‘Change must come’: One man’s fight to end Northern Ireland’s segregated education

Now 90 years of age, living on the banks of the Shannon and blessed with the greatest of neighbours and friends, former priest David Rice is enjoying an old age that most would pray for, even if they were not people of faith.

“I don’t think I have ever been happier,” says the Killaloe-based Rice, who swims 200m every day in the local swimming pool, runs a local writing club that has spawned scores of authors and still drives superbly. A two-seater sports car, in fact.

Best known for Shattered Vows, the 1990 book that highlighted the extraordinary exodus of priests from the Catholic Church, himself included, Rice believes he has been saved for one last great fight.

In a new book, The Sundered Children, which includes more than 30 contributions from figures including President Michael D Higgins, the Newry-born Rice rails against the existence and inequities of segregated education in Northern Ireland.

‘Some children are anxious or angry. Sometimes they’re blank. And then they’re expected to go straight into class’

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“This sounds ridiculous, I know, but I have a great sense of providence that I have been kept alive to try for this, especially when I reached 90 for no apparent reason when nearly all of my oldest friends are dead,” he tells The Irish Times.

In his opening to the book, Rice, a former Dominican priest, quotes Martin Luther King’s saying that “if we are to have peace on Earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather sectional”, and that no individual, or community, can live alone.

“I was brought up in a mixed part of Newry between Drumalane and the Dublin Road where the Protestant and Catholic kids played together. We went to separate schools, all right, but they remained my friends for all of our lives.”

Today, just 7 per cent of children in Northern Ireland go to integrated schools, more than a quarter of a century after the Belfast Agreement pledged to “encourage its growth”.

Schools serving different faiths often exist side by side, within walking distance. A report by Ulster University found 32 such examples, with some faith schools under pressure because of declining enrolments and stressed budgets, but they still survive.

Meanwhile, families who want to send their children to integrated schools struggle and often have to travel significant distances because nearby schools are segregated, the report said.

Churches have propagated and defended faith schools and “denominational interests are still embedded in the system and contribute to the enduring separation of schools”.

The Ulster University report noted that it is 100 years since the creation of Northern Ireland, more than 50 years since the start of the Troubles and 23 years since the Belfast Agreement silenced the bombs and the bullets.

During this time, considerable funding has been given to faith schools. But by leaving the “sectarian, sectoral segregation of schools unaddressed”, the report says it could be argued that these resources have “maintained the endemic pattern of structural and community separation”.

In day-to-day terms, Rice says it means that almost quarter of a century after the Belfast Agreement, too many Northern Ireland children “rarely encounter members of the other side until they are in their early 20s. By that time, prejudices are locked in.

“Two groups, both thoroughly decent but polarised by culture, religion, ethnicity, politics, prosperity levels, by interpretations of history and by geography, living in separate areas and even divided by peace walls. And, above all, separated by schooling,” he says.

Ironically, he believes that faith schools maintain segregation without protecting faith: “Instead of saying Catholics and Protestants, we should say nationalist or unionist, because that is all that it is.

“The kids that are coming out of these faith schools have no religion at all. Two of my nephews went to integrated schooling in Dalkey and they have a sense of spirituality, even though they didn’t come from a Catholic school,” he says.

Given that 71 per cent of people in Northern Ireland say that they are in favour of integrated education, according to a recent Irish Times/ARINS poll, Rice asks: “With all this talk of a united Ireland, the profound silence about a disunited Northern Ireland is surely the black hole of our northern galaxy. Why don’t they call for a referendum on it?”

Rice, who educated several generations of Irish journalists in the Rathmines School of Journalism, has spoken directly about his views with Bishop of Killaloe Fintan Monahan, one of the contributors to Sundered Children.

The bishop played a key role in converting the former St Mary’s Boy’s National School in Co Tipperary into the co-educational and multi-denominational Nenagh Community National School following an agreement between the diocese and the Tipperary Education and Training Board, which now sees the school teaching up to sixth class.

In Sundered Children, Bishop Monahan remembers a conversation with a fellow bishop some years ago who was firmly convinced that the removal of the Catholic Church can and should never happen.

“It is my strong opinion that it is in the interest of all stakeholders that a diversity and variety of patronage should be available,” he said, favouring a mix of denominational and non-denominational, integrated and shared patronage-run schools.

Illustrating the possibilities, Bishop Monahan pointed to the existence of Gaelscoil an tSlí Dála, which is jointly run by the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, largely thanks to the efforts of his predecessor, Willie Walsh.

Rice has spoken with Bishop Monahan, visiting his house: “He was terrific. When Willie Walsh brought up this subject in conversation with Northern bishops, they told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about – we’re the ones that know.

“We need to change. It isn’t for the Irish Government because no one will listen to it, but there must be some way in which the church authorities and the Stormont administration can do something about this,” Rice continues.

Asked if there is a place for religiously run education any more, he says: “There is a place for imparting the faith of whichever faith it is, but it should not be in school hours.

“I think school should be for mathematics and all the other things and faith should be taught on the sidelines.”

Although most people in Northern Ireland say they favour making integrated education the norm, the real-life actions of those same people as parents often differ in their bid to see their children raised by acceptable cultural, moral and social codes.

“The answer surely to that is that the level of integrated schools is raised to the level of the best Catholic, or other religious schools,” he says.

Protestant schools in the poorest districts in Northern Ireland “don’t teach their kids properly at all”, he says, with Catholic schools in similar social conditions doing better.

“Why could we not create integrated schools with the right teachers who could do extremely well, so that children could be well educated?”

The number of children attending integrated schools will never rise much beyond its current 7 per cent share unless action is taken.

“It is a question of wanting to do it, but the silence! The silence,” Rice goes on, clearly laying the blame with both religious and political leaders.

The continuation of segregated schooling in Northern Ireland has implications for southerners, too, especially if the debate about constitutional changes intensifies.

Demographic and social change may lessen the unionist/nationalist polarisation, “but time alone will not do it. The last 100 years did not do it”.

“Only time involving the education of our children of both sides together – perhaps for several generations – will do it,” he writes in his book.

Such change would have downstream consequences for Northern Ireland’s society, including a growth in the number of mixed marriages.

[ ‘Indisputable’ demand for integrated schools but challenges remain 25 years after Belfast Agreement ]

“Church leaders fear mixed marriages, expecting loss of control. But they need to be persuaded that they are better for society than the present divided nation,” he continues.

Change will not come quickly, or easily, he accepts, though he mourns the failure properly to fight the battle for change up to now.

Time is inevitably not on his side, though Rice has the energy of men nearly half his age: “I’m 90 now, and I am having an absolute ball. I’ve had to take stands on a few things, but this is the one thing that I want to take a stand on now. Change must come.”

The Sundered Children is available from amazon.com, though not from amazon.co.uk