School patronage

Hotblack Desiato

seamus wrote: »

Give us some proper data on how many are actually a member of these religions, versus who just likes to call themselves Catholic.

It's still a pointless question*, and a p!ss-poor way to justify maintaining the 19th century education system we have.

As I asked before, why should an OAP in Donegal ticking the catholic box have any influence on the patronage of a school in Cork?

We already know that a large number of parents want change, and we already know that our education system violates human rights.

We also know that people lie through their hoop on the census form - how about that "I really really can speak Irish" question?



* It should be a pointless question, as the religious affiliations of citizens should make no difference to the provision of state services...

robindch

tretorn wrote: »

I dont want to livein an area with a large non national population because I dont want my child in a class with people with poor english [...]

FYI - "dont" should be spelled "don't", "livein" should be "live in", "non national" should be "non-national", "whats" below should be "what's" and the first letter of 'english' should be capitalized, as in 'English'.

tretorn wrote: »

[...] and with customs I abhor so if that happened where I live I would sell up and live elsewhere or else I would just put up with whats available and stop whinging.

Sounds like things are so bad here in Ireland, you should leave the country!

tretorn

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

It's still a pointless question*, and a p!ss-poor way to justify maintaining the 19th century education system we have.

As I asked before, why should an OAP in Donegal ticking the catholic box have any influence on the patronage of a school in Cork?

We already know that a large number of parents want change, and we already know that our education system violates human rights.

We also know that people lie through their hoop on the census form - how about that "I really really can speak Irish" question?



* It should be a pointless question, as the religious affiliations of citizens should make no difference to the provision of state services...

We do not have a nineteenth century Education system, we have one of the best Education systems in the world and this is one of the reasons we have a lot of inward investment, the ready availability of graduates with good degrees.

Again there is no huge demand for secular education. There are a minority of parents who want ET together schools. The unfairness has been acknowledged and the Church offered to divest schools, the problem is everyone thinks divesting schools is a good idea or so they tell the vocal minority, in reality parents want to see some school or other but not their own school, hence the hysteria in Kinsealy.

tretorn

robindch wrote: »

FYI - "dont" should be spelled "don't", "livein" should be "live in", "non national" should be "non-national", "whats" below should be spelled "what's" and the first letter of 'english' should be capitalized, as in 'English'.Sounds like things are so bad here in Ireland, you should leave the country!

Ahem, kindly keep your english grammar teaching to yourself.

I didnt ask for your grind, I will type whatever way I like.

Back in your box now, you rude patronising individual.........

And arent you lucky you didnt get a last century education, you wouldnt be able to show off if you had.

robindch

tretorn wrote: »

Ahem, kindly keep your english grammar teaching to yourself.

Normally, people on boards avoid commenting on the other posters' spelling and grammar. However, where a poster whinges about low standards of English elsewhere when that poster is making basic grammar and spelling errors? Well, an exception seems quite fair.

tretorn wrote: »

Back in your box now, you rude patronising individual......... And arent you lucky you didnt get a last century education, you wouldnt be able to show off if you had.

"arent" -> "aren't", "didnt" -> "didn't", "wouldnt" -> "wouldn't" and "........." to a proper ellipsis "...". And yes, I did receive most of my formal education in the 20th century.

Anyway, regardless of your disgrammatacistic outbursts, you've been carded for incivility. Your next wayward post will see you taking a brief holiday from the forum.

Mark Hamill

smacl wrote: »

My take on it as a secularist is that religious beliefs and all that go with them are personal and subjective. What they mean to any given person is none of my business, but neither should the be allowed influence the decisions of the state for the same reason. I think the issue here is misuse of census information, which unfortunately happens all too frequently. We shouldn't be attempting to define people's preferences by their nominal religious affiliation, we should be asking them about their secular preferences on the census in addition to the religious affiliation.

I posted a poll on the Christianity forum a few years back with this in mind, asking non-Christians not to vote, and 73% of respondents said that they were against the church influencing the state. The question was further qualified in relation to schools and hospitals.

I too believe that religious beliefs are personal. The thing is that labels are not personal, and that's by design. We have labels so that we can communicate to people information about ourselves quickly and efficiently, without having to stop and describe every single aspect of ourselves in every situation to everyone. If someone takes on a label, then they are defining themselves by that label. Therefore expecting people to only take labels that actually define them is completely reasonable.

Mark Hamill

tretorn wrote: »

I have no interest in immigrant friends and to be honest the immigrants I know, eg, the Chinese, the Filipinos,the Poles etc all stick to their own groups too. I have never seen Chinese people hanging out with Nigerians or Muslims for example and while my children are in school with lots of nationalities they dont socialise outside school with anyone but their own nationality.

Might this be because so many schools are segregated by religion (and therefore race)? Because I am white Irish and I am engaged to a Filipino and I weekly meet up with other Asians, Europeans of all types, Americans North and South, and any other ethnic group I've forgotten to play board games in Dublin city centre.

tretorn wrote: »

I dont want to livein an area with a large non national population because I dont want my child in a class with people with poor english and with customs I abhor so if that happened where I live I would sell up and live elsewhere or else I would just put up with whats available and stop whinging.

Firstly, all kids have poor English, it's why they have to do it in school.
Secondly, and again, do you not think these issues you have with foreigners might be aggravated by segregation? How will their English and customs improve if they don't get to integrate with our "better" English and customs?

Why do you think that I don't have a problem with their English and customs?

smacl

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I too believe that religious beliefs are personal. The thing is that labels are not personal, and that's by design. We have labels so that we can communicate to people information about ourselves quickly and efficiently, without having to stop and describe every single aspect of ourselves in every situation to everyone. If someone takes on a label, then they are defining themselves by that label. Therefore expecting people to only take labels that actually define them is completely reasonable.

I don't agree. Labels, such as the term Catholic when used by someone to describe their nominal religious affiliation, are ambiguous insofar as they mean different things to different people. For example, if you take the line with someone that they're not a Catholic because they've voted to legalise abortion or same sex marriage, and in doing so taken a position contrary to Rome, you just fallen foul of the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy. While these labels can be a useful shorthand in some circumstances, they do not define us and nor should they. It is a mistake in my opinion to treat people as a homogeneous group based on such labels, just as it is a mistake to blame everyone who shares such a label with the actions of anyone who also carries that label. Again, just my opinion, but this is as true of religion as it is of race, gender or sexual orientation.

lawred2

The divestment in North Dublin has been postponed by the department.

Not surprise - their plan to achieve it was cack handed

Anteayer

We've a modern education system but it's hampered by a 19th century structure. The first real venture into something that looks more like a public school system has been the ETBs.

Everything else is basically running on the model of having a private religious organisations or, in the case of Educate Together, a secular trust running it.

You can critique the structure and the heavily religious ethos without necessarily talking about the quality of academic achievement. Saying that the structure is wrong isn't saying that the education system and its outcomes are poor, rather that the systems could be improved upon.

Schools play an important role in social structures of society and that's the area where the patronage issue is problematic.
We've a public, compulsory attendance school system that's outsourced to private organisations, the vast majority of which are religious and have an agenda of evangelisation (faith formation to use their terminology) which is being achieved through control of public schools.

Add to that a much more diverse population through the change away from religious practices in Ireland and also immigration and you've a scenario which is creating an "us" and "them lot" in education which is a public service.

I mean would you accept this in any other public service? I doubt it somehow. Can you imagine Catholic libraries Vs protestant libraires and people having to set up Reading Together to accommodate diversity? Or having different Garda stations for different religions or maybe post offices, play grounds etc etc

When you apply the same structure to any other public service it suddenly starts to seem ludicrous.

If we live in a republic which claims to be pluralist and secular with equal rights for all, we certainly don't live up to that in our education system.

evolving_doors

lawred2 wrote: »

The divestment in North Dublin has been postponed by the department.

Not surprise - their plan to achieve it was cack handed

Intentionally cack handed!

lawred2

evolving_doors wrote: »

Intentionally cack handed!

most likely

Hotblack Desiato

lawred2 wrote: »

The divestment in North Dublin has been postponed by the department.

Not surprise - their plan to achieve it was cack handed

It wouldn't surprise me at all if this was their plan!

patsman07

Anteayer wrote: »

We've a modern education system but it's hampered by a 19th century structure. The first real venture into something that looks more like a public school system has been the ETBs.

Everything else is basically running on the model of having a private religious organisations or, in the case of Educate Together, a secular trust running it.

You can critique the structure and the heavily religious ethos without necessarily talking about the quality of academic achievement. Saying that the structure is wrong isn't saying that the education system and its outcomes are poor, rather that the systems could be improved upon.

Schools play an important role in social structures of society and that's the area where the patronage issue is problematic.
We've a public, compulsory attendance school system that's outsourced to private organisations, the vast majority of which are religious and have an agenda of evangelisation (faith formation to use their terminology) which is being achieved through control of public schools.

Add to that a much more diverse population through the change away from religious practices in Ireland and also immigration and you've a scenario which is creating an "us" and "them lot" in education which is a public service.

I mean would you accept this in any other public service? I doubt it somehow. Can you imagine Catholic libraries Vs protestant libraires and people having to set up Reading Together to accommodate diversity? Or having different Garda stations for different religions or maybe post offices, play grounds etc etc

When you apply the same structure to any other public service it suddenly starts to seem ludicrous.

If we live in a republic which claims to be pluralist and secular with equal rights for all, we certainly don't live up to that in our education system.

I totally agree with all of this. Hits the nail on the head.

Now, to move the discussion forward. (Hopefully)

What is to be done?

The status quo clearly can't remain. The current system of divestment isn't working, mainly due to obscurantists within school communities and the Church itself. The Department needs to take full control of each divestment process and provide parents and teachers (who, in the main, are shamefully ignorant regarding these matters,) with factual information about ET/ETB schools. That would cut out the complete nonsense we read about this week.

If this approach was adopted, the end result would be the amount of secular schools would rise to around 25%-30%. If planned properly, this could provide everyone with a Secular school at a reasonable distance.

But if our end goal was a fully Secular education system, as I believe it should be, then we need to rethink this current trend.

tretorn

Well, the status quo is remaining in North Dublin and the parents and the teachers will be very relieved.

It didnt take much to cause hysteria so its obvious there is no real appetite in that particular community for change.

And, no, the end goal is not secular education, who do you mean by "our" do you mean the small minority of parents who agree with you.

evolving_doors

, I think the worst word that has entered educating kids is "choice".
Could you imagine if they started to slice up the hospitals according to religion, so we could all have our own health ethos catered for.
I don't really understand why people need to be Catholic, or whatever religion, to learn a subject like maths or science.

There's a split and ghettoisation of education going on with religion at its core. The only way people can say their religion is better than everyone else's is this league table nonsense.

patsman07

tretorn wrote: »

Well, the status quo is remaining in North Dublin and the parents and the teachers will be very relieved.

It didnt take much to cause hysteria so its obvious there is no real appetite in that particular community for change.

And, no, the end goal is not secular education, who do you mean by "our" do you mean the small minority of parents who agree with you.

By "our" I meant people who, ordinarily, go to the Atheism&Agnosticism section of Boards.

Why would the teachers be relieved? If their school was divested they would no longer have to prepare children for the Communion/Confirmation etc. Plus, if there are more than five teachers in their school, statistically, one of them is currently teaching children to believe something that they find literally unbelievable.

lawred2

patsman07 wrote: »

By "our" I meant people who, ordinarily, go to the Atheism&Agnosticism section of Boards.

Why would the teachers be relieved? If their school was divested they would no longer have to prepare children for the Communion/Confirmation etc. Plus, if there are more than five teachers in their school, statistically, one of them is currently teaching children to believe something that they find literally unbelievable.

The message going home to parents came from the teachers through the kids

patsman07

lawred2 wrote: »

The message going home to parents came from the teachers through the kids

See my earlier comment regarding the ignorance of teachers in these matters.
I would remind you, presently, if a teacher is an atheist, he/she must keep this completely hidden if: they would like to have their temporary contract renewed, be eligible for a permanent contract, or promotion, at some future date.

smacl

evolving_doors wrote: »

Well said, I think the worst word that has entered educating kids is "choice".
Could you imagine if they started to slice up the hospitals according to religion, so we could all have our own health ethos catered for.
I don't really understand why people need to be Catholic, or whatever religion, to learn a subject like maths or science.

There's a split and ghettoisation of education going on with religion at its core. The only way people can say their religion is better than everyone else's is this league table nonsense.

I agree entirely with the league tables being nonsense, there's more than enough pressures in the existing points system for students and teachers without trying to notch it up even further by getting schools to effectively compete against on another on what is far from a level playing field or even the right playing field.

With respect to choice and having a one size fits all model, I think it makes sense in terms of economy of scale, but I'm not sure we're even close to having a single model that most people would accept. From example, I'm of the opinion that separation of genders in second level is as big a problem as religion. If we're concerned about women being under represented in STEM, it is hardly surprising if there are girls schools that aren't offering the full curriculum at leaving cert level. Having a daughter who is now studying maths and physics in college, she would never have gotten there without taking entire subjects and grinds outside of her school. No engineering or applied maths taught at her Catholic all girls school, and the teacher in her class didn't manage to complete the honours maths curriculum. While I'm a big fan of Educate Together, and my other daughter is flourishing in her ET secondary, I suspect it isn't a model of education that everyone wouldn't want at this point in time.

tretorn

Young women generally arent interested in STEM subjects, they are drawn more towards roles that are people related, they for the most part arent geeky or happy to work alone in labs and no amount of encouragement is going to change gender preference.The female brain is completely different to the male, this is apparent from age two.

The league tables are very important, the parents of children who arent academic will say otherwise.

A sporty boy will do much better in an all boys secondary school as there will be more very talented athletes to make the top team. The staff make up in all boys schools is generally more male and boys related better to men at this age.

If you look at the league tables the single sex schools do better and most if not all are religious. Dont forget who educated the poor and disadvantaged, it was the religious orders so they have a long proud tradition in Irish education.

smacl

tretorn wrote: »

Young women generally arent interested in STEM subjects, they are drawn more towards roles that are people related, they for the most part arent geeky or happy to work alone in labs and no amount of encouragement is going to change gender preference.The female brain is completely different to the male, this is apparent from age two.

Ok, as per the rules of this forum, I'm going to ask you to provide some hard supporting evidence for the above. In my opinion it is sexist nonsense.

The league tables are very important, the parents of children who arent academic will say otherwise.

A sporty boy will do much better in an all boys secondary school as there will be more very talented athletes to make the top team. The staff make up in all boys schools is generally more male and boys related better to men at this age.

If you look at the league tables the single sex schools do better and most if not all are religious. Dont forget who educated the poor and disadvantaged, it was the religious orders so they have a long proud tradition in Irish education.

Again, this is all unsupported opinion. Schools in better off areas tend to have better outcomes than those in socially disadvantaged areas, which is hardly a surprise. Schools that are results focused tend to favour those students that are high achievers rejecting others. This simply increases polarisation between 'good' and 'bad' schools. Education, in case you weren't aware, is about getting the best outcome for all of our children, most of whom aren't privileged or gifted.

As for the religious orders, their abusive running of schools directly is thankfully nearing an end as their own memberships dwindle away. Our schools are funded by the taxpayer and run by lay teachers, with the involvement of the religious orders being something of a bad hangover.

King Mob

tretorn wrote: »

Young women generally arent interested in STEM subjects, they are drawn more towards roles that are people related, they for the most part arent geeky or happy to work alone in labs and no amount of encouragement is going to change gender preference.The female brain is completely different to the male, this is apparent from age two.

Where exactly is this notion coming from?

Cause maybe outdated, biased, ignorant and sexist ideas might actually be more the cause of the differing levels of genders in STEM subjects.

Mad thought though...

patsman07

Treton has a point here I believe.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/


We see different skills in males&females of other species, why should humans be any different?

It doesn't mean we should separate the genders in school or teach, as fact, religious myths.

On the other point about single sex religious schools being "better." If this is true it is in spite of being religious rather than because of it. These schools have had a long history in which to develop a reputation. A good reputation attracts parents who value education+this leads to an enhancement of the reputation. Most secular schools are relatively new, furthermore, secularism has only taken a foothold amongst middle class people in the past twenty/ twenty five years. Historically, children from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds attended secular schools.

smacl

patsman07 wrote: »

Treton has a point here I believe.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

We see different skills in males&females of other species, why should humans be any different?

Not sure any other species deal with STEM though and suggest you've drawn a false conclusion there. If you read the article and the study that it references, you'll note that in countries where women are less involved in STEM it is through choice rather than ability. Reading a bit more around this, as noted in this Guardian article, we see that this is an effect of social expectation and a cultural artifact, not a biological one. In poorer countries, there are more women in STEM as social pressure directs them into the roles where they make the most money. In more affluent countries, social pressure pushes them towards more traditional female roles. The single sex school exacerbates this, as a girl wishing to enter into engineering for example is at a distinct disadvantage if she comes from a school where engineering is not offered in the senior cycle.

tretorn

Its not only more males who are drawn into STEM careers, its also attracts a high proportion of autistic males or males somewhere on this spectrum. These men find it hard to relate to other humans so are therefore not the most comfortable people to work with and definitely most women wouldnt find that type of work environment very comfortable.

So even if more females are encouraged to do degrees in Computer Science for example you will find the drop out rate for them will be high and many who do qualify and get their degree will move on into other work fairly quickly.

As I said male and female brains are very different, its two different species, this is why nursing and teaching roles /Social care roles are predominately female.

It has absolutely nothing to do with single sex schooling, you will find the same CAO choices in the single sex school as you will find in the Community school. The Community school though will attract a different type of female student, the ambitious girl and her parent will choose the single sex convent school if its available over the community school. The parents of the bright boy will choose the Presentation or the Holy Ghost or the Jesuit education for their boys most definitely above the enormous melting pot community school.

The League tables will show the facts, its the same top schools every year and its the CAO results that determine life choices and where you are going to end up living and the better off areas will have the best schools and on and on it goes.

King Mob

tretorn wrote: »

As I said male and female brains are very different, its two different species, this is why nursing and teaching roles /Social care roles are predominately female.

And are you basing this on any research? Studies?
Or...?

tretorn

smacl wrote: »

Ok, as per the rules of this forum, I'm going to ask you to provide some hard supporting evidence for the above. In my opinion it is sexist nonsense.



Again, this is all unsupported opinion. Schools in better off areas tend to have better outcomes than those in socially disadvantaged areas, which is hardly a surprise. Schools that are results focused tend to favour those students that are high achievers rejecting others. This simply increases polarisation between 'good' and 'bad' schools. Education, in case you weren't aware, is about getting the best outcome for all of our children, most of whom aren't privileged or gifted.

As for the religious orders, their abusive running of schools directly is thankfully nearing an end as their own memberships dwindle away. Our schools are funded by the taxpayer and run by lay teachers, with the involvement of the religious orders being something of a bad hangover.

I went to a religious run school and no one abused me.

I got a very good education provide by religious people who devoted their lives to the less well off, they built schools in disadvantaged areas and these schools are still going strong now and people queue up to get into them. These religious people wouldnt even have got a salary, their earnings would have gone to the order and the religious teachers wouldnt have anything to their name.

The religious might be dying off but in their place Boards of Managements are set up to ensure that the schools are run under the same religious ethos and they arent going anywhere. These schools are chosen by parents for the specific ethos they offer and they could fill places three times over.

evolving_doors

tretorn wrote: »

Young women generally arent interested in STEM subjects, they are drawn more towards roles that are people related, they for the most part arent geeky or happy to work alone in labs and no amount of encouragement is going to change gender preference.The female brain is completely different to the male, this is apparent from age two.

The league tables are very important, the parents of children who arent academic will say otherwise.

A sporty boy will do much better in an all boys secondary school as there will be more very talented athletes to make the top team. The staff make up in all boys schools is generally more male and boys related better to men at this age.

If you look at the league tables the single sex schools do better and most if not all are religious. Dont forget who educated the poor and disadvantaged, it was the religious orders so they have a long proud tradition in Irish education.

Ergo religion and gender discrimination makes for better engineers?

tretorn

The religious schools are better than the community schools but if you want a non denominational education more than you want the best education for your child well thats a valid choice for you.

The vast majority of engineers are male, thats a fact. The vast majority of teachers and nurses are female, its up to everyone to make a career choice that will satisfy them. Women should not be coerced into making STEM choices for PC reasons or because the business sector has lots of vacncies that they cant fill.

If you want more women to take up STEM positions then make the job family friendly, offer extended maternity leave, career breaks, flexitime and part time working, this way women might seriously consider it.