Sir, – I usually enjoy Jennifer O'Connell's weekly column, but this week I found her article on teaching religion in our classrooms to be just about as offensive as it possibly could be ("Fairy stories have no place in the classroom", Life & Style, March 9th). There was a derogatory and presumptuous tone to the article, which included disrespectful comments such as describing biblical teachings as "fairy stories".
Faith is always a personal choice, but whatever you choose to believe, you should be allowed to do so with dignity and without derision. – Yours, etc,
JOHN BELLEW,
Dunleer, Co Louth.
Sir, – Jennifer O’Connell asks why Irish children are spending 2½ hours a week learning about religion. The answer is simple. It is because of the apathy of those children’s parents. The current generation of young parents has done nothing to change the status quo in which the Catholic Church wields such power in the national school system. These young parents automatically baptise their children and send them into the classroom to be inculcated with superstitious nonsense and mumbo-jumbo mantras. This despite having little or no faith whatsoever themselves, as is clearly evinced by the paltry numbers attending church services around the country on a weekly basis. Upon questioning, these young Irish parents will typically offer two standard excuses – “I did it to keep my Mammy happy” or “They won’t get into the local national school without the baptismal certificate”. Neither of these gormless excuses will do any good to the newest generation of Irish children who are going to miss out on hundreds and hundreds of hours of far more valuable academic learning in their formative years, hours they will instead waste preparing for the bizarre and psychologically damaging sacraments of confession, communion and confirmation. –Yours, etc,
PHILIP O’CARROLL,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – I note that Jennifer O’Connell strongly disapproves of fairy stories.
There is a difference between education in values, ethics, and behaviour, and fairy stories. Indeed the 2011 California first-grade curriculum covers “the values of fair play”, “respect for the rights and opinions of others” and “rights and responsibilities as well as social behaviour”. None of this is very different from Irish primary schools. There is no such thing as a value-free education, and the idea is incoherent.
Irish schools are, of course, underfunded, although I do not think it unreasonable to teach Irish in them. Our students perform very well in both science and mathematics, notably better than US students. We could do better, but not by copying the US.
I also wish to defend fairy stories. Stories matter. For children stories serve many purposes – recreation, comfort, socialisation, enhancing literacy, making sense of the world and exploring ways of coping with it. Fairy stories benefit children and adults, and I support their use in schools, and in our homes. – Yours, etc,
ANTHONY STAINES,
Professor of Health Systems,
School of Nursing
and Human Sciences,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – If only from the standpoint of literature, it would be odd indeed to ban from schools “the greatest story ever told”. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK KELLEHER,
Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9.