UNA O'HIGGINS
Sir, - Mary Olive Scott (February 4th) makes a reasonable case for the retention of separate schools for Catholics and Protestants in the North.
Her comparison with our own Civil War, however, I do not, on reflection, find apt.
What brought me to the point of saying what I did in the interview with Kathy Sheridan (Features, January 25th) was the plight of both Catholic and Protestant children in North Belfast who, on the same day, had to be rescued from their separate schools by police, because of sectarian hatred.
Thirty years ago at a conference in Derry, when facilitating a workshop, I asked two teenage lads in the group what they thought of Protestants. They said they didn't know any, had never met any. By now they may have children of the same age whose experiences are similarly limited.
Shortly after his installation, the late Cardinal Ó Fiaich offered some encouraging thoughts to a meeting of the Irish Association in Belfast (the press by then had withdrawn). He felt the need for children to mix, he said, and believed that this could be achieved by schools sharing facilities such as playing fields, science labs, orchestras, etc. while retaining their separate ethos.
It is when children are targeted by hate-filled people who may not in fact know any such children as individuals that the question becomes crucial. Nothing immediate could be achieved even if ideas such as those of Cardinal Ó Fiaich were promulgated tomorrow, I realise all too well, but the alternative is to retain the status quo.
As for the stable, representative politics that Ms Scott advocates, in Britain politicians seem to be raising a question-mark over "faith schools" because of racial hatred in some areas. Transfer that into Northern Ireland and could we see "faith schools" having to raise their own funding?
Rightly or wrongly schools are looked at as places where sectarian tensions may either be eased or continued (even if unintentionally). - Yours, etc.,
UNA O'HIGGINS O'MALLEY, Blackrock, Co Dublin.