Canadian National Anthem

[Valka D'Ur]

They're at least allowing non-Catholic students now I guess. It wasn't like when I went through the catholic high school system.

Yeah, they can. I could have gone to the Catholic high school if I'd wanted (and if my grandparents had been willing to pay extra since the education portion of our property taxes went to the public system). I decided to go to the public high school, though, and thank goodness. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have met several people who ended up having a very significant effect on my life.

I personally loved it, there was mass a couple times each year, and since I walked to school I got to sleep in on those days... Plus stuff in the auditorium for easter and christmas, was easy to sneak out and do whatever you want. They did not take attendance for religious events for whatever reason, maybe a legal one. So you could do what you wanted, as long as it wasn't too obvious. The vast majority of days had nothing religious about them other than "religion class", which were mandatory in grades 9 and 10. There was also a chapel in the school which was open for students to use as they saw fit (or not).

This would have been after the Charter came in, right? Students have more options now if a teacher tries to force them to participate if they don't want to.

Religion class in grade 9 was boring, but I learned a bit of good biblical trivia. It was all old testament stuff, so at times a bit interesting to learn about from a non-believer perspective, but I knew most of it already so for that reason it was boring. Grade 10 religion was "World Religions" so a lot more interesting to me, because I did not know a lot about other religions at the time. I like to learn new things about our world, so I was into it.

That would have been interesting. Most of the religious stuff I learned in schools was actually in college, in various history and anthropology classes. There was also a comparative religion course offered on University of the Air (lectures from various classes at Carleton University). So out of curiosity I got up at 6 am and watched it. It was rather interesting.

Other than that we had a higher standard of education than the public school system, and everything else was exactly the same. Oh and there were a lot of Polish people there and even a "Polish corner" where a large group of Polish students always hung out, right under the photo of Pope John Paul II, which the school was named after.

I was in Grade 11 the year John Paul II became Pope. It was one of the things we briefly discussed in my social studies class.

So I had a good experience in this system overall, but it needs to be opened up to include everyone, the Catholic label needs to be stripped off, and it probably needs to be merged with the other public school system.. the one that's actually 100% public.

Good luck with that. There are definitely people who would prefer this because of the incredible redundancy of each system spending money for separate resources when it would be much more efficient to share.

But then you get the parents who think nothing of value is taught in public schools, and as one of them put it on CBC.ca, "The kids have to learn morals SOMEWHERE."

Well, excuse me. I live a pretty decent, moral life. I didn't need a Catholic school for that.

 

[Evie]

Abolishing catholic schools is one tall order. It can be done (QC did), but it's constitutional amendmnent territory, albeit the kind of amendment that only requires the concerned province and Ottawa. Tthe best you can probably do is replace the Catholic school system obligation with a French school system obligation (as QC did. Well, except they went protestant -> english)

 

[Takhisis]

I wish you'd said something years ago. I do not think you're a superstitious idiot.

I already have, several times over the years.

My objection is when religious people - of any religion - try to impose their religion on others, whether it's by doorknocking or trying to block beneficial legislation due to personal preferences and not because it's bad legislation.

Well… you can't stop people from, say (hypothetically), voting against abortion in a referendum if their morality and ethic views come from a religion you dislike.

Doorknockers are an annoyance mostly foreign to these shores, but I can sympathise.

For my part… I specifically believe in God as being a loving creator. Love and forgiveness is what I try to base my life on. Of course, being human, I fail far more often than I like. It is, evidently, very different from what some of these people who call themselves Christians appear to be following. In fact they do Christianity a disservice and if they are Christians they are very bad ones. Of course there's still a lot of decent people in that group, but if they don't speak up they're silent enablers.

Here's an example of the ‘Christian’ shenanigans of which I thoroughly disapprove. Just the one, so as not to derail the thread into discussing Michigan politics.