They very much depend on catchment area. Depends on style of parent you are too - would you encourage your child to call you by your first name. If so they will do well in ET.
I’ve heard a few parents express concerns about them being informal and worried kids could struggle with transition to secondary school but that is speculation
Having said all that there is one near us and parents who send their kids there do seem to sing it’s praises and are very much in favour of the style of education it offers.
I haven’t thought about this before now. I wouldn’t mind my child calling me by my first name. A slight tangent but I know someone around 30 years old whose father is about 60 and she calls him by a harmless nickname he’s had since he was young. I find that weird.
I have friends in their early/mid 30s who still refer to their father as Daddy. I find it awfully unsettling.
What are the forum’s thoughts on parents baptising and putting their children through the communion/confirmation process when they are non practicing RCs, agnostic or ignorant/indifferent to religion themselves?
I find it somewhat weird and a lot seem to do it to appease grandparents or simply for the sake of it.
Yeah, I was at a wedding over the Christmas and got chatting to a lad I went to school with at the dinner. I know full well he isn’t religious and has no interest in it and he was telling me about how his eldest had first holy communion this year. I was ball hopping him to an extent saying why would you put the child through that when you don’t practice yourself, knowing full well the child is getting it so they get the day out and the money.
His wife knowing full well where I was going started shitting on about how she wanted the child to go through it so they would learn right from wrong. I left her off as I didn’t want to take her to task in front of a table of people but just thought it was bizarre logic.
Not saying its nothing to do with that at all, but the growth has been exponential and I asked several people why, and this was amongst the reasons postulated by more than one. I’d not have thought of it tbh, I presumed it was just a fad, like hurling is for the middle classes.
I have noted that the gaelscoils in galway are populated largely by the well heeled and sharp elbowed. Back in my day the one small one was populated largely by oddball hippy types.
Dyslexia, adhd, and immigration didn’t really exist then.
It actually says a lot about you, resorting to sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “racist” when people are trying to tease things out in a relatively adult fashion.
Everyone is tribal to an extent. Screaming wokely changes this not one iota.
Look the only reason I go to mass is to keep the wife happy. She’s religious and wants the kids brought up with religion. I go to mass stand up, sit down and kneel but I don’t open my mouth in prayer. The kids are getting older now and are getting wise to my lack of belief. There’s no more harm in exposing them to the fairy stories in Mass than there is in having them believe in Santa Claus. They’ll soon grow up and make up their own minds anyway.
And I have no issue with that. I am not here to knock anyones spirituality or beliefs and if someone in the home is practicing then by all means feel free to rear your kids in a similar fashion.
I am more perplexed by families who are utterly indifferent to Catholicism getting their kids baptised etc
Being a mass goer myself with a couple kids gone through communion the only masses I saw most of my Kids classmates at are the preparatory ones for communion. A lot of these people would consider themselves catholic’s but couldn’t be arsed going to mass while here I am, an atheist and weekly mass goer.
From what I know, the majority of regular national schools are much stronger academically over an ET school. I believe our local ET don’t even give them homework. Although too much homework probsbly isn’t good either.
Myself and my wife have no religious beliefs (did the heathen hippy humanist wedding and all) but we will be sending our kids to the RC national school. Even though there is supposed to be a decent ET school in our area.
My wife would usually have a good insight into such matters so that’s good enough for me.
Meanwhile, in didsbury, the Proddy primary school is traditionally seen as the best of the state schools. In order to get in, you have to get a book stamped at mass, or service, or whatever they call it by the priest/minister/deacon every Sunday and present the fully stamped book along with the application form.
I also think you are missing number 5 - the sheep option. Which is that in a lot of cases people are idiots and do it as it is the done thing as they were baptised, got christened etc and know no different and have no real options on Catholicism/religion etc.
Well, there’s the crux of going to school to rote learn (standard national schools) or develop the student as a person and critical thinking(ET schools) - you’d ideally want a bit of both but the traditional national school / secondary school have no resources for it and there’s less and less critical thinking being pushed - Numbers/ resources etc. etc — it’s really about just getting students to reach targets - can read x, can write x etc. etc and shipping them on to the next year. Then there’s the argument of whether school should be the place to develop students - and should this not be done at home…
If you’re going down standard national school, might be best off to go to a rural one with low numbers - but there’s the worry of a lot of learning difficulties in these places as most boggers are inbred.