On 16 January 2017 the Department of Education sought submissions from interested persons and groups on the role of denominational religion in the school admissions process and possible approaches for making changes.
The Mid-West Humanists today 11 March 2017 have sent the following submission to the Department.
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Mid West Humanists March 2017
To Richard Bruton TD, Minister for Education and Skills
Contents
- The Mid-West Humanists make this submission
- Who the Mid-West Humanists are
- Mid-West Humanists’ reasons to meet includes the problems with education for those with no religion
- The plan we submit will benefit also people in religions with less numerous adherents, and will make governing the State and keeping peace easier
- Subjects that the Consultation Paper and the Minister mention, which this Submission uses
5.1. Lower admission priority and the pressure to baptise are not fair to families and parents
5.2. Ethos is a part of Approach 4(2) – so this Submission addresses ethos
5.3. Understanding the different religions in the community and including all children with respect
5.4. The Constitution of Ireland, parts relevant to education and State schools - Principles of the Mid-West Humanists on which their view how to run National Schools is built
6.1. A society fair to all people, and no rights for institutions
6.2. Children’s rights,
1) to develop intellectually, that adults and the State not blur their differentiation of ideas based on evidence and reason from ideas that people believe without evidence
2) to know all the variety of people among whom they live/ will live, to feel at home in society - The Mid-West Humanists’ view on the Paper’s 4 or 6 suggested approaches to admissions to schools
7.1. General – all 4 or 6 approaches are unreasonable
7.2. Approaches 1, 2, 3, 4(3)
7.3. Approach 4(2) – pressure to agree to ethos is the same as pressure to baptise, unfair
7.4. Approach 4(1) – children’s rights will be infringed after admission unless ethos is secular - The Mid-West Humanists’ own view on the best admission rules, and the correct ethos
8.1. Repeal the Equal Status Act 2000 Section 7.3(c) entirely
8.2. Teachers must teach all the religions together to all children together, fairly and neutrally
8.3. To not blur distinctions of basing on evidence, teachers not to state religious ideas as true
8.4. The Constitution gives the teaching of religious doctrines to parents and not to the State
8.5. The State makes children attend school, so it must be fair and make schools secular - Replies to the 4 questions that the Consultation Paper asks about all approaches
9.1. It is unfair that any religious group have State-funded schools
9.2. The Constitution mandates the State removing religious influence in schools which it funds
9.3. The legal support for National Schools and the Minister’s power to change how they run
9.4. Unintended impacts of our approach are not a problem - Additional ideas
10.1. The value to society of all schools being secular, with no discrimination on admission
10.2. Constitution and international conventions support secular ethos and no discrimination
10.3. Misconceptions about National Schools’ legal status, and the real status - Conclusion
11.1. Changes needed and the power to make changes: the changes are constitutional
11.2. Reasons for changes: children’s rights to development and to be at home in society
Filed under: announcements, constitution, cultural issues, Dáil Éireann, education, law, religion, science, Seanad Éireann, Secularism | Tagged: constitution of ireland, equal rights, Human Rights, law, National School, science, secularism, society | Leave a comment »
This just appeared on the Dublin Road in Limerick. Can it be telling the truth? I’m not well up on this but I’ve started to do a little research. It looks like there are two elements of disinformation here. The message about adult stem cell cures is seriously overstated and they must be using a very low threshold for a definition of a treatment. The message about embryonic stem cell research is technically true but the reason for this is that there hasn’t been enough time for treatments to be developed because of the delays imposed by the opposition of the anti-science crowd. Of course here they are setting the bar high for a definition of a treatment.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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Mid-west Humanists - An Irish Atheist Community 