Time for education minister to have faith in his ideals
September 3, 2012
AFTER long debate but little action, this academic year parents will be given a choice to change the patron, and by extension the culture, of their child’s school.
Of over 3,300 primary schools, 44 will be surveyed to ask parents if they wish to change the patron of the school their child attends. The questions to be asked are still a work in progress; the net issue is will parents wish to continue having the local Catholic bishop as patron, or will they opt for change. This change process, still to be defined, is arguably one of the most important departures in Irish education since 1922.
The debate in recent years has been about the choice, and the lack of it, parents have for their child’s education. An almost monocultural, almost always Catholic community, has rapidly given way to a much more diverse and likely permanently changed society.
For the first time there is now a significant community of parents who want non-denominational education.
There is a growing disjuncture in school communities between the lives of parents and the ethos of the schools their children attend. It is debatable how effectively promoted a Catholic ethos is in Catholic schools where clergy are largely absent.
A tradition of lay passivity in the face of a dominant clerical presence has left a legacy of indifference in some class rooms.
Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn has long been a crusader for a more liberal, less clerical Ireland. His controversial comment in 1996 about a post-Catholic pluralist Republic seems percipient in retrospect. Now 66 and probably in his final tour at the cabinet table, he has a chance to leave a lasting mark on the fabric of Irish society. As a former minister in economic portfolios during the 1980s and 90s including finance, it will not be lost on him that the Irish left has manifestly failed to implement a social democrat let alone a socialist economic agenda. Now under the cosh of the Troika, Ruairí Quinn in Government is implementing policies the PDs would have lusted after, but hardly dared hope for. Post-Catholic Ireland is coinciding with a post-social democrat future.
In its centenary year Labour has arguably lost the economic argument for another generation. It is seriously threatened again with electoral retribution. The one plank of its policies where it is unquestionably riding the contemporary zeitgeist is what in the civil war of current American politics are called cultural issues. Eamon Gilmore’s description of gay marriage as ‘the civil rights issue of this generation’ and Pat Rabbitte’s warning off Cardinal Brady against Catholic church engagement in any political campaign on abortion are telling.
A generation ago Garret FitzGerald’s constitutional crusade ran into the ground in the face of economic recession and social conservatism. There is little of the latter left. But Ruairí Quinn, who with Michael Noonan, is the remaining veteran of that cabinet, will know that unpopular governments find delivering major change difficult.
Ruairí Quinn in contrast to his own past rhetoric and his colleagues’ current posturing has been remarkably ameliorating in tone towards Catholic educators. Certainly he has harried the religious orders over compensation payments to abuse victims. He has also said he believes he has been caricatured as an enemy of the Catholic church. He envisages Catholic schools that are ‘openly celebratory about their own religion’ in an environment in which parents would have a free choice between denominational and non-denominational schools.
On the face of it, surveying parents in just 44 schools is a modest proposal. Its critics may say disappointingly so. The complexities of transferring not only patronage but property, and the possibility that parents of any persuasion may be reluctant to change the patron of what they regard as well-run schools, will likely mean modest change in the short term. What is at issue is the effectiveness of the mechanism, once instituted, for delivering more sweeping change in the longer term.
In parallel with a mechanism to allow parents change school patronage is a promise for legislation to amend Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act of 1998. This allows institutions run by religious institutions or orders to bypass anti-discrimination measures ‘where it is reasonable to do so in order to maintain the religious ethos of the institution’. An openly gay teacher or an unmarried teacher who becomes pregnant is vulnerable to the censure, or more, of Boards of Management and Patrons. If largely, but not always an implicit pressure, its removal would empower an openness that could be perceived as undermining a school’s ethos. It would also unquestionably vindicate the personal freedoms of the teachers concerned, as well as influencing the school culture of their students.
Given the overwhelming dominance of Catholic schools, vindicating the religious ethos of school communities that decide to adopt one is unlikely to be a priority now. But it flags a future tension. Similarly the expectation of major change in school patronage is unlikely to be met in the short term. The minority Protestant faiths are acutely aware of the importance of schools to their communities. Contrary to perception, they are a lot less part of an emerging liberal consensus than supposed.
Ruairí Quinn is likely to leave behind a school system where change in the statistics on school patronage is modest or negligible. He has an opportunity to empower a change in the attitudes and ethos of individual teachers, and over time of the patronage of more schools, that could cumulatively be transformative. The Catholic school system is now the overextended infrastructure of a reduced faith community. If less faith-run schools are the conscious choice of more committed parents, new challenges will arise around the religious freedoms of fewer and truer religious schools. For now that future horizon is some way off. In retrospect, however, it will likely be seen as having begun under Ruairí Quinn in Autumn 2012.
* Gerard Howlin is a public affairs consultant, and was a senior government adviser from 1997 to 2007.
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