PinkyLeftBrain wrote:

My point is/was that religious organizations shouldn’t be in the education business because they often conflate their ideology and education into some bizarre form of near torture.

My wife went to a catholic ’school’ in her elementary years and now meets some of those younglings that are still around and is amazed at how fucked up they are. They bought the programming hook line and sinker and were twisted kids and grew up to be twisted adults.

I weep for the future of this country with the resurgence of ‘religious’ schools and the control that ‘religion’ is trying to exert (all to well) on government and our society.

We as a society have to value the separation of religion from education or the combination of the 2 will spell the end of our country.

I think that’s kind of a slippery slope you’re talking about.

As for the “resurgence”, I do see that within the evangelical mega-church community, but not so much in the catholic community or other more established denominations… my catholic grade school dates back to the late 1800s, my catholic high school dates back to the early 1900s, and the catholic university I attended is the second-oldest Jesuit school in the nation and the oldest catholic university west of the Mississippi.

I think there are consequences that can be seen among those educated in catholic or other religious schools, but I think trying to mandate the outright abolition of these institutions would be blatantly unconstitutional. The establishment clause mandates a separation of church and state, and insofar as catholic and other religious schools are subsidized almost entirely through private funds, they are in compliance with the establishment clause, and the abolition of such schools would be a clear violation of our civil liberties.

I, like most rational people, abhor the atrocious rhetoric of institutions such as the KKK. But as a civil libertarian and one who loves the Constitution, I’ll defend the free speech rights of those heinous people to say what they want, even though I vehemently disagree with what they are saying.

It wasn’t the most tolerant environment, but it also wasn’t the least, and I saw much less harassment than I heard about from students who transferred from the local public schools. And we girls certainly weren’t expected to be silent–the high school was obsessed with turning us into “leaders” (not really an interest of mine) and had very high academic standards, as well as an emphasis on community service. I received a more than solid education that prepared me well for college and graduate school.

Most of my teachers were good and supportive, and while I never felt comfortable being fully out of the closet, harassment and discourtesy were not acceptable, and the administration did their best to handle the situation when I was stalked by a former friend who was “in love” with me.

It was not a perfect environment (sex ed was very much of the “scare them with STDs!” variety), but it was better than other alternatives available to me and certainly not as toxic as Pinky describes.

Like any other type of school, Catholic schools vary. Some are bad. Some are good. Most are probably somewhere in between. But they do manage to meet state educational requirements, and they do historically provide solid *academic* educations, regardless of what one thinks of religious involvement in education (and yes, we talked about evolution in my biology class).

WHO did the experiment where someone seemingly shocked an unseen person until they were dead? How is the environment that the younglings are immersed so different? Nurture and programming go a long way.

Milgram. 1961.

You’re right, Pinky. From what I can see, religious indoctrination in private schools is a pretty slippery slope, and once instructors and students begin to go down the path, it’s very tricky to determine where religious indoctrination begins and where secular learning ends. That’s why I just happen to believe that parochial schools need to be evaluated and monitored for curicculum and content.

As far as nuture and programming, I’ll do you one better and posit that social learning is everything. Since human beings are so far evolved from our primate ancestors, nothing is instinctual anymore, save for the self-preservation instinct (avoiding jumping into fires, off cliffs, etc.). We have no instinct to be compassionate and charitable to each other, to defend other humans from abuse and wrongdoing, and to aspire to the commmon goods rather than self-serving ends. All those things have to be taught and learned, and school is just as good a place as any for young humans to be socialized and taught how to observe the social compact. When the school environment is constructed as an “us versus them” paradigm, however, is where we have trouble, because such dichotomies undermine the concept of inherent human dignity.

This is the quagmire of parochial education: the idea that some people are “less human” than others, hence, less deserving of a chance at redemption. That’s the big problem I have with religious instruction at school. It can be divisive rather than unifying.

Uh, which “old days” are you thinking of? Harvard was founded by the Puritans. Princeton is a Presbyterian school. The history of private education in the United States is a religious history, like it or not. As the largest denomination in the US, there are a lot of Catholic schools, but there are also a lot of Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, and Jewish schools that you’ll have to ban as well.

Are you saying we should banish all private schools and have only public schools from elementary to university? And who’s going to tell all of those Harvard and Yale (Congregationalist) graduates that their diplomas don’t count anymore?

My wife went to a catholic ’school’ in her elementary years and now meets some of those younglings that are still around and is amazed at how fucked up they are. They bought the programming hook line and sinker and were twisted kids and grew up to be twisted adults.

I weep for the future of this country with the resurgence of ‘religious’ schools and the control that ‘religion’ is trying to exert (all to well) on government and our society.

We as a society have to value the separation of religion from education or the combination of the 2 will spell the end of our country…

Idiocracy was more than a bad movie. It could be very prophetic. They didn’t call them the ‘dark ages’ because they were so much fun…

Maybe if there wasn’t a choice, like in the old days, we WOULD have better schools.

Whatever.

Pinky, I hear you, and I’m sure that the kids you describe were as horrid as you say. But a lot of people go to Catholic schools who aren’t indoctrinated or horrid. I was sent to Catholic grade school, high school, and college because my parents cared about my education, and the public schools in my town are not so hot. And guess what! The education I received enabled me to think and question, leading directly to me becoming an atheist! In addition, I learned an awful lot about Christianity, which I think is pretty important in that it’s one of the dominant forces in the development of Western culture.

I’ll admit I’m pretty horrid sometimes, though.

YES it’s possible to have a good kid go through the catholic endoctrination center and not be brain washed just as it is that a kid could be shit out of a public school with a diploma and end up curing cancer and the effects of rampant inbreeding on humans.

BUT they were placed in a ’school’ that raised their poor brain cells to believe that they were THE SHIT and that EVERYONE ELSE WASN’T, especially those that don’t worship the freaking pope and the holy church of pedophilia or partake in certain ‘carnal’ practices.

HEADY stuff, this mind programming. They were raised, by the cult, to see nothing but the cult so help them god and fuck the others that aren’t ‘in the family’ or those that haven’t suffered through the hypocrisy and pedophilia for which it stands.

WHO did the experiment where someone seemingly shocked an unseen person until they were dead? How is the environment that the younglings are immersed so different? Nurture and programming go a long way.

JUST like the Barney videos and the ultra-violent video games are working to program our young to one day rise up and kill us.

THE catholic cult should not be involved in ‘indoctrinating’ or training or counseling any child, IMO. They have no business being in the mis-education business…

Pinky I totally agree with much of what you have to say about a lot of the indocrination that occurs in Catholic Schools in the US, but I grew up in St. Louis City, which has some of the WORST public schools in the nation (the ENTIRE SLPS system lost its state accreditation 2 years ago), so I’m glad my parents sent me to catholic schools, simply because the other option would have been an educational black hole for me.