There has been a certain smugness in recent years about the healthy state of the Irish education system. We now have one of Europe's highest proportions of students staying at school until 18. Steady investment in education over the past 30 years has resulted in plenty of highly skilled young people able to capitalise on the current economic boom.
However, there has been little of the anguished soul-searching about falling educational standards which has afflicted our British neighbours. Now comes a report which attempts to disrupt the cosy consensus that "we've never had it so good".
Not for the first time it is the work of that provocative group of nuns and priests, the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI). The organisation's education commission last week circulated a discussion paper on the future educational role of the religious orders which argues forcefully that the education system is biased against poor people.
The values of Irish schools, particularly at second-level, are those of individualism, competitiveness and consumerism, it says. What is the point of learning in religion classes about the Christian values of sharing, compassion and the common good, when the values elsewhere in the school are those of the points race and the me fein free market.
The Leaving Cert is the passport to individual wealth and prestige - and the principal message of education now, argues CORI, is that those are the things that matter in end-of-century Ireland.
Its paper goes on to quote a series of damning statistics showing how few people from poor backgrounds go on to third level; how many early school-leavers come from similar backgrounds; how much more likely people with no educational qualifications are to be poor than people with higher education.
The paper is a little thinner when it comes to proposing what should be done about these injustices. It admits religious orders have something of a credibility problem on this issue because of their involvement in running `elite' schools for the Irish bourgeoisie.
But it points the way to a new direction. CORI urges religious congregations to make an "option for the poor" central to their schools' structure and planning; to work with community groups in deprived areas; to develop the hugely under-resourced and potentially subversive adult and community education sector and to highlight the structural injustices which have led to those areas' multiple social problems.
The Gonzagas and Blackrocks, the Mount Anvilles and Sion Hills should look to their social consciences. CORI urges religious orders to start telling the well-heeled parents of children at such schools that they will no longer contribute funds for middle-class school extensions because they are investing instead in community education projects for the poor.
EDUCATION & LIVING
Editor: Ella Shanahan Production: Hugh Lambert and Harry Browne Cover illustrations: Cathy Dineen Email: education@irish-times.ie
