By abolition of wage labor do they mean hourly wages in favor of salary or universal income only or what?
I think the implied meaning is usually that everything should consist of worker cooperatives.
What Cheese said.
Uncomfortable question came up the other night.
Would you go to church to ensure your kid gets a better education?
My answer was no, itād just be contributing to the bigger problem. But then really thinking about it just seems that Iām prioritizing my own ego by being so militantā¦
Thatās what we did when I was a kid. Detroit public schools arenāt great, but in the 80s?
We went to a private Catholic school. The family had to show up to mass or it was trouble. We also had to go to mass on Wednesdays in school.
I learned the theology enough to sound like I believed/cared, but otherwise kept my mouth shut and got much better education than I otherwise would have (except in sciencesā¦). When I got to a public elementary school in the suburbs for fifth grade after we movedā¦ it was a full two years behind in all subjects. Two whole years.
I donāt know if angry atheist adult Rym could swallow that bile and put on that kind of show today though. I could barely swallow it dealing with certain cultural issues (sexism mostly) when traveling abroad for business in certain countries. I refused to return to some of those countries because otherwise I would have gotten in trouble eventually.
Thatās where Iām at. I was lucky, I went to a Church of England school which had no requirement for me to be religious, once I started thinking for myself I never got in trouble for saying it was all nonsense but I also never said it in a way that was disrespectful.
My wife went to a Church of England school that was overzealous to put it mildly however it does well in the school tables. Although I know my experience in a religious school was above average I never considered that there was a requirement for us as parents to submit to it ourselves, so this question has really shaken me.
Unquestionably yes. Education is a whole bunch more important than an hour or so of my time on Sundays. Though itād be me doing the bare minimum. Going late and leaving quickly, not speaking to anyone. That kinda thing.
I basically prevented my family from going to church from a very young age, like four. I was always a āproblemā for certain kinds of people. Practically kicked out of school in kindergarten. Wouldnāt do the pledge of allegiance. Also was expelled (which was rescinded) the first week as a freshman in highschool.
Iām not 100% sure why Iām like that, but the older I get the more I feel like āthose people were crazy.ā
No, Iād find a different private school and/or move to a better school district if necessary. Angry atheist Marmot and angry atheist @SkeleRym are in the same boat on this one, I wouldnāt be able to put on that face for more than the thirty seconds I can barely muster to say āno thank you please leaveā when the Jehovahās Witnesses show up at my door.
Depends entirely on the church/congregation. I would say a common trend amongst my generation was overall negative experiences with Sunday school, through a combination of dogma focused teaching and parents who were in no way religious but forced me to attend out of social obligation.
In my adult life I have found a much more progressive congregation and had very positive results in terms of education. Iām still pretty uncomfortable going to service but there are numerous other opportunities for spiritual education.
I think youād need to do some premeptive soul searching. Thereās nothing wrong with raising your kid in an atheist/agnostic household but if you have negative feelings towards religion try asking yourself if you hold them out of actual (dis)belief or antagonism towards your upbringing. It is also entirely possible to educate your child yourself, the primary texts are freely available. But if you feel more comfortable deferring to someone more experienced, it think it would be worth shopping around to find a group you trust.
Does it have to be a Christian church? If I can go to a mosque itās a no brainer.
Ok, wait yeah, the type of church it is matters. This is a cost benefit kinda thing. Some churches have food for you and are awesome (Sikhism comes to mind). Others are like many many hours of service in Latin; and if weāre willing to go to the extremes, Iām sure thereās religious rituals that exist thatād make your skin crawl.
Whatever it is is being balanced against a better education for a child. If itās just a bog standard like christian service. Then sure, thatās not a major sacrifice. If itās a more intense greek orthodox affair, thatās no longer like an hour, thatās closer to four hours. I wouldnāt fault someone not wanting to give 4 hours a week up. If itās one of those more extreme, skin crawly ones, then no.
The answer for me may be yes as well. When we lived in Georgia, my kids went to a handful of different daycares, with a couple being religious. The best of the bunch was a religious, education based daycare. We may have been spoiled, though, as Georgia either had great daycares or Oregon has garbage ones since none of the ones in Portland happen to have a serious education focus, though are typically secular.
I do want to add that the other heavily religious one our son went to in Georgia was easily our worst daycare experience. After realizing his mother and I had yet to be married they started treating our son poorly and on the last day he went there they called my wife to have her pick him up and said āyour bastard child wonāt shut up and you need to get himā then left him, at the time 2 years old, in the front office alone after the call until my wife showed up. That same daycare was eventually forced to shut down after several incidents of refusing to release children to parents that had gotten behind on payments.
My parents also had this posed to them and they still had me in public school. My mom (who was a catholic teacher at the time) did not want us to be around there so instead of going that route they moved to the suburbs and we went to one of the better school districts in the country (not sure if it is still the case but the running joke was āwe are 15ā).
Instead we were forced to do CCD (aka catholic lessons) after school each Monday, my Mom also teached that for a small check so we had to keep the impression going. Eventually once I figured out the gig was up I kinda was indirectly told that I wouldnāt have a say in the matter until they stopped at 8th grade. So I kept my head down, was considered the best of the class and voted āMost likely to become a priestā at the end of it.
Later in life I had a small stint as an IT contractor for a Catholic school where I would do simple things like get the computer lab ready, trouble printers, fix smart boards, etc. I witnessed first hand what a āprivate catholic schoolā was (this is when a school is not part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia but still wanted to exist). I can tell you from that point on there is no way in hell you could convince me to get my kid to do that.
The education was better in that school than the surrounding area, however the amount of time kids had LEGITIMATE moral quandaries in handling situations from other people and were repeatedly told to do the wrong thing my bones lock up just by over hearing it. That damage to be told to not interfere in breaking up a fight with younger kids because by you getting involved makes you the bully is just so fucked up.
For me it matters a lot what level of participation would be required from me and the extent to which Iād be forced to hide my atheism.
If it were just a matter of going to church and generally staying quiet I guess Iād be willing to do it if it were really necessary. But you can be damned sure Iād look for better solutions to that problem first, like moving elsewhere.
If it meant I had to pretend to be a Christian, then hell no.
I went to a Catholic high school that was really lax on the Catholicism. We had people there of all religions, and many atheists. The only religious content was a morning prayer along with the announcements, an assembly once in a while where weād get out of class for a bit while theyād hold mass, and one required religion class every semester.
And this religion class consisted of three semesters on Catholicism, and the rest were classes like World Religions, Ethics, Justice, āThe Banality of Evilā which was more of a history and politics class where we discussed things like genocide and other terrible world events and leaders, and the ultimate blow-off class where you just watched Hollywood movies and attempted to loosely explain Christian themes in them.
It was leagues better than public school, prepared me for college to the point where I immediately tested out of every math class I needed to take for my degree, and the student culture was more adult and civilized than college was. If anything, it taught me to think more critically about religion and caused me to finish walking away from it entirely.
Wow. This whole conversation is amazing. I knew America had fucked up education funding, but this is just super weird. And it feels like a normal conversation!
Welcome to the US, where anything done for the public good is communism. 
I wish this was an America thing!