Church and Secular schools in Canada

Could you provide a cite for whatever it is you mean by the bolded part?

Regards,
Shodan

Perhaps other places than in the US?

The Province of Ontario, in Canada (11 million people) has fully funded Roman Catholic Separate Schools. Attempts to abolish them in favour of public schools for everyone have met with the Catholic Church flexing its muscles with voters and keeping these privileges. The Province of Quebec used to have publicly funded separate schools but thanks to a new spirit of fairness and common sense in Quebec, the province has abolished religion-based schools.

I stand to be corrected, but the Catholic Religion is taught at taxpayes’ expense in a number of countries like Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. France, after a long and heroic battle by the secularists in the past two centuries, suceeded in secularizing. I also think there are state-financed Catholic schools in at least parts of Germany. But please, if I am wrong about any of those countries, correct me.

Another interesting point you may wish to note. A few months ago, Judge Luigi Tosti, of Camerino, Italy, was sentenced to seven months in jail for refusing to work in a courtroom in which a crucifix is displayed. Under Italian law based on treaties originally negotiated between Fascist Italy and the Vatican, a crucifix must be erected in every courtroom, classroom and hospital room. The Present Pope, Benedict, the formere head of the Inquisition under John Paul II, has been pressing for increased observance of this fascist-era law. If you wish to protest this outrage see this site:http://www.iheu.org/node/1902.

A Muslim student in Italy was sentenced for refusing to have a crucifix hanging over the head of his sick mother.

I see - thanks for the explanation. Didn’t know you were one of them-thar furriners. :slight_smile:

Does Ontario also offer non-sectarian public schools, and parents chose which ones they want to send their children? Or is it Catholic or nothing?

Regards,
Shodan

Ontario has publically-supported Catholic (“separate”) schools and (now-secular) public schools. Originally, Ontarian public schools were to be explicitly Protestant, but this seems to have died out in the 1800s.

As mentioned upthread, Quebec originally had a parallel arrangement: Catholic and Protestant schools as well.

These parallel systems of Catholic and Protestant schools were mandated by the original agreements of Confederation which formed Canada*, since Quebec was Catholic and Ontario was nominally Protestant.

But the two provinces developed in different directions, with Ontario quickly acquiring a mix of Christian religions (and later other religions), and Quebec only changing much later (the mid-twentieth centruy).

When we Ontarians do our taxes, we get to choose whether our education taxes support public or separate schools.

These days, the discussion is whether Ontario should fund schools for all religions, or for none. Funding just Catholic schools is inconsistent. I believe that Ontario has even been cited by the UN for human-rights violation over this.

There are a fair number of private religious high schools in Toronto now, for instance, for which parents have to pay hefty tuition fees, like any other private school.

I regard the current system as unfair. I think the government should fund no religious education. Funding schools for all religions opens up questions like, how do we decide what is a religion, and what school is a ‘real’ religious school?

[sub]*I am not sure of the educational arrangements at this time in other provices, like the Maritimes. I believe that all schools in Newfoundland were run by one church or another until even the 1990s, but Newfoundland did not join Canada until 1949, so it was not part of the original Confederation agreements.[/sub]

I went to those schools. Sure, the religion bit was kind of silly, but for the most part it was a solid education.

Honestly, “recovered”? When I didn’t want to go to church any more I just stopped going. You’re a grownup, make your own decisions.

Thanks for the info. This isn’t like a voucher system, is it?

Regards,
Shodan

What I heard about Ontario Catholic schools is, as RickJay says, that they are indeed Catholic and don’t try to hide it, but they do offer a good education. I believe that they are in fact considered better than public schools. Many non-Catholics send their children there.

As Valteron and Sunspace said, Quebec used to have constitutionally-mandated Catholic and Protestant school boards until the mid-1990s. Still, when I was going to primary school, at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, this only meant that we were offered a religious education class that our parents could replace with a secular moral education class (most kids took religious education). This system of school boards has been abolished and replaced by language-based school boards, but Catholic and Protestant religious education is still offered (as well as secular moral education) in our schools. This should be abolished as well in the next years and replaced by a general course offering information about the major world religions.

I also remember reading that Newfoundland had religion-based schools until recently, but I’m not sure.

When I was a kid, one public school I attended had Mass as part of the daily curriculum. Of course, this was in Fascist Spain. I think it’s still the case in Spain that the Catholic Church is heavily involved in education, if it doesn’t control it outright.

When I was in the English language school system mid to late 80s, the course was Humanities and we cover the 5 pillars of Islam, Yom Kippur etc., the main Christian holidays (Advent etc.) and a bunch of sociology type subjects. However, within the English system the course was broken down between Catholic and not-Catholic. I believe the Catholic version wound up doing some “catholicy” stuff but it escapes me.

It’s just a checkbox on my tax forms. Since each area of the province has both separate and public school boards, similar funding mechanisms apply for both, and by default students go to the nearest school to where they live. You don’t get to direct your taxes to a specific school.

ISTR that if you are going to a private school and paying tuition explicitly, you still pay public education taxes, but possibly at a lower rate. I could be very wrong about that, though.

Many areas of the province have French and English versions of both separate and public schools, leading to four publically-funded boards in any area. But actual schools in the French boards tend to be a lot thinner on the ground than “English” ones. If the religious distinction was abolished, presumably the Eglish separate school boards would be roled into the English public schoolo boards, and likewise with the French.

Thanks.

Can you go to whatever school you want (in your area)?

Regards,
Shodan

I think so. When I was in high school, we moved across town, and I should have switched to the other high school in town, but I said I wanted to continue going to the same school, even though it was a lot farther awy. I think there was some form my parents filled out.

This was around 1980, though. With the way the Ministry of Education was kicked around by assored governments (things were centralised, rearranged, new curricula added, grade 13 deleted, etc, etc), I really don’t know what the details are these days.

The other important thing to note is that education is a Provincial responsibility. Each province will have a similar setup but with differences due to history.

Currently my 5 year old goes to an Ottawa Carleton School Board school, but if my wife and I had wanted to we could have sent him to the Ottawa Carleton Catholic School board.

I’ve never heard of issues with, say, a Mormon child not getting into a Catholic public school. Of course I now eagerly await being shot down. :slight_smile:

Pretty much. Some of my classmates were not Catholic. Some of them weren’t even Christians.

Basically it’s just two public systems. In one you get 30 minutes of a subject called “Religion,” and they help you get ready for sacraments and whatnot, like first communion and confirmation, and you get a little more verbage around religious events. Every month or so we had a Mass in the gymnasium for some event or another. In the other system, you don’t. The teachers are all just regular schmoes, though they have separate unions, sort of. The nuns and priests are pretty much long gone from the teachers’ ranks. The provincial education standards - e.g. what you’re supposed to learn in math, English, history, etc. - are the same.

Another difference is that, for whatever reason, Catholic high schools (but not elementary) seem to all insist on uniforms (though I don’t know why they bother, since the uniforms are usually worn untucked and slovenly and the girls hike their kilts up to eight inches above the knee, which you would think would drive you wild with desire but you get used to it. They look dreadful, actually.) and public high schools don’t.

Oh, and we had a school priest, whose job it was to run the religious stuff. In an amusing note, ours was one of the supervisors on the infamous Grade 12 Paris-Rome trip. He left his luggage unattended in the Rome airport, so *la polizia * took it outside and blew it up. He was forced to go shopping for new clothes in Rome, but he hadn’t brought much money with him, so the students lent him some clothes and what money they were willing to part with. He came home looking like a flood victim.

You can go to either kind of school, so far as I am aware; at some point I believe if space was limited preference would be given to Catholic students but they might not do that anymore, and anyway, since funding is tied to how many students you have on your rolls, principals would be loathe to turn anyone away if they had the room. We have a bit more freedom in terms of deciding what school to go to than I think most Americans do; I went to schools way outside of my neighborhood, in one case to get more French instruction, in another because I didn’t feel like switching schools. It’s not a voucher system, though; they’re all publicly funded.

In Ontario at one time it was believed the Catholic schools were somewhat better, and as recently as the late 80s it was an open secret that universities accounted for this in comparing grades. They were certainly a bit better at the high school (secondary, as we call it) level. Since then however, the difference has largely worn off, and the standards overall are pretty much the same. (Of course they might vary from school to school.)

The OP to this thread was a question/response to a point made in the OP of Recovering ex-Catholics share your strategies.

Since the sixteen posts in this (unintentional) hijack had overwhelmed the seven posts of the original discussion while remaining civil and fact-based, I have split the threads, moving this one to General Questions.

[ /Moderating ]

Wow. I had no idea you could split thread content like this. Cool! :slight_smile:

It is not a lot of fun to do, but the hijack had pretty well overwhelmed the original discussion. I figured it was only fair to both sets of posters.

Thank you.

Wow, I started a thread without knowing it. But thanks to Sunspace and RickJay for the info.

Regards,
Shodan