Gabriella DeFina
Mr. McGilly
ENG 3U1
Friday, May 13, 2016
Time to Reconsider Publicly Funding Catholic Schools
In Toronto alone there are about 800 schools of all grade levels. Within these 800, approximately 200 of them are catholic, thereby meaning about 25% of schools in Toronto are catholic. This poses the question: Why Catholics? Why does the government choose this religion to publically fund as an individual board? It could relate to back in the 1600s when the world was pretty much an Oligarchy of Theocracy. However, it is now the 21st century and the world does not work like that anymore. Although prevalent, Catholicism is not what it used to be. Nowadays, it is more a personal choice rather than the societal norm. In
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Why did our ancestors decide it was necessary to have religion and education as a combined learning environment? This can be traced back to the settlement of the British and French. This is an indication that Canada has always been a constant battle between protestant and catholic. Evidently, the British prevailed, this is the beginning of a country devoted to Christianity, or was.
The world is not what it used to be, people do not surround their lives around religion anymore, especially youth. There are so many other pressing topics that are circulating the world today that religion is no longer in the spotlight. Therefore, since times are changing rapidly, education systems should follow. Realistically speaking, students are not as devoted Catholics as the Catholic school expects them to be. As someone who has been in a catholic school for my entire life, it is fair to say that my peers do not take the religious aspects of Catholic schools seriously. Mass has commonly become an excuse to skip and sleep in or do other assignments. Religion is considered a “joke class” that students do not care about. Prayers on the announcements have become a great way to waste class time or it is simply boring. Catholics who created the initial catholic schools would be rolling in their graves at the disrespect students give to catholic schools. It is evident that religion no longer fits into the norm of schools. There should be a time and place
Many people have thought that religion is one of the most important aspects of our lives and that it is a structure for how we must carry ourselves. Some believe that a life without faith or religion is no life worth living at all because that is what allows them to give meaning or purpose to life. Many would agree that there are great stories about morals and traditions that each provides and we could learn a great amount of wisdom and understanding from them. As a result of this they also believe that it should be taught alongside our everyday classroom lessons such as math, reading, and writing. In fact, the Catholic Church had such a strong presence in Cincinnati during the 1800s
Schools nowadays you aren’t even allowed to talk about religion or politics in class because it could “disrespect others” in some places students are no longer required to stand for the pledge of allegiance which can be offending to other students in the area. Have prayer put back in school will allow students to take their time and for others to respect their wishes to pray, and whether or not they wish to participate in prayer time is up to them, but it allows the other students a silent time where they are not shunned or told they aren’t allowed to respect their religion by prayer during school
The issue of whether or not to use tax dollars to provide private schools with vouchers has been controversial for many years now. Many people feel that it is our governments obligation to provide private institutions with the proper funds, while others believe that if private schools inherit our tax dollars then it is violation of our constitution as it promotes a particular religion. I think it is our government's responsibility to provide each and every school with tax dollars, regardless of its orientation. Many reasons, especially popularity and success rates provide substantial evidence that private schools should be funded by government vouchers.
Still, critics believe that public schools are for education and not for religious observances. “If God himself gave human beings free will- the choice to love him or not, to obey him or not-then no believer should try to force another to confess a faith” (Meacham 101). Those who practice religion know that God has given everyone free will, and with free will, one has the choice to practice religion in school. Some individuals are raised with religious beliefs and others are not. Religion should not be forced upon those who do not wish to practice their faith publicly. As researcher Christopher Ruddy said, “The best place for faith to be taught to kids is in the home, church, and private schools” (qtd. in Jinkins 126). When students attend school, they are there to further their education, instead of being forced to organized prayer. Having organized pray would not be fair to the other students who do not practice religion. It is obvious that there are other opportunities to practice faith other than mandating students to participate in organized prayer in public schools.
Is a tax-supported school different in principle from a tax-supported church? Schools and churches are similar in their goals. A school seeks to educate the members so that they can be more productive in society; churches seek to educate their members, so they can become better people spiritually. Now we have the question, is a tax supported school different from a tax supported church? When looking at authority, it always goes back to, “Who provides the money?”. In a tax supported institution, the authority rests with whoever is supplying the funds, which is usually a government. The government will have power over the school or church, because without this funding, the institutions would fail. This authority will determine what to teach,
When looking at the history of America, it is fascinating to see how the public schooling system even got started. The first schools in America were not public schools, as many would presume. Instead, “the first schools in the United States were religious and not secular” (Elifson 1). Nearly all public schools, up to the 1960’s incorporated religion and prayer in their classrooms; however, in the last 50 years, prayer and religion in public schools has been debated over countless times. Even in Hudsonville, Michigan, which holds the record in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most churches on a single street, there is much debate over prayer and the teaching of Christianity, or any religion, in the public schools. When I
The first catholic school was started in 1845 by two lay people Mary and Michael Bourke. Now 200 years later catholic education is taught to 74,000 students in over 150 schools. This is due to a major change that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, population growth, increased reputation and the formation of systems in catholic schools. (bne.catholic.edu.au) Catholic education is regulated by the Archbishop through Archdiocesan guidelines for religious education. Many people support and live their lives through catholic religion.
Canada is culturally diversified country. The religions are diversified as well. The predominant religions in Canada are Catholicism which represents 42 percent of its population and Christianity who represents 40 percent. The other religions are Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and minor religions. The heavy concentrations of Catholics are in Quebec and most of them are French Canadian. This is because the 83 percent of the French people are Catholics. When settlers arrived from France and England, they tend to promote their religion and as a result the Canada has been diversified in religion. English settler were mostly Christian, thus the Christianity became other predominant religion in Canada. And the floods of immigrants from Asia, Europe brought their religion to diversify Canadian culture are religions. (Roberts and Taylor, “Canadian business etiquette”, 2012)
Religion also aids in the centrality of the Eurocentric culture. There has been much religious influence from English beliefs. The idea of separation of church and state branches off from the baptist, congregationalist and quaker ideologies that the English population used to support. In current day, this ideology is still acknowledged and is of major influence in our system. There have also been other major religions that have infiltrated the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture like Jewish, Catholic and Muslim faiths, however, these religions aim to conform to the dominant Eurocentric demands as they adapt to the english language, and procedures while still maintaining their religious heritage. The education and public school system has been of great aid to maintain the centrality of the European culture. In colonial times, there were scarce education opportunities. However British Americans considered education and public schools to be a gateway for the Anglo-Protestant “way of life”. By having children attend primary school they would assimilate into the Anglo-Protestant culture and
School is not the same as when I was growing up. We prayed, we said our pledge of allegiance and most of all God was talked about freely in schools. Times have changed. A lot of people do not agree with prayer in the school system. People give a lot of different reasons on why they do not agree such as respecting everyone’s culture and beliefs. I do not agree with totally removing prayer from the school. I believe there is a way to respect every culture and still have prayer in our schools.
As of the moment religion is included in most of United States school’s curriculum. Religion is permitted in the curriculum for public schools, all throughout the United States. With religion in public schools, the schools throughout the United States can and most likely will be more diverse and could be more accepting towards students who are different and do not fit in with other students because of their religion, which will reduce the amount of religious discrimination in the country. Religion in schools allows students to have a wider range of historical education, learning about what started theit faith. Religion should be included in the public school curriculum because it provides a more diverse group of students, if it is not included the students will not understand other’s religious beliefs, the power of religion should be embraced, students will be forced to conform to the rules of society’s norms, and students will have a wider range of historical education.
The government of Ontario should fund all religious schools equally and not just the Roman Catholic Separate schools. Firstly, if the Ontario government did not fund all religious schools it would go against the right to education. As schools are the main places in which people get education, there should be enough variety of schools to satisfy the diverse population of Ontario. Since everyone of every gender, race, and culture have the right to education, schools of any sort should be funded by the government. Additionally, with the result of only having Roman Catholic schools in Ontario, the right of a fair and free world is broken. In order to obey the right of a fair and free world, the Ontario government would have to listen to
Prayers in public schools? This is a big topic in most of the worlds in today society. People need to remember that it is a public school and many people do attend them and it’s their choice to attend those schools. Me personally I feel they school be allowed! just like the pledge of allegiance. Some kids have different races and believe in different beliefs then most Americans today. We still allow these different regions into the United States to be a part of the American society so for them to believe that we would have to change or correct what we believe in is a messy situation. But as of today will still don’t prayer in public schools systems, in less it is a catholic school system. But I can see that we can’t be selfish among our self and the religions of others. If we was to having prayers in public school there
Religion in public schooling is a major controversy proven by the fact that Americans have been debating the place of God in schools almost repeatedly since public education got its start in the country nearly two hundred years ago. As the United States becomes
The new consensus is call “civic public school” and it is the result of a battle that started 1980 and 1990 to enable schools and communities to find a common ground about the two extremes of teaching religion in schools. One of the extremes was the ones advocating for religion in school. This spectrum was call “sacred public schools”. In this spectrum religion was force to teach to students. This model is unconstitutional and favored most Protestant Christian, leaving behind other religions and groups. The second model was based on pushing religion complete out of the public schools. This model was call “naked public schools. In this model base on the First Amendment religion was put out in teaching. This “naked public schools” was based in