RETHINKING EDUCATION IN IRELAND

Interview conducted by Mr. Martin Beuster with of ,

Dr. Diarmuid Martin

MB: Archbishop, what is your vision for a Catholic education for the coming generations of this country?

DM: Catholic education has a long tradition. Catholic are present in almost every part of the world, in the different cultures in different ways. What is important is that Catholic education as we go forward in a changing Ireland adapts to the changes but manages to retain the richness of its tradition.

MB: It is certainly true that we are seeing fundamental changes in Irish society at the moment. Would you think that in the past we have seen Catholic education in Ireland?

DM: There is the parents’ wish to have the right, as is in the Irish Constitution, to decide on the type of education their children receive. Now, Catholic education has varied. There are Catholic schools, there are forms of Catholic education which even people who are not Catholics would like their children to attend because of the quality of the education. As regards the Catholic school system, there are two particular temptations it has to avoid. One is elitism and the other is that Catholic schools, because they are the local community schools, are not left carrying an excessive burden by people who sometimes, speaking about diversity, opt out of diversity and opt to go to schools which are, in fact, elitist. That is a danger at the present time.

MB: You mention diversity as an important aspect of education in today’s Ireland. Diversity comes alive in an environment of tolerance where people speak and act with honesty and conviction. So how do you suggest authentic denominational education can be fostered?

DM: There is a tendency for someone to say that there is diversity, that everyone has come together. In fact, that is not necessarily the way. Diversity implies that you respect the different traditions that are there, but that people are educated into their tradition in a way in which they can interact responsibly with others. I am convinced, and you can see this worldwide, that if people are educated with confidence in their own tradition, they will be well able to enter into a society that is diverse, bringing their own values with conviction. If you look at the areas, for example, where fundamentalism and religious tensions emerge, they arise normally where people are insecure in their religious identity or where the quality of their religious education is deficient. We have to ensure that the quality of

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religious education or that the quality of education in religiously run schools is of the highest level and that people go out with the confidence in themselves and their religious convictions which allows them to be strong participants in society.

MB: In that context do you think that the patronage model as we have seen it in the past has served religious education well?

DM: The current situation whereby, for example, I am patron of over 80% of the Primary schools in the Dublin Diocese is, in many ways, out of date. It does not respond to the needs, and I have been saying this for some time. The Minister for Education has set up a forum to look at the question of patronage and this is moving forward. Now, what is interesting is that it should not move forward on an ideological basis. It should move forward on a sure, empirical basis of trying to find out what do parents really want, what type of education parents want, and it will be a system of diverse patronage. Already, in the Dublin area, particularly in the newly built areas, that diversity is emerging through the building of new schools and the way these new schools are allocated. However, there is still a very strong demand from parents to have a religious base or an education that has a strong religious dimension to it. By that I do not mean simply that it is the study of comparative religion or sociology of religion or the history of religion. I think that they do want their children to come out with a mature sense of responsibility which springs from the actual practice of religion.

MB: Educating young children to develop their own moral compass is, perhaps, the biggest challenge we all face and this is where faith-based education comes into its own. You spoke of the danger of being elitist and we have seen this in other countries where Catholic education has become something of an option for the wealthy. Do you see that danger manifesting in Ireland in the future and how can we address it?

DM: I have always been aware of the possibility of elitism to which you refer and which I introduced into the conversation. Then there is the other side. If you go to the inner city sites of the United States the education for the poorest and the opportunities for the poorest have been given by the Catholic school system. If you look at Chicago and New York, they have an extraordinary record of offering education and educational opportunity for people who are marginalised and the Catholic school system on the whole fostered that in Ireland over the generations in ways that were appropriate for the time. We now have to see how we go about that for the future.

MB: Where do you see enrolment policies playing a part in that?

DM: I believe that first of all we have to see that there are viable alternatives to the current Catholic system in place. That will enable enrolment policies to become more reasonable and people will be freely able to opt for a particular type or stream of school. In the intervening period there will, obviously, be difficulties of application and I think that the policy that is being developed by the Forum on

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Patronage is showing the way forward on that. I believe that this cannot be achieved overnight. We have to find a way to do that over a particular period of time. For me the optimum time within which to achieve that would probably be the duration of a child’s attendance at Primary school, i.e. from the time they enter until the time they leave. Over that period schools would develop their on-going policy so that those children who are in the schools would finish their education but the new children would be entering in the knowledge that this particular school would be going in a particular direction. It would also facilitate teachers who would have a particular option over a period of time and in a managed way to decide which type of school they would prefer to teach in. That is a way which would bring people together. There are difficulties in areas where there may be only one school. The Forum itself sees that difficulty and it is still to be addressed.

MB: So, who do you think the key players are in bringing about these changes?

DM: In today’s Ireland we have extraordinary opportunities to move forward in a way that we have not done in the past to improve the quality of education across the board and to ensure that the school becomes very much embedded in the community of parents, in particular, teachers and other elements of the community. I believe that, particularly in our Primary schools, the system of a local Boards of Management taking responsibility means that there is a greater involvement of parents and the community in the school and that has great advantages over one which is run in a centralised way. Education by its nature has to respond to the particular local circumstances. I would say the same thing is important in looking at cutbacks in education. If you simply have a generalised cutback across the board then some people are going to be more disadvantaged than others, so the involvement of the community and the Department of Education and the educational establishment in the good sense, the universities, the teacher training establishments, and the Churches with their traditions will make for better outcomes.

MB: Would you be convinced that the sacramental life is best placed in the school, going forward?

DM: I don’t think it’s best placed in the school or in the parish or somewhere else. I think it is a matter of bringing together all those who are key players in this and the school plays an important part. If you look at the sacramental preparation; it is an important part of school life and would be celebrated in school life itself. There is a certain sense in which the school wishes to be part of the broad community to which the children belong and to those special moments in the life of the children. However, I do believe, and it is part of my policy, that the parish must become more clearly involved in that, in co-operation with the school and listening to the parents.

MB: The prime responsibility for education rests with parents. Then there is the triangle, if you like, of the concern of parents, the life of the parish and the mission

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of the school. What we see in Ireland currently is a great disaffection form the life of the parishes and we see a new life emerging within these parishes. What we see also is, perhaps, a misunderstanding of the role of the schools in religious formation. You have spoken of the theological illiteracy of people who have come through years of religious education in this country. These are people who lack the theological grammar to meet the challenge of rooting their own experience in a faith community.

DM: If you start off from a compartmentalisation, with the parish here, the school there and the parents over there, you are going to end up with compartmentalisation. You will notice that the people with flip-charts always have circles. You have a circle around parents, you have a circle around the school and you have a circle around the parish. The more the circles converge the better your system is going to be, so the answer is not in saying that you go off in one direction. The answer is that you try, in a particular community, in a community that is diverse, to achieve the best possible combination of all three and that that takes place in a school of high quality.

MB: Where can we support parents who lack the grammar to develop their own faith?

DM: This is another important question about which I have very strong views. At the end of the I stressed particularly that the dominant need we have to address in the Church, is that of adult faith formation and when I say adult faith formation I do not mean education of another category. There are young people, children, teenagers, adults and the elderly. By adult faith formation I mean that which is adult in the way it acts, in the way it treats people, respects people as adults; that it trains them to a faith which allows them to live as adults in the adult world in which they live. This is certainly something that is lacking in the church in Ireland. I think that in this respect Ireland is way behind what is happening in some other countries. However, we do have a National Directory for Catechesis which is a very broad programme and which has to be implemented in the years to come. As yet, I believe, it has not broken adequately into the management of the catechetical programmes in Ireland. This is a real challenge for us. When that happens parents will be stronger in their commitment and will be able to bring that into the life of the school and the community. Now, we have to be very careful about this. There are people who do not want religious education. Their rights have to be respected and we have to provide a plurality. We also have to be careful as regards assuming what parents think, and one of the good things coming out of the Forum is that there will be a process of consultation going on. It was sometimes said that because of the large number of immigrants to Ireland that the should play a smaller role. It should be remembered that many of the immigrants are Catholic and that many from other faith traditions would wish their children to go to a school with some religious inspirations. The difficult challenge therefore, is to proceed with that consultation, to see that it is well and scientifically conducted and, also, that external factors do not play a dominant part in it.

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MB: What external factors?

DM: Well, in the sense that sometimes people are particularly attached to a school. If you are going to have plurality over time people will have to make those choices and may have to go to a school within a reasonable distance rather than to the school next door. There is also the other challenge we face, particularly in Dublin, although I am sure that it happens in other places, and that is the demographic changes that are taking place. If you take the parish of Blanchardstown in Dublin, for example; in the five-year period since the last census the population increased by fifty percent rather unexpectedly, so that the planning for schools in areas like that is quite difficult. On the other hand, in the city centre we have schools where the numbers are going down and in some cases the indications are that they will not go up very quickly. In this diocese we are already working to address this question, maybe bringing together single stream schools into co-educational schools, leaving those buildings, perhaps, for either another educational patron or for some other use.

MB: I would suggest that a radically positive view of the world today in Ireland is counter-cultural. Do you share that view?

DM: There is obvious frustration because of the economic challenges and because of the changing culture in Ireland, but in my meetings with young people I find an extraordinary sense of idealism. Irish people are very much European. They have an understanding, they know, they travel to a degree that was not normal in my time. They have a real commitment to the improvement of society. For example, there is a huge number of schools in the diocese who organise projects for local help, who go each year to the developing world. These are all people who have a desire for a different world, they want a hope-filled world, a world full of meaning. At the same time they are facing the tragic situation that the job offerings that are there for them mean that they may not be able to bring that idealism to the service of our own country and they may emigrate. The challenge of long-term unemployment may not be as significant in Ireland as in some other European countries, but it is one of the main things that bring about a lack of hope and a lack of idealism

MB: But idealism, I think, will always meet with harsh realities and the question then is, how do we respond when we hit the wall?

DM: Idealism certainly meets with harsh realities, but conformity will never address the harsh realities. If you simply go with a system of conformity or a negative orientation then you are going to end up where you started.

MB: Adolfo Nicholas, the Superior General of the Jesuits says that God is not absent from the world, that He is insistently present in its depths. So it is not the lack of hope; it is to see that in the reality that we face God is at work. If this conviction informs the way we treat each other, if it informs the way we educate our children,

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it will help them to develop a moral compass which is not utilitarian, which is going in a direction where society becomes one of care. Do you see that Catholic education, to that extent, would be counter-cultural in our economic environment, in view of the way that Irish society has developed in the last twenty or thirty years?

DM: Obviously, Catholic education will always be counter-cultural. It will be challenging people in every situation to establish the roots of real values and, you know, religious education opens a person to God which means it opens them to transcending to the Christian God who is a God of love and the more one is captured into that understanding of the Christian faith, the more one allows the message to work through them and that is a message of love, of self-giving rather than simply of having. It should bring an understanding of integrity in personal life and a sense of morality in the broad sense of that word. It is very difficult today to know where you ground public morality. One of the problems is that the Church, perhaps, emphasised sexual morality too much and the concepts of public morality too little. The challenge we have is to show that faith is something that gives us a different view of life which will influence the way we act in public. Many of those who come out of Catholic schools are not necessarily models of Christian living, and this, again, is where Catholic education must challenge people out of their conformity, out of just drifting in to what is the current culture of the moment and to give people a sense of the common good and a sense of responsibility. I spoke the other day about education to responsibility. I go to schools and sometimes see there the mission statement which is about enabling children to realise their talents, about educational excellence, but they say very little about the fact that when you get that, when your talents are realised, you don’t do it just for yourself, that you must go out then, from that sense of responsibility, that your broad education, of which faith-education is a part, makes you different from others and that will always be counter-cultural. I don’t mean that we all become revolutionaries. We agreed that idealism meets harsh realities, but with our broad education, grounded in faith, we do not run away from the harsh realities. We confront them by accepting responsibility for bringing about change in our society.

MB: Where would you draw the line then, on what you might still consider a Catholic education or a school which professes to Catholic education and practices? If we look at doctrine, if we look at the question of inter-faith communion, sexual morality which you have mentioned; these are the issues that parents today are grappling with, that young people are grappling with. This is their reality. So where would you draw the line on what you would still consider a Catholic school?

DM: I think the fundamental criterion is the leading of people to an understanding of the faith in Christ and what that means. You see, very often we end up defending positions rather than illustrating positions or rather than teaching people what are the values which come from the Christian teaching that enable them, if they interiorise them and live them, to become more mature in their faith and also to become better citizens. Catholic education should be producing people who are exemplary citizens in a way that comes from their faith. This should enable

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them to sit and live and talk and dialogue with people of other faiths rather than saying that we are right and you are wrong, and should give them the ability to explain the hope that is within them, which comes from the Gospel and from their life in the Church. It is a very big challenge. The Pope has spoken about a crisis of education rather than a crisis in education and that crisis of education is really about what type of school community will produce people who are able to go out maturely to realise their talents to the highest degree possible for as long as possible and to be able and willing and desirous to take part in the life of the society. If you simply think about wealth or power then you will fall into the trap of conformity and espouse values that are empty and which, in the long term, do not give the liberation that the Christian message should give.

MB: The conformity that you mention might have resulted from a model of control which, in the past, was driven, perhaps, by an underlying concept of fear. What is the model that can replace this approach?

DM: The model that can replace this is to go back and get to know who Jesus Christ was, what He said, what His teaching is; that fundamentally, He came to reveal to us that God is love and that love is the driving force for changing. That means that love is a way of life in which all your interactions are driven by a sense of caring, of welcoming and also of forgiving. Today’s world is very harsh and that sense of being forgiven, of being able to rise up and start again is vitally important. We can understand all this on a personal level but we have to bring it, in some way or other, into the type of society that we have. That is why I would stress also the need for on-going education for people; that those who were disadvantaged at some stage of their lives due to exclusion or marginalisation, because their needs were never met and their talents never recognised, that they have a second chance. There are extraordinary things happening here in the inner city of Dublin as regards people who, because of the poverty they lived in, went out to work when they reached fourteen years of age or as soon as they finished school. Some were extraordinarily talented people and through adult education they are re- discovering themselves and flourishing. These are the very ones who will go out to the community and bring about change. That must be a real dimension of Catholic schools. They are not inward-looking, elitist schools but schools which are supported from the community and within the community but they must then bring their contribution to the community.

MB: Archbishop thank you very much for engaging in the dialogue.

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