David Quinn
There are prices to be paid for greater social variety, writes David Quinn
‘Diversity’ is the new religion of Ireland. It is one of those words that is never challenged, is constantly promoted and is simply assumed to be a good in itself. Celebrate it, we’re told.
‘Diversity’ is ‘inclusive’. ‘Diversity’ is ‘compassionate’. These sound like Christian values, don’t they? How can Christians object? On the contrary, shouldn’t they sign up to the diversity agenda and actively promote it? Well, it depends, doesn’t it, on what exactly ‘diversity’ means?
Diversity in itself is neither good nor bad. Calling something ‘diverse’ might be a simple statement of fact. You could say, for example, that is a particular school has a very diverse population consisting of pupils from many different backgrounds.
Is it good that a given school is very diverse? It might be, but it depends. For example, do they all speak different languages? If they do, then it will become very hard to teachers to do their jobs properly. In a school where subjects are taught through English, what happens when a substantial minority of pupils have poor English? Then we have a problem. Teachers might spend so long with those pupils that it holds back the class as a whole.
Revolution
How do you teach a common system of values to a very diverse school population? Take sex education. For the most part, schools in Western countries, including Ireland, take one of the central tenets of the sex revolution for granted, namely that – with the exception of incest – no act is wrong, sexually speaking, so long as the parties to it are adult and consenting.
But we saw in a primary school in England recently that many Muslim parents objected to their children being taught about LGBT relationships. The school has suspended sex ed lessons for the time being, but eventually someone is going to have to give way, either the school itself or the Muslims (who were joined by some Christians).
But the point is that it is absolutely impossible for a school to teach values that will be common to everyone. In fact, it may become harder the more diverse a school population becomes, and easier if the pupils, teachers and parents all have a common background.
So, when we’re told to ‘celebrate diversity’, we have look closely at what diversity means in a given context.
One reason families are more ‘diverse’ is because of more and more marriage breakdown”
To stay on the example of schools (which are a sort of microcosm of society as a whole), what should happen to the teaching of religion?
Well, some people insist that the only way to handle this is to teach all religions equally, or else don’t teach about religion at all.
But not teaching about religion at all, while insisting that pupils be taught about sex in a way some parents will inevitably find objectionable, says religion is such a problematic area that it doesn’t belong in school at all. And that teaches something about religion anyway, something bad.
If instead the school teaches that all religions are equal, this can easily end up conveying the message that religions are equally true and equally false. In this case, trying to cater for ‘diversity’ collapses into a form of relativism.
And what about parents who want their children taught a specific religion and a specific set of values by their school? Should we then have Catholic and Muslim and Protestant and secular schools? Increasingly our political establishment dislikes separate religious schools and wants all children to be taught in the same schools.
But if children are all taught in the same kind of schools, that would mean a less diverse range of schools. So, we have the paradoxical outcome that in the name of ‘diversity’ we get less diversity.
Again, we can see that the more we examine this issue of ‘diversity’ the more complicated things become.
What about the family? Once more, we are told to celebrate all the diverse forms of family that now exist, and certainly all families should be given respect, just as all religions and all ethnic groups should be treated with respect.
But one reason families are more ‘diverse’ is because of more and more marriage breakdown, or because more and more men are opting not to help raise their children, or are not being let, meaning more and more women are having to raise their children on their own, and more and more children are growing up without a father.
This means family diversity might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Or what about multi-culturalism? Again, we’re told to celebrate it. Multi culturalism is mainly a product of high immigration. This is a very touchy subject. Bring it up and you’re very likely to be condemned as a ‘racist’.
But if newly-arrived people don’t share important values in common with the surrounding culture, you might have a problem, and it will be worse if they specifically reject those values. So you are entitled to ask a few questions about what multi culturalism might mean in practice.
Might it mean, in fact, that your own historical culture, which you might be strongly attached to, and might not be half so bad, has to be more and more watered down over time?
Multi-culturalism is mainly a product of high immigration. This is a very touchy subject”
Might your country become less socially cohesive, more divided, less unified, more fractious? People will suggest that the answer is to tolerate difference. But that is too simplistic if the new cultures are very different from your own and they are constantly being told they don’t really have to adapt to their new country because their own culture is so great.
The point is, diversity cannot be celebrated uncritically. A responsible person must ask the question, what does diversity mean in practice? Can it have a bad as well as a good side? The answer is obviously, yes. In other words, let’s have a proper think about this.