THE FIRST meeting between Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn and
religious interests about a diversification of an almost totally
religious primary education system took place last week.
A good
indication of the likely growth of the demand for non-religious
education is provided by the rapidly rising proportion of couples who
now choose civil as distinct from religious weddings.
Data on this
subject is currently in arrears, but figures for 2007 show that in the
preceding 11 years the proportion of civil unions rose from 6 per cent
to 23 per cent. In our cities between 36 and 40 per cent of marriages in
2007 were civil ceremonies.
Particularly in urban areas, where a
number of primary schools exist quite close to each other, a transfer of
patronage to neighbouring schools could resolve local problems arising
from the absence of primary schools acceptable to parents who do not
wish their children to attend a religious school.
However
transfers of patronage cannot resolve the problem that exists in many
rural areas or small towns where the population is insufficient to
support more than one school. This issue is one of those listed to be
considered by Quinn’s forum.
In this connection it is necessary to
consider decisions taken by Fianna Fáil governments in 1965 and 1971
when first the national school rules and then the curriculum were
changed in a way that legally converted 90 per of our national schools
from formally non-denominational schools into integrally Catholic
institutions.
To understand the circumstances that led to the
unique primary school system that survived until 1971 it is necessary to
look back at history.
In 1695 penal laws were enacted which
forbade “papists” to “publicly teach school or instruct youth in
learning”. This led to the emergence of a very extensive illegal network
of what were necessarily outdoor schools, known as “hedge schools”.
After
the repeal of that penal law between 1782 and 1793 these schools were
able to find accommodation. As a result, by 1824, in addition to 422 new
schools already opened by Catholic Church authorities, these hedge
schools had evolved into a network of 7,500 private schools with
Catholic masters.
There were also about 4,000 schools with Protestant
masters, almost 1,400 of which were financed by Protestant Bible
Societies, most of which aimed to convert Catholic children to
Protestantism.
Most children in these schools were Catholic.
In
order to meet long-standing Catholic educational grievances, the Irish
chief secretary of a new Whig government, Edward Stanley, wrote to the
liberal Protestant Duke of Leinster to invite him to head a Commission
of National Education which was to establish, in response to joint
requests from Protestants and Catholics in any parish, a network of
state-aided non-denominational schools under local patronage.
It
is notable that the Catholic hierarchy initially supported this scheme
for non-denominational education – influenced by their concern to block
the proselytising efforts of many Protestant evangelicals. So the
genesis of our
de facto Catholic primary school system does not lie with the
Catholic Church – which many people wrongly blame for the emergence of
denominational schools in Ireland.
That development was in fact a
consequence of the initial bitter hostility of Presbyterians to the new
schools and of the strong opposition of a majority of the Church of
Ireland.
Faced with an almost total absence of joint
denominational requests for the establishment of such schools, the
commissioners soon felt obliged to accept requests for national schools
emanating from exclusively Catholic sources.
They were simply not
prepared to face the consequences of the new scheme being sabotaged by
Protestant intransigence. Most of the new schools were then established
under the patronage of members of the Catholic hierarchy.
However,
in order to maintain the non-denominational principle, religious
instruction was excluded from the curriculum, and was taught initially
on a particular day of the week, and then at a particular time, with
education itself during school hours remaining non-denominational.
This
unique educational structure appears to have remained unchanged under
British rule and thereafter until 1971, when over 90 per cent of our
primary schools were made integrally Catholic – on the grounds that “the
separation of religious and secular instruction into differentiated
subject compartments served only to throw the whole educational function
out of focus”.
I believe that the 1971 decision was a mistake.
With some practical adjustments, including a diversification of the
patronage system, the pre-1971 system might have continued to be
defensible as in principle providing an education open to all.
But
once over 90 per cent of our schools became integrally Roman Catholic, a
demand for non-religious schools was bound to grow rapidly, and, given
the requirements of Article 42 of our Constitution protecting parents’
rights in this area, the State cannot resist such a demand.
In
most areas where there is only one local school the only feasible
solution to the problem of providing a form of non-religious education
seems to me to be a belated return to some form of the pre-1971 system,
including a provision for religious education to be separate from the
rest of the school programme.