RITE AND REASON: Michael Dungan, a father of three children attending the school, describeshis family's experience of interdenominationalism at Gaelscoil Thulach nanÓg in Dunboyne.
As a parent of three children attending Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg, in Dunboyne, Co Meath, it has been my lot to watch the calm and nurturing fabric of the school be threatened by the events of recent months.
My wife and I were among the founding parents, with children attending from the moment the school first opened in September 1998. From the start, the new school had an exceptional buzz of excitement and vitality about it.
There was the total immersion in the Irish language, with all a Gaelscoil's linguistic and other acclaimed contingent benefits, including greater parental involvement and smaller classes. The principal, Tomás Ó Dúlaing and his then sole colleague, Séamus Ó Torpaigh, were warm, experienced and full of ideas and energy. The school was local and it was inter-denominational.
We are in a mixed marriage and although our children were all baptised Church of Ireland, we had always intended them to be aware of the tenets of Roman Catholicism and Church of Ireland.
Our interest in ecumenical education was clearly shared by the majority of the founding parents. When the religious orientation or ethos of the school was formally decided, the vote went 13-9-0 for interdenominational, Catholic and multidenominational. The school then chose a patron, An Foras Patrúnachta na Scoileanna lán-Ghaeilge Teo.
Sadly, unforeseen problems soon emerged, leaving all of us who were involved looking a bit naïve - and An Foras Patrúnachta had no written policy of interdenominationalism for us to turn to. The difficulties related primarily to the teaching of conflicting doctrinal truths. There weren't many of these, but enough to pose the question: how in a mixed class do you teach children to believe doctrinal truths when those truths contradict each other?
The options presented were twofold: keep the children together and subject them to conflicting truths or separate them at those times. In Dunboyne the denominational breakdown was 96-4, so separation would cause one or two C of I children to be taken away from the rest of their otherwise Catholic class.
It would be fair to say that all sides now recognise and reject the educational and psychological hazards such segregation involves.
Even Gaelscoil Cill Mhantáin, whose interpretation of interdenominationalism An Foras Patrúnachta had initially asked us to follow, has since ceased to separate children for doctrinal instruction. And keeping children together? There is something almost farcical, certainly educationally compromised, about instructing opposing truths to children of both denominations at once.
In spring 2001, An Foras Patrúnachta asked the school to research and produce its own interdenominational policy, saying that if agreement could be achieved within the school, An Foras would find it difficult to reject it. In July 2001, a conclusion was reached, after a long and wide-ranging internal and external consultative process to which all parents were invited and most opted to contribute.
The resulting policy gravitated towards a third option: teaching everything together except those doctrinal truths exclusive to either denomination. Professional catechists, paid for by the school, would teach doctrinal truths after school hours for, it was estimated, about 12 hours over the eight years spent in primary school. The board approved the policy and sent it to An Foras Patrúnachta.
An Foras, however, rejected the school's agreed policy and the board, then under a new chairperson, acquiesced. On March 4th, a letter from the board to all parents announced that 100 per cent of all religious education must be taught within school hours and made not a single mention of the school's own policy, the work that went into it or the consensus it represented.
No wonder so many parents were upset. The claims that interdenominational schooling was about "full and equal partnership" were beginning to ring pretty hollow. Our board was implementing a Foras policy which meant all children would be instructed to believe contradictory truths.
For the school's tiny number of Church of Ireland children, the only alternative the board offered was for parents "to withdraw their children from that part of the programme or explore alternative arrrangements with the school". This is identical to the way that C of I children are accommodated in Catholic schools.
Hard questions remain for An Foras to answer given that its board includes no one from the Church of Ireland and that it drew up and imposed its policy without once seeking the opinions of the C of I's educational authorities.
The specific concerns of distressed C of I parents have never been satisfactorily addressed by An Foras, nor, indeed, by the board in connection with the U-turn it made public in March. The facilitation process funded by the Department of Education was set up after the implementation of An Foras's divisive policy directive.
The facilitator's interim report, it seems, has not yet even been discussed by An Foras and the school's principal has been dismissed for the stance he took on the issue.
Michael Dungan is a Protestant parent with children at Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg where he is also the music teacher.