Question: If there was a referendum to take all state run (but church owned) schools into state ownership and remove the Catholic church completely from their management function (basically get them out of our primary and secondary school system) would posters support or oppose it?
I would vote yes. If there were any issues with owership of land/schools and the church wanted compensation then that would have to be counter acted by laws etc... But I reckon it would be complicated.
My sister sends her kids to an "educate together" school. The children are thought about all religions in an educational way and they are not indoctrinated into anyone faith the way I was when I was going to school.
That would be a model I would prefer but obviously this would take a lot of planning and preparation. Not something any government in the history of the state was good at.
Just as a question to any parent here of kids in primary school.... Do kids still pray in school?
I am 40 this month and I left primary school in 1981 and all we seemed to do was pray. It wasn't a school run by brothers and nuns but obviously had a catholic board of management and ethos.
We prayed at the start of the day, said the Angleus at noon, prayed before lunch, prayed after lunch and prayed before going home. If someone was sick we prayed for them. The teacher questioned us from time to time so see if we prayed before we went to bed and told us only animals in the jungle didn't so we were no better than animals if we didn't. I have since found out that our teacher then (we had him from infants to confirmation class) was a member of the Knights of Colombanus so I may have been unlucky as my sisters who went to a convent didn't do as much prayer as we did. The teacher regulary spoke in absolute awe of the catholic church, so much so that when I left and went into secondary school I was shocked when we didn't pary. I was completely brainwashed as an 11/12 year old kid. I fully expected to go to hell for being a sinner.
We had this female teacher in secondary school who was present one day when the Bishop was visiting and "welcoming" us to our new school. He put out his hand for her to kiss his ring but instead she grabbed his hand and shook it. After he left she turned to us and said "Did you see that <..er> trying to get me to kiss his ring?"... I was in shock for weeks, convinced she was going to burn!