Catholic Syllabus now that Baptism is not required in Schools

BSquared

I wanted to see what people thought about the fact that Baptism will no longer be required to be considered for a Catholic school however the syllabus may remain the same requiring children to learn about the Catholic religion and go through the Communion and Confirmation processes in school.

If children aren't Baptised it probably means their parents don't want to raise their child as a Catholic so even if the child is accepted into the school why would they have to go through the religious syllabus? Shouldn't there be a choice?

Loveinapril

I would presume that parents could just opt their child out of religion like my parents did when they sent us to a catholic school unbaptised.

Qrt

Non-Catholic pupils would typically just read a book or something. During our Communion and Confo practice, the three non-Catholics in the class just sat down the back (and had the craic).

eviltwin

As a parent you have the right to opt your child out but it's possible they will be still in the classroom while religion is being taught so they will pick stuff up. Then you gave all the other stuff like prayers, religious iconography etc they will be surrounded by.

The high horse brigade

If a school participates in religion it should be made the last half hour so I can collect my child early.

CPTM

I think it should be mandatory to teach religion, without teaching kids to be religious. I'm not religious at all, but I wish I'd gotten a better understanding of the different key religions around the world since it's the topic of many debates these days, and also a lot of my colleagues have different customs which I don't know about. So just a fact based curriculum and nothing more.

doolox

Ethics and comparative religion is the way to go. There should be some element of right and wrong and equity and fairness taught to children even if it is outside the RC framework.

My personal experience of religious teaching was one dominated by fear, conformity, non critical thinking and enforced and reluctant observance of pointless rules. Sex was taboo and so was self advancement and looking after temporal needs. We were supposed to suffer everything and offer it up to God...

As a young man I could see that , for example, large families had had it very hard to survive but the people were not given the means to control family size and suffered because of this.

The upper middle class Catholics dictated family size and fertility beyond the limited means of most lower class and badly paid people. They did this with the base motive of ensuring a plentiful supply of cheap, conforming and readily abused labour for their various enterprises. The church played ball because they could claim more adherents than their rivals. A sort of arms race involving membership without regard for the limited size of our planet.

BSquared

CPTM wrote: »

I think it should be mandatory to teach religion, without teaching kids to be religious. I'm not religious at all, but I wish I'd gotten a better understanding of the different key religions around the world since it's the topic of many debates these days, and also a lot of my colleagues have different customs which I don't know about. So just a fact based curriculum and nothing more.

Yes defo agree. There should be more emphasis on learning about other religions from a young age. They are probably worried kids will change religion if they tell them too much about other ones 😂

Peregrinus

Loveinapril wrote: »

I would presume that parents could just opt their child out of religion like my parents did when they sent us to a catholic school unbaptised.

This. Whether or not a child is baptised, parents have a constitutional right to withdraw the child from religious instruction. There is no proposal to change this.

BSquared

Peregrinus wrote: »

This. Whether or not a child is baptised, parents have a constitutional right to withdraw the child from religious instruction. There is no proposal to change this.

I suppose my concern is that there may be more children now in classrooms where Religion is being taught that want to be withdrawn from it. What happens to those children? Will they just be left at the back of the class or will they be taught something else during this time? Coming up to Communion/Confirmation this can represent a large amount of time.

Peregrinus

BSquared wrote: »

I suppose my concern is that there may be more children now in classrooms where Religion is being taught that want to be withdrawn from it. What happens to those children? Will they just be left at the back of the class or will they be taught something else during this time? Coming up to Communion/Confirmation this can represent a large amount of time.

I don't think there's going to be an significant increase of opt-outs. Given that 95% of the national schools in the country are under Catholic patronage, it's already the case that most unbaptised children are already in Catholic schools, and many of those who aren't will be in schools under other religious patronage, where different religious instruction is offered. This change in the rules will facilitate parents of non-Catholic getting their child into the Catholic school of their choice, but I don't think it's going to lead to a huge rise in the number of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools.

The question of how to accommodate children who opt out of religious instruction is a matter for individual school managements. I think the main method used in practice is "back-of-the-classroom, keep-quiet". If the number of optouts increases signficantly, some better provision will have to be made, but that's a school-by-school issue. And, for the reasons already given, I don't think this particular change in admission rules is going to result in a signficantly greater number of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools than there already is.

BSquared

Peregrinus wrote: »

I don't think there's going to be an significant increase of opt-outs. Given that 95% of the national schools in the country are under Catholic patronage, it's already the case that most unbaptised children are already in Catholic schools, and many of those who aren't will be in schools under other religious patronage, where different religious instruction is offered. This change in the rules will facilitate parents of non-Catholic getting their child into the Catholic school of their choice, but I don't think it's going to lead to a huge rise in the number of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools.

The question of how to accommodate children who opt out of religious instruction is a matter for individual school managements. I think the main method used in practice is "back-of-the-classroom, keep-quiet". If the number of optouts increases signficantly, some better provision will have to be made, but that's a school-by-school issue. And, for the reasons already given, I don't think this particular change in admission rules is going to result in a signficantly greater number of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools than there already is.

I see what you mean however I think there have been a lot of non practicing Catholics who have gotten their children Baptised in order to get their child into their school of choice. If these Baptisms stop then there will be an increase in non-Baptised children in Catholic schools. The next question for parents is if they want their children to go through the Catholic religion syllabus/process (Don't think you can be Confirmed without being Baptised?)

Peregrinus

BSquared wrote: »

I see what you mean however I think there have been a lot of non practicing Catholics who have gotten their children Baptised in order to get their child into their school of choice. If these Baptisms stop then there will be an increase in non-Baptised children in Catholic schools. The next question for parents is if they want their children to go through the Catholic religion syllabus/process (Don't think you can be Confirmed without being Baptised?)

I take your point.

Still, remember removal of the "baptism barrier" for getting into Catholic schools is only relevant to parents who want to get their children into Catholic schools. We don't know how many parents have been baptising their chidlren in order to get them into Catholic schools, and will now stop doing so. If the result of this is a big drop in the number of baptisms then, yes, in 8 years time we'll have a cohort of children in Catholic schools who can't make their first communion, and their parents may wish to withdraw them from the first communion class.

If this happens in significant numbers, the schools will have to make arrangements for those children. But it remains to be seen what those arrangements will be and, as there is 8 years to plan this, we probably won't see very much in the short term.

The real problem, of course, is that there are far to many Catholic schools, relative to the demand for Catholic education. If unbelieving parents not only didn't have to baptise their children to get them into Catholic schools, but didn't have to send them to Catholic schools in the first place, the problem wouldn't arise. We need more Educate Together, etc, schools. And while attempts to reduce the dominance of Catholic patronage in the schools system appear to have stalled for the time being, we are talking about the medium to long term here, and there is a tide in Irish public opinion, manifested in the marriage equality and abortion referendums, which I think suggests that another push at this problem might yield better results than we have seen so far.

BSquared

Peregrinus wrote: »

I take your point.

Still, remember removal of the "baptism barrier" for getting into Catholic schools is only relevant to parents who want to get their children into Catholic schools. We don't know how many parents have been baptising their chidlren in order to get them into Catholic schools, and will now stop doing so. If the result of this is a big drop in the number of baptisms then, yes, in 8 years time we'll have a cohort of children in Catholic schools who can't make their first communion, and their parents may wish to withdraw them from the first communion class.

If this happens in significant numbers, the schools will have to make arrangements for those children. But it remains to be seen what those arrangements will be and, as there is 8 years to plan this, we probably won't see very much in the short term.

The real problem, of course, is that there are far to many Catholic schools, relative to the demand for Catholic education. If unbelieving parents not only didn't have to baptise their children to get them into Catholic schools, but didn't have to send them to Catholic schools in the first place, the problem wouldn't arise. We need more Educate Together, etc, schools. And while attempts to reduce the dominance of Catholic patronage in the schools system appear to have stalled for the time being, we are talking about the medium to long term here, and there is a tide in Irish public opinion, manifested in the marriage equality and abortion referendums, which I think suggests that another push at this problem might yield better results than we have seen so far.

Yeah I agree. What would be the best way to "push" this problem to try to get a result?