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Too Cool for (Catholic) School?
July 18, 2008 - 7:49am
Find Ms. Communicate's answer here.
[ 18 July 2008: Message edited by: jrose ]
She was unwilling to support having her niece offered up to the institution, because of sexism, etc, so she boycotted the baptism. But yet here she is willing/wanting to give her son up to a sexist institution and have further patriarchial bias entrenched into him, beyond what is already present in the public school system. Why the inconsistent philosophy?
Sure enough he would take a 25 min bus trip, as opposed to a 5 min walk, but is the saved 40 mins a day, worth serving your child up to an institution that will influence the rest of your child's life, and to one that she apparently feels strongly about, that she boycotted a baptism?
Wonder what kind of "bad reputation" the public school has that would outweigh the really bad reputation, and deserved one at that, of the Catholic Church?
I've attended three Catholic funerals this month and no amount of political opinion would convince me to miss any one of them, in the same way I've attended baptisms and weddings, and even the odd church service because it was important to members of my family that I be there. The positive of attending something like a family occassion far outweighs my feelings toward any one denomination. It seems that someone who is willing to miss such a thing has convictions strong enough to keep his or her child out of Catholic school.
Not so. Open access was one of the conditions of extension of equal funding to grades 11, 12 & 13.
As to the question she raises: "I am worried that sending my son there will be indirectly "supporting" the Catholic Church" -- if you have the illusion you are "sending" your son to any particular high school, have another chat with him. Perhaps he will set you straight. In that case, you might ask him to explain why he has chosen this school, just so you will have a clue why you have "sent" him there.
We have managed to eliminate public confessional boards, though alas there is still government funding for private confessional schools aka religion-based ghettos. That crap should be banned.
This does seem odd, and I can't imagine not attending a niece's baptism, given that most baptisms are simply done to please older family members. Hell, the only time I set foot in a church (other than for bazaars, and to admire exceptional architecture) is such family events.
These religious schools should be cut off without a cent.
Such funding is the great loophole left in our fight to eliminate confessional schools in Quйbec. And while a (secular Jewish) friend has lots of horror stories from her stint as a teacher in a private Chassidic school, most of these centres for religious and sexist indoctrination remain Catholic ones.
The term confessional schools is not used in Ontario, and they are not private schools. We have four public systems in Ontario: English Catholic, English secular, French Catholic, and French secular. Also, within the two English systems parents have their choice between English-language schools and French Immersion. All four (or six) sets of schools are 100% provincially funded, thanks to Mike Harris taking taxing powers away from school boards. As such, they are effectively controlled by the province, with some local control in the hands of the four sets of publicly-elected boards of school trustees. The three sets of teachers' unions (the two French-language systems have a common teachers' union) work closely together.
Not very like Quebec.
The big Ontario battle was from 1971 to 1984. The Catholic system stopped at Grade 10, and Grades 9 and 10 were funded at elementary school levels, slightly lower. The Liberals and NDP fought for 13 years to get equal funding for the Catholic boards, while the last remnants of the Orange Order (the Masonic Lodges come to mind) tried to keep the Catholics in their place, leaving school at age 16. We won.
That said, back then, public schools were de-facto "Protestant schools" with all sorts of religion in it, so I can understand why people then thought that Catholics should be able to go to separate schools (although it's still Christian supremacist, since no one ever thought that maybe Jews and people of other religions didn't like having Protestant bullshit crammed down their throats in the public school system).
But now, public schools have been properly stripped of religion. So, there is absolutely no excuse for publicly funding Catholic schools.
Not a single public dime towards religious indoctrination!
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Led for most of that period by Stephen Lewis.
Maybe there are a few non-Christians in the ONDP now too, when they decided it would be great policy to ensure that the Legislature continues to recite the Lord's Prayer every day, instead of supporting a completely reasonable proposal to end the practice. Doesn't mean that they're not reinforcing Christian supremacy.
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]
The Liberals, which were traditionally the party Catholics and francophones voted for in opposition to the Protestant, Orange and anti-immigrant Tories traditionally supported the extension of funding for separate schools and the NDP advocated this position as well, in the 1970s, party in order to eat into the Liberal's base but also because in the context of breaking from Ontario's Anglo-Protestant supremacist past supporting Catholic school funding seemed like the more progressive option. Of course, the notion that right wingers oppose Catholic school funding and progressives support it is a false dichotomy but it was very real in the politics of post-war Ontario.
Of course, by 1985 the reality of Ontario had changed and the old Protestant-Catsholic enmity was gone but just like the way generals often fight the last war, Ontario politicians, particularly on the liberal-left, were looking at Catholic school funding from the context of 1971 and before and failed to recognize that the rest of the word had changed and that extending funding to a Christian school was not a progressive, anti-discrimination measure, an antidote to the bigotry of the past, but was actually a reactionary move that failed to recognize the importance of separating church and state.
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]
Just when it looked like Prue might be trying to distinguish himself from the other candidates through a bold policy maneuver that would make the NDP more attractive to a large sector of the population whose views are not reflected currently by any party - he backtracks for fear of having been bold.
Canadian Press
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]
It was meant as a dumb joke in bad taste. Oh well, I guess I should have known better than telling bad jokes on Shabbos. I'll delete it if you delete your quoted reference to it.
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]
Other than invoking the name of Stephen Lewis, the other name I should invoke was the best voice of the Left within the party in Ontario at that time, Dan Heap. At the crucial convention debate on the topic he argued, as always, from socialist principle, not from any sort of realpolitik, that no socialist could defend what the grade 10 cut-off was doing to working-class Catholic kids. The hope that some folks nurtured in the hearts -- that if we starved the Separate School system of money it would somehow wither away -- he dismissed pretty brutally as fighting religious battles on the backs of working-class and immigrant kids.
But perhaps I'm in trouble quoting Dan Heap. After all, he was (gasp) an Anglican priest. Never mind that he had quit the role of parish priest back in 1954 and been a worker-priest for 18 years before being elected to city council and then to Parliament. Never mind that no one who knows him or knew him then -- such as his first young constituency assistant, Olivia Chow -- would ever think of him for a millisecond as a Christian Supremacist.
I don't understand the criticism of this woman for being inconsistent in her opposition to Roman Catholicism. Is consistency such a virtue that it should outweigh other factors? If you strongly object to an infant family member being baptized into the church on the say-so of her parents (considered by some to be a form of child abuse) does that mean you should not so much as contemplate sending your own child to a Catholic school - even though you believe he will not receive religious instruction?
A more reasonable answer would point out that there is no way to avoid "supporting" the Catholic Church if she sends her son to the Catholic school; not only will her school taxes be directed to the separate school system, but the very presence of her son as a student - and therefore a statistic - will help to validate and perpetuate the existence of the separate school system, and conversely weaken the public system, even if only by a relatively tiny amount.
And of course, she does not forfeit the right to speak out against the Church (which was the actual question she asked).
She was not asking for advice on whether she should send her son to a Catholic school. There are obviously some arguments for and against it, and she has the right to decide that for herself. If she decides to go with the catholic school, it will not be because of any religious sympathy for the Church, so it doesn't make her a hypocrite for speaking out against the chirch and opposing the enforced religious recruitment of family members through the sacrament of baptism.
I thought Ms. Communicate's response was quite appropriate.
The horror!
I grew up in a neighbourhood that was about half Catholic. When I was finishing Grade 10, I found to my great surprise -- indeed, horror -- that the majority of the Catholics in my age cohort were planning on leaving school at age 16. A smaller group were going to continue and pay tuition fees. A still smaller group were going to switch schools. The next September there were a small handful of switchers in my Grade 11 class. If I recall correctly, only one stuck it out to the end of Grade 12.
But what I found was the true horror was that everyone seemed to think this situation was perfectly normal. It was 1958. The USA was gradually and painfully granting equal rights to black students. Justice Frankfurter expressed faith that although the practice of segregation had gone on for a long time, the change in the legal backdrop and the education of the general public would ultimately change local customs. But equal rights for Ontario Catholics was not on the radar, it seemed.
Equal to whom? Non-Catholics? Interesting bifurcation of the society.
"Equal rights" for Catholics would mean no religious public schools for them - just like everyone else. Are you using some Ontario dialect definition of "equal"??
Quйbec and NL have wiped out religious public schools, with virtually zero backlash.
Starting this school year, no Catholic public school should accept any new student. Simple, eh? No traumas for the "working-class" kiddies. They can all just stay in whatever school they're in, or start their schooling in a plain vanilla public school.
Oh, of course, it will require a constitutional amendment, which takes two seconds. We know, we've done it.
Any other social crises I can help Ontario with?
I doubt you're serious. But let's suppose.
Would you make no exception for younger siblings, who would find themselves in a different school then their sibling two years older? I guess not.
But we have no surplus buildings. In Port Hope today three schools have students entering Grade 1: one Catholic and two Public. Where will this new plain vanilla public school be? In a wing of St. Mary's, which will gradually fade out the "St." and eventually be renamed Mary Vanilla?
More to the point: what sane person would propose, or vote for, such unnecessary disruption? What voter wouldn't say "Why can't we all get along?" as in fact we do.
[ 19 July 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]
Starting from last years grade 9s, the catholic school is funded for those grade 9s until grade 12 and all the ones after them already in the system. Starting next year there is no funding for any students entering the catholic system. That way no one can say we are abandoning students already in the system.
And there should be no mre funding for anything but the public system
I'm trying to determine whether you really don't understand that change is several decades overdue.
Each new cohort doesn't have to be in different buildings. They just need to abolish the religious stuff. One year at a time. Within 5-6 years, the nightmare is over.
Get it? Same building? Different syllabus?
Different school board. Different principal. In fact, different neighbourhood, if the three new public schools each have their own attendence boundaries.