Religion and Engaging with the Teacher

I've had a few sets of friends who emigrated to good jobs, and lived abroad for years, but who moved back to Ireland over the past few years. One factor which was common was the desire to move home before their respective eldest started school. They wanted the kids to be brought up here and avail of the Irish education system.

So, in my experience, it is not uncommon for parents to leave well paying jobs and great personal lifestyles to uproot and move between continents to benefit their kids. If moving 30km is "no choice" for others then you'd have to question the actual strength of their positions. You have a 5 or 6 year lead in time.

In the interest of fairness, it might be a good idea to have random allocation of "belief system" for children in primary school, regardless of parents belief. So, say Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism and Atheism and have it taught as fact. It will be interesting to hear the howls from Catholic parents! For those who have no religion it will be the exact same situation as we have currently.

I think there should be freedom of and from religion. We should never have a situation where a child has to sit through Catholic indoctrination if the parents do not want it. The point was that it would not be accepted that a Catholic child has to go to an Islamic school for example. We wouldn't have the excuses like:

• its only a few prayers
• Why don't you set up your own school?
• Emigrate FFS!

Yet this is the type of thing that non-religious people have to put up with the whole time. The vast majority of the schools in the state are Catholic. There is an increasing number of people with no religion who don't want the indoctrination. The schools are private but almost fully funded by the state. There should at the very least be the possibility to have the kids facilitated elsewhere while the religious instruction is going on.

actually I am...they're not beating it into kids these days. Plus instead of having parents who are believers he has 2 that are non-believers.

I'm quite happy to discuss with him---he's 8 and has Asperger's so is extremely extremely intelligent and has done his own research on this and he doesn't believe in God either. But he's quite happy to attend the class and discuss with the teacher and believe me he really puts it to her.

He's open minded to a lot of things so why deny him? Let him make his own mind up.

Yes, that is exactly what I want and I don't think it is unreasonable either. It could be funded with increased parent contributions for example.

That is about as likely as them contributing towards compensation for survivors of sexual abuse. But, yes it would be a good idea if "owners" of the schools contributed more financially.

Parents want their children taught religion. If they didn’t, more of them would insist on their children being opted out.

The majority of those parents (in Ireland) want their children taught Catholicism, primarily, because the majority of people in this country are Catholics.

I have a suspicion that you’d have absolutely no problem if schools were teaching children that God is not real and that all religions are a waste of time. I apologise if I’m wrong on that, but I suspect that I’m not, and if I’m not, you’re just as willing to force your views on others as any religion is, and that goes for anyone else who feels that way too, obviously.