Debrief

By Anne Odling-Smee

(As featured in the Irish News 18th Jan 2012)

I am a Catholic who served for 12 years on an Education and Library Board and have also had the privilege to be a governor for many years of both controlled and integrated schools.    I was dismayed – though, in honesty, not very surprised – by Bishop Donal McKeown’s comments,  quoted in the Irish News earlier this month.  In an article headlined  “Bishop: diluting religion in schools is unfaithful to God”, His Grace suggests that controlled or integrated schools teach only “fragmented information”; the implication is insulting and ignorant and certainly does not accord with my experience.   The article takes the Bishop’s address for World Peace Day as a challenge to supporters of a single education system, and quotes him as saying:  “The Holy Father is clear that education affects the whole person, and means leading young people to move beyond themselves, and leading them to a reality, toward a fullness that leads to growth.”   Many would agree with His Holiness; my issue is that the Bishop, or perhaps the Irish News, seeks to give the impression that there is only one type of school which offers this. Yet all schools in Northern Ireland include religious studies in their teaching and a Christian element in their governance – and certainly maintained schools are not the only establishments to teach and discuss justice and peace as the Bishop also implies. It would be difficult to find a school of any type which did not have as its aim the development of the whole person.

The premise behind the establishment, just over 30 years ago, of integrated schools was that in bringing children together with others of all beliefs, cultures and backgrounds from an early age, in an environment where those aspects were nurtured and respected, we could develop the whole person.  The idea was to bring together, not dilute, the many facets of belief within a school with a stated Christian ethos. 

I am intrigued to read that Bishop McKeown says his sector’s schools support the whole of society – whilst acknowledging that they segregate children. Subscribing to the theory of a shared future sits oddly when many of the pupils emerge from the Catholic school system having had little opportunity of knowing a large proportion of the local community. When some then go on to study at a denominational teacher training college, what practical experience have they had of meeting “the other”  – therefore, how are they equipped to educate the next generation for a pluralist and shared society?

It saddens me that at a time when the Catholic Church is encouraging receptive ecumenism, which entails us learning from other denominations and faiths so as to reach a better understanding between people in the world, this sort of statement from a respected Bishop is being repeated.  A paradox indeed.