The students of Northern Ireland’s first integrated school, Lagan College in Belfast, visibly shudder when faced with a question about identity late in a conversation about the future they seek.
“How many of you would describe yourselves as Irish, and how many would describe yourselves as British?” they are asked.
The sighs of frustration roll forward from the back of the P13 AS Government & Politics class.
“We get annoyed at the question because it’s quite stereotypical. I would consider myself Irish, but I wouldn’t exactly take issue with anybody else saying otherwise,” one student says.
“Slowly over time, especially among our generation, it’s becoming less of a problem. People don’t care that much. It depends on your background, but most don’t really care where you’re from, don’t really care what your identity is,” says another.
Contrary to the image offered by this month’s anti-immigration riots in Ballymena and elsewhere, the question, however, highlights changing attitudes among swathes of Northern Ireland’s youth.
For them, if not for everyone, identities of all kinds are fluid, important enough to be respected, or not important enough to fight over, even if many come from still-segregated communities.
Facing often vicious opposition, Lagan was set up in September 1981 during some of the darkest days of the Troubles by Catholic and Protestant parents, who wanted their children to learn together.
A total of 28 children came on the first day – 14 Catholic, 14 Protestant. Today, Lagan has grown to 1,460 pupils, with 200 new arrivals each year on a campus beside Gregagh Glen – one of 71 integrated schools in Northern Ireland.
It’s a warts-and-all approach, we don’t stifle debate within the classroom. Everybody has an opinion, and they’re all entitled to it, as long as they express it respectfully
— Fergal McGuckin
On a Tuesday afternoon, the P13 class and their teacher, Fergal McGuckin, interrupt class to talk about the lessons students have learned from going to Lagan, and their lives outside.
Student Cillian Connolly has no doubts about the benefits. “I have friends here from obviously Protestant backgrounds, from Catholic backgrounds, and Muslim backgrounds and everything else.
“In our group, no one would even know what you are, or care. I’ve been here for four years and I didn’t even know if my mates were Protestant or Catholic half of the time,” he tells The Irish Times.
However, Northern Ireland’s changing face is evident elsewhere, too, he asserts, citing the belief of friends in denominational schools who often, nevertheless, think that their own school is integrated.
“They’ll say: ‘There’s loads of Catholics in our school.’ So, they think it is integrated because of the numbers of other faiths, even though it isn’t integrated, as such. That’s kind of good, really, that they would think like that, it’s unofficial integration.”
Outside the classroom, however, students are still often badged by their first or second names, or where they live: “Sometimes, someone will say: ‘Oh, you can just tell you’re a Catholic,’” he says.
Later generations will find the debate about integrated education puzzling, he believes. “Our grandkids will look back and think: ‘Wait, there were Catholic schools and Protestant schools? That’s so odd.’
“It’s like us looking back and thinking that it was completely mad that there were separate toilets for black and white people in the United States. They’ll think that it was all completely mad,” he says.
Just 8 per cent of Northern Ireland’s students go to integrated schools, even though, depending on the poll, nearly 80 per cent of parents say that they want more such schools.
“However, none of the 8 per cent of places that we have were established by the government, or by government planning,” says Paul Caskey, chief executive of the Integrated Education Fund charity.
The Irish language is studied by all first-year Lagan students. Dubbed “enrichment Irish”, it shows where it “has come from and (explains) the significance it has, in placenames, etc”, says principal Amanda McNamee.
The numbers studying fall away in later years, she says: between six and 12 students take GCSE Irish examinations, while an A-Level option was dropped because it did not have enough demand.
Students usually study three A-level subjects, so choices must narrow: “And it is a difficult language, and I say that as an English teacher; it’s not easy,” McNamee says.
However, the first-year experience leaves its mark: “The children love the songs, the cultural side. Some, though, find it difficult to pick up – from all different ability levels,” she says.
Most of the P13 students are interested in some political issues, but have little interest in politicians – and very little, it has to be said, in the workings of the Stormont Assembly and Executive.
Connolly’s classmate, Francesca Keenan, voices an unhappiness shared by others: “They’re not really helping the majority of ordinary people. Even though they seem to have differing ideas of what should go on, they’re really serving their own interests.”
For the last 16 years, the English-accented Amanda McNamee, born in England to Irish parents, has led the school in a career honoured by an MBE from Queen Elizabeth, one that began in Omagh before the Real IRA bombing.
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Shortly after 3pm on August 15th, 1998, McNamee, then newly married, was preparing with her husband to pick up a new kitchen in a shop near the courthouse in the bustling Co Tyrone town.
Nearing Omagh, she changed her mind: “We’d been out the night before. I said to Adrian: ‘Oh, we’re tired and jaded. Let’s go home,’” she says. A few minutes later, the bomb exploded, killing 29.
Life’s journey can be decided by a turn of the wheel. Today, McNamee’s passion for the social value of integrated education, fuelled by her time in Drumragh Integrated College in Omagh, is evident.
Lagan has a clear code based on the Christian principles of equality, service, reconciliation and respect, she says, “where everyone is expected to be exposed to, and to respect, the beliefs of others”.
Students gathered to consider the legacies of the queen and Pope Francis when they died “because for many people in our school they were important parts of their lives” she says.
“If it’s important to some of us, it needs to be respected by all of us, so it’s not that someone can opt out of such an assembly because they don’t recognise the queen, or the pope – they can’t,” she says.
Years ago, Lagan students’ uniforms marked them out, though such problems have faded. However, students coming from still-divided communities are often regarded locally as “different”.
“Sometimes, you’ll hear other people say things that you just haven’t been exposed to here, because it’s so normalised for me to be with people of other religions and stuff,” says one student.
Coming to Lagan was “like night and day” compared to elsewhere, another student says, “the way people treat one another, attitudes to language and stuff, you get none of that hate”.
Lagan’s students are well versed in the Troubles throughout their school years, says McGuckin, right up to the end: “So, they’re probably sick of it by then.
“It’s a warts-and-all approach, we don’t stifle debate within the classroom. Everybody has an opinion, and they’re all entitled to it, as long as they express it respectfully.”
“Students learn to be comfortable in their own skin, about being a nationalist or a unionist, or whatever.” The bonds made in Lagan last. “Friendships made here endure. It’s like a badge of honour,” he says.
