Catholic school refuses to allow enrolment based on surname

In a strange take on name-calling, where it is usually the school bullies who conduct such activities, and the role of the school officials to stamp it out, a Catholic school in Sydney refused to enroll a boy to the school unless he use his mother's maiden name.

The problem? His surname is 'Hell', which, in German, means 'light' or 'bright'. The boy's father, whose heritage is Austrian, has lived with the same surname all his life, and himself attended a Catholic school when he was a boy.

While the officials at the school quickly changed their minds when the family took the matter to the local media, the Hells are apparently reconsidering the notion of a Catholic education for their children.

This is probably just as well. Any school which prohibits the entry of a person based on their name, not taking into account the origin of that name, clearly has some serious problems going on. Presumably the books in the school library will have large swaths of redacted sections where whole sections are cut out merely for containing words that while perfectly valid in another language just look a little too naughty when considered from a narrow minded and maybe slightly bigoted English-only-thankyou perspective.

One can only imagine, for instance, what would be left of a German book on art - page numbers might survive, but as for the kunst inside, it would surely have to go having too much of a resemblance to other naughty words in English.

While this may seem a somewhat humorous example, it is yet again another case of the thought police attitude that religion so frequently employs.

One has to wonder whether the initial decision to deny enrolment to the child will have a lasting psychological trauma on the child. It was the child, in the end, who refused to enrol under a name other than 'his'. As such, he was exposed to a large institution effectively saying "your name is not good".

References:

• Times Online: "Catholic school shuns pupil called Hell"