Sir, – Ann Kehoe (Letters, April 5th) takes a very lopsided view of equality. She says that "parents and teachers have a right to express concern at hasty divestment".
This process has been anything but hasty. It is no exaggeration to say it has been going on for decades now and has been the very opposite of hasty because of continued delaying tactics like those in Portmarnock and Malahide in Co Dublin recently.
Where is her understanding or accommodating for the rights and concerns of parents and teachers on lack of divestment over these decades?
She says she fears that multidenominational schools may prefer secular teachers, yet Catholic schools completely discriminate against non-religious teachers, including requiring religious paperwork and qualifications.
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She then repeats the claims against multidenominational schools banning Christmas and the like, despite overwhelming evidence that parents and grandparents and children in these schools take part and are supported in these very activities.
I fail to understand why a hard core of people fight such a natural progression with dubious surveys decades after it was called for.
I note that in the same month a leading Irish university published its detailed survey of its staff and students including that 38 per cent and 43 per cent respectively self-identified as “no religion”. This is despite 96 per cent control of primary schools by religious organisations.
In light of this would these hardliners consider that divesting themselves of the secular among them due to lack of choice might actually benefit their religion? – Yours, etc,
ANDREW
DOYLE,
Bandon,
Co Cork.
A chara, – Real divestment is not merely replacing one vested-interest body, euphemistically called a “patron”, with another to provide education for children in schools. The European Court of Human Rights (2014 O’Keeffe case) clearly stated that responsibility for what happens in State-funded schools lies with the State.
Patronage is the off-loading, by the State, of its responsibilities to subsidiary entities, many of which have no real mandate. The movement towards divestment therefore suggests that patronage as a model for the management of schools has failed regardless of the identity of patron body. Why, therefore, should the State persist with an outmoded model of subsidiarity? Why replace a failed model of patronage with a plethora of as yet untested models of patronage? Religion and religious practice seem to be the focus of the arguments for and against religiously based patronage. What ideological issues will new patrons present in the future?
Despite the Minister for Education’s assurances about divestment, I am aware of a teacher being sanctioned for mentioning St Patrick in class and a principal being admonished for giving children sports medals with the traditional Celtic cross embossed on them. Apparently these actions did not coincide with the ethos of the patron body.
The Stanley letter (1831) outlined a vision for education provision in Ireland known as the national schools’ system. The Irish State abandoned that very progressive 19th-century vision of education, which aimed to “unite in one system children of different creeds” (Edward Stanley, Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1831). Let’s renationalise our schools and abandon the outmoded subsidiarity model of patronage. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN Ó DÍOMASAIGH,
Dunsany,
Co Meath.