Green Party (UK) on religion and schools

You can if you wish examine the controversy as it was on one forum, from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OntarioGreens/message/742 onward.  It began months earlier, but that is a fair place to start, if it's worth your bothering, for now.

The only conclusion reachable is that uncomprehending anti-religious animus, and possibly some truly awful manipulation, was behind the GPO's reversal on ed. policy from favouring diversity to monolithism.

Too bad about "single secular" support.  Why should Ontario be any different from most of the rest of Canada?  Notice how Ont. Catholic schools in the news recently again as "outperforming" their counterparts?  Wouldn't want to keep success, would one?

But that is mostly beside the main "green" points, as you'd see if you dip into my copious (& a few others') writing in that controversy, which in some ways is still ongoing...

Thanks for the book reference.  I immediately reserved it from the local library system.  It's got some pretty respectable approbations there.  Maybe we can start a politically relevant discussion on the basis of that book once I get a hold of it.  This blogsite needs continual elevation.

oh my, Michael, i'll not go into it too deeply just now, but "segregating"? "indoctrination"? "correct"?

and "comparative religion" is a substitute for ambience & worldview?

why have kids do the integrating work parents should be doing?

can you not think of better ways to integrate people other than to intrude on parental choice & culture?

and if parentally-chosen "segregated" schools produce literate upright citizens at a better rate than what they opt out of, why would a Green not want to partly fund them, to be fair?

I was quoting Jacoby to some Greens recently, and if Neuhaus also said a good word about Dacey's  book, I should have a look, but the books are piling up again, i'll try to get to it soon

"public funding of faith schools failed in Ontario in the last election for a multitude of reasons" -- primary among which uncomprehending xenophobia & Tory gross ineptitude

"open the door to a lot of potential new schools" -- a bad thing to a so-called green, eh, wouldn't want "diversity"

"have to be supervised, and monitored by the Ministry of Education to ensure they are teaching what needs to be taught adequately" -- like my family was "monitored" for 30 years of non-schooling -- not!!; and so what again, what could be meant by "adequately"

"Lastly I believe" -- but you're giving yourself away, your presentation was ostensibly objective, now you tell your real uncomprehending motivation, much like GPO-ers most strongly behind their stupid policy, they just don't get it & refuse to try, although that last bit I still have to give you the benefit of the doubt on, until you start making reference to brain sizes or blocks of free time as before...

"If they want to build schools" -- typical, education is about buildings, buses, administration...right...it's pathetic

""Sunday" schools great" -- yet another overgeneralizer from Christian experience...take another look, the main movers for fairness in funding comes from an A-Z of independents, Armenians to Zoroastrians

"don't expect the public purse to pay for it." -- but why? it happens all over the world, EVEN ALL OVER CANADA, what makes your Ontario so diferent, if not its disgusting Orangeman past!  Do you not realize that GPO stupidity wants to go back to the take-it-away-from-Catholics days, without even realizing what they are doing! And they even got votes for it! Grunt.

"mosques, temples or synagogues [...] why should private schools" -- when i pay my dues to a synagogue this new year, which starts for me in about a week, it is tax deductible, which you must not like we guess; that was how the Harris govt. tried to go about it, via tax credit, but the Tory way was fairer; but they all miss the green points anyway, in yet another case of, as i've put it so often, the right being right for the wrong reasons

"they can keep their nose out of it " -- how would they have their nose in it?!... see what i mean by "uncomprehending" opposition to fair funding? uniquely ontarian opponents refuse to become aware that it goes on all over the place, that there is a terrible anti-catholic history here, that it's not really about money, that...

so there, that's what i could find time to (get that, "find time to", at warp speed) fire off, look at that same greens' forum i suggetsed to Michael, and come back maybe with some real arguments

• "open the door to a lot of potential new schools" of course you would take that wrong, I think everyone else gets that, that comment was about money, alot of new schools would mean sygnificant additional dollars to be spent on education, where would that come from.
• In Ontario we have a standard curriculum and standardized testing all students education must meet certain standards, no matter seperate or public board, that takes monitoring, which costs money
• No I believe in freedom of religion and the freedom to pay for it and the right to get a tax receipt for it
• Education is not about buildings, however if you think you can just take any old building throw 500 kids in it and not put in adequate health, safety, sanitation, environmental, and fire systems, you are obviously not thinking things through, and if you don't factor those costs into your ideas then you should start.
• "Sunday" is in quotes to identify a concept, ie: the religious group holding its own religious classes on its own, as is common in many, if not all religious groups.  And yes I am a Catholic, am I supposed to be ashamed of that.
• I don't know what that rant about orangemen grunting was, but yes I would remove funding from the Catholic board, even though I am a Catholic, and have kids attending public school.  I and my church teach my children religion, and I donate to my church to help make that happen. I don't think my neighbors, who are from all walks of life should have to pay for me and mine.
• The problem with a tax credit for private schools is it potentially removes too many dollars from an allready streached public system, that is available to ALL Canadians.
• "keep their nose out of it" you obviously don't understand the structure the Ontario Catholic boards are forced to accept in order to receive public funding, I identified many things that would not nescesarily sit well with many religious schools, but of course you are afraid to tacle them, it is you who are incomprehending, would you accept in your religious schools, muslim students? evolution? sexual education? world religion classes? Government control of your schools if your schools contravene the education act?  All this is stuff the Catholic board in Ontario currently puts up with to get their precious money, so they can have a religious school where they hang a cross in every room and spend 1.5 hours a week on religion, and they have to carve that time out of music or gym, because they are not core curriculum items.
• Public funding of various religious schools sounds like a good idea until you start adding up the dollars and start trying to balance secular and religious differences, it just does not really work.  As for it's done all over the world, like where, and I mean, just to spell it out plainly for you, I mean, in what country or province do they publicly fund every type of religion out there that wants to set up a religious school in their country.  Under this concept you could have the 20 or so wicken families in Toronto wanting to set up their own school for their 40 or so kids and the government picking up the tab. 
• Look I have been in Jewish, Christian, and Moslem private schools here in Ontario and many of them are already operating at or above Ministry standards, but that is by no means all, and having attended the Catholic school system I know intimately what it's like, and I am telling you that if you were to get public funding you would not like the strings that would go with it.

Good Yom Tov!

I'm speechless, but that aside, the above comment is rife with judgement.  For someone hoping a Green can leap to "get it", some moderation of accusation would be appreciated.

The government does coerce you to pay for another's religious instruction:  http://www.oneschoolsystem.org/faq.html#FAQ_Q1

In fact, read the whole page.  You can also read the fast facts section that shows that Catholics are not opposed to the current system -- as polling results indicate.  I admit that site is obviously biased, but if you stick with the actual facts and ignore the rhetoric you will still find that you are wrong on your first two rebuttals.

Regarding your third rebuttal, math is a purely abstract philosophical subject that is completely perpendicular to religion.  Teachers not sharing the faith of a religious school system should have equal opportunity to teach non-religious subjects in a non-discriminatory environment.  Or is that not a Green ideal?  Perhaps the presence and ubiquity of a religious artifact may cause a child to neglect the useful pursuit of science in deference to the pursuit of his/her religion.  This does not create a balanced educational system.

Anyway, you are looking to the Catholic system as an example, which has plenty of public scrutiny to ensure it operates properly.  But maybe you'd feel different if the only convenient access to public education was through a government funded Scientology school that happened to open in your area.  Just because people are somewhat comfortable with the Catholic implementation of a school system doesn't mean they are comfortable funding classes on Xenu and the 400 billion year history of the universe.

By the way, the official position of the Catholic church is that theistic evolution is a valid theory consistent with Catholic doctrine, but you'd be hard pressed to know that by polling graduates of the Ontario Catholic school system.  Virtually all sciences -- physical and philosophical -- intersect with evolutionary theory, so it's not a small issue.

And finally, if you think that a divinity would impressed by the non-free nature of religious instruction then I'd be willing to buy you a membership with the Fraser Institute and the CPC.

I don't want to wade in too deeply here about the GPO policy. Let it suffice that the policy was not well conceived given Ontario's historical context.

My family has been politically active in Ontario for 160 years. The root of their activism was resistance to what my grandfather(s) termed the 'Presbyterian Mafia', and the Orangemen. It was a dark chapter of intolerance, and systematic discrimination against the Catholic majority in all walks of life.

The touchstone issue wasn't the impossibilty of Catholics serving on, say the superior court, or Justic of the peace appointments. Neither was it the impossibility of a Catholic becoming chief of police etc. The touchstone was the basic fact that Catholics paid the majority of the taxes that supported the schools which their children did not attend.

For decade after decade, Orangemen battled Irish republicans, and Italian immigrants, in the streets. It was a bitter and unpleasant time. Ultimately, this issue was laid to rest in the dying days of Bill Davis' premiership, with the extension of the right for Catholics to direct their property taxes towards the schools which their children attended.

It was as Statesmanlike as it gets. Over a century of civil conflict over religion was finally laid to rest. Re-opening this issue, while those bigots and chauvenists on both sides of the battle lines are still not yet in their graves may be likened to a battle call. Ignorance of the context is no excuse, and make no mistake, this policy is interpreted by many as a revival of religious intolerance, and is taken as sympathetic towards sytematic persecution of Catholics. It was in fact tailored towards winning the votes of bigots, and all the finely reasoned arguments as to the fairness, etc. etc. etc., which may have some basis in reason, have no meaning when the historical context is taken into account.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

 It seems much as I thought: In yesterday's provincial by-election in a central Toronto riding, the GPOntario candidate's numbers lost the couple of percentage points, afforded last sorry general election to GPO province-wide and in that very riding, afforded as a xenophobic bump. Minus the effectively anti-Catholic/religious publicity this time around the school funding issue, it seems there was that much less interest in GPO, something GPO-ers should actually be happy about.  I even noticed in a printed interview the candidate's apparent moving away from the contentious education policy that generated the sad xenophobic assistance to GPO last time.  I know Greens in St. Paul's, and if those core supporters are no longer accompanied by the green-perverse attractees re oneboardism, this by-election's loss is a gain. Start afresh and I might join on actively again, but sorry, still cannot for now.

To what xenophobic bump are you referring?

see http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/schoolsandresources/article...

Just as I expected.  The Ont. prov. Liberals, who campaigned last election against John Tory's ineptly expressed but more equitable proposal to extend funding to religious schools,
having allowed the Africentric school in Toronto to go ahead, will likely eventually permit funding for religious anyway, in a manner similar to this popular school (see link) if & as it succeeds. When I said as much post-election to GPO-ers, nobody could comprehend, except those who saw GPO as way off the mark to begin with with their ed. policy reversal, which did provide their temporary electoral "xenophobic bump".  The trustee in the article we know, and he is part of a group that was very disappointed at John Tory's failure, but knows that the success of this alternative school should eventually lead to their obtaining fairer access to funding in a similar non-discriminatory way.  All you uncomprehending opponents of funding for religious schools, note well the final sentence in that article, that it's open to everyone of necessity. So what's wrong with a partly publicly funded Islamicentric school, if it puts out upstanding citizens, if  Africentric works well & is funded (in full)? If it works, why would a Green want to can it based on some ideology?  Note well also that GPOpponents of religious school funding were not against separate boards for French (I'm not either, who cares how many boards?), yet often argued on efficiency grounds for onebigfatboard, pretty much belied by their picking on religious but not on French, revealing real trouble with religion.