Commission rules Catholic primary school discriminated against atheist student

[Polak]

Giving homework passes to Catholic children ruled as discrimination – The Irish Times

Parents ‘delighted’ with religious ceremonies ruling – The Irish Times

Thoughts on this story?

Personally it is another one of those cases that annoys me a little bit. You sent your son to a Catholic school. They accepted your son despite neither you or him being Catholic, and now you get upset when the Catholic school has an extra-curricular Catholic activity (who would have thought), that your son is more than welcome to attend, where if you go, you get some type of prize.

You choose not to send him (again, you are free to do that if you wish) and now you take the school to court over it for discrimination? Please.

When in Rome really doesn’t work with people does it?

Seriously they could have just sent him to the ceremony. He doesn’t have to believe it, just take part and get your prize, or don’t take part and don’t collect your prize. You are given the option here to do what you want and that still isn’t good enough.

 

[Feanor2]

Why can’t they just give him the prize anyway- even if he doesn’t attend?

 

[Polak]

Because I suppose you get it for attending. You have to earn it. If they just gave it then other kids would think they could have just not gone.

 

[Irishmom2]

Normally, I would say that if you send your child to Catholic school and aren’t Catholic you would need to follow what they are doing. Your child would need to say prayers, do the the homework for religion class, attend mass with the class during school. That is how it is at our local Catholic school.

The mistake in this case was the offering of the “reward” for attending an event that was not during school, and one that probably all of the Catholic students were going to attend anyway.

Should the atheist parent have made a big deal about it? No. It’s one homework pass, not anything to have warranted such a strong response.

 

[Polak]

Hi @Irishmom2

Do you live in Ireland? If you do, was this a big deal in over there? Was it talked about a lot in the media?

 

[Irishmom2]

Nope, I don’t live there.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

This kind of feels like when in the military you get two options: Attend services or scrub the latrine.

One concern I have in this story is if the homework was really homework if only one child had to do it. The purpose of homework is to help the class learn, to expand and apply what they’ve been taught, and to gauge if the lesson got through to the children (and see if any need additional help, or if the lesson needs to be given extra time). If only one child does it, then it’s busy work and possibly a deterrent to missing the choir ceremony.

 

[Polak]

Giving the child homework because he didn’t attend the ceremony is something I can agree was unnecessary. Even though homework isn’t officially punishment, in this particular scenario it was definitely made to look like that way to the child. You don’t attend, you don’t get the reward, that is enough, but to also give him homework that nobody else had to do, that’s a bit much.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I find the story disturbing on a number of levels.

First, that a Catholic school is taking an atheist pupil from an atheist family, when a Catholic child could have had that slot. I doubt they are short on Catholic pupils in that area.

Second, that the Catholic school is “incentivizing” kids to attend a religious service instead of teaching them that we go to religious services because we are Catholic and it’s part of our life, not because we get some earthly reward like no homework for attending. I can tell you that when I was in Catholic school and we were expected to be at a Mass we were told to be there, not “incentivized”.

Third, that the atheist family complained about this arrangement when as noted above they simply could have sent their kid to the religious service.

I’m hoping that the school both does away with the incentivizing for services and just makes attendance mandatory or something, and also that they don’t take any more atheists.

 

[Polak]

First, that a Catholic school is taking an atheist pupil from an atheist family, when a Catholic child could have had that slot. I doubt they are short on Catholic pupils in that area.

I think there are rules in some countries that, even if you’re a religious school, you cannot ‘discriminate’ accepting students based on religion. It’s very odd. I’ll double check that but I definitely remember hearing about this.

Second, that the Catholic school is “incentivizing” kids to attend a religious service instead of teaching them that we go to religious services because we are Catholic and it’s part of our life, not because we get some earthly reward like no homework for attending. I can tell you that when I was in Catholic school and we were expected to be at a Mass we were told to be there, not “incentivized”.

Agreed, but they are young kids and it can be hard to convince them the right way. Perhaps the hope was that this would make them want to attend and then they would realise how much they enjoyed it?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Agreed, but they are young kids and it can be hard to convince them the right way. Perhaps the hope was that this would make them want to attend and then they would realise how much they enjoyed it?

Primary school age kids aren’t at the age to be “convinced”. They’re at the age when an authority figure needs to tell them this is how it’s going to be.