Should catholic schools be state funded?

Here in Ontario, Canada, we have state-funded catholic schools that are able to legally discriminate against non-catholics.

What is going on?

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• state-funded
• religious
• schools

[DrFoolishit]

Catholic schools are government funded here in Alberta as well, however the provincial government here also wants to get rid of them. The only thing keeping Catholic schools state funded is the Alberta governments unwillingness to get in a huge fight with the Catholic teachers union. I Just hate the idea of my tax dollars funding religious education.

As a comment on discrimination, both my high school physics and social teachers were atheists. (I went to a catholic high school)

[imaginenoreligion]

Perhaps it is difficult to find physics and sociology teachers that belong to the catholic faith.

How do we get stuck with these institutions? It's even worse in the UK, where we are stuck with many historical oddities such as the house of Lords and the royal family, institutions that do not belong in a modern democracy.

[sweetsweatyfeet]

It's about time we secularized ALL public institutions. A properly democratic government must be secular and religiously impartial to protect the religious freedom of it's citizens. The state has no business endorsing or giving preferential treatment to one faith over another, Religious faith is a private matter and needs to stay out of the public arena.

[gendron1212]

Really??? You want to teach? And what do you do when your students ask you what will happen at the end of your life? What is your response? Catholic education fosters hope and imagination. I would not want my child in your classroom if you yourself are denying these attributes to your students.

[Reesorville]

Therefore today, we have a public school system and a catholic school system. On a similar note, all of the universities in Canada used to be religiously affiliated too (and officially many of them still are technically).

I'm under the impression also, that you have a choice on your tax forms to state which school system you want your money to go to, which means that no one is actually forced to pay for the catholic schools.

Bishop Charbonnel in 1856, is when it all started. God Bless,

[Reesorville]

the government agreed to give the catholics their own schools where they could teach their own faith, and not be forced to teach the protestant version of christianity, as occurred in the public schools. Therefore the two seperate school systems were created.

However, in the 20th century, Canadian society changed and became increasingly secular, thus making the public (protestant) school system into the public school system we have today, which isn't religiously affiliated as it once was...

[Reesorville]

To my knowledge the catholic schools in Canada both hire non-catholic teachers and have non-catholic students. There are lots of catholic physics and sociology teachers out there, even in the public school system.

The catholic school system came about in the mid-19th century in Canada. All of the public schools at that time were affiliated with the christian faith, and catholics wanted their own schools apart from the protestant majority. After a harsh social battle, the government...