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One Small Step for BasilSource: Fortnight, No. 83 (May 10, 1974), pp. 5-6Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25545022 .

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FRIDAY 10th MAY 1974/5

Britain: problems of low pay in certain industries where trade unions have always been weak, problems of inter-union conflict in industries where long-established trade union

organisation has been overtaken by new technologies, and

problems of procedure in settling disputes. The strategy which the working party proposes is centred on the creation of a new and independent Labour Relations Agency, whose

job it will be to step in and investigate the more general problems of structure and organisation which are so often

ignored in the ordinary coursTe of collective bargaining and arbitration. With this new body pressing for changes in

organisation and procedure?the working party itself has included draft codes of discipline and procedure in its

report?the prospects for a continuation of the relatively

peaceful climate in industrial relations in Ulster are good. The less committed adherent of the view that only

voluntary pressures can work effectively in this area, however, may still have a few questions to ask. The report of the joint working party is in one sense a complacent document like many of those produced in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. There are only passing hints at the problems of

sectarian pressures, and no mention at all of the question of inflation or how to operate an incomes policy. It is not that the trade union movement in Northern Ireland has been

ignoring the issue of discrimination. They have been directly involved in the other important working party, known as the

Van Straubenzee Committee, on discrimination which

reported last year. Significantly in that sphere where there is a need for more radical policies of change, the emphasis on

voluntary as opposed to legal pressure was less prominent. On the contrary the British model of the Race Relations Board, with wide powers of legal enforcement, is being actively pursued on the ground that voluntarism is unlikely to

produce the results which are required. The same could be said of integrated education and of an incomes policy. The conference of the Northern section of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, meeting in Ballymena this week, will be

celebrating its victory over the IRA, and the forces of the law. But it may yet need legal support and sanctions if it is to achieve its other objectives of freedom from discrimination and a greater degree of equality between different levels of

workers, and between workers and pensioners.

Education

One Small Step for Basil

There has always been a.lot I _-j^3__,--_ I

of support for integrated i^lll_i^__k, education amongst politi- /ggggggBl^^l cians. Their excuse for fail- t^^^^^_^__^P^

ing to ever do anything other ^^^#^.

than support the idea has / * '

/?%(?>\^^^\ been the impossibility of get- V Ce_^^^3^^J ting integration without re-

^*-^^^ ^f*^ sortingto "bussing" or with-

^L_l_* out radical changes in the

Sm^^ social and religious make-up f l^y of the Province. It is a chic- *te_?<_r ken and egg situation?will

j_R_w___S^L_t!CW I integrated schools produce gB^ySSl^^^^ an integrated community or will an integrated community produce a common school

system? As it is easier to legislate for the integration of schools than

for the integration of communities, Basil Mclvor's proposals for shared management of schools is a step in the right direction, albeit a small one. It brought an immediate

response, as one might expect, from representatives of the Catholic Church who declared the scheme naive and not welcome. On one television programme following Mclvor's

speech the dislike for the scheme voiced by the priest was echoed by a right-wing Protestant clergyman.

Clearly anything.that the Executive does in education is

going to trample heavily on the toes of someone or other. In

every part of the educational system reform is going to comd

up against the grammar school lobby or the church lobby. To

go ahead with Mclvor's scheme, without some support from the churches would make its implementation impossible. At

present Catholics attending state schools are being intimi-, dated into returning to the Catholic educational system by threats that their children will not be 'confirmed' into the church. In Craigavon, where necessity forced both Catholics and Protestants to attend the same school, the local Catholic church sent a priest to give the Catholic children the instruction which they apparently wanted. As soon as a

Catholic school was built in the area this arrangement was

stopped although Catholic children continued to attend the state school.

The church does not believe that the segregation of children has played any part in the inter-communal strife. But then churches aren't noted for seeing the obvious, faith in the unknown has always taken preference over reality.

Children from different religious backgrounds who have mixed on holiday trips and other ventures have clearly shown that the opportunity to make friends with 'the other side' does a lot to dispel the myths and fears which are part of their dubious heritage.

Perhaps the time has come to get to grips with the churches and question what place they should have in education. Education and religious education are two distinctly separate things. It is quite possible to teach moral principles in schools

which would be acceptable to atheists, Jews and Buddhists as well as Christians. It would also be possible for schools to

provide religious instruction for would-be Christians after school hours or at a time when children can opt in to religion rather than opt out of religious teaching. This system* coupled with Sunday school teaching, and the influence of home, would provide enough opportunity for indoctrination to keep both Protestant and Catholic clergy happy. It would also allow those people disillusioned with Christianity and those of other persuasions an opportunity to have a school

system where their children can be taught free of the

trappings of religious and community divisions that are the hallmark of this desolate country. It is no more logical to teach religion as an integral part of a school curriculum than it is to teach vegetarianism, atheism, pacifism or worship of the great pumpkin.

There is another aspect of Mclvor's proposals which are

disturbing. Mclvor must have known that his scheme;* however mild, would stir up enough feeling to make it the

predominant educational topic for months to come. He may also know that despite support in the Assembly the plan is

unlikely to get off the ground. It is also true that the most

likely solution, the complete separation of church and school-, is not likely to win much favour with his colleagues.

Meanwhile the discussion on quasi-integration will pra vide a useful smokescreen to hide other educational matters which require urgent action. Talk to Mclvor about compre hensive schooling and, in public, he will say that the matter is

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6/FORTNIGHT

under discussion and there will be an announcement in time. Ask him about comprehensive education in private and he

! will say, "Oh, but you wouldn't want to get rid of those nice

j grammar schools, would you?" Despite support for compre | hensive schemes among the area boards there is unlikely to

; be any action from the Department while Mr Mclvor is in

j charge. If integration is so close to the Executive's heart then, when

the shared management scheme breaks down, a little time

might be devoted to integrating the teacher training colleges. Witfi teachers coming from the same building there would be

hope then, at least, that their charges would be educated

through stressing the similarities of the communities rather than, as at present, the differences.

Dublin Letter 1 I

Integrated Parents

Supporters of integrated education in the Republic must have greeted Mr Basil Mclvor's speech on the subject last

] I week with a mixture of relief and impatience at the least.

I Relief?that the case for an experiment in shared I schooling had been put so forthrightly by a Minister for

Education in some part of Ireland, and that it had allowed

somebody like the Opposition leader, Mr Lynch, to come out in favour of integrated education as strongly as he did at a

Fianna Fail dinner in Co. Wexford last Saturday, a few days after Mr Mclvor's speech. Impatience?that our own

Minister, Mr Burke, has set himself so firmly against the

I power-sharing philosophy of Mr Mclvor's proposals, par

[ ticularly the emphasis on the need for inter-church co

I operation and the undertaking that the rate of progress I should be set by the parents. I Mr Burke's views on the merits of integrated primary

| schools and of the rights of parents in the matter have been

| illuminated recently by a dispute at St. Patrick's National

J School in Dalkey, Co. Dublin, where the parent-teacher asso

[ ciation has been demanding a management structure which reflects the multi-denominational mis of the pupils.

ST. PATRICK'S OF DALKEY St. Patrick's is a primary school under Church of Ireland

I management, with an enrolment of slightly over 200 boys and I girls. About 50% of the pupils are Church of Ireland, 25% I Catholic, and 25% other denominations. The flirtation with

I multi-denominational classrooms which Church of Ireland

primary schools have often explored in the past, often for very I practical reasons, has in this instance become a passion

J which both Mr Burke and the Church of Ireland are now

I trying desperately to still. I St. Patrick's, like every primary school in the Republic, I stands on grounds originally bought or provided by the I Church under whose management it is. The Church appoints

[ the teachers, has the final say in the choice of textbooks, is the

I final authority in all matters relating to the day to day I running of the school and, in addition, is responsible,

[ through the pockets of its parishioners, for a proportion of

J the annual maintenance cost of the school buildings.

This at least is the position according to the Book of

I Regulations, which at one point gives "explicit recognition" I to the denominational character of the schools. Iji practise I however several developments?the rocketing cost of sites for I new schools, the increasing financial burden of the 'parish

| contribution', the growth of parent-teacher associations?

I are creating .difficulties and tensions not easily resolved I within the old structures and which, in the case of St. | I Patrick's, have spotlighted the illogicalities in a system of

state education, under such tight denominational control, when confronted with parents demanding their constitution al right to chose integrated classrooms.

PARENTS RIGHTS Mr Burke is at present negotiating with the managers,

Catholic and Protestant, on the question of site and maintenance costs, and with the managers and teachers on a

proposal to involve parents in boards of management. While there is every indication that he will agree to take over a larger proportion of the direct costs, he has never said anything to

suggest that he would support a management structure

sufficiently flexible to accommodate shared responsibility between the churches where parents desired it; and still less, that parents might form a majority on a board of manage

ment.

Mr Burke's views on this thorny issue of parents' right might never have been clarified if it had not been for St. Patrick's School. St. Patrick's problem, or at least its most

important one, overcrowding, had taken at least ten years of hard work to create. In the 1960s it was a small parish school with about 60 pupils, predominantly Church of Ireland, and with little prospect of growth, Faced with the possibility of even smaller enrolments it encouraged parents of other de nominations to send their children there. This the parents did in increasing numbers as the reputation of the teaching staff grew. It was one of the first schools in the county to

experiment with the teaching methods and techniques produced in the Department of Education's new child centred curriculum in 1971. But it is desperately short of

space for the new pupils it has attracted. The manager of the school, the Rev. Frank Williams, feels

that his parish's financial liabilities in relation to the school are already dangerously high, and that the Church of Ireland should not be obliged to pay for primary school education for the whole community. He has refused to consider building another classroom, a view which is shared by his Select

Vestry. The parents, while accepting that the present buildings are inadequate in the long term, are prepared to

accept a temporary solution on the present site, involving extra classrooms, while they wait for the Minister to provide a new school on new site, which he may never do. They are also determined not to accept any solution, temporary or

permanent, which would involve diminishing the present denominational mix.

The Minister's reaction to the dispute has been unexciting. He has had one meeting with the PTA and the manager, at which he said that even if the parents bought a site, built a school and hired the teachers, he could give no guarantees of

support. He concluded the meeting with the remark that in future he would deal only with the manager, not with the

parents or teachers. Later he wrote to the manager advising him to reduce the enrolment to 180 by next September, and to select pupils on the basis of their religion: Church of

Ireland first, other Protestant denominations second, and

Catholic and others third. In addition no pupils under five

years of age, whatever their religion, were to be admitted. The obvious effect of this policy, in an area of increasing

population like south-east Co. Dublin, is that the multi

denominational aspect of the school will be eroded and it will

eventually return to being a larger version of what it

originally was, a Church of Ireland school with a predomi nantly Church of Ireland enrolment. This Mr Burke prefers to risking his good relations with the Church of Ireland by

participating in a takeover of one of its schools. It seems that

both Minister and Church are waiting anxiously for the other to speak, each unwilling to break the silence in case too much

is said. Neither, unfortunately, seems prepared to let the

I parents set the pace.

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