Religion and Engaging with the Teacher

gormdubhgorm

This article popped up relevant to this thread

https://www.thejournal.ie/divestment-catholic-primary-schools-stalemate-part-two-5464867-Jun2021/

It ranges from interesting points of view and robust debate, to childish bickering - and that is just the comment section!

I would say it would save reading this thread!🤣

The article was very detailed and seemed to canvas many experiences from different viewpoints. I suggest, Some posters will be quoting bits that article back up their viewpoint for years to come on boards.ie in Education/Religion debates!? 😉

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456314#Comment_118456314

Accepted? Is that the best people can hope for? To be "accepted"? We could not have cared less whether Catholics and Protestants found what we believed to be acceptable or not. Our concern was that their beliefs did not cut the mustard with us. It's all fine and dandy for them to believe and promote those things, and it was all fine and dandy for our family to know what those beliefs were and to respect the people who hold them. But we did not want their messages of their faith undermining the belief system that we were working hard to foster in our son. So we moved house specifically to avoid sending him to a school where those messages would be promoted.

Catholics get schools that will avoid that problem. So do Anglicans. But if you're of no religion at all, or if you belong to a very small minority belief system, there is nowhere you can go without this happening to you unless who happen to live in certain spots around the country. Not only that, but you are forced to pay a heavy price in taxation to support this system. They literally take money out of your pocket, use it to build and fund a school which can operate according to "its preferred ethos", and insist that you have to send your kids there or else move. Technically, they also say you can or should set your own up, but in reality that is only a valid option if you have big numbers locally in your "ethos group".

You seem to be saying that this stuff doesn't matter. But it does matter. Why would you have Catholic schools or Protestant Schools or Muslim schools if it doesn't?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456379#Comment_118456379

Indeed. I'd say that it is much less likely to be an option than before.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456486#Comment_118456486

It makes a compelling case for change, in fairness.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118455628#Comment_118455628

What you should do is take some of that imaginative energy you put into making up your strawmen and try to direct it towards something positive.

And yes, you don't get to force your beliefs onto others. And you will not get your desired discrimination as you earlier stated. The Constitution protects against you from attempting both.

And finally, you still haven't come up with anything like a plausible reason why you cannot organise to have a school of your choosing set up from scratch. The only plausible reason is laziness.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456396#Comment_118456396

Find me a kid that doesnt like christmas and the nativity play.

People are making too big a deal of this, either choose convenience and accept the above, or stick to your beliefs and find an alternative. Its not as if any of this is a surprise to anyone. And how much of this is going to stick with kids if it isnt being reinforced at home?

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456543#Comment_118456543

The word "accepted" here means to be given a place in that school. Schools have to accept any child as long as they have space available for them. It doesn't mean they do some kind of personal profiling of the students character. You might not be accepted into a particular school if it already oversubscribed, but if it isn't then they accept you.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456543#Comment_118456543

Accepted yes, everyone applies to a school and you either get accepted or not. Why would you take issue with that.

And if you have a set of minority beliefs then you either do as you did or you drink the kool aid. If they are super important to you then you'll know what decision is right for your family.

The irony is nowadays the most dogmatic people are those that are anti religion, most people have enough the be getting on with without letting this kind of thing work them up.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456733#Comment_118456733

Sure, let me introduce you to the Muslim, Sikh and athiest families and their kids who wonder why their heritage is excluded and ignored when it comes to the big family celebration at Christmas time.

As explained to Donald, 'find an alternative' doesn't work when there are only a tiny number of ET schools which are already oversubscribed and have limited catchment areas.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456936#Comment_118456936

Because they are in a huge minority thats why. If their heritage is that important to them im sure they make their own arrangements.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456956#Comment_118456956

And there it is - the Christian value of to hell with the minority, cos we're going to do our own thing anyway.

See if you think it all the way through and work out why minorities can't 'make their own arrangements'. Why should people be discriminated against at school, just because they're in a minority group?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456690#Comment_118456690

How about the 'plausible reason' of 'it can't be done' as evidenced by the fact that you can't come up with a single example of it actually having been done in living memory. Clearly, every non-catholic parent in the country is 'just too lazy' to take on a 20-year community fundraising project with uncertain outcome.

BettyBlue22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456956#Comment_118456956

That's nonsense. They're not in as small a minority as you think, they arrange religious education for their children outside of school in the same way that Polish kids attend Polish School on Saturdays. This is because our fundamentally secular free primary education sector was co-opted by the Catholic and Protestant churches when the colonisers could no longer stomach funding them, so that neither religion could be deemed to be poaching the faithful of the other. The Church might have originally funded education in the early days of the state to ensure their faithful stayed under the thumb, but the tithes of the faithful well compensated them.

The history of the Irish education system is lofa with religious interference.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457073#Comment_118457073

Take it whatever way you like Andrew , you can't accommodate everyone all the time, when the vast majority identify as one thing and are happy enough to go along with the charade then you can't accommodate the other 10 percent that are made up of dozens of different belief systems so anyone with any sense just gets on board with the system as it is and if there particular man in the sky is that important to them they can look into all that in their own time.

Cyrus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457603#Comment_118457603

They are a very small minority and the rest of your post proves my point , people will make their own arrangements if it's that important to them.

If I moved to Germany I wouldn't expect there to be an Irish Catholic ethos in the school, if that kind of thing was important to me I'd seek it out elsewhere

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456936#Comment_118456936

I see you will be delighted with the double bank holiday this year for st Patrick's day. The government have also decided to give recognition to women as well. We are goint to have a new Bankholiday in 2023 on 1st February....St Bridgit Day. If you join the army you wear the boots. when in Rome do as the Romans do. and all that.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457088#Comment_118457088

You have loads of examples. I sent you a list of about 100 ET schools. A few pages back someone listed 5 religious schools that have been set up since the turn of the century. Don't mistake your own ignorance of something as proof if its non-existence. Do you think that those 100 ET schools have been there since the time of the dinosaurs or do you think that maybe people got together and did a bit of organising?

Again, you cannot point me to a single law which prevents you from getting off your arse and organising something for yourself. Because there is none. What you want to do is to let others put in the 20-years work and for you to scrounge in and try to steal it off them after they have built up what they want to build. You don't have the right to do that any more than the FAI would have the right to be given Croke Park.

Instead you make up lies like trying to say that others are telling you that you have to travel to the "other side of the country". If you are barred from entering other schools along the way then that's on you. You have freedom to move to wherever you want to live also. Perhaps it came as a surprise to you that you child would have to attend school? For most people, they would be aware of that even before they had children. Even if you didn't realise that the child had to go to school until it came to you and told you itself at age 5, it would still have given you 8 years to move somewhere else so that it could finish its primary education and start secondary elsewhere

Donald Trump

.

BettyBlue22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457727#Comment_118457727

It only does that if you're unable to read what I've written, but have at it.

Whether you log in as Cyrus or Donald Trump doesn't change anything.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118458086#Comment_118458086

As you are fond of saying yourself - "Nonsense".

Report the accounts if you want.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118458029#Comment_118458029

And I already explained to you that all those schools were built by the Department, not by the local community group method that you propose for others. So have you any actual examples of schools built by communities, as you propose?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457723#Comment_118457723

They actually could accommodate ALL pupils relatively easily, but they're not arsed to do it.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457783#Comment_118457783

You don't get forced to join the army though, or forced to go to Rome.

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118458149#Comment_118458149

Educate yourself dude. The mechanisms and options are there in black and white: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/education/primary_and_post_primary_education/going_to_primary_school/ownership_of_primary_schools.html

Traditionally, the site for national schools was provided locally - either directly by the patron or as a result of local fundraising. There was also a local contribution to the building costs and the running costs. Changes were made over the years as multi-denominational schools and Gaelscoileanna were being built and did not have a 'local' funding base. New arrangements were introduced in 1999.

Private primary schools get no State funding.

Cost of site - new national schools

The State pays the full cost of the site. The patron still has the choice of funding the site cost. If the State pays, then the State owns the school building and leases it to the patron under a lease or a deed of trust.

If the patron pays, the patron owns the school. If the State pays, it does not change who the patron is.

I'm wasting my time giving you this information anyway. The fact that you haven't bothered your arse even to do basic research confirms you're hardly going to get off your arse to do anything positive.

No need to thank me. I wouldn't be expecting anything.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456749#Comment_118456749

If Catholic children had to attend Muslim schools, or schools that actively gave lessons and messages undermining their religion, unless they were willing and could afford to move house, the bishops would scream the house down (and so would you).

The real irony comes from Catholics who take the status quo so much for granted that they think it doesn't matter, when what's actually happening is that it does matter and it suits them. They don't think it's dogmatic because they don't have to think. They don't think it's sectarian or bigoted because it suits them.

If it doesn't matter - if you really, honestly think it doesn't matter - isn't the obvious answer to take all of the schools out of the control of Catholic (or Protestant) church figures and put them into the hands of local State-run ETBs? If it genuinely doesn't matter as you insist, then changing the patronage can't hurt at all. Right?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118458222#Comment_118458222

So which of the schools in your list were paid for by the patron?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456956#Comment_118456956

Why do you think it's OK to treat minorities worse? It's not OK to take taxes off a person and use their money to deliberately undermine the belief system they are trying to foster in their children. It doesn't matter whether the person is black, white, Catholic, Sikh, disabled, gay or any other demographic group. No taxation without representation, full stop.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118457783#Comment_118457783

Er, you might be in Rome, but the rest of us aren't. What a weird thing to say.

beggars_bush

The state should not be funding religious instruction or indoctrination.

The time wasted on this could be used for so much more important stuff- literacy, numeracy, 3rd language, yoga, pe.

If parents want to opt in for religious instruction then there should be extra time given after school/weekend and paid for by the parish/diocese.

We do A La Carte Catholicism very well in this country

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118458294#Comment_118458294

I recall someone saying once that whenever society has an itch, the schools get scratched. We ask schools and the education system to carry a lot of the burden of teaching desirable skills and knowledge to our children - but some of that burden should probably fall on families and society as well. And then what? If our kids aren't good at yoga, PE, managing their diets, mindfulness, languages and all the other stuff we'd like them to learn are we going to blame schools and teachers? It wouldn't be the first time. The same goes for religion; it shouldn't be the job of teachers to foster any particular set of religious beliefs, that should be a job for parents and families.