A return to some form of pre-1971 non-religious education may be needed in rural areas, writes GARRET FITZGERALD
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 this 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 factoCatholic 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.