There is an election for the Premier of the Canadian province Ontario, where the conservative party is fighting the liberal party over the issue of publicly funded religious school boards.
The incumbent liberals would like to maintain a publicly funded secular school system. [There is also currently a publicly funded Catholic school system, but evolution is taught in science classes and creationism is taught in religion classes; the students are given the opportunity to decide for themselves.]
The opposition conservative party would like to modify the current system by extending faith-based funding to all other religions.
Many are concerned about the segregation that will occur when kids are compartmentalized into specialized schools based on their parents’ faith, which is often correlated with their ethnicity, i.e. Jews to one school, Muslims to another.
That said, it would be nice to have a publicly funded Pastafarian school.
Jason Parent is going to make this a reality. Please read his letter, and pass it along to any like-minded individuals:
Greetings To All Ontario Voters,
If you live in Ontario, then you are likely aware that there is currently an election going on and that the major issue is one of faith-based funding in Ontario schools. The Conservative party would like to finally open up the public education system to all of the faiths in the world – including Pastafarianism. Imagine a day when your children can sing, play and dance with their Pastafarian brethren in between classes; imagine a time when our religious beliefs may be taught at the schools where your children attend. This is indeed a very exciting time in Ontario.
However, the Liberal party would not extend funding to Pastafarian schools if elected. Why does Dalton McGuinty oppose Pastafarianism? Why would he oppose our right to impart our Pastafarian beliefs on our children through the public school system?
I am hereby launching a campaign for Pastafarianism in our public schools, and am asking for your support. First of all, you need to vote for John Tory on October 10th to allow this to happen, as the intolerant Liberal party will never let us launch any Pastafarian schools. Secondly, please send me your email address; I will keep it in a safe place so that when the time comes for us to sign a petition and bring it into Queen’s Park we will be able to quickly do so. Thirdly, please spread the word so that the number of potential signatures may grow as quickly as possible.
I am deeply committed to seeing a publicly funded Pastafarian school board in Ontario and hope that I can count on your support. Please send all email addresses to jasonparent@rogers.com. Expect a reply only once John Tory has implemented his faith-based funding program.
I will not sell your email addresses, nor will I provide them to any third-party at all – not ever, ever, ever, ever. If you’re worried then give me your spam addy; but there’s no reason to be worried.
May The Noodley-One Be With You,
Jason Parent
I happened to have attended catholic school in Ontario for many, many years. Boy was it fun! Watching the hover nuns torment the children, seeing the priests be all holy and worthy of respect. Being puzzled at the child molester teachers that were carted off to prison. Oh boy, never a dull day.
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I can totally understand why the Ontario Liberal Party would want to continue to support that tradition. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?
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The separate school system made me the outspoken, anti-relgious, athiest that I am today. So I support continuing the tradition, the more people that go through it, the more people we may get who will end up campaigning against the Dark Side.
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What is the saying? That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger?
I too attended a catholic school in ontario. i’ve heard stories about the way it was in the old days, but when i attended [mid to late 90's], there really wasn’t a strong focus on the religious aspect. i mean, you had to take a religion course every year, but it wasn’t really focused on catholicism. grade 12 was actually about social justice, we explored such questions as whether or not the death penalty or abortion was just. and while the church’s viewpoints were presented, the class was more of a forum/discussion area than an indoctrination. maybe i just had a good teacher, i don’t know. grade 11 was comparative religions, where little time was spent on catholicism and we were given a general overview of judaism, buddhism, islam, etc. we even took field trips to the local synagogue and buddhist temple. grade 9/10 were more standard english courses where the focus was on essay writing with a religious theme; but there were always kids like me that prefered to take the opportunity to write essays pointing out contradictions in the belief system, and the teachers must have been instructed to allow for lenience and to grade based on ability to present an argument, because i received high marks throughout, despite the fact that my essays were always written from a very atheist slant.
like many, i would prefer to see all religious funding scrapped and have one public, secular school system for all. however, that option is not on the table. well, the green party has this viewpoint, but, if we want to talk florida in 2000…
the election is not close enough for my little plea to make much of a difference. the liberals have a healthy 10 point lead. that’s the main reason i’m coming out with this now and not whenthe race was closer.
still, if the conservatives somehow manage to win then i see no reason why pastafarianism should not be considered, so long as enough support can be garnered to bring the church into official status.
call it preventative warfare.
Based on my background and knowledge in comparison to my peers that came from a public school, I have to say that my education was head and shoulders above theirs.
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I know many, many people who had no idea after 13 years of schooling where the Iberian pennisula is. Or who the first Prime Minister of Canada was. Or what Pi denotes, or even what Pi is, etc, etc.
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But I also got to go to Class Mass every Thursday and go to ‘confession’ and tell all my dirty little secrets to the priest on duty. By the way, the standard answers are, “I lied to my mom, hit my little brother and forgot to do my homework.” The standard punishment…I mean repentance, 10 X Hail Mary’s and 10 X Our Father’s.
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What kid wouldn’t want to do that?
see….that’s the thing. i *didn’t* have to do that, because i refused to. there were public masses…not weekly more like monthly….but in order to attend, you needed a form of parental consent. i was in an awkward situation where my father wanted me to attend a catholic school and my mother wanted me to attend a public school, so i ended up in the catholic school system, but she wouldn’t sign any of the consent forms.
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so, i got to hang out in the library during mass.
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confessions were always voluntary. they would set something up in the cafeteria once a month, and the students would be allowed to go to confession based on their own discretion – every month if they wanted, or not at all if they decided not to.
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i understand that things were different years ago, but they’re not that way anymoe. and i would like to see one school board for all, but, like i say, that’s not currently an option that’s being presented to us.
I am a Pastafarian of long standing and have endeavoured to spread his noodly word. I also went to Catholic school in Ontario.
>[There is also currently a publicly funded Catholic school system,
>but evolution is taught in science classes and creationism is taught in religion classes;
>the students are given the opportunity to decide for themselves.]
I have seen this kind of statement many times, it is incorrect. While the Catholic church deserves criticism on a lot of issues, teaching creationism in religion classes is not one of them. The bible stories of creation are taught as allegories and, except for some outliers, the Catholic Church accepts the reality of evolution, despite what that loudmouth Bill Donahue would have you believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church
I was going to vote for the Conservatives until they came out with this position on faith-based schools. I can’t vote Liberal because they decided to regulate (i.e. give the government’s stamp of approval to) naturopaths, homeopaths and practitioners of eastern “medicine”. But thanks to Jason, I realize that I can get the public system to pay for my son’s education in my faith as well.
Toodles with Noodles
One of the most positive benefits about going to a catholic school is that I pretty much despise all things religious, have no respect for people who ‘have blind faith’ (most especially if they are intelligent, well read and educated), pity children who are exposed to it (and think it should be deemed child abuse) and think that mankind’s proclivity towards god and godlike endeavors will more than likely be his downfall.
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If I had never been exposed to it I may have ended up, at the best, indifferent or ambivalent towards it. At the worst, actually believing in, some, or all of the clap-trap.
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I strongly believe that enlightened peoples all over the world should not encourage nor endorse religion in any of it’s evil forms. Religious beliefs have led to millions and millions of deaths in the past hundreds of thousands of years. It encourages xenophobia, intolerance, hatred and seperation of the human community.
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(Picture me standing on my soap box here) We of the ‘Blinders Have Been Removed’ society, instead of sitting quietly and watching all the idiots vie for the top spot of superstition and hocus pocus, should actually speak out and say, “What the F*ck?”
You have just given me a brilliant idea! In Britain faith schools can already be funded by the government. maybe we should start up a school in London. A flagship school for Pastafarianism.
@Angryy
Because we wouldn’t get a Pastafarian school, we would get a bunch of churchie public schools. That would be bad.