Let’s keep the magical thinking out of schools.
Let’s be upfront. The demographic situation in Alberta in the days gone past dictated that we have two school boards. Keeping the religious happy was much higher on up on the agenda in the 20th century. I get that.
It is, however, the 21st century. Religious cotton-brained ideas and the accompanying adherence to magical thinking should have no place in a secular society.
As a teacher I find it distasteful that fellow members of my profession are actively teaching ‘magic-as-reality’ to naive children who look to teachers as a secure attachment point and reliable source of information. It boggles the mind.
Let’s scrap the ‘separate’ school system and worry about giving a meaningful learning experience to all children – not just the ones that are lucky enough to go to public school.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
10 comments
March 15, 2015 at 8:00 am
albertaD
hear, hear! I wonder how much money it would save the alberta budget if religious schools didn’t receive public money and churches were taxed?
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March 15, 2015 at 8:26 am
john zande
I went to Catholic schools from 1 to 12, but we were never instructed in religion. In fact, my secondary school taught comparative religion (in grade 10, only), and apart from that, nothing. It was interesting, none of the priests appeared to take religion seriously at all, so it came across to us more as a community thing rather than any truth statement. We had one clearly dedicated religiously-minded teacher, she taught English, and one day, by chance, not design, we got onto the subject of proving to her that god did not exist… could not exist. She went a little crazy, left the room crying, which made us feel bad (it wasn’t our intention to hurt her), but its what happened after that which was telling. We later discovered she’d stormed into the rectory trying to rally some of the priests to come into the class and prove to us that we were wrong. None, we heard, took her up on the offer, which drove her even more nuts. Later that week she fronted the class with a guest: the Archbishop of Brisbane. No shit. the fucking Archbishop! He tried his best, but after we got over the intimidation factor, we held our own against his esoteric babble. Fun experience.
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March 15, 2015 at 9:29 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
I think that maybe being a priest and working from the other-side might actually encourage atheistic thought in some individuals. Knowing the moves, the words and the rituals must lead to questioning eventually.
It must be very hard to sustain a practice that gives no answers, no signs, no evidence and nowhere to attach. The religious individual has to construct and maintain a lot of cognitive frame work to keep his worldview intact.
The argument of authority :/ I feel for her and for you. It is obvious that she was very dedicated to her ideas and did her best to express her feelings on the subject. I wonder if bringing in “the big guns” and watching the same thing happen to him make her pause for reflection?
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March 15, 2015 at 10:58 am
Rob F
The impression I get is that (at least in the US), in Catholic schools, the education one receives in secular subjects is pretty good, at least compared to what wingnut fundies (low bar?) “teach”.
I truly don’t know about here in Canada.
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March 15, 2015 at 11:06 am
The Arbourist
@Rob F
So, other than the odd course on religion there isn’t much of a difference. Seems like a lot of duplication of infrastructure just to be able to teach the odd course in magic.
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March 15, 2015 at 11:28 am
tnt666
(Typo in previous post. Feel free to delete)
And it’s getting worse. At least in the past there was a requirement to teach the entirety of the secular curriculum. But lately, in various jurisdictions, religious groups are fucking with that and getting away with, under the guise of “multiculturalism”.
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March 15, 2015 at 12:07 pm
Rob F
I agree that there shouldn’t be teaching of religion on the public dime.
And another problem is the people who are elected to run school boards or put in charge of choosing curriculum. Think of how often you hear about trying to remove evolution or to install revisionist wingnut propaganda into textbooks.
And this problem isn’t necessarily restricted to the US. As I recall, here in BC, Surrey School District once tried to ban sex ed and spent millions of dollars fighting the introduction of a book depicting same-sex parents in a court battle that went to the Supreme Court (SSD lost).
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March 15, 2015 at 12:35 pm
The Arbourist
@Rob F.
Absolutely. The getting seats on important civic posts through acclamation (usually a time endurance test) is a well established phenomenon in the US.
I think every province has had trouble with the “moral majority” when they cause a fuss over some new incarnation of the devil. Thank goodness secular society keeps this woolly-headed thinking tamped down for the most part.
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March 15, 2015 at 12:37 pm
The Arbourist
@tnt666
Multiculturalism is a sticky issue. I firmly believe that a secular state is a necessary requirement for living reasonably in the 21st century. What can be problematic is drawing the line between secular values and cultural ones.
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March 15, 2015 at 2:45 pm
bleatmop
My problem with Multiculturalism is that so many of the worlds cultures are deeply intertwined with their religion. What is Sikh culture without it’s religion? Muslim? Hindu? Heck, even going back to the 1980’s, what was it to be Irish without also being Catholic? One just has to look at the growing pains Ireland is going through and the pushback from the Catholic church as they try to secularize more today.
Multiculturalism seems to be a fine goal on paper. It’s when we get down to the nitty gritties of deciding which is a cultural practice and which is a religious practice. It is also true that some cultural aspects are not desirable, such as those that lead to honor killings. Certainly the killings are illegal irrespective of multiculturalism, but what about all the cultural practices that lead to those attitudes. How do we distinguish between which of those are cherished cultural artifacts that we should be preserving and those that we want to go by the wayside?
Rereading this, it is quite a bit off topic, so apologies for that.
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