Sir, - Bishop Smith is to be commended for encouraging public debate about the future control of primary schools. He does not however in his response (May 27th) address a central question: What exactly do the words "Catholic ethos" mean in the context of Catholic schools and what is the role of teachers therein?
The bishops no doubt see the primary school as being at the centre of the believing community, a place to nurture Catholic belief and practice. In my experience as a teacher, it is nothing of the sort. Most parents and many teachers have a secular outlook on both morality and practice of religion. Even those teachers who practise the Catholic faith do not always see themselves as missionaries. In short, many schools in urban areas are masquerading as Catholic schools and the Catholic ethos is being silently and relentlessly corroded from the inside - by parents and teachers who are lukewarm or totally disinterested in religion, or who don't see the primary school as a central place of evangelisation.
The Catholic hierarchy's insistence on control is the root of this corrosion which is eating away at its own community and the integrity of the educational system. If it continues to insist that all primary teachers are contractually bound to teach religion, there can be only two results: a further, rapid dilution of the Catholic ethos and a decline in educational standards. The fundamental contract of honesty between teacher and pupil - at the core of all education - and between teacher and school authority, is widely breached by teachers who either don't believe in what they preach or don't teach at all what their employers believe them to be teaching. In my view, this dishonesty, increasingly at the core of the primary educational system, is contributing to a decline in discipline and educational standards generally.
With reference to the new schools coming on stream, Bishop Smith mentions the Catholic parish community, as if it is the parish community that takes decisions regarding such schools. On the contrary, it is the clergy, the bishops in particular, who decide.
In response to Bishop Smith's question on the future of primary schools and as a way of addressing all these concerns, I propose the following:
1) the trusteeship of all new primary schools be vested in a wider and more democratic community of interest;
2) the appointment of qualified catechists, some of whom might be ordinary teachers who have a vocation in this area, to teach religion in primary schools;
3) the removal of the obligation on all teachers to teach religion;
4) preparation for the Sacraments of First Holy Communion and Confirmation be situated in its proper personal, home and church context, outside the official teaching day. - Yours, etc.,
Gerry McAlister, College Manor, Dublin 9.