Madam, - Seamus Mulconry (October 19th) questions Fintan O'Toole's assertion that primary education should be facilitated under one State education model and challenges Mr O'Toole to "offer some proof that the State is capable of better managing the primary education system than its current voluntary managers?".
I point Mr Mulconry to the egalitarian and successful Nordic education model. Schoolchildren here simply go to their local community primary schools where they mingle and learn together irrespective of creed or colour. They are doing quite well under one state education model. According to the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Finland recently ranked in the top five worldwide for mathematics, reading literacy, science and problem solving.
In addition I contend that the Nordic education model goes a considerable way to nipping class and race division in the bud during a child's early formative years.
The World Bank's leading education consultant, Juan Manuel Moreno, recently said: "An efficient and equitable education system is, in the final analysis, what we mean by a system based on quality". That is why Spain recently opted for the Nordic education model. - Yours, etc,
NIALL O'DONOGHUE, Vesilahti, Finland.
Madam, - Seamus Mulconry castigates Fintan O'Toole for advocating more State involvement in primary education. This Thatcherite reflex would be fine and laudable if primary education were a business segment, where competition could temper the behaviour of participants and lead, via closures and amalgamations, to maximum efficiency. But primary education is not a business. It is, in fact, one of the best examples of an activity where it is far more important to be effective than it is to be efficient.
Effective at what? What should be the goals of primary education? They should not, I submit, include the promotion of adherence to the tenets of any religion. That function belongs in the home and in the church, mosque or synagogue. Primary schooling should be about grounding in the requirements of literacy and numeracy, but also in the imparting of what it means to be a good citizen.
Only the State can do this properly. Only the State can educate the young people of the country fairly and impartially. Only the State can ensure the enrolment of pupils according to criteria that do not leave some behind because of the religion they happened to be born into.
This has not happened a lot in this country, but the fact that it has happened at all, to even a small minority of children, is a disgrace so large that it cries out for the current system of primary school patronage to be abolished.
Mr Mulconry's sideswipe at the problems of integration in France is disingenuous. Were it not for the care that the French constitution takes to separate church and state the problems in the banlieues would be infinitely greater than they are at present. - Yours, etc,
SEAMUS McKENNA, Farrenboley Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14.