Korean Job Discussion Forums

crusher_of_heads · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:27 am Post subject:

[quote="Bramble"]

Octavius Hite · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:55 am Post subject:

http://www.cbc.ca/ontariovotes2007/features/features-faith.html

Bramble · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Location: National treasures need homes

Deleted.

Bramble · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Location: National treasures need homes

crusher_of_heads · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:19 am Post subject:

Messed up attributions by me-it happens to the best of us. Sorry about that.

I loathe Dalton Mcguinty and what he stands for, and I am glad I am not in Ontario-I'd be voting NDP or Liberal as there is no way I would support Tory-and I got paid for 2 years by one of the Catholic school boards in Ontario.

Not taht I am all for secularism, but giving a voice and a foot in the educational system for every monkey-arsed belief system-no thanks.

Kuros · Joined: 27 Apr 2004

I attended Catholic schools in the US during my elementary and middle school years.

Evolution is taught. Creationism is not given any attention.

There was a religion class. The trend when I was growing up was that religion was taught as a kind of historical treatment. There was comparitive attention to Buddhism and Islam in the high schools. I am not religious today, but I am grateful for my religious education. It helps to be conversant in the Bible, as anyone who has studied literature, particularly American literature, would probably agree.

Re: Tax exemption status. Catholic schools should probably be allowed tax exemption status. I know in the States parents of children who pay for private education at Catholic schools are not given abatements on their local/state taxes (a lot of which goes towards education). Nor should they be given abatements. Tax exemption should include some standards on teaching and methodology, but I'd be surprised if most Catholic schools could not meet those standards. Nobody would be hurt by holding them to those standards.

I would say those who advocate denying tax exemption status to religious schools are ignorant of the full-range of benefits such schools provide, and exaggerate a non-existant tension between religion and 'secularism' to bolster their arguments. I would not be surprised to see such people deny that literature classes or other social sciences be suppressed in public schools. It would be a natural continuation of a trend to suppress tax exemption for religious education to further advocate that public money should not go towards education that does not directly prepare students for vocational trades or money-making when they come out of school.

A balanced and liberal education should include some treatment of religion, if only in a historical context. The faiths and belief systems of the Greeks, for example, were generally not suppressed during the Renaissance. People at that time understood that while there were mention of pagan gods in classical texts, the value of studying those books outweighed any misplaced concerns that mention of such things would challenge people's belief in God. History is better taught as a living past, and insofar as schools, public or private, can convey the real beliefs of the time being studied, so much better will be the understanding of its students of the relevance and importance of the period.

Likewise, the argument that Catholicism, Islam, or what-have-you, should not enjoy tax exempt status may come from more than ignorance of the benefits of such an education. The argument may be based on an over-sensitivity to the assumed weakness of secularism. This sensitivity is not merited, as secularism can survive the tolerance of the vast predominance of religious teachings. The only religious teachings that should be suppressed are those that are violent or abhorant to a peaceful and stable open society, and I think such organizations will not only be rarely found, but will also conflict directly with the aims and goals of the greater religious community of which such organizations claim to be a part. One example of a borderline, dubious subject-matter that might fit this characterization is Creationism, which is NOT a tenet of the Catholic Church, but an invention of extremist evangelicals in the US.

Leavingkorea · Joined: 27 Apr 2007

Bravo Ontario

And for those wondering. Catholic schools are funded as they fought for and won the right, because they have been around longer than the public system as the French were present in Canada before the English. Napoleon's loss equals England's gain.