Faith Schools Segregating Migrant Children

Bannasidhe

Eramen wrote: »

There was no 'secularism' as a personal belief before the Jacobite risings. You're applying an ideology to the past that did not exist. What existed then in Ireland was a culture of benevolence between religions or lack of - not secularism.

Secularism is a modern facet of ideology that has to be actively lobbied for to gain any sort of meaning or political relevance. The people of the past (in the situation you described) lived and incorporated passively into everyday life a religious tolerance - they had no need to force a political view onto others out of a misled view of a pretentious, false equality.

Secularism is a politic, don't mistake the cultural past for secularism - because secular politics was not part of the culture.

No - it was a secular society because the Church had no impact whatsoever on how that society was governed.

Church interference came with the Tudors - along with religious intolerance (and loss of women's property rights/loss of divorce/concept of illegitimacy/ anti-homosexual legislation etc etc etc)

Eramen

Bannasidhe wrote: »

No - it was a secular society because the Church had no impact whatsoever on how that society was governed.

Church interference came with the Tudors - along with religious intolerance (and loss of women's property rights/loss of divorce/concept of illegitimacy/ anti-homosexual legislation etc etc etc)

Oh yeah, I forget, the ol' 'all religion has to be bad all of the time'.

I switched my brain on for a sec there, sorry.

Dades

Eramen wrote: »

Secularism, as a part of a greater egalitarian agenda, which is based on nothing but 'feelings', least of all anything scientific, is a cause of many problems.

Fake-atheists (most people who identity as 'Atheist'), being part of the problem and some of the major proponents of 'equality' (based on nothing but politics) and thus secularism must cling to it to find relevance.

The above post is blather. No, really, it is.

blath·er
/ˈblaT͟Hər/

Verb
Talk long-windedly without making very much sense: "she began blathering on about spirituality"; "stop your blathering".

Noun
Long-winded talk with no real substance.

Nodin

jank wrote: »

Yes, great to post on the Internet but there is a thing called property rights which is protected under the constitution. If you really really want to play that game (I don't ) then how much does the state owe religious organisations for the past 250 years for providing education and health services?

An amount that would be minus the grants, fees per head paid and various subsidies over the same period.

carpejugulum

You often hear that multiculturalism failed because the immigrants do not want to integrate. This shows that integration is not possible even if people genuinely try.
And is possible because of the usual suspects - religion and government.

Bannasidhe

Eramen wrote: »

Oh yeah, I forget, the ol' 'all religion has to be bad all of the time'.

I switched my brain on for a sec there, sorry.

Any chance you could switch it on and explain how you got from

'no, it was a secular society because religion did not influence the governing of civil society' all the way to 'religion is bad m'kay'.

Did you pass Go?

Bannasidhe

carpejugulum wrote: »

You often hear that multiculturalism failed because the immigrants do not want to integrate. This shows that integration is not possible even if people genuinely try.
And is possible because of the usual suspects - religion and government.

Oh I dunno - I reckon the Normans assimilated pretty well. I mean, looking at a Fitzgerald one would hardly know they were French speaking foreigners with Welsh mammies.

Hotblack Desiato

Dades wrote: »

I was actually thinking ex-Pope Benny has just found Boards.

Boards is a step up from Twitter :cool:

jank

Bannasidhe wrote: »

No.

The idea does not stand.

In 1813 Ireland was under the control of Westminster as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Do you seriously think they would allow the Roman Catholic church such a vital role in Ireland??
No - they made some concessions on the provision of private education/health provision plus the building of a few churches for RCC support for the Act of Union but that is about it.

Yes, there were 'Hedge schools' (fees needed to be paid)- but there were
also free Protestant schools available. The RCC provided an education only for those who could pay.

Most poor children received no education at all.

The first Catholic controlled hospital didn't open until 1834/5 (St. Vincent's). It was open to all who could afford to pay for its services regardless of religion.

The Catholic health care givers didn't discriminate on the grounds of religion - they simply restricted their health care to those who could afford it.

Every other hospital on the island of Ireland was either Protestant or secular.

From 1839 the Westminster government began to build and fund free dispensaries and infirmaries across the country. These were all secular.

You have simply demonstrated that you are plucking things out of the air and haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about.

I note you still haven't addressed this:

You might also be good enough to answer my question as to what relevance events in previous incarnations of the State has to do with policy in the current incarnation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_McAuley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ignatius_Rice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_Nagle

Bannasidhe

Catherine_McAuley founded the Sisters of Mercy in 1831. By which point Westminster had established a Free National school system.

Given the recent revelations about the Christian Brother's I am amazed you are using them to demonstrate how much the State owes the religious orders....

I see your wikipedia and raise you by actual Sources.

Free primary education after 1831, and the enforcement of compulsory education for children between the ages of 6 and 14 in 1892 ensured that all the children of Dublin had access to a basic level of education, at least in theory.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/education.html

Convent Schools and National Education in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Negotiating a Place within a Non-Denominational System

This paper gives an overview of the educational climate in which schools established by Catholic teaching orders of women were founded, and then moves to a close examination of the unusual position of "convent" schools that applied to join the non-denominational National System.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ763442&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ763442


Any chance you could address this in light of your statement that we 'owe' them for 250 (later reduced to 200) years of work on our behalf:

You might also be good enough to answer my question as to what relevance events in previous incarnations of the State has to do with policy in the current incarnation.

Paramite Pie

Eramen wrote: »

Looking at examples of secular countries where religion has been outlawed/strongly suppressed we can see that 'education' was in fact not conducted on a 'first come, first served' basis nor in an 'inclusive' manner as you are implying it would happen in these secular societies. I don't know where you're getting this idea from, but I'd wager perhaps from the momentarily popular ideologies (egalitarian social progress etc) that are the bedrock of the culture of the modern West.

Secularism is not part of any 'culture' as it is found in countries on many different continents. There's also a distinction between banning all religion and simply not favouring one over the other at an State level.

These ideologies you speak of are relatively new and as such will need to be tweaked until it's 'just right'. Religion cannot be tweaked or adapted to changing societies as it a rigid system of beliefs. Thus secularism is the way forward.

The only thing my mam remembers from her Catholic school is being slapped around. She was certainly thought 'respect' but nothing else.

Eramen wrote: »

'First come, first serve' is a silly way of conducting education and learning, as talents, merit, and ability of individuals are made irrelevant - so as to accommodate an 'all-inclusive under-education' for all students where all traces of talent are sidelined. Everyone is not equally capable of receiving a 'mainstream education' of lecturing and standard testing, as peoples ability is different.

I agree that talents are sidelined and that this is atrocious. But I don't think Faith schools ever deal with this either. As for not everyone being equally capable, the 'smarter' students are the exception not the rule. If kids show extra potential, there should be grants provided for gifted schools or extra grinds.
Perhaps allowing kids to move up to a new class early would be helpful to keep them challenged.

To be honest a good teacher will do more than any 'policy' no matter what kind of school you have. Unfortunately we do not have enough of those.

Eramen wrote: »

Standards have been dropping continuously as to accommodate people who are patently unable to compete or progress at high levels, unable to be part of productive learning in certain fields of studies and work. We are seeing universal 'dumbing-down', because as common sense will tell you, the only point that people can be completely equal in learning or anywhere else is at the lowest level of understanding. And this base level is the 'new standard' of modern state-sponsored education.

So what happens to students with dyslexia? Are you suggesting we give them the ol' DUNCE hat??

I know a guy who's dyslexic and cannot read sheet music, but he can play any song on piano simply by listening to a recording of it only once. But he got rejected by many music schools in London because he could not read the musical notations and simply gave up. For someone who's obviously very talented he was discriminated based on his ability to read despite being an intuitive musician.

Also I'm pretty sure that the system of Higher level and Ordinary level (while not perfect) at least caters to differing abilities among students to some extent.

In smaller schools there are not enough staff/resources or students to warrant separating students at different levels.

Eramen wrote: »

Undesirable policy is having undesirable effects, and dare we call is 'progress', and people dance in the streets at the abysmal thing we call 'state/college education' - which actually entitles you intellectually-speaking to not very much at all.

So yes, there are undesirables. We either desire to be fruitful in our learning or we don't, and this will naturally disqualify some people. These people can be very useful elsewhere in society, but not in a situation where education is a means to certain skills or work features.

Intellectual is just a word for people who over think everything. Not all education should be intellectual. Some students learn better by 'doing' rather than simply reading the theory. That does not make them less intelligent. I know a guy who's a well respected engineer. He never went to university but learned 'in-the-field'... he's still a very in demand guy (even in the recession) as many graduates had all the theory but didn't know how to use it!!

Eramen wrote: »

This kind of discrimination is intelligence. We discriminate between things of different and unequal value all the time, such as what we eat, McDonald vs a balanced bean-salad, obviously of different value.. It requires our discrimination to be understood. We do this all the time, life is based on discrimination: what we do with our time, what job we work, what friends we have, what partner we choose to romance.

And how do you propose we discriminate? Interview kids first before junior infants? They're not exaclty the most articulate..:rolleyes: they already do entrance exams for secondary schools to keep students at simliar levels in the same class. (there were 5 levels in my school in each year). But simply rejecting people from schools cos of mental snobbery isn't a good thing. Education is a right, your salad and your partner is a choice.

Choosing is not discrimination, exclusion is.

Eramen wrote: »

"Forging an inclusive Ireland" is talk of political science, not education. We should wish to build better people, in education and elsewhere, and to do this we must attract the most suitable people into these fields of learning. We can't accept everyone when we have limited resources, or when people are inherently of different value when we consider them in relation to their education.

Why have atheists fallen into an understanding of reality that has overtly politically Fabian-marxist, unscientific, mediocre, and counter-productive? Only people who watch copious amounts of tv and believed everything they heard in politically-charged modules at college worry about 'inclusiveness'. I worry about getting the job done, and doing it to our very best. Talent before politics!

I never learned about 'inclusiveness' at college even though I had 3 hour law lectures as part of my health and safety course.

Everything you mentioned about 'skill' first reminds me of Art Schools. You go to a school to do a portfolio but you're told what to do and everyone's portfolio looks the same at the end. I know a student who was rebuked for trying to think outside the box and done her portfolio in her own style.

She was told that would learn creativity in University:rolleyes:. The University accepted her but rejected many of the other students who done what teacher said.

No matter what the system will always fail some people but in the example above even schools that claim to emphasis talent and that filter students by ability still have inherent flaws.

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

Ending segregation along religious lines won’t necessarily end, or even reduce, other forms of segregation. If, as in Australia, state schools prioritise applicants according to where they live, that still results in significant social, etc segregation, and I suspect the same would be true in Ireland.

Your point seems to be that if people lived in racially segregated ghettos, the secular schools would unfortunately reflect this fact, whereas the church schools would be shining examples of multiracial tolerance (though not quite multiculturalism)
Alas no, the best way to have less segregation.... is to reduce segregation.
Jank's post demonstrates the fallacy of thinking that religious segregation is some sort of "noble cause";

jank wrote: »

State schools really depends on where you live. If you live in the Eastern Suburbs in Sydney or the Northern Beaches, then your OK. If your out in Mt. Druit or Blacktown then your in trouble. That is where private education can come in handy. You might live in an area with not so great state run schools, but what you can do is send your child to a privately run school (or a catholic school) anywhere once you cough up the fees

Eramen wrote: »

Only people who watch copious amounts of tv and believed everything they heard in politically-charged modules at college worry about 'inclusiveness'. I worry about getting the job done, and doing it to our very best. Talent before politics!

Inclusiveness is at the heart of this alright, but not in the way you think. In a free society, it is open to talented individuals to earn lots of money for themselves and to send their kids to be privately educated, to attend private hospitals with superior healthcare etc..
BUT when any school or hospital receives a state subvention, and has staff on the public service payroll, they lose the right to be exclusive. That is the bottom line. They should be all-inclusive in their admissions policy. The fact that the religious schools have managed to get an exemption from this (just as they have from employment equality laws) is a sad indictment of our society, and hopefully a short-lived one.

Brian Shanahan

Eramen wrote: »

Supposedly - but any person who observes the world with honesty doesn't come to that conclusion.

Just because we don't let you oppress anyone who doesn't conform exactly to your strictures, it doesn't mean we're oppressing you.

Or am I witnessing a world's first a non-secularist complaining "but I'm being oppressed!" without it having the hidden meaning "I want to oppress and kill others who I don't like but them secular meanies won't let me"?

Hint:

Odds of option B are vanishingly low.

Brian Shanahan

jank wrote: »

Yes, great to post on the Internet but there is a thing called property rights which is protected under the constitution. If you really really want to play that game (I don't ) then how much does the state owe religious organisations for the past 250 years for providing education and health services?

Fine then, charge the churches, remove all funding, bankrupt the bastards.

Frankly it'll take no more than a few days before the full extent of the financial support the government has given over the years to the churches is revealed, and they are driven to penury by the rest of us rightfully and lawfully demanding our money back.

It's simple, Jank, either the churches start living by the same rules the rest of us do, i.e. those of a secular nation, or they exist beyond the pale of the law.

Brian Shanahan

jank wrote: »

How long has the Catholic Church been in Ireland were they not providing health an education services?

One thousand four hundred and fifty years, give or take a few.

The church was very unintersted in the health, welfare and education of its flock up until people started realising what a con job it was in the 1800's.

Kiwi in IE

Peregrinus wrote: »

Not so. Public funding of church schools is the norm in Europe, and we also have it in Australia. The US is the outlier here, not the norm.

What is the percentage of religious schools v's secular schools in Australia and other European countries?

There are religious schools which get partial state funding in NZ, mostly in urban areas, but in a rural area where there is only one school, that school will be a secular state school. Pretty much the opposite of the situation here, where unless you live in an urban area, you are forced to accept a religious education for your child.

My partner and I have just made the horrendous decision to send our son to the only non Catholic school in our area, which is of course Protestant! If attempted indoctrination must occur, I find Anglicanism slightly more palatable than Catholicism. Mostly due to the lack of belief in transubstantiation, limbo etc and the generally better attitude to gender, sexuality and social issues. There is also the bonus of not having religious rituals (including confirmation in the case of this school) done in school time.

Kiwi in IE

jank wrote: »

Yes, great to post on the Internet but there is a thing called property rights which is protected under the constitution. If you really really want to play that game (I don't ) then how much does the state owe religious organisations for the past 250 years for providing education and health services?

More than likely a lot less than the RCC owes the generations of Irish people who have been subjected to physical, sexual and mental abuse in it's name, if a monetary value were to be placed on such things. Particularly when you consider that indoctrination is a form of abuse.

Kiwi in IE

jank wrote: »

So you have no issue with the state confiscating private property? I expect as does everyone the church to pay up its fair share of compensation. I have no issue with that but I dont want to live in a place where the state has the power to confiscate a persons property on a whim. Ownership of property is the keystone of liberal western society.

I am afraid the power and influence of that Church in the affairs of the State seriously undermines Ireland's status as genuinely belonging to 'liberal western society'!

Hotblack Desiato

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

Pretty much the opposite of the situation here, where unless you live in an urban area, you are forced to accept a religious education for your child.

Most people living in urban areas in Ireland have no real choice either.
The few ET schools are massively oversubscribed and most areas don't have one anyway.
Spending hours driving miles across Dublin four times a day for a school run is not a realistic option for most people even if they don't have other kids to be minded or a job to hold down.

My partner and I have just made the horrendous decision to send our son to the only non Catholic school in our area, which is of course Protestant!

That's exactly what we had to do.
To add insult to injury though, there are no less than two Gaelscoils in the area, so that's any chance of an ET scuppered here for good. Dept of Education thinks if we're not made worship a dead religion we should be made worship a dead language :mad:

Peregrinus

ninja900 wrote: »

To add insult to injury though, there are no less than two Gaelscoils in the area, so that's any chance of an ET scuppered here for good.

Is there anything to stop ET acting as patron of a gaelscoil?

(Does ET act as patron of any gaelscoil?)

PopePalpatine

I wonder, do Gaelscoils perform the sacraments as well?

If it does, that'll pretty much re-affirm my image of Irish as the language of Peig rather than the Seoige sisters.

jank

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

I am afraid the power and influence of that Church in the affairs of the State seriously undermines Ireland's status as genuinely belonging to 'liberal western society'!

The fact that you are free to post pretty much what you want* on the Internet stats otherwise. You are free to of course define what you mean and back it up.

*libel and kiddie porn excluded of course.

lazygal

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder, do Gaelscoils perform the sacraments as well?

If it does, that'll pretty much re-affirm my image of Irish as the language of Peig rather than the Seoige sisters.

The most catholic school near us is a gaelscoil. I see the children going to the nearby church on a regular basis, and non Catholics are not accommodated at all. Needless to say the attitude of the school has confirmed some of the preconceived notions I held about gaelscoilleana and the parents who are involved in them.

PopePalpatine

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder, do Gaelscoils perform the sacraments as well?

If it does, that'll pretty much re-affirm my image of Irish as the language of Peig rather than the Seoige sisters.

The Gaelscoil local to me is multidenominational.

Bannasidhe

Deleted User wrote: »

The Gaelscoil local to me is multidenominational.

One of the Gaelscoil near me is multi, the other is 'Catholic'.

The one my son considered sending my granddaughter to is uber Catholic which is why Granddaughter is now in the NS which although still under the patronage of the RCC is fairly multi as the local PP focuses all his attention on the Gaelscoil.

Peregrinus

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder, do Gaelscoils perform the sacraments as well?

If it does, that'll pretty much re-affirm my image of Irish as the language of Peig rather than the Seoige sisters.

Varies from gaelscoil to gaelscoil, I believe.

But don't let that disturb your image of the Irish language!

Kiwi in IE

jank wrote: »

The fact that you are free to post pretty much what you want* on the Internet stats otherwise. You are free to of course define what you mean and back it up.

*libel and kiddie porn excluded of course.

Not quite sure what freedom of speech on the Internet has to do with anything?

In idea of 'liberal western society' includes freedom of religion (and freedom from religion). Therefore health, education and legal systems should be free from religious influence. Not the case in Ireland I am afraid.

recedite

The point re the gaelscoileanna is that they are usually RC schools. But when the Dept of Education is looking around to see where they will push to transfer patronage from church control, they see that there is already a choice of schools in the area. Then they will focus their attempts elsewhere, such as an area with two schools under direct RC patronage. The patron of an RC ethos gaelscoil would typically be An Foras Patrunachta, not the RC diocese. Its all about giving parents choice, but it might be a choice of language, rather than a choice of religion.