Sir, - After two proposed multi-denominational schools in Navan, Co Meath, and Waterford city failed to secure temporary premises and consequently could not open, the chairman of Educate Together, Mr Paul Rowe, said (The Irish Times, August 7th), that parents of children in Waterford and Navan were being forced to enrol in denominational schools, which conflicted with their beliefs. A "small number" had opted for home education.
Multi-denominational schools seem to suffer, in the collective Irish psyche, from the stigma of being repositories of error: those who express the desire for a curriculum free from Christian religious doctrine are perceived as being the very people most in need of it.
When the Education (Welfare) Act 2000 is implemented next summer, the National Educational Welfare Board will have the power to authorise the issuance of School Attendance Notices that will force parents to send their child to a named school.
If there is no multi-denominational school available, this will mean that parents may be compelled, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, to send their children to a school that violates their Constitutional right under Article 42.3.1: "The State shall not oblige parents in violation of their conscience and lawful preference to send their children to schools established by the State, or to any particular type of school designated by the State."
How can it be legal for the State to issue School Attendance Notices to parents who have no choice? Will the State put parents who have no choice into prison for failing to send their children to schools they find incompatible with their beliefs?
Educate Together has also reacted angrily to the lack of any provision for a multi-denominational school in a plan on future education provision in Portlaoise. The idea of parents actually having any choice in this matter must not have occurred to the Portlaoise politicians who framed the development plan.
The Government states that multi-denominational schools will be supported in those areas where parents have expressed a preference for such a school; yet consideration of the future provision of resources for such schools is excluded from development plans. Planners seem to be of the opinion that parents who want a multi-denominational school are, at best, an insignificant minority; or, at worst, lost souls who aren't sufficiently concerned about the "moral formation" of their children. Perhaps subconsciously, multi-denominational schools are not regarded as providing the pre-requisite for a fully-functioning Irish society: a Christian religious moral formation.
Very few home educators would state publicly that they chose to home educate primarily because they object to the integration of Christian religious doctrine into general studies. But many would agree, privately, that the religious predisposition of the national school curriculum, and the general unavailability of other options, did influence their decision to teach their children at home. - Yours, etc.,
Debra James, Cummerduff, Gorey, Co Wexford