Ireland must look to its school teachers to help retrieve the "dangerous social situation" in which society now finds itself, according to former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald.
The disappearance of a "former deferential attitude to religious authority" means that the teaching profession must function in a much more challenging environment, commanding a role which can address the profound problems which changes have posed to Irish society, Dr FitzGerald told a seminar yesterday in NUI Galway (NUIG).
Dr FitzGerald, who is current chancellor of the National University of Ireland, was speaking on the theme "Civic Republicanism and Public Morality" at the first of a series of seminars hosted by NUIG's Community Knowledge Initiative (CKI).
However, if moral guidance in schools was confined to traditional religious teaching, there would be no capacity to "curb hedonism" or to instil public moral values in the new generation, Dr FitzGerald said.
"Unless firm ethical foundations can be laid in our schools for what I would describe as a new 'civic republicanism', the prospect of improving, or even maintaining, the quality of Irish society as we move further into the 21st century seems pretty grim."
He said parents could assist but primary and secondary schools "hold the key" to the urgently-needed "remoralisation" of Irish society.
Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, Mary Davis, chairwoman of a taskforce on active citizenship, and Alan Kerins, of the Alan Kerins Africa projects, are among the speakers contributing early next year to the CKI series of lectures at NUIG.
The series is being offered as "a response to the increased alienation and declining social commitment that is common in today's communities," the CKI says.
