Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man. The Jesuit maxim springs to mind on reading the report by my colleague, Carol Coulter, of a new survey of attitudes among primary school children in Northern Ireland.
Here, for example, are the views of two six-year-olds on the Tricolour: l. "It's a good flag. I'm a Catholic and it's a Catholic flag." 2."It's a Fenian flag. Only bad people have that colour of flag." So much for the green, white and orange which still flutters from many cars in Dublin, as though the drivers cannot bear to abandon the wonderful sense of togetherness we experienced during the World Cup.
"Too Young to Notice? The Cultural and Political Awareness of 3- 6-year-olds in Northern Ireland" was carried out for the University of Ulster by Dr Paul Connolly, Prof Alan Smith and Ms Berni Kelly. At a time of year when we will see again images of toddlers wearing T-shirts sporting slogans such as "Born to Walk the Garvaghy Road", the findings make salutary reading.
They also challenge the views of those, particularly in the churches, who argue that education is not a factor in promoting sectarianism in the North, and that the beginning of bigotry has far more to do with what a child absorbs at home: how Mum answers questions, the way that Dad responds to items on the television news.
Dr Connolly and his team found that at the age of three over 40 per cent of children were aware of the community divide and between 5 per cent and 7 per cent identified with their own community. However, only a tiny minority made sectarian comments.
This changed dramatically by the time the children had spent two years in nursery or primary school. By the age of six, a third of those questioned identified strongly with one community or the other, and 15 per cent were making overtly sectarian comments.
THEIR inquiry involved interviewing 352 children from nursery and primary schools, representative in terms of gender, age, religon and social class. The methods and images used were designed to allow the children to feel comfortable in expressing their views.
Those involved in carrying out the interviews believe that, if anything, the figures underestimate the level of sectarianism among primary school children. As Dr Connolly said, the rapid increase in community identification and the rise in sectarian attitudes, which occurs after two years of compulsory education, must raise "important questions about the indirect effects that our segregated school system is having on the development of young children's awareness and attitudes".
Over the past 30 years, and particularly since the Belfast Agreement was signed in 1998, millions of euro have been poured into projects designed to promote harmony and a better understanding between the two communities.
Those involved have included the European Union's Special Fund for Peace and Reconciliation, the British and Irish governments, the Ireland Fund, the Joseph Rowntree Trust and others. All the major churches have taken part in conferences and agonised research to produce reports with titles such as "The Challenge of Sectarianism".
Special bodies have been set up to monitor the progress of schemes designed to bring children from the two sides together. Programmes such as Education for Mutual Understanding form part of the school curriculum. The Peace and Reconciliation industry, as it is fondly known to those who work in it, is a major factor in keeping the province's unemployment rates at an all-time low.
One stark fact remains. Four per cent of Northern Ireland's children are educated together in integrated schools. Increasingly, they live in segregated areas and only meet each other when the riots start at night. The argument is made that bringing children together in schools would risk provoking more violence.
The first and last serious attempt to create an integrated education scheme took place in 1923. Secular schools were proposed in which there would be no denominational religious teaching. This was opposed by all the major churches and duly dropped. We are still living with the results today.
IN the past, it may have seemed reasonable for each community to cling to segregated education to preserve its "ethos". We know now that if there is to be any hope for a better future, there will have to be a move towards an education system which promotes tolerance and understanding from a child's first days at school.
Martin McGuinness has, in the past, expressed support for integrated education. Yet, the Burns report "Education for the 21st Century" hardly mentions it. There is much that is brave and visionary in this bulky overview of the future of post-primary education in Northern Ireland, most notably its determination to abolish the 11-plus selection test, which brands many children as educational failures. Already Mr McGuinness is under pressure from those campaigning on behalf of Northern Ireland's grammar schools to pull back on the issue of selection. He and his embattled department may well feel that implementing the key proposals in the Burns Report provides them with more than enough problems to be going on with.
But Burns, for all its virtues, does not go far enough in tackling the fundamentally sectarian nature of Northern Ireland's segregated school system. That will only happen when children are educated together from the nursery on.