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Oct. 29th, 2003 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccI dunno. I read this and to be honest my first thought is "well don't send them there then". If you're so paranoid that your children won't be able to decide for themselves at some later date... well, send them to a non-religious school.
What there aren't any "good" state schools in your area, or they're full up? And private's too expensive?
Tough shit. Apparently France is an option though, from what I've been reading.
It's different here of course. Generally speaking private schools are "religious" and state schools aren't, or at most have 1 hour of RE per week, usually run by an outside volunteer. Where I went to primary school had a choice of RE even, Christian or Muslim. Secondary school we had no RE, although we had 1 hour per week of Life Studies, which included looking at the lives of Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King and others. Dean went to a private school, which was religiously based although not a lot in actual practice. I think they had some RE in year 7 but mostly it was just prayers at school assembly and a couple of church services per year. The CE (Christmas and Easter) approach really.
It's an historical anomaly that Catholic private schools here are heavily government subsidised whereas other denominations aren't - although pretty much all schools do get some level of government funding. This was originally because the State schools were considered to be Protestant, and so the government subsidy of Catholic schools was designed to allow parents to let their child be educated in their own faith. Now that State schools are effectively secular and there are a lot of schools for various faiths (Hari Krishna, Catholic, Islamic, Fundamentalist Christian are just the few that I can think of in my area) there's a lot of debate about whether the high subsidy should continue, or whether it should be extended to all private schools. Personally I think they should drop it completely and put the extra funding back into the State school system, but then again, I'm biased.
The arguments in favour of extending the subsidies go roughly "we're parents and we pay taxes and if we choose to send our child to a private school where we think they'll be better educated then the government has no right to not fund that school". Or somesuch. The argument for dropping the subsidies go roughly "the government's provided you with a perfectly adequate school already, which, if it were properly funded would be equally as good as the private school and a shitload less elitist and why should we subsidise your attempt to have your child join the Old School Tie mob?" Again, or somesuch. I'm paraphrasing about a year's worth of Letters To The Editor here.
It'll be interesting when/if Dean and I get to this point to see what happens. I have honestly no idea which way we'd be likely to jump - as with most things it will probably depend on where we're living, what the schools are like, how much we're earning, what we're prepared to spend... etc, etc etc. I can see Dean pushing his old school on the grounds that it has cadets though. :-)
There are some schools where I would prefer not to send my (hypothetical) child, mostly on academic and social grounds. Whether I'd get around that by using the "elitist" state schools such as Melbourne High or MacRob or whether I'd get around it by moving or getting scholarships, who knows?
I sometimes wonder how much the middle of the road state and private schools really differ though. I mean, the majority of students don't go to either the lowest income state schools or the highest income private schools and we seem to get by OK. Some of us would probably do better in a more academic environment, some would probably do better in a more technically oriented environment. Thanks to the Blackburn report (spit) all schools are equal. In the purely "Animal Farm" sense...
Anyway, back to the Guardian woman. Honestly. Do yourself a favour and take the child out of the school. You'll feel so much better knowing that you're not exposing him/her to the evils of organised religion. Which of course he/she will never encounter in the outside world, ever. Or could ever decide for themselves to be interested in. Or could ever be interested in as a teenage rebellion against your rather strict atheism. Send them to the crummy state school. At the very least they can learn to defend themselves. Or maybe start a very lucrative career on the blacker side of the market. Who knows? Could be the best thing they'll ever do...
I hope they turn out charismatic fundamentalists, that'll learn her. ;-)
What there aren't any "good" state schools in your area, or they're full up? And private's too expensive?
Tough shit. Apparently France is an option though, from what I've been reading.
It's different here of course. Generally speaking private schools are "religious" and state schools aren't, or at most have 1 hour of RE per week, usually run by an outside volunteer. Where I went to primary school had a choice of RE even, Christian or Muslim. Secondary school we had no RE, although we had 1 hour per week of Life Studies, which included looking at the lives of Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King and others. Dean went to a private school, which was religiously based although not a lot in actual practice. I think they had some RE in year 7 but mostly it was just prayers at school assembly and a couple of church services per year. The CE (Christmas and Easter) approach really.
It's an historical anomaly that Catholic private schools here are heavily government subsidised whereas other denominations aren't - although pretty much all schools do get some level of government funding. This was originally because the State schools were considered to be Protestant, and so the government subsidy of Catholic schools was designed to allow parents to let their child be educated in their own faith. Now that State schools are effectively secular and there are a lot of schools for various faiths (Hari Krishna, Catholic, Islamic, Fundamentalist Christian are just the few that I can think of in my area) there's a lot of debate about whether the high subsidy should continue, or whether it should be extended to all private schools. Personally I think they should drop it completely and put the extra funding back into the State school system, but then again, I'm biased.
The arguments in favour of extending the subsidies go roughly "we're parents and we pay taxes and if we choose to send our child to a private school where we think they'll be better educated then the government has no right to not fund that school". Or somesuch. The argument for dropping the subsidies go roughly "the government's provided you with a perfectly adequate school already, which, if it were properly funded would be equally as good as the private school and a shitload less elitist and why should we subsidise your attempt to have your child join the Old School Tie mob?" Again, or somesuch. I'm paraphrasing about a year's worth of Letters To The Editor here.
It'll be interesting when/if Dean and I get to this point to see what happens. I have honestly no idea which way we'd be likely to jump - as with most things it will probably depend on where we're living, what the schools are like, how much we're earning, what we're prepared to spend... etc, etc etc. I can see Dean pushing his old school on the grounds that it has cadets though. :-)
There are some schools where I would prefer not to send my (hypothetical) child, mostly on academic and social grounds. Whether I'd get around that by using the "elitist" state schools such as Melbourne High or MacRob or whether I'd get around it by moving or getting scholarships, who knows?
I sometimes wonder how much the middle of the road state and private schools really differ though. I mean, the majority of students don't go to either the lowest income state schools or the highest income private schools and we seem to get by OK. Some of us would probably do better in a more academic environment, some would probably do better in a more technically oriented environment. Thanks to the Blackburn report (spit) all schools are equal. In the purely "Animal Farm" sense...
Anyway, back to the Guardian woman. Honestly. Do yourself a favour and take the child out of the school. You'll feel so much better knowing that you're not exposing him/her to the evils of organised religion. Which of course he/she will never encounter in the outside world, ever. Or could ever decide for themselves to be interested in. Or could ever be interested in as a teenage rebellion against your rather strict atheism. Send them to the crummy state school. At the very least they can learn to defend themselves. Or maybe start a very lucrative career on the blacker side of the market. Who knows? Could be the best thing they'll ever do...
I hope they turn out charismatic fundamentalists, that'll learn her. ;-)
