Raising a child as atheist in a very non-secular society

Dades

Húrin wrote: »

Materialism is, of course, a belief system, or at the least, a world view.

... as is nihilism or Buddhism. But I'm not sure I see your point.

Orion

ArthurDent wrote: »

but if it's a national school and there are places vacant after all those of the particular denomination have taken their places available the school would be obliged to prove that taking on this child would be detrimental to the ethos of that school -

Can you name a single faith based national school that hasn't had a full enrolment? Places are so short that there are none. And if the school's enrolment policy is clearly stated then a Section 29 appeal will fail once they reach 27 kids who meet the enrolment policy criteria.

MementoMori

Ok apologies to the OP as I have somewhat dragged this further off the initial topic but I kinda followed on the tread of the discussion.

Tbh I don't think it would be anything of an issue in the states if you move to the blue states; which seemed to be where you were headed. As long as you stay out of the Bible Belt area I don't think it will have any effect on your life. In the areas where you seem to be heading to, I think religion is something you have to actively pursue an interest in opting into. It's not the case where you would ever be ostracised because of religious belief. Even in the heart of the Bible belt I think the situation as regards religion and schools is probably in a much healthier state than in Ireland. Religious insruction is kept entirely separate from regular schooling - hence Sunday schools. The US has a very strict church and state separation so I think you'll be fine.

I honestly think the current legislation in Ireland regarding this is an utter disgrace.

I am hopeful that at least there is a much greater chance that new Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe will do something, as opposed to the previous Opus Dei "miracle baby" Mary Hanafin.

If the government had any cojones, they would just tell the Church - look we don't give a damm about what happened previously, this protecting your ethos shi.te is dead. Over. There shouldnt be any religion in schools whatsoever. Some teachings on morality/philosophy with a slight dab about the historical impact of religion. However the nonsense we had to endure of religious indoctrination should be scraped immediately. Due to the nature of the Irish education system, it basically means that if you don't get your child baptised that your are putting your child at risk of not receiving the best education available from the government. Quite simply this is an outrage.

Its just discrimination, plain and simple. If the Church wanted to display the Christian value of fairness, they could easily do the honourable thing and give the ethos nonsense up. The reason the Catholic Church don't, is that they know once they did, this would increase the decline in "practising" Catholics.

On a slightly different tangent, re Gambler's sister situation - what's to stop you lying about this i.e. I presume they don't ask for a baptism cert? even if they do I would just lie about it - delay, postpone, put off, could even send in a forgery - anything so that initially you could say to the school "oh yeah the child is Catholic" then once they enroll, say actually they are not catholic and we don't want them instructed in that nonsense. We're lied about this because we wanted the child to come to this school. Personally I would have no moral qualms with this. I can't see any school kicking up a fuss about it once the child was in place because once it got public I'm sure there would be an uproar. You could always go with the arguement of "ok we sinned - your Catholic. I'm sure you'll forgive us. Wasnt there something in that mad book of yours about not visiting the sins of the father on the child?"

Sorry for the ranting but this is a topic that really gets my wick up- the fact that its 3in the am probably doesnt help

ArthurDent

Macros42 wrote: »

Can you name a single faith based national school that hasn't had a full enrolment? Places are so short that there are none. And if the school's enrolment policy is clearly stated then a Section 29 appeal will fail once they reach 27 kids who meet the enrolment policy criteria.

we are arguing from the same place - I'm involved in an ET school too. I'm just discussing the realities of the application of the law....
there are lots of faith based schools that are not full.... outside commuter belts and newer housing areas in established towns there are lots of places available - that's how the govt is getting away with removing 28 teachers appointed last year in diff schools - falling numbers.

I think being able to discriminate in grounds of religion/sexuality in either employment or enrolment issues under an ethos banner is crap...but that s the system we will conyinue to have to operate in barring a referendum to change the constitution.
all I'm saying above is that to my knowledge if a school has plces available and all those of that denomination are already offered places there has never been a case where an atheist, muslim, jewish, wiccan....kid being refused a place on the basis of ethos.

MementoMori

MementoMori wrote: »

Wasnt there something in that mad book of yours about not visiting the sins of the father on the child?

I'll have to remember that one, it could be useful.

Dades

MementoMori wrote: »

Even in the heart of the Bible belt I think the situation as regards religion and schools is probably in a much healthier state than in Ireland. Religious insruction is kept entirely separate from regular schooling - hence Sunday schools. The US has a very strict church and state separation so I think you'll be fine.

That's all well and good until your kid doesn't turn up at Sunday school and you don't turn up for mass. There may be church and state separation but that's not the same as church and 'community'.

MementoMori wrote: »

On a slightly different tangent, re Gambler's sister situation - what's to stop you lying about this i.e. I presume they don't ask for a baptism cert?

I'm pretty sure some schools require a copy of the cert with your written application.

londubh

both my partner and i are pagan, and we both have different beliefs. so i understand your problem.
we want to raise our children here in ireland, which means we either exclude them from communions and confirmations in a catholic town which could see them singled out (children can be cruel to another child thats different) or do we play along with the community and subject our child to stories of hell and brimstone like we were.
i really dont know what to do. the only schools in my home town are run by the sisters of mercy or christian brothers.
i think the best thing we can do when raising a child is to raise them with education, commpassion, morals and most importantly tolerance. raise them to be a good person.
its best to let them choose when they are old enough same as we did.

An Fear Aniar

londubh wrote: »

both my partner and i are pagan, and we both have different beliefs. so i understand your problem.
we want to raise our children here in ireland, which means we either exclude them from communions and confirmations in a catholic town which could see them singled out (children can be cruel to another child thats different) or do we play along with the community and subject our child to stories of hell and brimstone like we were.

I sympathise, I grew up in a place like that. It raises the question of whether it's right to have your child suffer for your beliefs. Very tough call. I think a good parent would put the child's happiness foremost, you can always talk it through with them privately - above all, if you counsel them not to take it all too seriously they should be alright and get through it all relatively unscathed.


.

Gambler

Dades wrote: »

MementoMori wrote:

On a slightly different tangent, re Gambler's sister situation - what's to stop you lying about this i.e. I presume they don't ask for a baptism cert?

I'm pretty sure some schools require a copy of the cert with your written application.

Either way we would never lie about what our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) are. Just going along with the flow does nothing to confront the issue that allows the situation and also if we were to say that he was a christian then we would have no right to request that he doesn't take part in religion classes.

Even if he goes to religious classes there's the issue of all those religious bits that happen in primary school (He's 4 to answer an earlier question of what level he would be at) like communion\confirmation (I wasn't raised a christian so I don't really know what they all are). For example I know you can't take communion if you aren't baptised and haven't done confession and again we wouldn't disrespect someones elses belief in that way.

Gambler

londubh wrote: »

both my partner and i are pagan, and we both have different beliefs. so i understand your problem.
we want to raise our children here in ireland, which means we either exclude them from communions and confirmations in a catholic town which could see them singled out (children can be cruel to another child thats different) or do we play along with the community and subject our child to stories of hell and brimstone like we were.
i really dont know what to do. the only schools in my home town are run by the sisters of mercy or christian brothers.
i think the best thing we can do when raising a child is to raise them with education, commpassion, morals and most importantly tolerance. raise them to be a good person.
its best to let them choose when they are old enough same as we did.

I wasn't raised as a christian and I had a bit of a mixed bag of results growing up. My first school was in Carlow and they were abominable. I came home from school one day in tears because the nun who taught religion had spent ages telling me all about how me and my parents were going to burn in hell because my parents were guilty of original sin and they hadn't confesed and I wasn't baptised. Apparently (I don't remember) I was traumatised for weeks about it.

Then I was in a school in clonmel that was absolutely amazing. The principal there was very sensitive to all of the issues and because of his influence the school was an absolute haven for anyone that wasn't from a christian background (he even made space available for some minority religions to host their own religion classes to coincide with the christian ones if the local religious community could organise to staff it).

My last primary and secondary schools were in Dublin and while primary school was a bit awkward in that some kids made an issue of my religion over all it was a good experience. In secondary school it was never an issue at all but I think this might be down to the fact it was a community school..

My main recommendation when it comes to schools is to check them out and discuss the issues with the principal well in advance of applying for places (make sure you have enough time to do this so you can still apply early and make sure you are high on the list of requests) so you can get a feeling for the general policy of the school.

As for confirmations\communions etc. I personally never noticed the fact that I didn't have them. My fiancee always finds it really difficult to understand that I never missed the fact that I never celebrated christmass. None of these things were ever an issue for me on any level but if they had become an issue I'm sure my mum would have organised to do something to make it up, bring me out for a special day off when everyone else was doing communion etc. etc.