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Public Funding of Private Religious Schools, redux


Dr_Evil_Mouse

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The only reason they set up the dual systems in some provinces back around Confederation was because Catholics and Protestants had this unfortunate tendency to want to beat each other up, and so they had to be sent to their rooms. That was then, and this is now. And would people be ok with the government making provisions for schools that are intended chiefly for separatist Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, etc., so they can rally against one another and especially at this decadent secularism they find themselves in?

As it stands, the RC schools continue to exist in Ontario because of that 19th c. compromise; yet even the UN has declared it to be unfair. If something has to change, then let it be towards :choke: amalgamation (I hate that word).

I would like to see education about religion in all schools, but that's a persistenly uphill battle (having lost a lot of time fighting for it myself).

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i think we're on the verge of something having to change though. it seems as though we're in a culture of appeasers. kind of like when a failing student's parents bitch so much to the school board that the board would think it much less hassle to pass the kid than to flunk him. appeasing. we do this on the grandest and most miniscule of scales. given this and countless other examples i can't think that it far off the day when a. religion won't be taught in school at all, across the board, b. all religions will be taught in all schools and funded, across the board, or c. when hundreds of schools would pop up across the country each specializing and teaching their own curricula.

maybe now is the time to fight DEM, when change of somesort is eminent, even though the odds might not be anywhere near your favour. something has to give.

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it seems as though we're in a culture of appeasers. kind of like when a failing student's parents bitch so much to the school board that the board would think it much less hassle to pass the kid than to flunk him.

The Harris Tories brought this in. The education revisions saw to it that the best grade a student produced was the one that stuck. If a student only submitted one assignment, e.g., out of ten, the grade on that assignment was taken as representative of what the student was capable of, and would be the one that stuck on the report card. No shit. Ask CJ; she had to live through this bullshit.

given this and countless other examples i can't think that it far off the day when a. religion won't be taught in school at all, across the board,

This is already the case. There's a provision in the Education Act that World Religions have to be taught in schools unless there's an exemption filed by said schools to do so. Nobody bothers, because everybody's afraid of stirring up shit. There's a long history here that I'd be glad to talk your ear off with.

b. all religions will be taught in all schools and funded, across the board,

See above,

or c. when hundreds of schools would pop up across the country each specializing and teaching their own curricula.

That is precisely what the Ontario Conservatives want to steer towards, even though they know they could never afford it. IMO, this is a cynical vote-grab. The funding extension for Separate Schools in the 1980s just about busted the provincial bank; people certainly know better these days.

maybe now is the time to fight DEM, when change of somesort is eminent, even though the odds might not be anywhere near your favour. something has to give.

What sort of change do you see due?

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i don't per se see any change "due", as i'm not overly familiar with the system. but i don't think mike harris should have to shoulder the blame for society's overall, appeasing nature. i think that's been in the running since the beginning of the modern welfare state. you know, 'culture of entitlement'. change that i think is eminent would just be the next logical step in that direction- whether it comes from the left or the right, as both sides are fully enveloped in said culture.

all i was trying to say above is that we're at a particular time when governments are looking to make a change of somesort. what better time to campaign?

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i don't per se see any change "due", as i'm not overly familiar with the system. but i don't think mike harris should have to shoulder the blame for society's overall, appeasing nature.

I don't think this was about appeasing anyone but affluent voters in conservative religious groups (i.e. the ones already able to send their kids to private schools). Note that this was in the first instance about money and finding ways for people with it to hang on to more of it (to the erosion of the public school system), not any concern for culture; the step towards charter schools was introduced not by the Ministry of Education and Training (which would have seemed logical), but by Jim Flaherty in Finance - it was brought in as a tax bill. Nobody got to talk about education per se, and all the repercussions this would have had.

That, to me, is short-sighted, and just dumb. You don't go fucking around with culture and say that you were only trying to shuffle money around and had no concern for culture. Culture is affected whether it's being talked about or not.

What was it Hermann Goering who used to say, "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my gun"? (sorry, I haven't Godwinned in a while ;).)

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There's room in Canada for everyone... even people who don't want state-sponsored education, especially when the tone is such that they are expanding separate schools to include more than just catholic. I smell a home schooling tax break around the corner... which'll be good, cause I'm planning on raising my kids in the outback. If I ever have em that is.

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[rant]

It's such a frustrating situation, because education is turning to such shite. Seemingly half the students I now teach at the college level have language skills not much more advanced than our 9-year old (who at least knows that sentences begin with capital letters and end with periods). There's so much entropy and buck-passing that's been going on through the years - teachers moving their students along to be someone else's problem. Plus, again, there were all those changes brought into the provincial curriculum a few years back that made it virtually impossible to fail students or hold them to any level of accountability.

I mean, what doofus came up with the idea that if a student only hands in one or two assignments out of ten, the grades on those are to be taken as representative of the student's real potential, and be the ones that stick?

And systemically there are other dumbings-down too. Years back in secondary and post-secondary, there were no such things as textbooks; you read primary sources, came to class to discuss them, and wrote about them yourself. Then textbooks came in. Then those texts started including chapter summaries at the back. Then the popular thing to do was print paragraph summaries in the margins so you wouldn't even have to read full paragraphs. Then those summaries would get boiled down for Powerpoint so you wouldn't have to pick up the textbook. Now the expectation seems to be that teachers post those Powerpoints online so the students don't have to bother picking up pen and paper to write anything down themselves.

Entropy.

[/rant]

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I count watching TV and watching my pets as my two most important forms of education.

Summaries are a symptom of information overload...

Materialism(through unattachement to the environment), celebrityism, and violence are also symptoms of information overload.

Schools ought to teach people how to live well, for some it works (perhaps becasue the individuals would of lived well anyways), and for some it doesn't, and for those it doesn't, it eventually will hurt the community, so schools have a vested interest in minimizing the amount of children they free into the world with an incomplete tool set for how to live well... in general.

I've always pictured my revolution in education as this: teach kids comprehensivly THROUGH a specialist field... there are already traces of this (such as TAP and TIP and Art schools), but in general we are all forced to learn the same way: Take Math as Math, take Physics as Physics, take Drama as Drama.

I would instead would like to see a system that would identify the activities children gravitate to in their early years and allow them to learn all the subjects of the world through their 'natural passions'.

For example... If I was a sports geared kid, and really enjoyed it, I imagine I would get a kick out of learning math through sports, english through sports, learning home ec and nutrition through sports, you could even learn drama, geography and history through sports. The effectivness of this style of education I believe would be quite powerful, and nurture an enthusiastic attitude towards a multitude of subjects.

Music through math (3/4 time, resonance priciples) Wood shop through music (make your own instruments) Drama through music (write a score), Geography through music (tour planning, where is everyone from), History through music... How fun would that be!

To me it works accross the board... pick a subject and you can easily find a wealth of related subjects that meets this specialist-to-comprehensive goal. And the bottom line, students would enjoy school... and that's just what I didn't get from the whole experience.

University was different, but clearly it was affected by wave after wave of disenfranchised high schoolers, and some/most never seem to reconcile the differences in expectations, and the overall picture suffers.

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In an effort to appease ;), i'll try (in this post) to punctuate correctly, as I'm famous for not capitalizing.

Apathetic culture of entitlement (it feels weird capitalizing) is what I would say. I can't actually pinpoint the beginning of it all, but it's been in the coming for awhile now (it seems) and is one of the biggest reasons why I am a libertarian. Moreso than anything (and as much as I appreciate them) I would point a finger towards civil liberties and the wrong path governments have taken to vigilantly enforce those liberties. People are becoming increasingly accustomed to governments and public institutions alike doing their dirty work for them and have come to EXPECT these things (In order to avoid confusion, I am not referring to people who genuinely need assistance). Some of the response from the public sector during the days of Mike Harris only solidified this for me. You know reading the picket signs, that kind of thing. When you think of the finances of it all, you have to think of the finances, it made sense. Yet people are accustomed to their lives, to a certain comfort level and when anything happens to disturb that, they panic.

I wouldn't use Mike Harris' government as an example DEM. I think it's been in the coming long before him. His answer only stirred the pot more.

It's obvious a new and fresh and out of the box alternative needs to be sought after.

A LIBERTARIAN alternative! How's that for fresh!?

:)

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it all comes back to the old chestnut "you get out of something what you put in." the kids that do care about an education are the ones still getting full scholarships to Queens, and they could be sitting next to the most apathetic kid in the school who will drop out in two weeks.

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