Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by HarryHirsch 2047 days ago
The persistent underfunding. Everyone who can afford to send their children to private school will do so because OK public schools are plain awful. Of course it's impossible to raise taxes to attract any sort of decent teacher or buy equipment or even paint because it's Oklahoma, no one is using public school anyway, so why fund it.

But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.

1 comments

> But what's wrong with Catholic school? They have a tradition of being quite secular and open to different worldviews.

I went to Catholic school, and politically, they certainly seem to be for restricting other people’s freedoms (see abstinence only sex education, gay marriage, and abortion). My whole sex education at the age of 14 or so was a slideshow of genital herpes or sores and “don’t do it”.

There’s also the whole decades long organizational support of child molestation issue that one might want to avoid supporting.

At least the official position of the Catholic Church isn't biblical literalism, so you won't get the A-Beka crap. The Presbyterians down here in my village in Alabama inflict the stuff on the poor kids.

I grew up Catholic in a tradition where the social responsibility was taken seriously (also see here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolpingwerk). We didn't have the abstinence-only nonsense either, that must be particular to certain regions in the US. BTW, the Catholic position is that marriage is a sacrament that the couple administers to each other (the only sacrament where a priest is not needed), and, well, sex is complicated, and all sorts of Reddit drama happens when FWBs catch feelings & so on. This was actually how the subject was treated in school.

The recent child abuse revelations are disappointing. I always said that child abuse isn't confined to catholics, but the hierarchy at least provides some oversight that you don't have in megachurches, but it's clear that that did not happen, it was a total failure up to the Pope.