Madam, – I was delighted to see our school featuring so prominently in your Feeder Schools 2010 report (November 18th). However, I was bemused by some of the inaccuracies in the school profile which accompanied the story, and am perplexed that your reporter did not check them before publication.
While Glenstal has many unique features, we certainly are not the only all-boys seven-day boarding school in the country. Our older cousins in Roscrea and Clongowes operate a similar model. And while we like to introduce our students to some elements of the monastic life which is lived in Glenstal Abbey, it is not the case that the “monks mix with the students at matins and vespers”. The boys are in bed when the monks are singing their early-morning psalms, and are at study when they are singing their evening psalms.
Prayers for the boys take place in the school itself. Where many monks do, in fact, mix with the students is the classroom. Seven of us work more or less full-time in the school, with many others involved in other ways.
Ours is a Catholic school, but your report makes it sound like a sectarian one. When the school is oversubscribed preference may be given to baptised Roman Catholics, but our enrolment policy is inclusive.
We seek to provide a Christian education nourished by the liturgy but available to all who are open to a vision of God, regardless of their confessional allegiance or denominational affiliation.
Your reporter is misguided in her view of our students’ liberty regarding their “coiffure”. While the boys do not wear a uniform for class, there is a clear dress code, and they certainly may not wear their hair “however they choose”!
Finally, if your reporter can locate that plan for the restoration of the castle buildings I’d love to see it. And I would appeal to her to tell me, as a matter of urgency, what site has been identified for a girls’ boarding house, since neither the monastic community nor the board of management have discussed it! – Yours, etc,