Want a Teaching Job? Then Become a Catholic

The job market is tough right now. I can tell you from experience that finding a teaching job in certain markets is *really* hard right now since many districts are laying people off left and right.

Some teachers in Canada are resorting to extreme tactics to secure a position: They’re pretending to be Catholic:

“I don’t particularly like going (to mass) every Sunday, but if this is what I have to do, then I’ll do it,” said a Toronto-area woman, who didn’t want to be identified.

“I just really want to be in a career. I just want it so badly.”

The teacher said she has also been going to confession regularly and speaking with a priest on a weekly basis in order to receive the documents she needs to apply to the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

She is not Catholic. In fact, she doesn’t consider herself religious.

…

“I know what I believe in. I support abortion. I support gay marriage,” she added.

“I’m going through what I have to go through to get a job. I know it sounds bad.”

My favorite quotation has to be this one:

“I haven’t gone for my, um, what do you call it the bread thing yet… Communion. I’m nervous about it,” she added.

Ah yes, the bread thing…

Under the rules for the Toronto Catholic District School Board, all teaching personnel and others who work directly with children need to be Catholic.

It’s really incredible about Catholic schools. You have to adhere to the faith. (Or pretend to, anyway.) But it’s very telling to me that they don’t say “all teaching personnel… must be certified in the subject area in which they teach.” Because that’s not a necessity at many Catholic schools. It’s part of the reason I’m amazed some parents choose to send their kids to Catholic schools when there are perfectly decent public schools nearby.

As I read the article, I just keep thinking of how desperate for work some of these people have to be. At least where I’m from, Catholic school teachers at some schools make less than half of what a public school teacher makes. You don’t get the same benefits, either.

(Update: I’m told by commenters that in Ontario, Canada, Catholic schoolteachers make as much or more than their public school counterparts. The Catholic schools are also publicly funded and they actually receive more money per student than public schools. That’s pretty messed up…)

Here’s a random hypothetical for you: You’re an atheist teacher who can’t get a job in the public schools (for whatever reason). Would you take a job at a Catholic school if you had the opportunity?

(Thanks to Steve for the link!)

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BD

THat’s the thing FA. In Canada, Catholic school teachers get paid more than public school teachers.

And the Catholic school boards get on average $1000 more per head than the public schools do in funding!

It’s bloody ridiculous.
Chucky

I don’t know how it is in Canada, but in both the UK and Australia schools with an affiliation to a given faith consistently outperform their secular counterparts.
MathMike

If the issue is the qualification of a teacher, then the public schools are not much different when the first qualification is often not what you can teach, but what sport can you coach.
Tacticus

@Chucky
In .au a lot of the higher ranked schools do it by kicking out or forcing out anyone who is not going to perform really well

they don’t actually do well they just get students who will do well regardless
Trace

Heck yes.

I teach “science” to a group of homeschooled
4th graders at a fundie co-op.
CA

I’m moving to a big city and currently in the search, but it honestly hasn’t crossed my mind to try for any of the affiliated schools. Maybe I could hold my nose and fake it if I were a math teacher, but I’m a middle school science teacher. Not a lot of room for compromise…
Amy

Yes, most religious schools I know about in Australia (Sydney) are at least partly selective. I went to two religious schools- one selective (though minimally so- the main requirement was that you could speak English and knew about the standard amount of maths for a kid your age), and one not (although its hiring policies were highly selective/ discriminatory- my mother tells the story of a woman being told she couldn’t volunteer at the uniform store anymore because she was Catholic).

I finished at the moderately selective one. In tests at the beginning of high school, the grade was reasonably representative of state averages (slightly above- I think it was representative of the top 85%- as it didn’t take the absolute bottom students). By the end of high school, half the grade received marks in the top 15% of the state, and most of those were in the top 10%. No one was kicked out, and in fact only two or three people (out of about 170) left at the end of year 10.

By contrast, the school where I’d started high school finished well below average. Anecdotally, I remember friends who I thought were as smart as me coming in the top 30% (I was in the top 10%), and factually, only two kids in the whole grade came in the top 10%. Something like 50% of the grade left at the end of year 10 (as in left school entirely).

It really depends on the religious school. (I do admit though, the school I finished at was an elite private school). I think it was the resources that made an enormous difference. Also, the school was only nominally religious (be good because Jesus or whatever you believe in wants you to be good), and I’m sure many of the teachers were non-believers. (Religion rarely came up, and things like praying instead of studying- which happened at my first high school- certainly never came up)
Meg McG

Yes! And I would subvert their religious teachings with examples of freethought and evidence natural selection. I’d break em down from the inside! Mwah hahahahah!
And then I’d probably get fired.
DianaG

My uncle (a United Church of Canada minster), considered becoming Catholic just to get a job as a teacher when the local catholic school was the only one hiring. It’s good to know his principles and beliefs are so maliable.
Bob

Given the choice, I’d try for a third option – become an entry-level Oracle database administrator. It’s mostly memorization and tedium with some problem-solving skills and you don’t need to be a programmer or computer scientist to get started. The money is good and you don’t have to deal with the abuse of being an entry-level teacher not knowing until the last possible minute whether you’ll be hired (at least in Texas.) Yeah, you have to deal with arrogant programmers sometimes but they can’t be any worse than who you deal with in K-12 education.

Not to put down teaching as a career – it’s vital to our society – but pragmatically, the low wage and low respect factor make it a non-starter for me. My wife says I should be a science teacher and she’s probably right. I just couldn’t bear the grief I know I’d get if I left engineering analysis. It sucks, really, because I do enjoy teaching.
Sara

In Ontario the Catholic School board gets public funding, so heck yeah I’d pretend to be Catholic to get a job there. I won’t go into how pissed I am that they can discriminate based on religion when they get public funding.

I actually went to a catholic high school and the education was very good. I was exempt from any of the religious claptrap as a student though. I can’t really say if the education is better in the catholic schools, I don’t think it is. I also remember learning about evolution at my highschool 😉
Tony

Yeah in Ontario the Catholic boards are publicly funded, and the teachers make the same money and benefits as the public boards.
Samiimas

How am I the first person to mention that their’s a King of the Hill episode devoted to this exact subject?
Miko

Subject area certification sounds like a good idea, but in practice it’s usually a joke.

Meg McG: Catholic dogma supports evolution. Not for the right reasons (i.e., they support it because the pope says so rather than because the evidence is overwhelmingly in its favor), but nonetheless not the kind of thing that’s going to get you fired. As long as, you know, you’re teaching it in the proper class.
The Godless Monster

I was trained by Jesuits in junior high. I’d venture to guess that at least 10% of them were atheists, and many were liberal. Prior to that, I was trained by nuns at a hardcore parochial Catholic school. No open minds there. Two different experiences entirely.
To answer your question, I already know the drill for Catholicism, Islam and Fundamentalist Christianity, having been all of them at one point or another in my life.
I’d definitely take the job at a Catholic school without question. Whether I stayed there or not would depend on how much leeway I’d be given as a teacher. Not all Catholic schools are the same, and I wouldn’t really get a feel for it unless I was actually neck deep in it.
MeagD

Just to reiterate, the Catholic School Board in Ontario is publicly funded and all teachers and support staff there have salaries and benefits competitive with the non-religious Public School Board. The curriculum is still government sanctioned and the education students receive is comparable. Nonetheless, valuable learning is time is still wasted on prayer, church services, etc.

An unfortunate side-effect is that the Public School System curriculum is adversely affected by religious lobbying. Changes that were meant to be implemented to the sex-ed curriculum in Ontario were stiffled by religious groups, including leaders within the Catholic School Borad, despite the fact that higher-ups in the CBS had been consulted on several occasions before the new curriculum was decided on. They had been a party to these discussions and were well aware of the changes that would be made, but only decided to slander the Ontario government once the changes “outraged” the religious communities that like to think they have a license to censor all classroom discussion pertaining to anything but abstinence. Apparently teaching kids about homosexuality and gender identity (what it is, not if it’s right or wrong) is destructive and harmful. Who needs acceptance, or at the best tolerance?

As a result, students in both the Public and Catholic (also public) system are going to be subject to what has already been deemed an unsatisfactory sex-ed program, according to the Ontario government.
HumanistDad

I am a teacher, atheist and looking for full-time work. I considered ‘pretending to be Catholic’ like others in my graduating class.

I’m not sure that school boards can only hire ‘Catholics’ to teach. However, in order to teach in a Catholic school, you need to take a Catholic course during your Teacher Education. However, you can only get into the course if you get a letter from a priest that confirms you attend Catholic Church (I assume that means you meet some requirement for taking the course?).

I know at least one student who did exactly that. They went to Catholic church a couple times and asked the priest for a signed statement.

The Catholic school system here (Ontario) has been cited as breaching the United Nations rules on non-discrimination but the government has refused to address the problem. Catholic schools have taken the pressure off by offering classes on Comparative Religion.

When the Provincial Conservative party tried to allow for the opening of government-funded ‘faith schools’ (other than Catholic which is government-funded) a whole can of worms was opened up. I am proud to say that this issue probably ruined the Conservatives bid for election.

There is a growing Conservative movement in Canada but I think this is the last major assault we’ll see. Hopefully the Canadian public fends off the attack and our country continues its march forward for greater equality and human rights.
Daniel

For those outside Ontario, it should be noted that as taxpayers, we check off where the education portion of our tax bill is to go: Public school, or Catholic.

Besides issues already mentioned, there is also the issue of a huge waste of tax dollars by having to fund two complete and separate sets of educrats and their infrastructure to support two different systems.
Elle

This makes me so furious. Provincial funding goes to these Catholic schools and qualified teachers in Ontario can’t even apply for a job at them unless they meet religious requirements. Zero public funding should go to these schools; the law that gives them special status in Ontario is outdated and needs to be changed.

I have friends who are pretending to be religious in order to obtain employment at these schools, and I don’t blame them. They need employment, and I think for people who were brought up in religious homes it can be less of a deception because they can just fall back into old routines. Doublethink it I suppose. Not only do they have to pretend to be Catholic, though, they have to pretend to be “good” Catholics. So if you’re living with your partner but you’re not married, best not to mention that fact. At all. Ever.

Personally, I could never go through the charade of pretending to be Catholic. I just recoil at the thought. And knowing there is a school down the street offering a position that I cannot apply for infuriates me.
Brittany

I’m a teacher (in the US) who’s been looking for a job. I did actually apply at a Catholic school, and that Catholic school actually hires teachers who are not Catholic. In fact, most of the teachers aren’t Catholic.

However, you have to be a Christian to teach at the school, and I think that’s why I didn’t get the job. It just didn’t feel right to lie about being a Christian when I wasn’t, even though my parents and others told me I should have.

What’s even more strange to the story now is that I’m a substitute teacher at that school. I wasn’t good enough to teach, but I’m good enough to sub.
Doreen

I went to Catholic school from 1st through 8th grade and spent a few months at a Catholic high school. In terms of math and english, I did get a better education there than I did at a public high school and I was in an above average school district. My writing skills surpassed my classmates in high school; however, I suffered from the switch from the traditional teaching of math at Catholic school to the experimental math program they had at the public high school. The environment in public school was also a lot more lax and it showed in the casual, almost flippant way, students took their education at public school in comparison to Catholic school. During the few months at a Catholic high school, there was a constant sense of urgency and fear of getting in trouble, more so than the grade school I attended, which seemed to force students in to taking their school work seriously.

Despite the better quality of education in math and English, I will support public education over private any day. Public schools have a diversity of people and experience you won’t find in Catholic school, as well a lot more academic options. Catholic schools are also unprepared to deal with “special needs” students, and such students are actually better off in public schools.

I can’t blame teachers for pretending to be Catholic because of the job market. The job market for teachers has been rough for a long time and I had suspicions one of my teachers in 8th grade was there only out of desperation.

It wouldn’t be too hard for me to pretend considering morning prayers, first friday mass, confession, advent, lent, ect would all be nostalgic for me, but for someone who never experienced Catholic school, it would probably be a bit of a culture shock and hard to deal with.
jemand

whoa… they get public money but discriminate against the public in hiring? I wouldn’t pretend to get a job, I’d sue.
Canadiannalberta

No, I wouldn’t pretend to be Catholic. I had enough of that growing up. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on children, giving them an example to just pretend and suck it up.

Also, they get payed more and are publicly funded?! Then why are they always complaining they aren’t being payed enough?!

This does answer the question of why they wouldn’t enroll three Catholic girls ten years ago – because too many non-catholics were already enrolled. They actually said that.

My mom was so furious she actually stopped us from going to Church. And my aunts and uncles and cousins stopped, because they tried to get their kids in and were mad only non-Catholics were allowed.

Huh. Maybe that’s why we girls are atheists now. Hehehe, ironic, eh, Catholic Schools?

I’m going to go and have a giggle fit now.
False Prophet

The problem with politics in Canada, and especially here in Ontario, is that meaningful change takes forever to happen. (nb: In Canada, education is a provincial, not federal government, responsibility.) Most radical political movements in Canadian history, whether leftist (the social democratic CCF/NDP parties) or rightist (the Republican-lite Alliance/now Conservative party), tend to come from the western provinces. Usually, our legislators dither around an issue for decades, spewing a lot of rhetoric but doing nothing, until something finally gets to the Supreme Court of Canada and they set a precedent. At that point, the government will be forced in introducing legislation (as with same-sex marriage) or the more cowardly approach, don’t introduce legislation and the issue isn’t governed by laws at all (like abortion)

Catholic education is particularly difficult to address because it is supported by founding Canadian political documents–instruments equivalent to the US Constitution in weight. That said, other provinces, even provinces with a greater proportion of Catholics than Ontario, have abolished their Catholic school boards. In Ontario, there has been a lot of resistance, but since a large amount of education funding comes from municipal property owners (who can elect to direct their taxes to the local Public or Catholic board), things have generally stayed “live and let live” in typical Canadian fashion. Also, although 2/3 of Ontarians would like to abolish Catholic education, I guarantee if you showed them how much it would cost to implement, many would balk.

There are cracks in the foundation: a few years ago a gay student of a Catholic high school sued to be allowed to bring his boyfriend to prom and won. There are many Catholic teachers living in common-law relationships (even same-sex ones) and a kind of unofficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy exists: the teachers don’t want to lose their jobs, but I’m certain administrators don’t want to risk a discriminatory lawsuit, since all it would take is the right lawsuit to tear down the whole structure.

I wish I could believe that this influx of “in name only” Catholics would help undermine Catholic education in Ontario, but most Catholics here are already not particularly devout, until you attack their school system. Will it eventually be abolished? Most likely, but not for decades IMHO.
David

This is an interesting topic for me. I started teaching music at a non-denominational Christian school in Sydney (Australia) 2 years ago as a Christian. I basically got the job because of my church background but since then have de-converted and now I still teach but don’t advertise that I no longer hold the same beliefs and have completely left the church. Some of my students are aware and don’t care.
Personally, I feel that it might be a tad morally wrong not to say anything but on the other hand I think it would be morally wrong for them to dismiss me from the position when it has nothing to do with what I teach.
On another note, being in a evangelical christian environment regularly I see and cringe at how much they indoctrinate them with their beliefs. They pray multiple times a day and the kids have real dogmatic ‘black and white’ views of the world. As a parent myself I would love to send my children to private school, as the grades at these schools are generally higher than state schools but it certainly is not a great place for children to grow up evaluating and measuring the world they live in. Rational thinking is sadly under emphasized. I guess I might have to de-program them at home to some extent if they end up attending a religious school.
PrimeNumbers

The situation of Catholic schools in Ontario really makes us look like a backwards province and tarnishes the reputation of Ontario and Canada.
littlejohn

I suspect that there are lots of teachers here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, pretending to be Lutheran. Northern Indiana is so Lutheran the mailman nails the letters to your door.
We have two parochial school systems: one Catholic and one Lutheran. I assume employees of both must profess the appropriate religion.
I wonder what happens when a fake Catholic goes to confession and tells the priest she’s faking it to keep her job. The priest is sworn to confidentiality.
What does he do? If he reommends 20 Hail Marys, the teacher would simply refuse, on grounds that she, as an atheist, doesn’t pray.
If he refuses her communion, he will have effectively outed her, thereby breaking his oath.
One of them there paradoxes.
Casimir

If he refuses her communion, he will have effectively outed her, thereby breaking his oath.
One of them there paradoxes.

That is fascinating. But I would suspect this would be the way out of the paradox: his oath may only cover Catholics who confess. If the atheist does not believe in Catholicism and has no intention of believing in Catholocism, then the situation is no different than if a Hindu or Buddhist just decided to drop into a confession booth and make a confession.

I don’t know what the Catholic Church’s rules on that are, but they are their rules, I don’t see why they should hold for self-admitted non-members.
TSC

@ jemand: You couldn’t sue. The Constitution Act, 1867 guarantees that Ontario has a public (originally a Protestant) and a Catholic public school system. The original reason has to do with 19th century Canadian ethno-linguistic politics that I won’t go into here. But the constitution says that the separate Catholic board exists, and no part of the constitution (including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) can trump another part of the constitution.

If there was the will in Ontario to do away with the separate board, though, it could be done very easily: both Quebec and Newfoundland, at least, have done it.
Robster, FCD

Slightly different situation for me. I teach part time at a university. I am looking for a full time professorship.

One place I interviewed at was very nice, friendly faculty, good equipment, but the administration were god bothering busy bodies. If it got out that I was not a believer, or that I went to Drinking Skeptically events, I would have been fired promptly, even if I had tenure.

I chose to remain underemployed and keep looking rather than take a job where my future was in the hands of religious nutters. In a year, as savings dwindle further, would I take that job? Maybe, but I could also sell and service computers for better pay.
Not Guilty

Truly, somebody just needs to sue the CDSB and I would bet money that this would not stand up to a court challenge. When a candidate for leader of the Conservative party tried to “buy” votes by offering to fund ALL religious schools, Ontarians went apeshit. Needless to say, that was the end of his political career. I like our current leader (Liberal Dalton McGuinty – blasphemy in Ontario at the moment because clueless people who have fallen for the line that the HST is a tax grab, but I digress). But McGuinty bowed to the religious groups in reneging his attempt to reform sex-ed. I doubt he will step up to the plate and take away funding for the CDSB. But at least we stopped at the CDSB. Now to ditch them…
Nakor

@TSC: Actually the Notwithstanding Clause (Section 33) can trump anything in sections 2,7-15 of the Charter for a period of up to 5 years at a time. Unfortunately while our freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression (section 2) can be overridden by an act of congress or the legislature, the religious schools protection from the charter of rights and freedoms (section 29) cannot. Seems like the priorities aren’t quite straight there.
AxeGrrl

False Prophet…..that was a very nice synopsis of the entire situation 🙂

I wonder what it will take for the Ontario population to force revisiting the Catholic-funding issue……it’s so easy to explain why it’s wrong, but that’s not enough, apparently.
Aj

Chucky,

I don’t know how it is in Canada, but in both the UK and Australia schools with an affiliation to a given faith consistently outperform their secular counterparts.

Because they can be selective, not because they get more money per child.
Amy G

When I was looking for a teaching position, I found an opening for a private Christian school and applied. I actually got down to the final two applicants before losing the position to someone with more experience. The job was teaching orchestra and band, so I figured that day to day it wouldn’t be hard to fake being Christian. It’s not like I’d be teaching the bible or creationism or something. In the interviews I had to state my personal beliefs. I just decided to pretend to be where I was years ago… I was raised Catholic and decided a few years into college to leave the church. I looked around for different churches to see where I’d fit in best, not wanting to leave my faith completely behind. I told the interviewers that I was non-denominational at the moment… which is partly true, right? I just kinda left out the part of my history where I became atheist. You gotta do what you gotta do. It’s hard to find a job these days.
Not Guilty

@TSC you may not be able to sue to eliminate the CDSB, BUT you could sue for a Charter breach for the refusal to hire non-Catholics. Our Supreme Court is fairly progressive, I suspect they would interpret the Charter in such a way to end that practice. I bet the only reason the school doesn’t ban non-Catholic students is for the ability to convert them.
Tom Foss

I actually ran into this very problem when job hunting earlier in the semester, and I concluded that I just couldn’t do it. I’m paranoid enough as it is, and I don’t think I could spend a year-plus pretending to be religious (or pretending not to have serious misgivings about the school’s mission) and keeping my mouth shut in general. I didn’t apply. If I’d gotten more desperate, though, if it was closer to the start of the school year, I really couldn’t say whether or not I’d compromise that principle.

On a different note, when I was in undergrad, a friend of mine (a Junior Physics major) worked for a few months as the Physics teacher at the local Catholic High School–no teacher training, no certificate, not even his Bachelor’s degree! I thought it was ridiculous, but I guess I could have done the same thing–aside from all the pedagogical/classroom management stuff that I would have been totally unprepared for. Heck, two and a half years of teacher education didn’t prepare me for that.
TSC

@ Nakor: Yes, you’re quite right about the notwithstanding clause. I’m not sure I’d characterize that as one part of the constitution trumping another, though – it is the document working as a whole as it is intended to. The same is true of the normal functioning of s. 1 of the Charter (limiting Charter rights under this section is the proper functioning of both s. 1 and the limited section, not s. 1 trumping the limited section) and the 1867 Act carving out certain exemptions from the 1982 Act.

@ Not Guilty: Not so. S. 93(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867 states that no law may prejudicially affect any right or privilege that Roman Catholics had by law concerning separate schools at the time of Confederation. And s. 29 of the Charter states that “Nothing in this Charter abrogates or derogates from any rights or privileges guaranteed by or under the Constitution of Canada in respect of denominational, separate or dissentient schools.” Which means that s. 93(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867 retains full force and effect despite anything said in the 1982 Act. Furthermore, there has been a court challenge on this issue: Daly v. Ontario (Attorney General) [1999] O.J. No. 1383. In that case, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that s. 93(1) ensures the right of the Catholic Board to prefer Catholics in hiring. They had the right to do so at Confederation, so the right continues under s. 93(1) and cannot be discarded by reference to s. 2 of the Charter because of s. 29 of the Charter. The Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the decision.

Like it or not, s. 93(1) is on entirely the same level as the Charter. And it is s. 93(1) that grants the Catholic board the constitutional right to discriminate in hiring by preferring Roman Catholic teachers.

Link to Daly v. Ontario: http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/1999/1999canlii3715/1999canlii3715.html
Kaylya

I know someone who is in this situation. She’s someone who at one time was definitely Catholic but is now more unsure, but actively attending church so she can apply for stuff with the Catholic board.

That being said, the teachers in the publicly funded Catholic school boards in Ontario meet the same qualifications as those in the main publicly funded system. I think teacher pay is under the same contracts. In terms of the quality of the schools, some are excellent, some are not, just like in the public system. The Catholic schools don’t weed out poor students or anything like that, they work just like the public system in that respect.

The problem in this case is more fundamentally the fact that 10-15ish years ago there was this panic that there’d be a teacher shortage when the baby boomers started retiring and they added a ton of spaces to teacher education programs (In Ontario, that’s a bachelor’s degree followed by (or concurrent with) a 1 year B.Ed. degree), only, there wasn’t because there were also fewer kids being born and entering the system, and now there’s something like 2 people graduating with B.Ed’s for every full time spot that comes available, and it’s hard to even get on substitute teacher lists. The Catholic boards are just slightly easier to get in to, at least in some cases, and it allows you to be applying more places.

There are basically two things that are in demand: People who can teach in French, and people who are willing to go to isolated native communities.
Tony

Once her husband finds out she is pretending to be Catholic she’ll be honest and agree to work for Strickland and hand out propane flyers.
fritzy

I received my MA from Rockhurst in Kansas City, MO, a Jesuit University–There was no requirement to be a Catholic to teach there and frankly, the school appeared more liberal than a large part of the student body (The student health center had a large jar of condoms free for the taking at the front desk and one of the nuns that used to teach there was very active in the right to die mvmt and spoke to our class about the importance of a legally binding durable power of attorney to make your wishes known.)

It was an excellent school with a first-rate occupational therapy program and I would teach there in a heartbeat. Of course I wouldn’t have to pretend I was a believer to teach there. Would I pretend to be if I had to? Too many unknown variables for me to answer but on principle, I generally do not like to pretend to be someone I am not.
Sarah

Although I can see where the catholic school board is coming from I firmly believe that they should not be allowed, in any way, shape or form to discriminate against potential staff members for not being catholic. If they receive public money they should be legally required to hire the most qualified person regardless of that person’s religion.

There was a christian college that had an ad in Monster (a job search engine) for a maintenance man. The ad clearly stated that only applicants of the christian faith need apply. It irked me enough that I wrote to Monster as well as to the school in question. (Hubby was looking for a job at the time in a tight market and I thought such blatant discrimination wasn’t kosher). Of course, because they’re a private company they can do whatever the heck they want it still made my blood boil.

In answer to the question, would I pretend to be Catholic if it meant a good paying career? Probably. I went to Catholic school as a kid (my mother was asked to remove me in 3rd grade) so I could totally pass for Catholic. I wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade for long though, I’d be looking for a proper job in the meantime. (My conscience would be niggling at me constantly by having to lie and see children being brainwashed and treated like cattle).
kenny

I absolute would, and I would just try to include as much critical thinking and open inquiry in my classes as possible.