RITE AND REASON:Faith can be expressed in schools without friction for those pupils exempt from religion
THE VAST majority (more than 90 per cent) of Irish primary or national schools are under denominational patronage. Whether State support for religiously-affiliated schools is desirable from civic and educational perspectives, and whether this support will prove financially realistic, are large issues. But we do not operate from a clean slate – we are where we are in respect of the control and management of schools.
Choice of schools is a very vexed issue and there is a knot of confusion surrounding it.
There is a distinction to be observed between freedom and rights – in particular between the right to education and the right to a particular kind of school.
Children in Ireland have a right to education and parents have the freedom to send their children to a school of their choice. But this does not mean that parents have a right to have a particular kind of school.
The following analogy might make this clear. Citizens have both a right and a freedom to get married and the State has an obligation to respect this right and this freedom. But the State does not have an obligation to find partners for people.
This means that some parents may end up sending their children to a confessional school that supports an ethos to which they do not subscribe. These parents have a right to withdraw their children from lessons in religion and from sacramental preparation. But they do not have a right to expect the schools to protect them from any exposure to religion.
In any case this would be impossible.
Take the language itself. Irish has been described by John McGahern as providing the “ghostly rhythm” that expresses the religious spirit of life in Ireland. Perception of the relationship between language and religion led Éamon de Valera to argue that the language is “the bearer to us of a philosophy, of an outlook on life deeply Christian and rich in practical wisdom”.
Idioms which make reference to God are quite common. Dia dhuit, Dia’s Muire dhuit, Dia’s Muire dhuit’s Pádraig and Beannacht Dé ort are everyday salutations. It would be impossible to teach Irish without exposing young people to its religious idiom.
This prompts an interesting comparison. Just as withdrawal is allowed from lessons in religion, exemption is possible from the study of Irish. Students who have received their education outside the State up to 11 years of age are entitled to such an exemption.
The teaching of the language is compulsory in Irish schools, whatever reservations people may have regarding this policy. Schools not only teach Irish but, in many of them, the language is used throughout the day.
But the fact that some children are exempt from Irish class does mean that teachers must refrain from using Irish in what might be called “para-instructional discourse”, that is, in contexts other than direct teaching.
Examples of para-instructional discourse would be the use of daily courtesies and the giving of instructions about taking out copies and so on. It would, of course, be only right for teachers to provide English translations of such discourse or, if possible, translations into the mother-tongues of those children for whom English is not a native language.
Yet it would not be right to exclude the use of Irish from normal school life on account of the presence of some pupils who were exempt from studying it.
Indeed the language can be used with an aim of integrating such young people more fully into the culture of the country. Likewise, religious faith can be expressed in a manner that displays openness to young people who are exempt from the study of religion.
Indeed, there are differences between teaching religion and teaching Irish. But giving expression to faith is a feature of most national schools, and using the Irish language is a feature of all of them.
We live in the world in which we find ourselves and not in some ideal universe of total religious and linguistic harmony where all demands can be met to the total satisfaction of everyone.
Dr Kevin Williams lectures in the Mater Dei Institute of Education, a college of Dublin City University