The Catholic church has control over most primary schools in this country. They were in charge of my children’s education until last week. The new school year starts this week.
I had a meeting at the school with the headmaster regarding sanitation, my son’s supposed learning difficulties and religion. They spend half an hour of every day school day piffling around with the supernatural. If they were teaching ABOUT religions that would be a different matter. They teach about the Catholic faith and they indoctrinate the children about it. Religion is part of human history. Knowing about history is good. Telling people that ancient Palestinian myths are to be “believed in” is ridiculous.
The headmaster said “We just teach bible stories that are about love. They are just stories.”
Yeah I love stories to mate. Star Wars is great, but no one is ramming it down your throat every day asking you to believe it.
Everything was logical and sensible until we got to religion. Everything else is facts and reason but in one crucial area you have to leave your brain behind.
Towards the end of the last term there were a couple of troubling incidents. The first one was my son coming home from school and informing me that his teacher had told him that the world was made in six days. Ted is a smart boy and knows that this is a whole lot of piffle. The second incident was that the class was taken over to the church, made to get on their knees and pray. Ted doesn’t know what that is except that it is humiliating and degrading with the teacher standing over him saying ” Go on Ted, pray, pray pray.” I know he hated it because when he got home he told us he hated it.
I brought this up with the headmaster and he lapsed into confusion and denial.
I asked the headmaster could he just leave out the religion all together and use this time to help Ted with his reading and writing.
the answer was “no.”
When I asked him who actually is the head of the school of he said it was the local bishop. The local bishop has been found guilty by the courts of covering up sex abuse of children by priests in his diocese. When I put it to the headmaster did he think this was a proper person to be in charge of the education of the local children he flibbed and flabbed and flopped around. He came up with the fatuous and empty argument that not only priests abuse children. People from all walks of life do. I put it to him that if the metalworkers union or any other organization were in charge of education and had to be found out to be abusers or covering up and protecting abusers they would be thrown out immediately. The headmaster even said that somebody in his extended family had been abused by the church! He was ok with that! I was shocked.
The headmaster kept going on about “The Ethos.” I had to look that up when I got home….shudder.
He said to me, “You knew it was a Catholic school when you enrolled your children.”
Yes, but I didn’t know the extent of the cover ups and abuse until various government reports were released just before school broke up for summer. I didn’t know that when I filled out the enrollment form and stated that we were atheists you would be still trying to make Ted pray and dragging him off to church. I didn’t know that come this school year all this valuable class time would be taken up with bullshit, fantasy land and the notions of guilt and sinning and confessing!
I didn’t know the headmaster was illogical and insane. I should have, my mistake.
Ted goes into 1st class this year. I found out they are about to spend half an hour out of every day with the supernatural.
You can by law have your child excluded from this portion of the day and they will be taken out of the class and supervised in some kind of holding pen until they can go back in.
It’s not only the religion that is the issue. They don’t teach critical, and individual thinking. They don’t encourage creative endeavor. They want to produce conforming sheep. For example: when I see the kids from a particular class come out of school with some painting they have done they all have done the same thing! The are so many examples too numerous to mention. The whole sheep like lack of thinking is a thread through all they do.
You may think I don’t like the Catholic church. Your right. I don’t like any religion or pseudo religion, especially if they have an undemocratic power to influence the thinking of children.
Teaching unverifiable beliefs to children is immoral and evil. Young kids take everything in and believe and trust what adults tell them. It’s a serious responsibility.
I have moved my kids to another school. It means hours of driving every day and is most inconvenient but they tell me their policy is no religious indoctrination in the classroom. They are hard to find in this country.
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