Considering a Catholic School for a Non Catholic child...

[VerintheWhite]

We are considering sending our DD to a Catholic all girls school because it seems to be the best fit for her, however, we are not Catholic or even CofE. Has anyone had any experience of this situation? The school has mostly Catholic girls with a small minority of other religions.

These days it is not a requirement for teachers at faith schools to be practising Christians but simply to be "supportive" of the ethos of the school".
Most faith schools would expect parents to support the ethos of the school of the school as well. If this is not a problem for you - fine. However you would be expected to be supportive of their assemblies /collective worship and many have RE as a compulsory subject at GCSE.

"Equating racists with Catholics is offensive but worse, it is a dangerous slippery slope"

The poster wasn't equating racists with Catholics. She was using an example to illustrate the important question of which belief systems should get state-funded faith schools, and which shouldn't.

But go ahead, jump on your high horse and gallop off down the 'I'm offended, you've insulted my religion' road.

Or you could offer an opinion - where do we draw the line? Jehovah's Witnesses? Spiritualists? Scientologists?

For what it's worth...

I'm a Catholic and my children have all been baptised. We are not churchgoers but I do teach my kids about the principles of being a good christian and about being good people in general.

I chose not to send my children to a catholic school.I have problems with any school that only takes in ceratin types of pupils, in this case, pupils who follow a religion.

It is not a true picture of society to be surrounded and taught by memners of a single religion. I don't understand why anyone would do that.

Zanzibarmum, it is very easy to dismiss an argument by calling posters who disagree with you, bigots.

It's not about Catholicism it's about the consequences of sending your child to faith school.

Some people do it because they do believe in their religion and would not want their children exposed to a government-mandated 'RE' curriculum elsewhere.

I see no reason as long as it's legal not to have a Scientology school, JW school, or whatever. Why would you draw a line? I wouldn't send my DCs to one, but horses for courses.

'It is not a true picture of society to be surrounded and taught by members of a single religion' -- why is exposing your child to a different philosophy from the one he or she is surrounded by every day such a danger?

If what you want is for your child to be surrounded by atheism or relativism of varying degrees then you are looking for the same kind of environment that Catholics are seeking for their children in a Catholic school, where a single philosophy dominates.

math...I just want my children to make friends with other children, regardless of their faith. I want them to walk to school with friends from our community, from our neighbourhood.

I am very happy with the RE that they do in their non-denominational school. Ultimately, I want them to respect others regardless of who they worship and I dislike the the idea of a state school discriminating others who are not from the same faith

Do you see a secular school as 'atheist?' Do you think it would cause children to question their religion? That learning about Hume or Kant may cause them to ask questions about intelligent design, or the nature of 'truth.'

In our non denominational school the single ohilosophy that dominates seems to be pride in the school, in themselves, care for each other and the world. The are 70 languages spoken and many different shades of the major faiths.Most of those children maintain their faith without it being reinforced at school.

People bang on about the 'ethos' of church schools as if non denomination or a 'secular' school just staggers about in the moral wilderness.

And yes, I would have liked DD1 to have gone to the same school as her Catholic friends from nursery,

Absolutely no, to all of your questions NT. (Not that there's much useful learning about Hume or Kant in most primary schools of any brand...) Children maintain or reject the practices of their religion or its tenets on an individual basis and for various different reasons. You can bring a horse to water, etc. Same goes for children brought up to see organised religion as superstition.

I find the closed mindedness of posters here wrt the possibility of children being exposed to any one specific religious viewpoint ironic, but also loaded with value judgement about that particular religion no matter how much posters may protest about their motives.

What I object to in 'RE' is that it is neither religious nor particularly educationally useful and as a believing member of a church I am not happy about the '6 of one and half a dozen of the other' drift of RE. For Catholic children, a religious education provides answers to questions about the Catholic religion, as taught by the Catholic Church. Shrug it off if you will, but know it and understand it first is the motto. In other words, think.

I believe the ethos thing referred to is not necessarily any particularly holy or overtly religious one, though this depends on the school, but an air of having a purpose and a determination to mould young minds, imposing stricter discipline as a means of doing that and higher expectations of the students in terms of behaviour and academic achievement than you might find in a non-denominational school. Generalisations galore there. No-one has a monopoly on 'morality' any more than they have a monopoly on good quality education.

I am all for the separation of church and state when it comes to school btw and find the UK system completely insane. (Same for the Irish). I would scrap RE altogether.

Zanzibarmum,

"The casual offensiveness of some of these posts is remarkable coming fron people who no doubt see themselves as liberal people with 'reason'. Equating racists with Catholics is offensive but worse, it is a dangerous slippery slope. The good news is there is no prospect that state-funded Catholic schools will be banned
The bigotry implicit in the tone and language (not their basic argument) of some of these posts show the posters to be not as liberal and as tolerant as they believe themselves to be.
Anti Catholicism runs deep in this country and it would seem on mumsnet."

I don't see how you can say that without checking how it compares to their attitudes to other kinds of faith schools.

I can only speak for myself, but for my part I certainly don't consider catholicism and MORE ridiculous than protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism or Scientology. I have no desire to see any one set of superstitions or its adherents favoured over others - that's the whole point.

I have no problem with people practising whatever religion they want in their own lives. I have a huge problem with the government authorising discrimination against most of the population based on their not belonging to that religion. My impression is that most similar comments from others have been based on the same concern - nothing whatsoever to do with victimising catholics.

To paint any challenge to an entrenched practice of unfair discrimination as victimising to poor dears doing the discriminating, is a bit rich, really.

Mathanxiety,

What I object to in 'RE' is that it is neither religious nor particularly educationally useful and as a believing member of a church I am not happy about the '6 of one and half a dozen of the other' drift of RE.

I wouldn't be heart-broken if RE disappeared. But FWIW, I don't think the idea of it in mainstream settings is to "BE religious". That's mixing it up with precisely the kind of thing many are objecting to here - the idea in faith schools of RE actually training and forming the religious sensibilities of the child (which will by definition happen according to the specific faith of the school).

As I understand it, the "point" of RE in non-faith schools is mainly about objective, descriptive knowledge. Religions exist in the world, so we inform kids as part of their education about what those religions are and what the people who follow them believe. Just as we inform them about various political systems or any other aspects of social studies.

This seems reasonable enough to me. I've seen a lot of arguments about religion suffer through peoples' ignorance of the actual teachings that they're arguing about. Current debate in the west about Islam is a good case in point and is subject to all kinds of misguided presumptions about things that aren't really part of the source teaching at all. To start kids early in the process of questioning these presumptions, and coming to their own view about various religions based on more accurate information, seems useful to me.

I have no problem with people being opposed to Catholic schools where the state inc Catholic taxpayers pay the full revenue costs (30 per cent of kids in such schools are not Catholic).
It's just that comparisons with racists, or selling church schools for lap dancing purposes is not helpful to the substantance of the issue and does betray an intolerance that the posters purport to destest.
The good news is that the state sees it is on to a good thing - generally schools that provide a good standard of education including for 30 per cent non Catholics and state saves a bit of the capital costs.

Our right to a catholic education for catholic children is enshrined in The European Convention on Human Rights

ARTICLE 2

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religions and philosophical convictions.

And as the liberal party state in their policy statement

Liberals also believe that the European Convention on Human Rights should be incorporated into British law.

Then those who view themselves as liberals (seems to be 99% of mneters) should fully support faith schools and yet here you all are arguing against them. Maybe you are not quite the liberals you though you are.

VerintheWhite, I come from a mixed background including some Catholics but other religions and aetheists as well. I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools, but my mother tells me that I had decided that God and religion was all nonsense from the age of about 7. There were always a few other non Catholic children in the class, and I don't remember it ever being a big issue. I seem to remember writing an essay in RE in favour of abortion without the nun who taught the lesson being in the slightest bit shocked or even interested. Most of the teachers were not Catholics, I think the head and RE teachers had to be but other teachers could be of any or no religion. I wasn't confirmed and this wasn't an issue socially.
However, I did have friends who went to Catholic schools which were far more seriously Catholic.

For what it's worth, I agree that education should be secular and wouldn't send my own children to Catholic schools. But from my experience, it is quite possible to be an aethiest in some Catholic schools without any problems.

Then why are you not campaigning for an end to all-faith schools being anything but independent?

I must admit, I come to this as a foreigner. I'm from the US, yes, big bad ugly US. But there, if you want a faith school, you pay for it or you home educate. You can't pray in 'public'/state school, you can't even pledge allegiance to the US flag in many state schools or you can opt out (it's been a loooonnggg time since I was in one, though, I'd need to ask my sister, a high school teacher, about it).

There's no RE, there's no anything like that.

I am a Catholic, but only one child of mine is even christened, and that is in the Church of Scotland. My marriage is not even recognised by the Church, as it was a civil wedding. I had one Catholic marriage that I know was annulled, and another by a Unitarian that I don't even know would be recognised but at any rate, we divorced civally because he never wanted any children, ever, and had himself sterilised to that effect.

My children, at this school, have visits from a Church of Scotland pastor and assemblies in the kirk down the road. Historically, this is the domain of Campbell, who suppressed Catholicism in favour of the Crown, and as such, you must go into 'town' to attend Catholic Mass.

I raise no objection to this, obviously. It is a largely homogenous area.

But if there is such, why not take it to the government level instead of online deriding someone's beliefs, whatever they may be?

It is precisely because the aim of RE is not to BE religious that I object to it. Religion is supposed to be something you live; it is supposed to be something you are, not some dry subject you take a test in every two weeks.

I sent my DCs to a parochial (Catholic) school in the US (and paid for it) precisely because belief in God was taken seriously as a reasonable way of living your life, and because Catholic values were taken seriously as a foundation for living. They learned about the practice of their religion there, and at around age 12 (school was from age 5 to 14) started learning about other world and American religions in social studies, so in a historical/geographical context, and in the overall context of the civic duty of American citizens to observe the separation of church and state, 'give to caesar what is caesar's and to God what is God's', value the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, freedom of conscience... From 9/11 the school included a much bigger section on Islam into the social studies curriculum and the general drift of the lessons was that all are welcome in the US as long as the INS (as it was then) welcomes you, and that we are all children of the same God.

Mathanxiety

Where I live, going to a Catholic or non denominational school is about more than a deeply held religious conviction. It signals which particular 'tribe' you are from. From 4 children are educated separately along those tribal lines and they carry this identity throughout their lives. It influences politics, football what street a child can walk down in some parts.

Yes you can talk about philosophical ideas to children. You can ask ' who designed the designer? 'how can a being all knowing and powerful allow wars to happen? How do I know what I know?

Same in the US, where the Catholic school you attended signified whether you were Irish or Italian or Polish/German, etc. You would hardly ever find both Irish and Italian together, but plenty of Irish-Polish or Irish-German, or Irish-German-Polish-Latin American parishes and schools. And then there were schools that were all Hispanic. Of course, rivalries were reinforced by intense basketball competition. (Although I heard of a large fistfight/mini riot that broke out at a St Patrick's Day parade in a major US city recently, involving students from two Catholic high schools and one public, with no-one really sure who was 'the enemy'. Ah testosterone...)

The divide between Catholic schools in general and the public schools was a little greater than the Irish-Italian divide in decades past as far as I understand. You would send your child to the Catholic school of one particular parish instead of another based on your 'ethnicity'. And a good few Catholic children attended the public schools too (with Religious Ed taught in the parish at evening or weekend classes).

In the US city I lived in the expected reply to the question 'where did you grow up?' was the name of your parish from which could be deduced the ethnicity of your family. In the much smaller city where exH grew up the Catholic community centered around the expensive ($12,000 pa a few years back) all-boys and all-girls Catholic high schools was very cliquey and set apart from the clique associated with the equally expensive 'country day' school that attracted wasps and wasp wannabes. Both were set apart from the public schools though -- an example of schools and a community dividing along the lines of money, which in the context of that particular city meant race.

I grew up in a Dublin suburb where there were two national schools ('them' and 'us', one grossly overcrowded and one almost empty) then three as the village expanded (two of 'us' and one of 'them') and never the twain would meet. In the early years of the 20th century the election of deValera's first government was described as the changeover from the Clongowes boys (expensive boys' boarding school) to the Christian Brothers (not) [ouch]. Even in a virtually all-Catholic educational environment, lines of demarcation exist. Ireland's political, business, professional and media elites tend to be graduates of a few fee-paying, rugby-playing, Catholic schools

The US system where rigid enforcement of catchment areas for public schools means students can either be trapped or allocated abundant opportunity depending on their address contributes to inequality in American society and would do so even without Catholic, Lutheran or Jewish schools available. In metropolitan areas, if a faith school is not an option for you, you have absolutely no choice except to go to the local school or try to get a place in a heavily oversubscribed 'magnet school'. Not the only option actually -- people move to areas with better schools. OTOH, Catholic schools in inner city areas do a far better job of turning out students equipped to succeed in high school than public elementary schools do, and Catholic inner city high schools send astronomically more students to college than public high schools in the areas they draw their students from. Education responds to market forces too, and the tribal element involved in the lines that result are just as strong as any sectarian divide.

So what is your point? That a faith school is intrinsically better because of its faith? That the children know they are born sinful and have to spend the rest of their lives trying not to sin so they don't get sent to hell?

Are you saying that if all the schools were Catholic, standards in education would be higher? Or is that perhaps children who go to faith schools are a self selecting category? That their parents may well attend church, they may have a stake in the community, and consequently be motivated to ensure their child does their homework? Even the inner city schools, I'm sure, are surrounded by relatively affluent parents who have used buying power to ensure their child gets a place. And the schools are happy to go along with that.

It's the same here.

The idea that children are born sinful and have to spend the rest of their lives trying not to sin so they don't get sent to hell is a part of what religion exactly? Sounds like Southern Baptists to me (spare the rod and spoil the child brigade) and nothing like the Catholicism I have known all my life.. There are parents who think that a faith school is superior because of the environment there, the encouragement to frame experience in a religious perspective.

My point is that tribalism would exist despite attempts to wipe out differences between schools. Differences along sectarian lines are easy to spot, but I think it's the other differences, the ones between well off and deprived, that are the most insidious, and they would be there no matter what scheme of playing field levelling a government tried. There's a huge amount of self selection when it comes to schools, even in a system like the US where catchment areas are enforced, in the UK where there are several layers to the system, and especially in Ireland, where you can basically choose where you want to go.

Catholic inner city schools tend to have far fewer Catholic children in attendance than in the suburbs in the US and generally the diocese subsidises schools with collections taken in all churches of the diocese in order to ease the pressure to pay fees. Catholic schools manage to educate children for far less per child than public schools do in the US. Teachers' salaries tend to be lower, buildings have mostly seen better days, children provide their own school supplies, art supplies, etc, there's lots of organised fundraising to supplement the shoestring budget, and no financial help at all from the state.. Affluent families tend to move if they can and send their children to suburban schools, whether Catholic or public in the US. There are very few urban pioneers willing to risk their children's education in the inner city.

I don't want to be intolerant but when did this site become Momsnet?

That's an interesting perspective Mathanxiety, and I do take your point that there are many different ways that identities form and divide children - economic being the most important. I guess it's no accident that areas in Glasgow which are associated with sectarianism are also 'the most deprived.

But

I still don't support faith schools. And I don't think we are going to agree

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