Religion in junior infants

SpaceTime

tehbaggins wrote: »

What the hell has faith got to do with a moral code?

Again examples from Norway. We called our teachers and even the principal by their first names, we wasn't taught morality at all, nevermind from a religious viewpoint and no one wore a uniform to school ever. And yet we all turned out to be perfectly rational, moral and respectful in adult life. Same thing happening in Sweden and Denmark, potentially in Finland and Iceland as well, but I don't know the latter two as far as primary schools go.

The flipside of the morality coming direct from faith or religion-argument is that you're implying that you'd be a feral beast with no regards for anyone but yourself if you weren't "held back" by your faith and your religion. I doubt that's the case, so how can you hold to your side of the argument so vehemently?

In French school you actually spend a lot of time on secular philosophy courses and learning a lot about critical thinking.

You actually have to dissect why something might be so.

It's a huge part of what the French see as building the basis of a modern society that can think for itself and goes right back to the early ideas of French republicanism and post enlightenment thinking.

Are the French some kind of crazy, immoral society without any values?

Absolutely not!

Have a read of :

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22729780

Interesting perspective on their approach.

inocybe

I would love to see our school system move towards the French model. Where children are French first, above all other divisions. Here there seems to be a desire to split children into ever more narrow schooling - as echoed so many times in this thread... 'go set up your own school'. Their ideal seems to be that we have schools based on each religion, and our children are segregated on that basis. Why not Irish schools for all Irish children, with no divisions. Why is that such an unpalatable concept?

SpaceTime

The term "National School" would make you think that was the case. Doesn't seem to be much more than a misleading buzz word though.

lazygal

inocybe wrote: »

I would love to see our school system move towards the French model. Where children are French first, above all other divisions. Here there seems to be a desire to split children into ever more narrow schooling - as echoed so many times in this thread... 'go set up your own school'. Their ideal seems to be that we have schools based on each religion, and our children are segregated on that basis. Why not Irish schools for all Irish children, with no divisions. Why is that such an unpalatable concept?

Exactly. I can't help but think a lot of the duplication has more to do with adults than children. More schools means more posts for principal level, assistant principal etc, and schools to suit parents wishes in terms of religious beliefs is a bizarre way to accommodate children. I remember driving around rural Kerry last summer and passing loads of tiny small schools. Its far more efficient to have a smaller number of large schools that have the resources to deal with special needs and teach all children, rather than having 20 schools that all discriminate on the grounds of religion, spend more time on religious indoctrination than science and eat up more resources because they need many duplicates of services. Setting up countless small schools make no economic and, more important, educational sense.

SpaceTime

I would actually start reforming the system like this:

1) Create school districts and initially have the existing schools as part of them.
2) Gradually merge the management structures into a single principal for the whole district and a vice for each school.
3) Share facilities - create district sports complex, district library, have a team of district specialist teachers - resource, language, science, specialist psychological supports etc etc. Whatever it is a modern school needs.
4) You could create a lot of specialist posts as you'd have the scale to do that i.e. teachers specialising in particular areas of education, or being 'super teachers' of particular subjects who could actually help design courses, monitor implementation, work with colleagues on building better programmes etc etc etc.

It would eventually morph into a proper public school system, but gently.

....

I'd love to see the second level system split into middle school and high school.
There would be a good opportunity to merge facilities and create a number of proper high schools just covering senior cycle with a very broad range of subjects and facilities appropriate to young adults, not kids.

It could be an actual opportunity to prepare people for 3rd level and work.

You could also roll in a lot of short diploma post-leaving cert programmes etc into the same setup.

There's a huge difference between a 12 year old and an 18 year old in school.
I've always found it very odd that Ireland just lumps them all into one system.

...

BTW, I don't think you need to 'throw religion out of school', particularly here in Ireland where it's so wedged in there in the first place you'd have a major problem doing that.

I'd prefer to see religion accommodated as an extra curricular activity.
What's the big deal about doing that?

Churches could pay a specific teacher, or bring in someone who'd been garda vetted etc and approved to do anything in terms of religious education for a group of students who wanted to do that.

The issue I have is using the whole school system to push an agenda, that is forced on everyone, excludes some people entirely and using public money to do that.

We do need a properly run public school system though. At present we don't really have anything other than a bunch of almost entirely publicly funded private institutions, many of which are uneconomically small too.

There's a fairly strong argument for economies of scale and ensuring that we're getting value for the money we're spending here too. If you spread it too thin, you end up with very bad facilities and I think that is something we see way too much of in Ireland.

Also, how far will the state allow fragmentation to go?
At some point someone has to yell "we can't afford this". With the current system, you could potentially end up with vast amounts of duplication as people look for their own flavours of schools.

Aineoil

lazygal wrote: »

Exactly. I can't help but think a lot of the duplication has more to do with adults than children. More schools means more posts for principal level, assistant principal etc, and schools to suit parents wishes in terms of religious beliefs is a bizarre way to accommodate children. I remember driving around rural Kerry last summer and passing loads of tiny small schools. Its far more efficient to have a smaller number of large schools that have the resources to deal with special needs and teach all children, rather than having 20 schools that all discriminate on the grounds of religion, spend more time on religious indoctrination than science and eat up more resources because they need many duplicates of services. Setting up countless small schools make no economic and, more important, educational sense.

Excellent post.

In rural Kerry and Clare (I can only comment on these two counties as I know them) there are many small schools. It's a legacy from the past.

The reason many of these small schools were set up in the 1930's, 40's and 50's was that in those days all children walked to school.

The church acquired the site for the building of the school, sometimes the site was donated for free and in other cases it was bought for a nominal fee.

The state built the school and handed it back to the church.

So in 2015 if a school is amalgamated, the school that has to close and the land becomes property of the diocese, which they will try and sell.

The money goes back to the diocese. A local community gain nothing, no benefits at all.

One eyed Jack

Aineoil wrote: »

Excellent post.

In rural Kerry and Clare (I can only comment on these two counties as I know them) there are many small schools. It's a legacy from the past.

The reason many of these small schools were set up in the 1930's, 40's and 50's was that in those days all children walked to school.

The church acquired the site for the building of the school, sometimes the site was donated for free and in other cases it was bought for a nominal fee.

The state built the school and handed it back to the church.

So in 2015 if a school is amalgamated, the school that has to close and the land becomes property of the diocese, which they will try and sell.

The money goes back to the diocese. A local community gain nothing, no benefits at all.

It's fine to talk about all these "Super-schools" and teaching philosophy and critical thinking in school and someone else will want more focus on IT, music and drama, PE, even nutrition and cooking skills, economics and finance, sex and sexuality and science, more science and lots more science. Right, that's all fine.

So if you imagine we set up "super-schools" in each county, the kind that SpaceTime suggested earlier. Now in order to get to the super-school some parents will have to travel an hour to get there and an hour back, in their cars. As someone else suggested, these schools would be for Irish children. So where do the children who aren't Irish get an education? I'm sure as a teacher you're already aware of the difficulties regarding teaching children who's first language is not english. Then there are children with physical, intellectual, and emotional special educational needs and the jury is still out on intergrating those children into mainstream schools. I'm all for it myself, but some parents disagree.

Imagine trying to get all the parents interested in actually setting up that sort of a new system as opposed to the one we have now. What sort of pie in the sky idealism is that? And that's even before we touch on the whole trying to get teachers and unions to buy into the idea because they're already getting pretty miffed at the lack of support for extracurricular activities they provide in their own time that they're not getting paid for. I still get a pain in my face any time I hear mention of the phrase "Croke Park Hours"...

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. Of course it could, but only if the will was there, which unfortunately, it isn't. So really what we have here is an idea that would only suit a small minority of the population which means that even before it gets off the ground, it has proven to be not just economically unviable, but socially unsuitable for Irish society. All has been done yet again is cherry pick the parts we like from other countries, and ignored the surrounding infrastructure it would take to put those structures in place. It's difficult enough to try and teach children in a cold, damp prefab and people here are talking about building super-schools to teach philosophy and the Arts to children?

Sometimes I picture people blowing the froth off their flappycappulates while sitting in front of their computer or their phone as they refer to themselves as second class citizens who come up with this stuff, and I wonder do they even realise just how difficult it is to get around the mind-numbing level of bureaucracy in their own local primary school, let alone get a word in edgeways at union or Government level.

Aineoil

One eyed Jack wrote: »

It's fine to talk about all these "Super-schools" and teaching philosophy and critical thinking in school and someone else will want more focus on IT, music and drama, PE, even nutrition and cooking skills, economics and finance, sex and sexuality and science, more science and lots more science. Right, that's all fine.

So if you imagine we set up "super-schools" in each county, the kind that SpaceTime suggested earlier. Now in order to get to the super-school some parents will have to travel an hour to get there and an hour back, in their cars. As someone else suggested, these schools would be for Irish children. So where do the children who aren't Irish get an education? I'm sure as a teacher you're already aware of the difficulties regarding teaching children who's first language is not english. Then there are children with physical, intellectual, and emotional special educational needs and the jury is still out on intergrating those children into mainstream schools. I'm all for it myself, but some parents disagree.

Imagine trying to get all the parents interested in actually setting up that sort of a new system as opposed to the one we have now. What sort of pie in the sky idealism is that? And that's even before we touch on the whole trying to get teachers and unions to buy into the idea because they're already getting pretty miffed at the lack of support for extracurricular activities they provide in their own time that they're not getting paid for. I still get a pain in my face any time I hear mention of the phrase "Croke Park Hours"...

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. Of course it could, but only if the will was there, which unfortunately, it isn't. So really what we have here is an idea that would only suit a small minority of the population which means that even before it gets off the ground, it has proven to be not just economically unviable, but socially unsuitable for Irish society. All has been done yet again is cherry pick the parts we like from other countries, and ignored the surrounding infrastructure it would take to put those structures in place. It's difficult enough to try and teach children in a cold, damp prefab and people here are talking about building super-schools to teach philosophy and the Arts to children?

Sometimes I picture people blowing the froth off their flappycappulates while sitting in front of their computer or their phone as they refer to themselves as second class citizens who come up with this stuff, and I wonder do they even realise just how difficult it is to get around the mind-numbing level of bureaucracy in their own local primary school, let alone get a word in edgeways at union or Government level.

I was just trying to explain why there are many small schools in rural parts of Kerry and Clare and trying to amalgamate them would be difficult.

I never mentioned "super-schools".

byhookorbycrook

But are ET/Multi-denom Gaelscoils what people really want?
Likewise are parents willing to collect children 30 mins early from school? Religion is actually taught during lunch "hour" so will parents agree with their children finishing 30 mins earlier and the related child care costs?

zeffabelli

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

But are ET/Multi-denom Gaelscoils what people really want?
Likewise are parents willing to collect children 30 mins early from school? Religion is actually taught during lunch "hour" so will parents agree with their children finishing 30 mins earlier and the related child care costs?

I think a lot would be yeah, or go in late. Especially if they have kids in junior or senior infants as well because that would mean one pick up instead of two. By the time kids hit a certain age they can go home independently anyway.

lazygal

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

But are ET/Multi-denom Gaelscoils what people really want?
Likewise are parents willing to collect children 30 mins early from school? Religion is actually taught during lunch "hour" so will parents agree with their children finishing 30 mins earlier and the related child care costs?

I'd happily organise collection or drop off in order to ensure my children aren't made feel different by having to opt out of indoctrination during the school day. An extra 2.5 hours child care a week wouldn't be an insurmountable cost.
I don't want gaelscoils, Irish is pointless enough as it is. But a move towards more secular approaches would be welcome.

I'd love to see how.many children over a certain age would happily stay in school late or go in earlier than others for faith formation while their friends can have a shorter day!

byhookorbycrook

Was agreeing until "Irish is pointless."

zeffabelli

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Was agreeing until "Irish is pointless."

There is a point to it if you plan on teaching it.

lazygal

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Was agreeing until "Irish is pointless."

Well of course as an Irish teacher in a gaelscoil you won't agree. But Irish consumes so many resources for so little benefit. I work in an area where everything has to be translated into Irish and the number who actually use the documents is tiny. I actually liked Irish in school but my husband had an exemption and never missed out on anything by not having it. If it's a choice between Irish and teaching children a modern European or Chinese language for 14 years I know what most parents would pick.

frostyjacks

lazygal wrote: »

Well of course as an Irish teacher in a gaelscoil you won't agree. But Irish consumes so many resources for so little benefit. I work in an area where everything has to be translated into Irish and the number who actually use the documents is tiny. I actually liked Irish in school but my husband had an exemption and never missed out on anything by not having it. If it's a choice between Irish and teaching children a modern European or Chinese language for 14 years I know what most parents would pick.

Ok. So where are we now...our religion, tick. Our native language, tick. Anything else of our culture you want eradicated?

If you have personal issues with religion or the Irish language, don't send your kids to a school that teaches these subjects. You're only making a rod for your own back.

lazygal

frostyjacks wrote: »

Ok. So where are we now...our religion, tick. Our native language, tick. Anything else of our culture you want eradicated?

If you have personal issues with religion or the Irish language, don't send your kids to a school that teaches these subjects. You're only making a rod for your own back.

"Our" religion? The Catholic church hasn't had special protection since 1976. And show me a parent outside of those sending their children to gaelscoils who prioritises Irish as a subject.
Of course you'll never see anyone else's point of view so I won't bother any more with you.

frostyjacks

lazygal wrote: »

"Our" religion? The Catholic church hasn't had special protection since 1976. And show me a parent outside of those sending their children to gaelscoils who prioritises Irish as a subject.
Of course you'll never see anyone else's point of view so I won't bother any more with you.

Yes, "our" religion. If I'm sending kids to a Catholic school, I would expect them to be schooled in Catholic values.

I know plenty of parents who value their children learning Irish. It's sad that you would want to deny it to other children. I see your POV, I just think you're barking up the wrong tree.

lazygal

frostyjacks wrote: »

Yes, "our" religion. If I'm sending kids to a Catholic school, I would expect them to be schooled in Catholic values.

I know plenty of parents who value their children learning Irish. It's sad that you would want to deny it to other children. I see your POV, I just think you're barking up the wrong tree.

What are Catholic values?

frostyjacks

lazygal wrote: »

What are Catholic values?

Love, tolerance, compassion. I don't know why any parent wouldn't want their child being taught these values.

lazygal

frostyjacks wrote: »

Love, tolerance, compassion. I don't know why any parent wouldn't want their child being taught these values.

Are they exclusively Catholic values? Is discriminating on the grounds of religion in state funded schools showing love, tolerance and compassion?

frostyjacks

lazygal wrote: »

Are they exclusively Catholic values? Is discriminating on the grounds of religion in state funded schools showing love, tolerance and compassion?

Catholicism teaches theses values well, but other religions are available.

How is a Catholic school accepting Catholic pupils discrimination? Why would they take in all and sundry? Is a woman's football team who turn away male applicants discrimination?

One eyed Jack

lazygal wrote: »

Well of course as an Irish teacher in a gaelscoil you won't agree. But Irish consumes so many resources for so little benefit. I work in an area where everything has to be translated into Irish and the number who actually use the documents is tiny. I actually liked Irish in school but my husband had an exemption and never missed out on anything by not having it. If it's a choice between Irish and teaching children a modern European or Chinese language for 14 years I know what most parents would pick.

How could you possibly know this?

The only time I ever speak Chinese nowadays is when I'm talking to one of my child's friends who speaks with broken english, simply because it's easier for me than it is for him, and his parents have even less in the way of english.

The only time I speak Polish is again to my child's friends or to their parents who either have very broken english or in some cases none at all.

I haven't spoken french or italian in donkeys years!

lazygal wrote: »

"Our" religion? The Catholic church hasn't had special protection since 1976. And show me a parent outside of those sending their children to gaelscoils who prioritises Irish as a subject.
Of course you'll never see anyone else's point of view so I won't bother any more with you.

I'm genuinely not trying to be awkward for the sake of it here, but I very much prioritise Irish as a subject. In fact my wife has talked about sending our child to a gaelscoil, and our child wants to go to a gaelscoil, and he's top of his class in Irish, but I've told him that he won't be going to a gaelscoil unless I see a massive effort in improving his irish because I feel he'll struggle in a gaelscoil otherwise. It's an incentive for him, and he's quite determined about it.

SpaceTime

frostyjacks wrote: »

Catholicism teaches theses values well, but other religions are available.

How is a Catholic school accepting Catholic pupils discrimination? Why would they take in all and sundry? Is a woman's football team who turn away male applicants discrimination?

Because most sane countries don't operate a public school system on the same basis as a private women only football club!

Would you accept it if your local NCT centre was for Church of Ireland only and they *might* fit you in, if there are no Church of Ireland people going first and, you may just need to have a bit of an old pray while your car's being tested.

However, you could get an appointment quicker if you just converted!

Now there are a few Car Test Together centres but they've a 2 year waiting list and represent about 3% of centres at most.

Education in most normal countries is an open access public service.

We all pay for this "system" and we are actually legally required to educate our children which, in reality means sending them to school.

...

Honestly though, I give up!

I find the Irish complete blindness to this issue at official level really quite shocking.

I know two people who've opted not to move to Ireland because of lack of secular education (both IT people who were highly sought after by a multinational but chose to remain in the states when they checked out the school situation here)

I don't see it changing, but I guess like most things it's going to require Ireland to be dragged in front of some international human rights court for effectively running an aparthide education system on religious grounds and failing minority groups.

Ireland has a long history of failing young people.

I suppose us "non conformists" are expected to just get on the nearest plane and go live in a non theocratic state are we?

Wright

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Was agreeing until "Irish is pointless."

It is. Dead language. Get it off the bus speakers its annoying. If people want to study it optionally in Secondary School/College; fair play to them and good luck. But it's taking up valuable time that could be spent on maths and the sciences. Every year, like clockwork, Leaving Cert results come out and Intel's on the news practically begging for us to get our maths up.

Wright

frostyjacks wrote: »

Love, tolerance, compassion. I don't know why any parent wouldn't want their child being taught these values.

Exclusive to catholics or even religious people are they? Huh. I must be a Catholic and not even know it!

frostyjacks wrote: »

How is a Catholic school accepting Catholic pupils discrimination? Why would they take in all and sundry? Is a woman's football team who turn away male applicants discrimination?

This is a bad strawman. You can't equate it to what you're talking about. You could equate it to girl's schools I suppose, but not the topic of discussion.

3/10

lazygal

lazygal wrote: »

Well of course as an Irish teacher in a gaelscoil you won't agree. But Irish consumes so many resources for so little benefit. I work in an area where everything has to be translated into Irish and the number who actually use the documents is tiny. I actually liked Irish in school but my husband had an exemption and never missed out on anything by not having it. If it's a choice between Irish and teaching children a modern European or Chinese language for 14 years I know what most parents would pick.

What possible use is Chinese? Why not Japanese, or Hindustani, or Farsi? Mind you, all of those are equally useless as well.

We already speak a modern European language. Why bother with any others?

In fact, why bother with English? We already speak it, so what's with all the useless crap like poetry, drama and essay writing?

Art? Who needs Art? And as for all that CSPE and SPHE guff, shouldn't the parents be doing that instead of wasting my hard-earned money paying for it?

I read somewhere that some wasters were suggesting schools should be teaching kids things like "mindfulness" and "wellbeing". Drivel, complete drivel. Everyone gets a bit down sometimes, so why can't the kids just pull themselves together and get a Happy Meal at McDonald's, or when they get a bit older they can head to the pub and horse down a few pints. If it's good enough for our generation it should be good enough for theirs.

And don't even get me started on History. All about dead people - and no-one gives a monkey's about dead people.

Nope, we have it all wrong. More maths. And science. And accounting. And business. And did I mention more maths, and maybe even more science as well?

In fact, let's just ask the HR directors of PayPal, Google, Intel and a couple of other multinationals to write the training manual curriculum for our kids. That'd be great, wouldn't it?

frostyjacks

Wright wrote: »

Exclusive to catholics or even religious people are they? Huh. I must be a Catholic and not even know it!



This is a bad strawman. You can't equate it to what you're talking about. You could equate it to girl's schools I suppose, but not the topic of discussion.

3/10

I'm not equating, I'm comparing the absurdity of the two situations.

skallywag

lazygal wrote: »

... And show me a parent outside of those sending their children to gaelscoils who prioritises Irish as a subject...

That's some crass generalization.

It's remarkably ignorant to think that a parent of a child who does not attend a Gaelscoil cannot place priority on the Irish language as a subject.

tehbaggins

SpaceTime wrote: »

Honestly though, I give up!

I find the Irish complete blindness to this issue at official level really quite shocking.

I know two people who've opted not to move to Ireland because of lack of secular education (both IT people who were highly sought after by a multinational but chose to remain in the states when they checked out the school situation here)

I don't see it changing, but I guess like most things it's going to require Ireland to be dragged in front of some international human rights court for effectively running an aparthide education system on religious grounds and failing minority groups.

Ireland has a long history of failing young people.

I suppose us "non conformists" are expected to just get on the nearest plane and go live in a non theocratic state are we?

That certainly seems to be the only way at the moment. If there are to be reform in the education system here, it'll be a long, painful and drawn-out process that'll end up hardly reforming anything. Myself and the fiancée are getting married next summer with the plan being to start a family soon after. By the time the sprog's at school age, I very much doubt any reform has taken place, even if it's just to allow non-religious schools. Neither of us are too enthused about the idea of Catholic school and even getting into an ET school seems to be about the same odds as winning the Lotto. Looks like it's emigration time for us.

zeffabelli

Deleted User wrote: »

What possible use is Chinese? Why not Japanese, or Hindustani, or Farsi? Mind you, all of those are equally useless as well.

We already speak a modern European language. Why bother with any others?

In fact, why bother with English? We already speak it, so what's with all the useless crap like poetry, drama and essay writing?

Art? Who needs Art? And as for all that CSPE and SPHE guff, shouldn't the parents be doing that instead of wasting my hard-earned money paying for it?

I read somewhere that some wasters were suggesting schools should be teaching kids things like "mindfulness" and "wellbeing". Drivel, complete drivel. Everyone gets a bit down sometimes, so why can't the kids just pull themselves together and get a Happy Meal at McDonald's, or when they get a bit older they can head to the pub and horse down a few pints. If it's good enough for our generation it should be good enough for theirs.

And don't even get me started on History. All about dead people - and no-one gives a monkey's about dead people.

Nope, we have it all wrong. More maths. And science. And accounting. And business. And did I mention more maths, and maybe even more science as well?

In fact, let's just ask the HR directors of PayPal, Google, Intel and a couple of other multinationals to write the training manual curriculum for our kids. That'd be great, wouldn't it?

Art and English make life bearable...there is nothing more practical than that.

Math and science .....we would have NOTHING without them.

EVerything is business....

These are incredibly practical.....can you make any argument for Irish?

Heck even Latin is more practical.