much it costs and we already pay for it.

Subcomandante Marcos

Permabear wrote: »

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If the church had any shame they'd return the lands given in trust to public ownership. If they had any decency they'd do it as part of their atonement to the state for the clerical abuse scandal. Even without that, the state should just zone the lads as non-residential, non-commercial and cpo them at minimal cost to remove the outdated, unwarranted, unhelpful influence of "the church" in the Irish education system.
If the church wants to run schools on their own rules they should fund them themselves.

markodaly

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

The question, again, was "How much will that cost? And how will it be paid for?".

The answer, again, is we know how much it costs and we already pay for it.

We pay the running cost, but not the capital cost. These are two different things.
Saying we already pay for it when asked how much it will cost is just a way of saying, I don't know.

Subcomandante Marcos

markodaly wrote: »

We pay the running cost, but not the capital cost. These are two different things.
Saying we already pay for it when asked how much it will cost is just a way of saying, I don't know.

The state did and does pay the capital costs, and has done for decades, pretty much from the foundation of the state.

Permabear

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alaimacerc

Permabear wrote: »

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I think the concept you're reaching for is "recoup some of its considerable losses". But best of luck with the traditional exercise in dysphemism.

markodaly

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

The state did and does pay the capital costs, and has done for decades, pretty much from the foundation of the state.

Now you are really showing your ignorance. Free education only came to being in 1967, introduced by Donogh O'Malley. That was 51 years ago and 45 years after the state was founded.

Tell me, who paid for secondary school education in the meantime?

People really need to get their head out what every preverbal hole its in and read up on the history of education in this country.

The State since the foundation had very little input into education and it was really only since 1967, or arguably later that the state started to finance education in any meaningful way.

A tidbit, my mother left school at 11, that would be shocking today, but back than normal.

markodaly

Permabear wrote: »

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This?

Red_Wake

Permabear wrote: »

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And the Church owns them.

To "purge" (OP's term) schools of church influence, the country needs to own the schools.

And who pays for this gigantic buyout?[/quote]
Probably the same pot of billionaires the left expect to pay for all their idiot vanity projects.

A chap I know had a kid a while back. He's insistent that the child will not go to a school in any way affiliated with the Church. The only secondary school around that fits that description is a community school where more kids go to jail than to college. He's ruining his child's life for the sake of spite.

And guess which side of the political spectrum this halfwit lives on:angel:

alaimacerc

markodaly wrote: »

The State since the foundation had very little input into education and it was really only since 1967, or arguably later that the state started to finance education in any meaningful way.

So we're "only" talking about more than half the entire existence of the state.

Tell you what, let's limit any clawback to post-1967, and to sums directly paid to capital costs of works that religious bodies now consider their inalienable "private property". (Let's also gloss over how that was ever constitutional, given the "endowment of religion" clause.) Plus of course the monies owed under the institutional redress scheme.

How soon do you think they'll have the cheque ready?

James Brown

One eyed Jack wrote: »

...
That's what Leo was criticising, he wasn't criticising individuals either, he was criticising the ideology that is socialism.

He was trying to win back the religious vote.
He's playing both sides. He put himself out there as a champion of repeal, which the left have been pushing for for decades. Basically he wants the credit but the socialists or left to take any flak by kissing up to the religious. He's being a weasel.