Charlie Kelly
Viva Mexico!
Feel catholic schools promote segregation a bit in my personal experience, growing up the catholic schools were always rivals with all of the other schools in the area. Have heard the ones in the city weren’t so bad so probably depends on where about you are.
With religion being pushed more and more out the picture in general I don’t really see the point in them personally other than probably a way to get money for the churches.
I can only go on my own experiences of St Tams and St Augustines (didn't attend them but knew people from these schools). They were two schools that were definitely multi-faith and multi-racial, before the time when there was that much diversity.
I'd rather see us educate more life skills and more education on tackling and recognising prejudice, rather than prioritising the focus on getting rid of religious schools. I think thats a bit of a "using a hammer to crack a nut" approach.
I don’t have a problem with them existing but don’t think they should be state-funded. Pretty sure my mate’s mum had to convert to being a Catholic or something to become a headteacher which is also a load of nonsense.
Kashinda
it wasn’t a fix, I swear
I'd keep them for school football rivalries.
This post was last modified: 09-30-2019, 08:24 PM by Morph.
Kashinda
it wasn’t a fix, I swear
As with Scott, I can only really speak to my own experience - that’s where this ‘debate’ becomes really problematic for me, as really very few people can have a view with any real perspective and you basically end up with middle aged people talking about what it was like at their school, when they were at school, as though it’s a factual representation of the situation now.
I would say that sectarianism is certainly not taught at Catholic schools, as such. There are things that, looking back, were really off about it though. Like Kash says, there were all these trips to Lourdes etc, and loads of children were taken on a trip to see the pope when he had that visit in 2010. Can’t remember if they were officially given a day off to go with their families or if a blind eye was turned, but the place was dead that day. Some of the things I observed:
* very, very few pupils not of a catholic background. The catholic school in my current authority has also recently changed their entry standards so that only catchment catholics can get in;
* a probationer mass was held at the end of the year for all catholic school NQTs in the east of Scotland, ostensibly an optional event. I was told quietly that my attendance was mandatory and it was heavily implied that I would not be given a positive reference by the school if I didn’t. One of the other probationers refused to go on the grounds that she wasn’t catholic and was coerced by the depute head into attending when she noticed that she was in her classroom working when the event was due to start - she was threatened with failing her probation year and later told me that she felt her treatment was sectarian;
* curricular differences. You weren’t allowed to teach things like condom distribution being a possible solution to aids in sub-Saharan Africa, some topics were absolutely forbidden and we were warned against answering questions about eg abortion. These questions/pupils had to be referred to the RE department for support;
* pupil opportunities being limited by the church. I was blocked from starting an Amnesty group by the RE department/cardinal despite being told it would be fine. There was a list of approved charities, but SCIAF was basically the only one you could support. An English teacher and I had to pretend that pupils had been entered into a Guardian journalism competition when it was actually run by Amnesty - they were nominated and she was genuinely worried about what would happen if they won;
* I’m not sure what this shows exactly, but they made the head of RE (elderly wee pious woman who had a quite literal view of the bible) the head of science at one point
Saying non denom schools are Church of Scotland schools is anachronistic, I think. My school has ~40% of ethnic minority pupils and we have an associated Imam, as well as a Minister from the local religious establishments (we would have a priest as well, I’m sure, but he will only work with the catholic school), but pupils have not been asked to pray or listen to a sermon in years - it has been done away with as not inclusive. Religious observance events are now pupil led workshops on school values like equality, with little to no religious input of any faith. Of the schools I’ve worked in, the Catholic school is far and away the least inclusive in that sense.
I don’t think denominational schools cause sectarianism, of course not. But I don’t think they help tbh. I think I would probably do away with them, but I would also agree that there are far far bigger problems we have as a society causing bigotry and division *ahem fucking marches ahem*
This post was last modified: 09-30-2019, 09:03 PM by Cheeky Gnando’s.
Frei me a river
Nelson Seegero
They should be abolished, the Catholic Church having any influence over young minds is bad thing, let their parents indoctrinate them on a Sunday and keep schools for education.
This post was last modified: 10-06-2019, 02:23 PM by Morph.
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