Madam, – First Minister Peter Robinson, in opposing the state funding of Catholic education in the North, questioned the morality of segregated education there, saying “we cannot hope to move beyond our present community divisions while our young people are educated separately” (Home News, October 16th). Mr Robinson claimed segregated education is a “benign form of apartheid”.
To suggest that those who choose denominational education for their children are not committed to a shared society is a considered insult and is unworthy of the First Minister. No doubt Mr Robinson echoes a sentiment that would be favoured by some. However, I believe the majority of people support the principle of parental choice and educational pluralism.
It is both curious and hypocritical that a unionist politician would launch an attack in such intemperate language as Mr Robinson did on any form of perceived segregation. Successive unionist regimes were responsible for the segregation of communities throughout the North in line with their policy of gerrymandering to ensure to continuation of unionist hegemony in predominantly nationalist areas.
Indeed, a recent survey found that in excess of 90 per cent of the population in the North lives in denominationally segregated hou-sing. It is regrettable that the First Minister did not display the same appetite to pursue the segregation of the North’s children in unionist housing policies. The logical extension of his argument about forced integrated education would also require the forced integration of housing. Furthermore, does Mr Robinson’s policy of integrated schooling also apply to Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other ethnic groups?
As one who wholly endorses the unfairly maligned state education systems, on both sides of the Border, I cannot subscribe to the view that the mandatory integration of Catholic schools into the public system would benefit society.
It could also be construed from Mr Robinson’s words that those parents who choose either denominational or private education for their children should be discouraged or even denied this right by means of withdrawing finance.
Any and all solutions to schooling, public and private, must be consensus-based, where difference is not just tolerated but respected, where all creeds, colours and systems are celebrated and where the existence of schools with differing ethos is welcomed as genuine cultural pluralism. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – Peter Robinson was stating an inconvenient but vital truth when he said recently that Northern Ireland education is a damaging form of apartheid (Home News, October 16th).
As a reluctant product of the Catholic education system in the North, I have been in lifelong agreement with Mr Robinson on this one. The chorus of condemnation from a Catholic bishop, a Sinn Féin member and a Catholic school council is incomprehensible to me as I witness from afar my wee country still up to its tonsils in sectarian hatred.
Can these Catholic notables not see that the only way to really challenge this sectarianism is for children from both sides to attend the same schools, and to get to know each other? My own children attended a Protestant school here in Dublin, and Catholic instruction for the many Catholic children (not mine, I might add) who attended this school was provided by the parents after school hours.
Faith-based schools are clearly not appropriate in a wee country riven deeply by the problems of self-imposed apartheid.
How many more generations in the North are to be condemned to mutual exclusion, suspicion and sectarian violence in the interfaces,before it is accepted that Mr Robinson is correct, and that we have to begin the process of changing it, right now? – Is mise,