http://www.cssd.ab.ca/
A picture of someone I assume to be Jesus on the first page. Looks kind of religiousy to me. The first paragraph is about Jesus as well. Maybe you have a different idea on what the Catholic School board’s mission is that differs from what it blatantly seems to project.
How does that website demonstrate segregation? I poked around on it a little bit, and didn’t see anything about them not allowing non-Catholics to attend.
Unless it’s changed radically since I went to a Catholic school in Saskatchewan, the separate school system is an option, not a requirement. You can choose either religious or non-religious schools, and no one checks whether you’re religious. If you go to the Catholic schools, one of the classes is religion, and it will be chock full of Roman Catholic doctrine. You’ll even have priests drop by from time to time. But you’re not required to go there or to stay away.
They aren’t private schools; they’re public religious schools. Ontario has an entire network of public Roman Catholic schools; IIRC they’re allowed to exclude non-Catholics at the elementary level. In Quebec all public schools were (at least nominally Catholic or Protestant until the late '90s. Same thing in Newfoundland, except that Pentecostals & 7th Day Adventists had their own schools separate from other Protestants.
I attended a private school of my own free will.
We wore beanies (multi-panelled felt skull caps with wee brims).
My religion requires me to take EPO and testosterone. I look forward to you guys testifying in front of the Olympic committee and WADA at my disciplinary hearing.
What religion is that you ask? We’re Ferrarists. Dr. Ferrari is our god, and Lance Armstrong is his son and our one true savior. He was sacrificed so that the rest of us could be faster.
And now I can do what ever the fuck I want because you have to be tolerant of my religion.
Now that, I have a problem with.
Is this meant to be a joke, or do you think you’re making an actual argument?
Is segregation too harsh a word here? In any case, what is the purpose of having a Catholic School board? What is its goal?
Personally, I can see why they would want anyone to attend as it gives them a chance to convert you that they otherwise wouldn’t. And should we be splitting public funds to have two school boards just so the religious one has the chance to proselytize?
It’s worth nothing that while the schools are tax funded, it’s entirely elective. So on my property taxes, I choose “public” or “separate” (the Catholic board) and my taxes are designated to the board of my choice.
And now I have less of a problem with it. Although I’m still not thrilled by the exclusionary aspect.
Well, segregation might actually be the right word, given what alphaboi said. I didn’t realize that religious schools in Canada were both publicly funded and allowed to be exclusionary - even with the caveat added by raygun, I don’t feel its appropriate for the state to effectively work as a charity collection agency for a religious institution.
That being said, outlawing religious schools altogether is not really a defensible idea, particularly given the overall philosophic approach you’re taking in this thread. If some parents want to get together and use their own money to send a kid to a place where they get a little side of Jesus along with their three Rs, how is it your business or mine?
I don’t believe that Alphaboi is correct about excluding non-Catholics at the elementary level, though my experience is from Saskatchewan and his is from Ontario, which is different in ways. I distinctly recall non-Catholic and even non-religious children attending my Catholic school because it had better teacher-student ratios.
On this particular topic for me, the Googles, they do nothing.
It is constitutionally mandated: see s. 93 of Canada’s constitution.
The problem, at Confederation, was that Quebec was majority Roman Catholic while Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were majority Protestant. In order to avoid the tyranny of the minority in each of the four original provinces, (e.g. Roman Catholics forced to attend Protestant schools because the PTB were Protestant, and vice-versa), a system of denominational schools was set up: Separate (Roman Catholic) and Public (Protestant).
As time went by, the Public system welcomed students from all faiths and beliefs, and divested itself of religious trappings. As a small child in a Toronto public school, I remember the Lord’s Prayer and a Bible reading daily, but those had disappeared by about third grade. I’d guess that the Public system nowadays is totally secular.
It certainly wouldn’t pass muster in the United States owing to the First Amendment, but we in Canada find that the system works pretty well. As has been said, I can direct my school taxes to the system of my choice, so it’s not as if I’m being forced to support a faith/belief system I don’t agree with.
How about schools not being run efficiently because of duplication of services? In that case, taxes aren’t used effectively.
I’ve been trying to keep my idea of how organizations which are ‘voluntary’ operated separate from those that are mandatory. Education is one of those mandatory things. You need to send your kids to school and they should be going to schools that everyone else goes to for a number of reasons, not least of which is so that kids learn to tolerate each other. Perhaps tolerate isn’t a good word. Better would be to ‘understand’ each other.
When I was a child in Ontario, us Protestants were barred from attending Roman Catholic elementary schools.
Roman Catholic kids could attend public elementary schools, though according to a couple of RC friends I had in elementary school, they had to take additional religion classes at their church. My friends put up with that in order to attend our school because, as they said, the sports and activities were better than what was offered at the local separate school.
When it was time for high school, presumably the religion classes had ended; and all the RC kids went to the public high school.
Well, I’m not super keen on tax dollars going to religious institutions in any circumstance. In the US, it’s not an issue, because religious schools are privately funded. My knowledge of the Canadian school system is, obviously, somewhat rudimentary, but I suspect that there’s not that much duplication of services going on there. Unless a lot of these schools are operating at half capacity, if tomorrow every Catholic school in the country was transformed into a public school, I suspect you wouldn’t see too many schools being closed down. But I could be way off base with that.
I don’t much disagree with this. Like I said earlier, I’m not entirely thrilled with the concept of exclusionary religious schools. That being said, a homogenous school environment can still teach about tolerance and diversity. My own schooling was very homogenous. There wasn’t a single black or Asian student in my elementary and junior high school (this was all at one school that taught K through 8). There were maybe half a dozen Asians, and one black kid at my high school - none of them were in my grade. Both schools did a pretty good job of steering me away from joining the Klan when I grew up.
I wanted to circle back to this post.
First of all, sorry if I came at you a little heavy earlier. I thought you were arguing from an established position. If you’re still feeling your thoughts out on the matter, that’s great. Here are my own thoughts on the subject of why religious non-discrimination laws are important.
I want to start off by saying that I’m an atheist myself. I’m also queer. There’s a lot of people in the world who want to really fuck up my life, and almost all of them want to do so for religious reasons. (Except Marley23, who’s still angry over the incident with the ocelot.) So I’m not really arguing out of a position that is particularly sympathetic to religion.
So, the thing about religious people is, if you ask them to choose between their faith and almost anything else, they’re going to choose their faith. If their faith leads them to think God wants them to wear a hat, and you tell them, “If you want to play soccer, you have to lose the hat,” then they’re going to not play soccer.
Okay, so, big deal, right? They can’t play soccer. Sucks, but why make a federal case out of it? Well, so long as it’s just some assholes running a soccer league, it’s not much of a worry. Except, it’s almost never just a few assholes. If the QSF can ban turbans, than so can Tim Horton’s. And once again, faced with the choice of violating their faith, or having coffee and doughnuts, they’re going to pick their faith. And then maybe Air Canada decides they don’t want turbans on their planes. And so on, and so on. Eventually, you get to a place where there’s a significant population that is effectively excluded from participating in their country.
And that’s a problem. Because if this minority can’t reap the benefits of living in the country, they have very little motivation to contribute to it. Even if your employment is protected, what’s the point of succeeding at work, if you can’t buy a house in a nice neighborhood, or a fancy car, or go out to a good show? Even worse, a disaffected population is very vulnerable to radicalization, particularly if the disaffection is along religious lines. You’re going to get a lot of angry young men thinking, “If I can’t eat at Tim Horton’s, why don’t I just burn the place down?”
Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s stupid. All they’d have to do to participate in society is take off their silly hats.” And you’d be absolutely correct. But that’s not what they’re going to do. As ridiculous and irrational as it seems to you and me, they’re always going to keep their hats. We need to govern based off what people will do, not what they should do. In the interest of a safe and stable society, it is a necessary function of government to assure that there are as few barriers as possible between any religious, racial, or sexual minority, and full participation in society.
That link doesn’t say what you think it says. It doesn’t say anything about hiring practices, it’s all about avoiding corporate lawsuits. And it’s not saying that diversity training never works, he’s saying that certain kinds of diversity training don’t work. And the article ends with an example of a kind of diversity training that does work, although the writer is being cutesy with what he’s calling it.
I’d suggest that such thing would happen on a case-by-case basis. In my childhood neighbourhood in Toronto, a Catholic school stood two blocks from a public school. If the Catholic school was transformed into a public school, I don’t think it would last for long–the school district would be more efficient if the neighbourhood students were all at one school instead of two.
However, in some neighbourhoods, the same did not occur. In such cases, turning the local Catholic school into a public school might better serve the neighbourhood.
In Ontario, non-Catholics can be excluded from Catholic elementary schools. The way it plays out is that if a school has declining enrolment it will accept anyone, but if it is already at capacity it will exclude non-Catholics first.
The same applies to teaching at Catholic schools.
BTW, I, an atheist from a protestant background, used to supply teach at Catholic schools. It was very enjoyable, particularly because the kids were well behaved. The only down side was the ridiculous god stuff being taught as true fact. I can see why so many non-Catholics want to enroll their kids in Catholic schools (and why some Catholics insist on being exempted from the religion courses).