Obama ctiticises faith schools

full transcript of speech here The National Secular Society are being deliberately mislead.

There's a surprise.

@nanaej - Hindus don't have a 'God' - they have loads of them!

sorry I left the "ing" off "misleading"

if you want my two cents worth i would say yes to all the statements that have been made here.

You can't agree with, say, Bags, and me.

Just what I was thinking!

Thanks for the link, jings. This is the relevant paragraph, I think, and yes he does say that segregated schools (i.e. separate schools for catholics and protestants) are not a good idea, not helpful. The NSS has reported that bit right.

"Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity -- symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others -- these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided -- if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs -- if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation."

definitely agree with Bags,what was " wrong" with what you said?

He says a lot else as well, but he does criticise segregation by school.

envious, dear old jings has been known (once maybe) to agree with me but usually she can be counted on not to, especially if religion has been mentioned.

Yes. He is against segregation. That's not being against faith schools. He didn't mention faith schools as such!

Talk about spin!

Didn't Bill Clinton also visit NI with 'words of wisdom?'

Did anyone take any notice?

Bill Clinton did loads to sort it out!!!

jingl, how would you have faith schools in NI without having separate Catholic and Proddy ones?
#just asking

Right. I don't think I'm getting in a muddle here.

He would be happy with Christian schools. With Catholics and proddies attending the one school together. He would probably not give a sh toss about Muslim schools. Or Jewish ones. It being N Ireland, he doesn't like to see Catholics and Protestanst segregated because, of course, they need to live together in peace.

But that's what faith schools are, jings – segregated schools. Schools that segregate according to faith.

Yes, from the catholic point of view, jingle but he alienated some of the hardline protestants and there is STILL a problem with integration in schools.

No, he'd be happy with secular, non-religious schools. The parents and churches can do the religious stuff and the schools can do the other stuff.

Sorry, I mean segregation.

I would bet my bottom dollar that Obama would like schools to have a strong religious ethos.

Merlotgran yes. They are not there yet. But hopefully it's getting better. We probably don't know the whole truth about how things are for the average man in the street though. Bigots can't change that easily.

JO8, I'm a average "man" in the street,what do you want to know?

Do you live in Northern Ireland? I wonder if there is still hatred amongst Protestants and Catholics there. I can't see that things would have changed much at grass roots level. Especially with the older people.

I've looked at your profile. You live in the US!

I was referring to merlotgran's point about segregation in Northern Irish schools. And talking about the general situation there.

OK,j08 I see.

jingle I don't think things have change in Ireland even if on the surface things look to have improved.

My daughter lived in NI for ten years, jingle so we visited two or three times a year. It was difficult to understand the hatred between the Protestants and Catholics - this was in the late nineties and early noughties. The older people seemed to be entrenched in their views and we hoped the younger ones would be moving on but there was very little change that we could see.