Sir, - The decision of the Irish authorities not to provide financial support for Cooleenbridge Steiner School has been greeted with dismay in many other parts of Europe. Such schools enjoy the support of government in, for example, Finland, the Netherlands and many of the German lander, as well as in many of the countries of Eastern Europe where their approaches have been widely adopted as a means of shaking off Marxist authoritarianism. In Denmark the mere fact that a group of a dozen responsible parents desires a particular form of schooling is usually enough to guarantee state financing.
Ireland has always shown generosity to the schools of religious minorities and increasingly to those of ethnic and linguistic minorities. But in all European countries there are also responsible philosophical minorities who are equally deserving of tolerance. Those of us who live in Britain are all too conscious of our own government's backwardness over such matters and in recent years had come to believe that Ireland was showing a better example. One hopes that there will be a chance for a rethink now that both the European Union and the Council of Europe are giving increasingly firm moral support to the idea of educational pluralism. - Yours, etc., Robert Bell, Vice-president, European Forum for Freedom of Education,
St John's Wood, London NW8.