Sir, - Garret FitzGerald is anxious about the right of non-believing parents to have non-confessional education for their children. On the other hand, he fears the development of a multiplicity of small schools in areas where the level of non-religious children would justify the same. Might not a solution be found in a concept gaining increasing popularity in the United States? There the situation is the reverse of that in Ireland. State schools are absolutely secular. As a consequence, millions of parents desirous of religious education must finance the same entirely out of their own or other private sources. Many political figures are becoming supportive of state vouchers being given to those families to meet the costs of education without their having to submit their children to the secular state system.
Could not the same be done in Ireland for the sake of families uncomfortable with the denominational character of so much of the schooling system? While at it, the Irish might realise the wisdom in privatising education, whether denominational or secular. As for a multiplicity of schools, there ought be nothing wrong with that - unless of course, they were all part of the same centralised system, as was the case in Ireland. The concept of small is beautiful is especially valid in education. - Yours, etc.,
John P. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of History, Director, Institute for Irish Studies, Fordham University, New York, USA.