Sir, – There has been much comment on community national schools this week but this school model requires further scrutiny.
According to the limited publicly available information on community national schools, children are said to be divided into four groups at a certain point during the year – Catholics in one group, other Christians in another, Muslims in a third, and Hindus, Buddhists and humanists in a fourth.
Clarity is needed as to who teaches religious instruction to each faith group. Are these teachers of that faith themselves or are they classroom teachers, expected to teach something as faith, which they may not believe themselves? And if so, are children therefore being taught religious instruction by people not of that faith?
The fourth group, or what could be called a “miscellaneous” grouping, also causes concern. Why are humanists, Buddhists and Hindus put in the same group? Is this not disrespectful to those belief systems? If such “lump them all in together” thinking prevails, why not put Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the same group? After all, these groups all hail from the Abrahamic tradition.
And then there’s the numbers issue. If, for example, one Sikh or a Hindu child is in the class, will that child receive instruction in their faith? And if not, why not? If the school facilitates religious instruction to a group of Catholic children, why will it not grant that same opportunity to a single child of a minority faith? Surely every child in the school should, to use contemporary parlance, be cherished equally?
Or could it be that under the community national school model, the system and even the time during the school year when religious instruction takes place is there to facilitate one faith grouping, Catholicism, a belief system that already holds a privileged position within Irish primary education?
Perish the thought! – Yours, etc,
FIONNUALA WARD,
Primary Education Officer.
Educate Together,
11-12 Hogan Place,
Dublin 2.