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From todays Irish Times
PROTESTANT SCHOOLS appear to be battening down the hatches and cutting spending in response to recent Budget cutbacks. Like all schools, they must absorb the reductions in grants and substitution payments. But for them, the pain goes deeper. Without prior notice, a special support services grant paid to 21 Protestant schools across the State was withdrawn on Budget day to achieve savings of €2.8 million. And the pupil-teacher ratio for Protestant fee-paying schools has been increased from 18:1 to 20:1.
Many of the schools say their current budgetary position is unsustainable. Much of the pain will have to be absorbed by parents through higher fees as schools struggle to balance their books. Without grant aid, some children may be deprived of their right to a Protestant education. Inevitably, the increase in the pupil-teacher ratio will see the loss of teaching posts and new restrictions on subject choice for pupils.
Ok why should the state
1. Pay for fee pay-schools
2. Pay for religious schooling.
In targeting these schools, the Department of Education has tapped into the lazy stereotype that somehow, because they are Protestant, they exist in a well-to-do environment and are less deserving of resources. In fact, most of these schools are struggling to balance their books and many of their students are less than well-heeled. At Bandon Grammar School in Co Cork, for example, about half of the student body receives financial support and some 12 per cent pay no fees whatsoever. If this was Northern Ireland, members of the Dáil would be alleging discrimination if it was happening to the schools of the Catholic minority.
No if this was a Catholic School the Irish Times would be saying that this is a good move taking the government out of religion. I am sure I could find a few editorials stating this very thing praising the Educate together schools.
So people the question is do we still need the state to pay for private religious schools? Should it not be extended to the Catholic private schools as well?
I would be in favour of removing religion from schooling altogether – if parents want to inflict religion on their children, it should be done outside of school hours.
G’Luck
M
While I’d not be in favour of special treatment for any sort of religious schools, especially fee-paying ones, I can see why it might be an idea to offer special support to these schools as a means of protecting a minority culture within the Free State society. It’s not all that different from the special supports put in place to support members of the traveling community in some cases. One could ask why the government pays for halting sites for members of that minority community when if 30 members of the settled community were to ask for a similar camping facility, they would be treated differently.
Denominational education in the context of a growing foreign population is a blueprint for segregation, which is incompatible in my view with integration which is what society really needs. Segregated education only reinforces the “them and us” mentality. It has been a disaster in the UK where there have been race riots such as Brixton and Islamist terror attacks like 7/7. We need to plant the seeds of mutual tolerance and respect, and that starts in integrated-classrooms, where Muslim children can learn that the other side are not the “infidels” they might have been told they were in their home countries or in their communities.
Yes bring children up in religious ignorance especially where Catholicism is concerned. Instead make what we used to call the “liberal agenda” our new religion and see where that will get us. Forgive me if I see a bleak future.
Eddie L,
The “liberal agenda” you refer to is not a religion. Religion is belief without evidence, faith without proof. Religious parents are free to indoctrinate their children in any way they choose, but keep it out of school where children learn about the real world.
As a Protestant with a 9 year old child my problem is simple: how do I avoid sending my son to a school which has as a core mission the dissemination of propoganda for a belief system that I do not adhere to.
Personally I would prefer a secular education system, with religious teaching being run by religious groups outside schools. This option is not available. Until now the State has recognised that avoiding Catholic indoctrination in schools places a financial burden on parents and has provided funding. The latest cuts have removed much of this funding.
Gordon
The “liberal agenda” you refer to is not a religion. Religion is belief without evidence, faith without proof. Religious parents are free to indoctrinate their children in any way they choose, but keep it out of school where children learn about the real world.
I would agree with you. But also don’t for forget Atheisms is also a religion. There is no evidence there is no god, no proof either.
Agnosticism is the way to go
“As a Protestant with a 9 year old child my problem is simple: how do I avoid sending my son to a school which has as a core mission the dissemination of propoganda for a belief system that I do not adhere to.”
On a practical level, you don’t really have a problem. It’s not as though the average Catholic school devotes large amounts of time to religion, less to elements that are unique to Catholicism, and I’ve never heard of a situation where a Protestant student has been forced to listen to Catholic religion classes.
Of the thousands of Protestant children who attended Catholic schools, you’d do well to find even one who converted to Catholicism because of it. Of the many, many Catholic children who attended Catholic schools, you’ll find a fair few who turned against the religion because of it.
It wern’t the religious education classes that were a problem, more the whole question of the ethos whiuch pervades the school. One point in particular struck us concerned the attitude to authority and discipline.
I had many long discussions with a friend who now works for Jesuit schools after working for the Christian Brothers. He fully accepeted our point about the nature and the expresion of authority in the schools that he knew.
Gordon
Really? Well perhaps it’s my experiences that have been unique but I figure the average Irish Catholic school has little to do with the Christian Brothers or the Jesuits, so perhaps the schools your friend worked in aren’t exactly typical. To be honest, you’ll find little respect for authority or all that much discipline in the average non-fee paying Irish school. Discipline would generally be tighter in any fee-paying school I’m familiar with.