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Thread: Ireland finally completes its regression to the dark ages.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Default Ireland finally completes its regression to the dark ages.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...reaking42.html

    In a report published on the Children’s Ombudsman website, Ms Logan said the girl in question tried unsuccessfully twice to enrol in the school, once when she was pregnant and secondly after she had the baby in 2010.

    According to the report, when her mother wrote to the school principal, he replied: “Your letter surprises me. A neighbour called at your request and stated that your daughter was pregnant. I was shocked and I told her that I did not take in such girls. She conveyed the message to you.”

    Ms Logan wrote to the school in July last year following a complaint from the girl’s mother.

    She requested the school furnish a copy of its admissions policies and complaints procedures along with outlining its board of management structure.

    In response the school manager wrote to her: “Neither am I obliged to have any other frills that you mention. This school is NOT [manager's emphasis] a haven for young pregnant people or for young mothers who, in particular, have been in two other post primary schools. The school has an uncompromising ethos and will not become a dumping ground for those rejected elsewhere.”
    Fucking scumbags shouldn't be running a school.

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    Member Elendil's Heir's avatar
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    Sounds like the school could certainly have been more tactful... but isn't it possible that the presence of pregnant teens could interfere with its educational mission?

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    A Groupie Marsilia's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Elendil's Heir View post
    Sounds like the school could certainly have been more tactful... but isn't it possible that the presence of pregnant teens could interfere with its educational mission?
    No more so than if the school admitted black or openly gay teens, or teens with non-contagious illnesses.
    So, I'll whisper in the dark, hoping you'll hear me.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Elendil's Heir View post
    Sounds like the school could certainly have been more tactful... but isn't it possible that the presence of pregnant teens could interfere with its educational mission?
    If it is possible, and I'm not sure it is, then they could have said that. That's not what they said so I don't think practicalities came into the matter. It was a moral judgement not a practical one. Also note (from another article):

    According to the report by Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan, which includes school correspondence to the family, the child was denied a place at the school on the first occasion because she was pregnant and on the second because she was a single mother.
    I could just about maybe accept such behaviour if the school were privately run and funded. However, since it takes money from the public purse to operate I think it shouldn't be able to discriminate in this way. However, it seems no legislation currently exists to prevent the school from excluding pupils in this manner and for this reason.

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    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    I'd agree that a publicly funded school shouldn't be able to exclude students like that, but I guess it does all come down to what the law is.

    Quote Originally posted by The Original An Gadaí View post
    However, it seems no legislation currently exists to prevent the school from excluding pupils in this manner and for this reason.
    Do you by any chance know what types of discrimination against students is explicitly against the law? I'd assume ethnicity or national origin.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Zuul View post
    Do you by any chance know what types of discrimination against students is explicitly against the law? I'd assume ethnicity or national origin.
    The Equal Status Act 2000-2004 says that people should not be denied access to services, facilities or amenities because of race, age, religion, disability or membership of a traveller community. I know however schools are allowed discriminate on the basis of religion, if they have to when there are not enough places. So if a local catholic school (the majority of them are catholic in Ireland) has more applicants than places, they may choose to exclude people who aren't catholic when it comes to the last few available places in a year. To be clear if a Muslim kid's parents applied for a Catholic school before a Catholic kid's parents, the Muslim kid would get in first but when it comes to places running out, you can be shit out of luck if your faith doesn't correspond to the local school's religious ethos. There are also Muslim, Jewish, etc. schools but I don't suspect there are too many Catholics wanting to send their kids to these schools. Then there's the growing Educate Together primary schools, which are non-denominational.

    It seems only Community Colleges (not the same as US ones, basically a High School) are obliged to accept any student that applies. Other secondary schools are allowed cherrypick moreso. I know I did an entrance exam when I started high school and there was a slight chance if you tested too low you wouldn't get in. I was in high school as the celtic tiger boom and concommitant inward migration commenced and there were a few international students. That same school now would be much more diverse.

    In most instances, in most places, it isn't an issue but in a lot of parts of Ireland there has been huge demographic change in short order so some schools haven't been able to keep up with the capacity needed or there are two few schools in some areas. For example:

    Tuesday September 25 2007

    The country is facing an "unacceptable and dangerous" situation unless the State gets involved in proper planning for schools to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse community, it was warned yesterday.

    The current faith-based system of education provision meant that children from religious minorities would be "disproportionately represented at the bottom of the queue for places".

    The warning came as the new multi-denominational Educate Together school, Bracken NS, opened in Balbriggan, Co Dublin with 80 pupils, overwhelmingly from an ethnic minority background.

    The school has four classes, two junior infants and two multi-grades covering students from senior infants to fifth class.

    The school was an emergency response to demand in the Balbriggan area, to accommodate pupils for whom there was no space in other local schools, predominantly Catholic, which operate a Catholics-first policy.

    Educate Together chief executive Paul Rowe said yesterday they had no evidence of racist policies being implemented by school authorities in the Balbriggan area.

    The reason for the ethnic mix of the new school were complex, but chiefly to do with the chronic failure of planning for new schools in new communities.

    Neither was there evidence of institutionalised racism in the Irish education system, but there was profound, embedded and institutionalised religious discrimination throughout the system, particularly at primary level, said Mr Rowe. "This discrimination is the responsibility of the State, not of schools or religious bodies.

    "It is inevitable that, in a system where 98pc of schools are faith-based and permitted to prefer members of their faith in enrolments, those not of the majority religions will be disproportionately represented at the bottom of the queue for places. This is unacceptable and dangerous. It is essential that the State ensures that there are sufficient places in schools operating on the basis of equality in all areas.

    "Only then can we ensure that parents have equal access to education and that no one is compelled to choose a faith-based school against their conscience."

    He said international experience had demonstrated that there was an intersection between religious and racial discrimination and that, if religious discrimination went unchecked, racist division was almost inevitable.

    Educate Together wants the Government to amend planning legislation to require the transfer of sites for schools as a condition of planning permission for housing estates, "the root cause of school place shortages in new suburban areas".

    Mr Rowe acknowledged that change was afoot and said they had met with department officials last week to plan for schools for 2008. "There are strong indications of a real effort to get a handle on this question.

    "We would hope that measures like this would reduce the likelihood of other emergency situations such as emerged this summer", he said.
    I'm all for the complete secularisation of schooling in Ireland. It's ridiculous that we've maintained a sectarian system so long, especially now we have students of most faiths on earth in our school system, but also because I think religious education should be the responsibility of the individual's family and their church, not the state. A family with no religion has no choice but to send their kids to a religious based secondary school of some sort, although the religious education is scant enough as to be meaningless to all but the most ardently atheist parents.

    I have a natural dislike for private schools but I'm not sure I'd want rid of them completely but I just don't think they should get state funding if they have exclusionary practices as the school in the OP had. Worse than having such a bullshit policy is the unprofessional conduct of the school wherein there's no set of admission rules. These things should be clearly delineated by all schools.
    Last edited by The Original An Gadaí; 01 May 2012 at 06:51 PM.

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    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful answer, AG.

    It seems like maintaining a sectarian system has the potential for causing a lot of division as the number of immigrants rises, too. Difficulties getting into schools, limited schools for minority religions, and having people divided up that way doesn't encourage much in the way of assimilation.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    To be fair to most schools they'll now typically reflect the diversity of the areas they serve. Some of the schools we serve in our business have more children of immigrants attending than children of Irish parents. They're mostly ostensibly of a Catholic ethos which is reflected in the names of most schools in the country but most schools now seem to emphasise ecumenicism, multiculturalism. There is a subject for the Junior Cert. (a set of exams students do aged about 16) called Religion wherein they study the world's major faiths. It's a subject I wish had been around when I was a kid.

    The exclusion of the pregnant teenager in the OP is thankfully shocking for its rarity. It's just too much of a reminder of the marginalisation and brutalisation of pregnant teenagers in the past.

    With the state of this country's economy I'm not sure mass immigration is going to be much of an issue anymore!

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    I don't think it's necessary to create another thread for this rant so I'll stick it in here.


    It has come to light again recently that from the 1940s until as late as about 1994 around 1,500 mothers giving birth underwent, without their consent, a medically unnecessary procedure called a symphysiotomy. This was in lieu of the more standard caesarian section and was done for ideological reasons. While symphysiotomies are still done in the developing world, it's only because there are many parts of the world where a safe caesarian cannot be undertaken. It's considered an absolute last resort elsewhere. Ireland was the only country in the developed world where the procedure was widely used in the 20th century.

    Invented in the 16th century, the procedure involves widening the pelvis and side effects suffered by these women include urethral and bladder injury, infection, pain and long-term walking difficulty. To add insult to injury our then Minister for Health, Mary Harney ruled out any review of the use of symphysiotomy in Irish hospitals in 2010. Survivors are still calling for an inquiry. The long term ramifications for these women have been horrific and there doesn't seem to have been any case where the procedure was an absolute necessity.

    I was a Catholic by raising and for many years considered myself a Catholic agnostic, then a soft atheist. Now though as more and more stuff like this comes to light I feel my militancy growing. I just can't abide how so many people supported an ethos and organisation that treated women routinely as (as someone on twitter put it) brood mares. It makes me wonder, why is it that so many organised religions (most? all of them?) have ritualised misogyny? The Irish church in particular seems to have been especially egregious in this regard. The church tried to keep tampons out of Ireland because they would lead to women being sexually aroused. I wish I was making that up.

    More: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...reaking18.html
    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...317753223.html

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    Clueless but well-meaning Hatshepsut's avatar
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    Good god that's barbaric. I suppose I ought to post something more substantial, but I'm pretty much speechless.

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    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    Oh Jesus. That's horrific, AG.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

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    Elephant Claptree's avatar
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    Man, what the fuck is wrong with Ireland?

    Woman denied abortion died in hospital.

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    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    That story is just a perfect storm of awful. At seventeen weeks, even completely healthy and with every bit of technology we have on the planet right now that fetus was doomed. There was no saving it.

    Savita could have been saved, though. This blog post captured a lot of my thoughts on the topic.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Claptree View post
    Man, what the fuck is wrong with Ireland?

    Woman denied abortion died in hospital.
    Our political class are a bunch of amoral cowards. Since 1992 abortion in cases exactly like Savita's has meant to have been accessible but the legislation from the X case has been in political limbo ever since. Either because some of the politicians are anti-abortion themselves or, more likely, they're afraid of alienating the conservative, Catholic base and losing votes, they won't put the legislation in place. As a consequence doctors in Galway hospital risked life imprisonment if they aborted the foetus. So every party in government and the main opposition parties all have her blood on their hands as they've constantly blocked Supreme Court mandated change to our abortion laws. Hopefully Savita's death will shame them into bringing it in, 20 years too late.

    I suspect had the woman been an Irish dentist she may have known which hospital would have been more likely to give her an abortion because despite the legal ambiguity of the procedure it does happen in some Irish hospitals when the mother is at risk. I've no idea how often it has happened as for obvious reasons hospitals don't draw attention to the fact they do it.

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    This is the sort of bullshit we have to put up with: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfkfidqlgbau/rss2/

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    Elephant Claptree's avatar
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    I read this
    The front-bench spokes-person on enterprise also said he "went easier" on Tánaiste Mary Coughlan in the Dáil "because she is a woman" in an effort to dismiss claims that he had been sexist towards her.
    fourteen times trying to find anything but sad. I failed.

    How can this be? Are people so desperate for an enemy they'll pick anything they can find? If so, I'd recommend Thanos.

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