Blood donation

Yeah, but a mile of stream-of-consciousness-often-irrelevant-bollocks. I might need some sort of internal editor.

 

Most Americans won't even know of the American nor care.

 

true, farnsworth is in a braincell somewhere due to a long ago pbs offering. i remember nothing else except that he died broken and penniless. (i think)
certainly nothing taught in public school.

 

That's another thing that gets twisted over the Atlantic. Public school in UK costs extra for admission and tutoring, like Eton, Harrow, etc. In USA, I think the term public school applies to state or federal funded schools. My daughters went to a fee paying school which cost several thousands per term, but I was lucky that central Govt paid me a grant of 10% because my Service required me to move home every couple of years. This was recognised to be disruptive to junior/senior education with a minimal support for using a boarding school.

 

i think similar here. we have public (taxpayer funded) and private (user funded) and now charter. (taxpayer funded, but school choice for family, not available to everyone)
it is all very confusing, and difficult for voters to wrap their heads around when it comes up, so much disinformation.

 

Ok, but for us Public School is most definitely paying out more than you really want to. The best we could afford was about £3,000/child three times a year compared with state school (taxpayer funded) being free of charge. We had never planned on using the Public School system and never prepared in advance, so it was one heck of a financial body blow at the time. Now one daughter has a Master's Degree in education and is a deputy Head, the other has a BSc whereas neither parent has a degree to their name. Of course, I still know more than both of my daughter's IMHO!

 

we sent our 3 to public schools (free) and then college, (you pay here, although they already get a ton of tax money) all 3 did very well, with a lot of help and over seeing by their mother along the way. if you just throw them to the wolves, the odds of success go way down imo.

 

So true, don't think our pair would have developed half as well as they did had they remained in a regular state school system. Sadly, my role involved endless shift work plus detachments abroad, which left swmbo to fill the duties of both parents which the military over here fail to recognise. My kids didn't get to see me as much as we would have liked, but the upside was they were competently independent even before they went to university.

 

i was around, but working many hours starting and operating a small business. they were better off without me for the education side of things.

 

In Australia, we use the American words to describe schools because (whisper it) they make more sense than the British terms.

Public schools are publically funded. Private schools you pay for.

In-between, we have Catholic schools, which are subsidised.

For primary schools, the public school system is fantastic.

For secondary, I'm really not sure what to do. My elder daughter is two years from starting secondary school, and it is proving difficult to weigh up the pros and cons. Our two local public secondary schools are very good, but so is the local Catholic girls' school (which doesn't enforce the Catholicism, but I'm sure my background will be of some advantage to getting in. As for private schools, there's really only one near us that isn't appallingly snobbish and/or bitchy.

Hmmmmm

 

difficult choices for any parent. we saw some of our children friends head to Catholic and private schools after
primary. Catholic schools are not subsidized here, but have campaigned for it based on the enormity of burden taken off public schools.

 

Providing you are happy in your individual faith, I see no good reason to avoid a subsidised faith school. My personal view is that most religions should be part of a child's education, not necessarily just one become the framework of it. In UK there has been an increase of overzealous religious schooling to the point of fanaticism in some cases which now need legal intervention to recover. Chances are, your kids won't thank you for your efforts in this until they're over 30.

 

Yes, they don't seem to be too bad here.

I agree with your view on this, and it's something that frustrates me enormously here.

At government-run primary schools in New South Wales, religious education is only about your religion of choice. Parents fill in a form saying which one religion they want their kids to be taught (I use "taught" rather than "taught about" quite deliberately). The kids are split up for religion lessons into their respective religious groups, and they are told that the stuff in their religion is all fact. If you don't want your kids to be put through this, they can do "ethics", which is utter nonsense, or they can sit in a room and read a book WHICH MUST NOT BE EDUCATIONAL.

This is stupid.

Being taught your religion is what church/mosque/synagogue/temple and the attached Sunday school or whatever is for.

School is for education. If they're going to learn about religion - which they should - they should be learning the basics of all major religions. It's important to understand why that person is wearing those clothes or can't eat that food or is having a stupid war or can't talk about that admission of guilt or whatever it might be. It's useful to understand religions so you know where laws and traditions and parts of language come from. I wish they'd do this instead.

 

if you are happy in your faith, why would you want your children to learn about others, until they are well grounded in yours?

 

I'd want to teach them about mine - if I had one. And I'd want them to learn from the priest or rabbi or imam or whoever.

They don't go to school to learn how to praise their God. They go to school to learn stuff about the world.

 

I hate to disagree with you, bisco but children have open minds. By reinforcing one belief at an early age imprints in their psyche (hope that's the right word) and will be difficult to modify later. This may be good for the religion in question, but I see it as nearer to brainwashing for the child. IMHO, it would be better to teach children the basis of a variety of faiths and religious beliefs without bias and allow them to draw their own conclusions without pressure.

I cannot guarantee this would be the optimal way or even the he best solution, just my opinion.

 

but then, you should modify your original 'happy in their faith' because anyone who was truly happy would want their children to be happy as well.

as an aside, we raised all three of our kids in the Catholic faith, and none of them are Catholic now, so, i'm not sure about the brainwashing.

as i look back, i may have read your original post incorrectly.

 

Yes, I think you may have done.

I am happy in my faith.

It would not take long for my kids' school to indoctrinate my children in my faith. It would take once sentence, in fact. Which leaves seven very empty years of religious education.

But if I were still a Catholic, I'd want the kids to learn about Catholicism from me, and from the priest (with a responsible adult supervising at all times, of course), through church or Sunday school.

What I want from school is for my kids to learn about the history and beliefs of the major faiths, and how this affects the world.

In geography, my kids don't only learn about Sydney. In history, they don't only learn about now. So in religious education at school, they shouldn't only learn about their parents' faith.

 

it would be difficult to find a place in the curriculum, without removing something else.

 

I'm not saying comparative religion needs to be taught as well; I'm saying it needs to be taught instead.

So what you remove is "religious instruction" and what you put in its place is "religious education".

EDIT:

For clarity....

In New South Wales public schools, kids spend two hours a week either being told that their religion is the right one and that all others are wrong, and that everything in their religion is an incontrovertible fact, or, if their parents don't want to put them through that, colouring pictures or reading a book (a book which, by law, must not be educational).

Those two hours a week could be spent learning about everyone else's religion.

 

ah, i get it now. we don't have any religious education in public schools. (that i'm aware of)