While pupils in Dublin are adapting quickly to the more international character of their schools, the curriculum needs to catch up.
Even though 11-year-old Aakrit Schresta is Hindu, he has given up chocolate for Lent. He's the perfect example of the new hybrid citizen brought about by globalisation: a well-travelled individual who is inclined to pick and choose his beliefs from various influences.
Born in Ireland of parents who emigrated from Nepal, he is friendly with children from 30 different countries at Holy Rosary National School in Tallaght, Dublin.
Such is the religious tolerance at the school that each morning before classes, Islam is taught in the parents' room for those who want it, even though the school itself is Catholic-run.
Gerri Goan, who grew up in the area and has children at Holy Rosary, saw her first black person in England when she was 18 years old and never thought that she would be living in Dublin surrounded by so many different nationalities.
"My children go to school with others from all over the world and they don't see race, they only see individuals," she says.
One-third of the 450 children at Holy Rosary are immigrants. Many junior infants start school without knowing any English, yet the Department of Education has allocated only two years of extra English classes for non-English-speaking children, which is nowhere near enough, says principal Max Cannon.
"Some of these children have experienced trauma, some have learning difficulties masked by their inability to speak English, and there's the issue of Muslim parents who want to maintain their native language in the home, so that the children are learning English only in school," Cannon says.
Salah Haddad, from Libya, has children in the school and believes curriculum materials, which reflect the lives of indigenous Irish children, should also include images of children from elsewhere.
"People need to see themselves in the books and the pictures," he says.
Doing a masters in intercultural studies at DCU, Haddad is also worried about the development of Muslim schools by Muslim parents.
"This could push certain groups to alienate themselves," he says. "It's out of control, talking frankly. Muslim schools are very far from Irish society. I believe that no school should be set up under a specific religion, which means that in Ireland we will have to have a complete separation of church and State in the running of schools."
But many Catholics are loth to give up control of 97 per cent of national schools and 50 per cent of secondary schools.
Paul Meany, principal of Marian College and president of the Joint Managerial Body for Secondary Schools, says, "Catholic schools take an inclusive approach, while still giving witness to Jesus Christ. Parents have the right to send their children to religiously-run schools if they wish to, no matter whether they are Muslim or Jewish or Hindu."
At Holy Rosary, such issues seem a world away from the successful model of integrated education that the school presents. It's a happy place, where little girls in Muslim headscarves play side by side with children from 30 different countries, so that the playground scene seems to represent all humanity.
Parents are closely involved in school life. When Walter Ngegne from Nigeria lost his wife to cancer last year, becoming a widower with four children, "the other parents were massively supportive, financially, emotionally and spiritually", he says.
Svetlana Litmanova, from the Ukraine, also finds the local intercultural community friendly and supportive.
"You don't feel like a foreigner here," she says. "You feel you are part of a family."
Lahdi Boulmelh, who came to Dublin from Algeria 29 years ago, has observed that while in the past Irish people saw newcomers as individuals and were friendly and helpful to them, they now tend to see only ethnic groups.
"Racism has started in Ireland in the past few years and some parents are teaching their children by making racist comments," he says.
"The Irish tend to look at children as either Libyan, or Algerian, or whatever, when these are as Irish as we are - and I don't think that this problem of racism is taken seriously. If we don't do something, we'll be heading down the route of other countries, such as France, where anyone from an ethnic group is never fully accepted."
A school where everyone gets along can nurture the spirit of integration, but school isn't enough, these parents agree. "It can't just be the school alone. An example has to be set both at home and at the school," says Ngegne.
KH