Ireland has National Schools. The Wikipedia version:

In Ireland, a National school is a type of primary school that is financed directly by the State, but administered jointly by the State, a patron body, and local representatives.

I’m not sure what a “patron body” is or how it gets standing to administer state schools. The point I’m interested in though is that they’ve always been entangled with religion. Still Wikipedia -

National schools, established by the British Government with the Stanley Letter in 1831, were originally multi-denominational. The schools were controlled by a State body, the National Board of Education, with a six-member board consisting of two Roman Catholics, two Church of Ireland, and two Presbyterians.

Secularism, apparently, wasn’t an option.

Which brings us to Rule 68. Emma O Kelly reported for RTE a couple of years ago:

Comments by the head of the Catholic Schools Partnership at a conference today prompted me to look up the rules that govern the running of primary schools here.

They’re available online and they make for fascinating reading.

Published in 1965, its difficult to see many sections of the “Rules for National Schools” as anything other than an anachronism.

Even the language is from another era. Teachers and pupils for instance are always referred to as ‘he’. That is, apart from when the rules need to mention a female teacher or “mistress” as it calls them. For example the document states that Junior Infants boys should be taught “as a rule” by “a mistress” or by an “assistant mistress” as opposed to a male teacher. I wonder what was the reasoning behind that?

But its one rule above all the others that is now causing controversy. Rule 68 deals with religion in schools. The Forum on Patronage and Pluralism, which is due to publish its final report shortly, believes this rule need to be abolished entirely. The Department of Education agrees that it has to go.

What is Rule 68?

Of all the parts of a school curriculum Religious Instruction is by far the most important, as its subject-matter, God’s honour and service, includes the proper use of all man’s faculties, and affords the most powerful inducements to their proper use. Religious Instruction is, therefore, a fundamental part of the school course, and a religious spirit should inform and vivify the whole work of the school.

The teacher should constantly inculcate the practice of charity, justice, truth, purity, patience, temperance, obedience to lawful authority, and all the other moral virtues. In this way he will fulfil the primary duty of an educator, the moulding to perfect form of his pupils’ character, habituating them to observe, in their relations with God and with their neighbour, the laws which God, both directly through the dictates of natural reason and through Revelation, and indirectly through the ordinance of lawful authority, imposes on mankind.

It’s dreadful. It asserts and demands right at the outset the very worst thing about religion, which is the pretense that it’s not this world and our fellow human beings (and other animals and the planet we depend on) that matter, but One Top Guy who is absent and unavailable yet demanding and absolute. It makes obeisance and submission to this imaginary Boss the most important thing, shoving everything else into inferior status. It’s the great human perversity: declaring the imaginary to be the boss of the real. The “proper use” of all our faculties – it says all – is “God’s honour and service.” How revolting, how abject, how clueless, how dangerous.

The second paragraph quickly falls into the usual confusion, talking about moral virtues that in fact mostly make sense only in terms of what we owe to each other as opposed to what we (are claimed to) owe to “God.” It gets downright incoherent with “in their relations with God and with their neighbour” – as if there’s no tension between the two, as if they hadn’t just spelled out the tension themselves. Then after that they move comfortably into the normal fascism, where we have to obey “lawful authority” because god says so. Priests of course are more lawful authority even than cops, not to mention bishops and cardinals and popes.

And that rule is still in force.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s possible that Sri Lanka is doing Buddhism wrong. It’s also possible that I have a naïve view of Buddhism, and that non-attachment is entirely compatible with being petty and obsessive about things that don’t matter. You be the judge.

A British tourist is to be deported from Sri Lanka because of a Buddha tattoo on her arm.

Naomi Coleman was arrested as she arrived at the airport in the capital Colombo after authorities spotted the tattoo on her right arm.

A police spokesman said the 37-year-old from Coventry was arrested for “hurting others’ religious feelings”.

Ms Coleman is being held at an immigration detention camp after a magistrate ordered her deportation.

She was going to the Maldives next and said ok she would just go straight there but they told her no, she had to go back home. How does that work, I wonder – why does Sri Lanka get to decide her destination?

The UK travel advice on Sri Lanka warns of the sensitivity of the issue and tells visitors not to pose for photos in front of statues of Buddha.

Over the past year monks belonging to certain hardline Buddhist groups have led violent attacks against Muslims and Christians, a trend which has given rise to considerable concern among religious minorities in Sri Lanka.

I think the “hardline Buddhist groups” are also probably doing Buddhism wrong. But I’m not a Buddhist, so I don’t know.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Cliven Bundy has more bad ideas he wants everyone to know about.

Bundy is attempting to use his newfound fame to spread more than just his views on grazing rights, telling the Times he planned to hold a daily news conference.

Remember Joe the Plumber? I think what we have here is another such populist hero – Cliven the Cowboy perhaps.

During Saturday’s conference, Bunday shared his views on “the Negro”:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Mmm. I love drive-by sociology performed by random tresspassers and resource-thieves.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Soraya Chemaly has a piece on the ubiquity and invisibility of everyday sexism.

A point she makes at the end should be a post-it on everyone’s forehead for a few years.

The sad fact is that while it is polite to express sexist ideas, confronting them is considered the height of rudeness and humorlessness. When a man at a neighborhood cocktail party comments rudely on my breasts or when another in a meeting interrupts me incessantly while trying to talk to other men, it is me, not them, who is considered hostile and unpleasant for saying, “My face is up here,” or “Would you please stop interrupting me?” When my children’s school fails, year after year, to teach my children a gender balanced history or enforces dress codes in sexist and homophobic ways and I am compelled to point these practices out as deleterious to girls and boys, reception to these ideas can be best described as tepid.

It’s true you know. You’re really not supposed to say anything. You’re supposed to sigh, and fume inwardly if you have to fume, and carry on as if nothing had happened. If you say anything you’re a bitch, a pain in the ass, a harpy, a Professional Victim – an ideologue, an obsessive, a keyboard warrior, a drama blogger, a source of division in a previously affectionate paradise.

Remember when I said anything about Shermer’s bit of casually smug sexism? Hoo-boy – outrage. His casually smug sexism was fine, my pointing it out was horrendous.

It’s a long long road up a high high mountain.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by jesse on Built on Christian values.

Well, unlike the US, England (and the UK as I understand it) still has an established church, as do many other European countries, which may be part of the problem. In the US at least we can be more explicit about secularism, even though there has been a LOT of pushback.

The thing is, I’ve noticed that many westerners have no problem with secularism — until they run into religions and people who are “other.” Then, all of a sudden, it’s a bad idea. The connection between what looks like secularism and entrenched privilege for largely western cultural norms (which can be just as negative and arbitrary as anyone else’s) seems lost on such people.

One of the flip sides of secularism — at last coming at it from an American point of view — is that it means secularism for everyone. That means that if we are going to do work-arounds to accommodate people’s freedom of conscience, then that applies to everyone, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Zoroastrian. The school cannot operate in a way that privileges one group over the other. It’s really that simple.

You can’t stop people from praying in school, but you can’t lead one (as a person in authority). You can offer space to religious clubs or groups but you can’t tell the Satanists or atheists they can’t meet in your gym while Campus for Christ can. You can’t tell students not to wear yarmulkes or headscarves or turbans, and you can’t have the 10 Commandments posted in the classrooms. People can do whatever they like within their religious community (within reason) but you can’t give it state sanction.

I don’t know why this is such a hard concept for people.

At least in the US, one of the reasons for an explicitly secular constitution is that there was a large variety of Christian sects in the US even then. Secularism was meant in part to leave room for that, so you wouldn’t leave anyone feeling alienated.

Let’s not forget that in 1780 the religious wars in England and Oliver Cromwell were not so far in the past — a century or so — and in fact much of the violence that we associate with Cromwell’s rule in Ireland spilled over into the Americas as well, though the targets weren’t Catholics. (In that case it was the Puritans, who supported Cromwell, engaging in battles with the people in places like Maryland, who supported the monarchy and its restoration). To say nothing of the then-current religious violence in Ireland. The founders of the US were not eager to repeat those experiences, nor create any more divisions between the colonies than already existed. Secularism was a principled position, but there was a very concrete political reason for it also.

When people feel alienated from the political process or the society in which they live, that’s when you get political violence (and religious violence). It is no accident that the countries that have a lot of terrorists and insurgencies tend to be ones that have managed to convince large sectors of the population that the ballot box and politics are ineffective. And that’s why secularism is so important to a modern — and yes, multicultural — society. You need to have a situation in which everyone feels like they are getting heard, where everyone has a stake in continuing some established order and method of resolving disputes. Otherwise yes, you do have whole classes of people who feel like they have no stake in the society at large, and that’s not good.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The sociologist Abbie Day, who is Reader in Race, Faith and Culture, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, has an article on Cameron’s recent issuing of religious instructions.

She notes the low church attendance and census decline but says they’re not all that matters.

…it’s easy to get distracted by numbers, which are themselves never neutral but are instead collected and presented, often anecdotally, to fulfil specific goals and make certain points. What is counted is what is perceived (by certain actors) to count. A group that is small numerically can be a majority in terms of power and voice – which is exactly what we are seeing with Cameron’s assertion and the response.

One-third of primary schools are managed by the Church of England and the popular ones insist on parental attendance for two years before a child even gets on the waiting list. Bishops sit in the House of Lords and recently tried to over-rule the Commons. The Queen is head of state and head of the Church. Apart from the British Humanist Society (BHS) and the National Secular Society (NSS), few voices complain about that imbalance; many see it as a quaint vestige of history.

On the one hand it’s pro forma but on the other hand it has a lot of clout.

There is not, however, anything quaint about forms of ethno-national violence carried out by members of the English Defence League or other fascist groups on grounds of ‘religion’. It is this toxic connection that people signing the British Humanist Association (BHA)’s letter of protest are, rightly, worried about, as signatory and Goldsmiths’ Professor of Psychology, Chris French, told the BBC on Monday.

The evidence given to support the claim for Britain’s Christianity is that a particular set of values underpinning society is ‘Christian’. That claim is never substantiated by anything more than a vague reference to legal and moral norms but, again, factual accuracy is not the point: this is discourse. The objective is to cast ‘us’ as moral and ‘others’ as immoral.

Precisely, and isn’t that exactly why it’s such an extremely antagonistic thing for a head of government to do.

The kind of discursive Christianity indulged by Cameron is ahistoric, and more dangerous as a result. It will not decline as will institutional, church-based Christianity: most people who attend the Church of England are old, as are those who ticked ‘Christian’ on the census. Those people, once described as ‘the Conservative party at prayer’, are a declining percentage of the population -  from 71.7% in 2001 to 59.3% in 2011 -  but one to which Cameron wants to appeal.

Unfortunately, he also wants to appeal to those I describe as ‘ethnic Christians’ who do not attend church, do not believe in core tenets of Christianity – the resurrection, for example –   but want to claim national and moral superiority by aligning themselves to what they perceive as the national identity. This apparently closed, fixed identity characterises the nation and not, of course, those ‘others’ who arrive as immigrants, or even their children.

Cameron’s appeal was not to the dwindling minority of people attending the mainstream churches, but to those who, along with so many of the ‘new right’ sweeping Europe, pick and choose a tasty morsel of cultural capital to throw to the crowd.

The new Christian Cameron: bang on trend.

So what he said was actually a dog whistle to the EDL and their friends and allies. I didn’t really think of that. If she’s right, what he said, and did by saying it, was even worse than I thought.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Have some bad advice.

It’s given by someone called Penelope Trunk, who is the founder of something called Brazen Careerist, which is “a social network for young professionals.” She gives “career advice” at her website, penelopetrunk.com. I wouldn’t look to her for advice if I were you.

CBS News disagrees with me though, and offers her advice to a trusting world.

Of course, sexual harassment is ubiquitous. It is so prevalent on the job that girls can expect to encounter workplace harassment the first summer they work during high school. And it continues for a long time.

But don’t report it. That would be most unwise.

 In fact, smart women don’t file formal complaints against ordinary harassment. They either ignore it or handle it on their own.

Because that’s how progress is made – by individuals either doing nothing, or doing something on their own, covertly and with shame.

The bottom line for a woman, though, is that if you want to have a career of increasing power, you are going to have to keep quiet about the harassment.

So suck it up laydeez. Maybe things will get better some other century.

Once you become aware of the widespread tolerance for harassment throughout the world, it becomes clear that you will have to put up with it as a form of cultural diversity. If you want to be good at working with a wide range of people, you need to be good at brushing off harassment.

It’s the liberal thing to do.

H/t Jen Phillips

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Sexism? What sexism? I don’t see any sexism. You must be imagining things.

Conservative “pundit” and contributor to Fox “News” Eric Erickson is pissed at the thought that Hillary Clinton might run for president in a couple of years, because she’s so ugly.

“She’s going to be old!” Erickson noted. “I don’t know how far back they can pull her face!” he added.

“Can I say that on the air? I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t,” Erickson continued. “You know what I mean, though!” he added.

No, dude, go right ahead. Don’t be inhibited. Say what’s in your heart. Be authentic. If you’re grossed out by the thought of a woman who isn’t 18 and hot, be sure to say so. Any woman who isn’t 18 – or let’s be generous, let’s say any woman over 25 – and hot should be ashamed of herself for still existing.

Erickson then mixed up John McCain and Bob Dole and claimed that Democrats will call sexist attacks on Clinton — like, say, jokes about her being old and needing plastic surgery — bigoted because “every attack you could possibly level will [according to Democrats] be some phobia from the right if Hillary does get in.”

What I’m saying. All this palaver about sexism – how can it be sexist to point out how old and ugly Hillary Clinton is? It’s her fucking job to be young and hot, so it’s everyone’s duty to complain about it when she doesn’t do her job. Has she ever worked a day in her life? I’d like to see her put in a few hours selling risky mortgages for a change, like a real American.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A very cool Nova episode about animal minds.

If you want a particular highlight start at 8:50 to watch the New Caledonia crow faced with a novel problem it takes 8 steps to solve. The crow has done each step separately before, but never seen them combined. It’s pretty damn fascinating.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Donald does Twitter.

What does he do when he does Twitter? He says Obama goes down the stairs of the plane wrong. He should be doing it slowly and ponderously so that we will all be overawed and a little abject, instead of running down them because dude they’re stairs, you go down them, you don’t savor them and luxuriate in them.

The Donald is kind of a troll.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Rebecca does rewards for her Patreon thingy, where people can request items they want. Secular Woman requested a drawing about the current state of the secular movement, so she obliged.

I’ve never done a political cartoon before so this was very exciting. I decided to draw a picture of something that from what I understand actually happened at the recent American Atheist Conference Art Show:http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/04/its-more-of-a-guy-thing-in-paintings/

She deserves a reciprocal reward for that!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I guess Labour people are panicking about the Forcible Christianity Gap, and rushing to catch up with David “we are a Christian country” Cameron.

Jack Straw says that the way to deal with Islamist takeovers of state schools is to do a Christianist takeover instead. I take it he’s never heard of secularism?

Muslims must accept that Britain is built on Christian values, a former Home Secretary has said, in the wake of mounting evidence that a group of schools have been taken over in a ‘Trojan Horse’ plot by radical Islamists.

It is “inevitable” that many Muslim communities will not integrate with the rest of British society but it must be made clear that attempts to isolate Muslim pupils from the rest of society are unacceptable, Jack Straw said.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

One quick bit of stupid to smack because I just saw it so it’s fresh in my mind – Dan Fincke has a (public) mini-essay on Facebook making the point that it’s not very humanist or reasonable or compassionate to respond to a woman who says she has PTSD from verbal abuse by assailing her with more verbal abuse. Predictably but annoyingly there’s a guy who keeps saying all she has to do is stay off social media, and problem solved.

It’s not victim blaming if there is a 100% effective way to avoid being a victim. Even doing nothing would prevent becoming a victim in this context. A victim in this instance would have to willfully participate in their victimhood.

Someone responded with “like going to parties or bars.”

No, like not reading what people are saying to you on social media.

Ok stop right there. 100% effective way to avoid being a victim? Just not reading what people are saying to you on social media?

You have got to be kidding.

It’s on social media. What does that mean? That it’s public. Other people can see it. What does that mean? It’s trashing your reputation. Can you 100% solve that problem by not reading it?

No.

Of course not.

Jeezis. How obvious does it have to be before people will see it?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A story told by “A Mighty Girl” (which is a group) on the eponymous Facebook page.

In celebration of today’s Boston Marathon, we’re sharing the dramatic story of the first woman to officially run the historic race. Kathrine Switzer’s experience is a revealing illustration of the barriers that trailblazing women athletes had to overcome and of how far girls and women in sports have come in only a few decades.

In 1967, Switzer was a 20-year-old college student at Syracuse University when she registered for the race using her initials, K.V. Switzer. Not realizing that she was a woman, who were barred from participating in the Boston Marathon for over 70 years, race officials issued her an entry number.

During the race, marathon official Jock Semple attempted to physically remove Switzer from the marathon after discovering she was female. Other runners, including Switzer’s boyfriend Tom Miller, blocked Semple and she was able to complete the marathon. Pictures of the incident and the story of Switzer’s participation in the marathon made global headlines.

After the marathon, Switzer became deeply engaged in efforts to increase girls’ and women’s access to sports and she and other women runners finally convinced the Boston Athletic Association to drop their discriminatory policies and allow women to participate in 1972. By 2011, nearly 43 percent of Boston Marathon entrants were female. Switzer also helped lead the drive for the inclusion of a women’s marathon in the Olympic Games — a victory which was achieved at long last with the first women’s marathon at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

It seems so outlandish now. It’s not a contact sport, there’s plenty of oxygen for all; why on earth were women kept out?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Governor Chafee’s declaration of May 1 as Reason Day is really very cool.

Governor Chafee has proclaimed May 1 as “A Day of Reason’’ in Rhode Island.

His proclamation begins: “Whereas, the application of reason, more than any other means, has proven to offer hope for human survival upon Earth by cultivating intelligent, moral and ethical interactions among people and their among people and their environments….’’

“I, Lincoln D. Chafee, governor of the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2014 as Day of Reason in Rhode Island and encourage all state residents to join me [in] recognizing the importance of this day.’’

Well yay. How nice to hear that.

The Humanists of RI and The Secular Coalition for RI say Chafee signed the proclamation at their request to help “raise awareness throughout the State of Rhode Island of the importance of Reason as a guiding principle of our secular democracy.’’  Chafee spokeswoman Faye Zuckerman did not dispute this characterization on Monday.

Timed to coincide with the “National Day of Prayer” on the first Thursday in May each year, the two groups say the goal of their own effort “is to celebrate reason—a concept all citizens can support—and to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.’’

All right. I’m impressed.

For the record:  Chafee also signed a proclamation declaring May 1 as a “Day of Prayer.”

Baby steps.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

God’s fans are up in arms, of course.

Kenniston Vogel
If you don’t believe in god, that’s fine…burn in hell….but when you start missing with my country and falsifying facts. That’s where I have a problem. You need to get your few thousand followers and get the hell out of my country. I have a few friends that would be more than happy to help you..here let me name a few. The Lacs, Moccasin Creek, the US U.S. Army, The U.S. Marines, NRA. The Jawga Boyz. This is just to name a few fokes that I know would love to help you GET THE HELL OUT OF MY UNITED STATES. Amen

God loves a hater, I guess.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The AHA press release:

Contact:

Merrill Miller, merrillmiller@americanhumanist.org, 202-238-9088 ext. 105
David Niose, dniose@americanhumanist.org, 202-238-9088 ext.119

(Washington, DC—April 21, 2014)—A lawsuit was filed against a school district in New Jersey on behalf of a local family that objects to their child’s school conducting regular Pledge of Allegiance recitation with the words “under God.”

The case was filed by the American Humanist Association (AHA) on behalf of a Monmouth County family who wish to remain anonymous. It claims that daily school-sponsored recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance—declaring to students that the nation is “under God”—is discriminatory toward atheist children and their families. The American Humanist Association originally sent a letter of complaint to the superintendent of schools for the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District in Monmouth County on February 19, but the school system responded by saying it would not change the practice.

“Public schools should not engage in an exercise that tells students that patriotism is tied to a belief in God,” said David Niose, attorney for the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center. “Such a daily exercise portrays atheist and humanist children as second-class citizens, and certainly contributes to anti-atheist prejudices.”

The American Humanist Association claims that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance violates Article 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, which states, “No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil or military right, nor be discriminated against in the exercise of any civil or military right, nor be segregated in the militia or in the public schools, because of religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin.”  The American Humanist Association points out that the original version of the Pledge did not include “under God” wording. That wording was added in 1954, during the McCarthy era.

“It’s not the place of state governments to take a position on god-belief,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “The current pledge practice marginalizes atheist and humanist kids as something less than ideal patriots, merely because they don’t believe the nation is under God.”

This case is similar to one awaiting a decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Doe v. Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, based on that state’s constitutional equal rights protections. The Massachusetts case is also being handled by the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center.

Details of the lawsuit can be viewed here.

# # #

Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, DC, the American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other non-religious Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming philosophy of humanism, which—without beliefs in any gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

Special thanks to the Louis J. Appignani Foundation for their support of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hey look at that – via the American Humanist Association -

Notice the huge emphasis on “ALL” – in the 1940s, when racism and sexism and homophobia were barely on anyone’s radar, even the people oppressed by one or all of them.

But also notice the pre-McCarthy absence of that deity guy.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)