Which of these youthful ideals...

Back in '95 I think our local catholic school was £1200/term (i.e., £3600/year) for day-attendees, (now it's £3615/term ... which is £10,845/year or $16,755/year... you guys get it cheap!). Day-care was costing us around £20/day (i.e. £4600 a year). Because we both worked we had to continue paying the child-minder after our daughter started school so I would drop her off at the child-minder's house on the way to work and pick her up when I'd finished, for which I think we were charged£50/week. We paid for extra maths and english tuition (not Montessori but Kumon) but that was to cope with the dyslexia she inherited from me. Unfortunately we were unable to pay for her university fees but we paid for her rent (in London), 'phone, internet and rail travel plus paying for her food-shops once a month, (and my wife would sneak her special treats now and then, and occasionally top-up her bank account, that I pretend to know nothing about), so now she is lumbered with a student loan to pay off over the next 25 years, but that's not as big as it could have been. 

 

Yep, even for atheists such as ourselves.  I told her just to tune out during the monthly masses.  She was fine.

 

Fortunately, my daughter didn't get that sort of nonsense even in Catholic school.  In fact, the Catholics at that school were much more respectful of her beliefs that some of the fundamentalist students at the public school.

 

One of her classes at the public school once had a debate on whether it was all right to display the Ten Commandments in the classroom.  The division was my daughter and one other girl against 28 other students.  She held her own and stuck to her beliefs, I'm very proud to say.

 

My husband is still mourning for the days when he got free tuition plus a stipend that paid all his expenses at the University of Bristol.  Damn fine education for free.  It's a shame that's not true anymore, on the other hand, it did severely restrict access to higher education so there are always tradeoffs.

I am sure Teresa was a great person but not so sure about her followers.  Govt has recently insisted that adoption support must not be denied to single parents; if provided, it should be provided universally.  The Missionaries of Charity decided this was completely anathema to their Christian values and withdrew adoption support altogether.  Not the most spiritual or compassionate act, I must say.  I would not completely write off the scope for religion to heal.  But for that, it must reform itself...or should I say, be allowed to reform and do away with a lot of 'rules' that are simply incompatible with modern liberal values. Unless we continue to insist modern liberal values by themselves are abhorrent.... which is what hardliners in just about every religion seem to do and thereby end up using it more as a tool that punishes the supposedly non compliant.  Somebody like Gandhi broadly held the ability to retain God-faith without letting details of religious ritual and rules get in the way of compassion.  But sadly have to say people like him seem to be in a minority.

Exactly, they have had far too much time to get it done and they haven't because they HAVE to quarrel so much over each religion's version of utopia instead of accepting there may be more than one path to salvation, if there is such a thing.  

An amusing but very annoying incident that happened in my wedding ceremony.  In Hindu marriage, the groom appoints one priest and the bride another and together they both cook up the wedding.  Since the bride's priest has more work to do, he gets paid more...accepted convention. Now, to my bad luck, the priest our family appointed (who has performed ceremonies for several of my relatives in the past) happened to be the father in law of the one my wife's family appointed.  G-Priest's ego was hurt to learn he would be paid much less than B-Priest and G-Priest chose to punish us by asking for more than what he had initially agreed for.  Left a very bad taste in the mouth, needless to say. As it is, I am a strong advocate of just getting a simple ceremony done at the registrar's office and throwing a grand party to relatives and friends instead.  Especially so in inter-caste/inter-religion marriages where trying to perform a traditional ceremony as per one religion is just tomfoolery imho.  Would have done likewise had my wife not been from a more 'traditional' family.  Maybe whenever my little one (there isn't one yet) gets married, I could persuade all concerned of the pros of my idea.  What 'sanctity' is supposed to be conferred on the wedding by the priest being there to perform it was robbed by his pettiness, sorry to say.