Brandon Scott
It flies in the face of everything Catholics have been told by the media and those who purport to speak on behalf of children but the evidence is in, school children want more religion in their classrooms and not less, and a survey by the Children’s Ombudsman backs this up.
The survey revealed that 34% of 1,036 young people surveyed desired more religious education in schools while also indicating that only 3% wished to see religious education removed entirely from the curriculum.
Two leading figures in Catholic education, Alan Hynes of the Catholic Education Partnership (CEP) and Fr Patrick Moore PP of St Michael’s Parish Castlepollard, voiced their support for faith-based education in the country and argued that the young people’s responses need to translate into a new appreciation for religious education, where its “life-essential element” is recognised anew.
Mr Hynes hoped the findings will combat the “downplaying” of religious education which has “become vogue” and led to it being “shoved aside” in classrooms.
Mr Hynes, CEO of the CEP, welcomed the results of the survey.
“I found it very interesting because these were the voices of young people,” he said. “It’s positive from our point of view. This idea that young people are interested and intrigued by these things and why wouldn’t they be?
“The downplaying of religion in the education system that’s becoming vogue, not just among the patrons but you would commonly see people arguing that religion shouldn’t have any place in schools. I think that’s a mistake.”
Mr Hynes added: “For people who are religious, which is still the great majority of people in Ireland and even the world, religion is not a phenomenon but a lived experience,” he said. “To try and simply rob it of that life essential element that so many people hold it to be, I don’t think that it will promote respect in the end between people of different faiths.
“Here in the Catholic Education Partnership, we’ve been in dialogue trying to promote a view that we believe that religious education is an integral and important part of the education system and it should be understood on the basis of how it interacts with other subjects.”
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Fr Patrick Moore PP of Castlepollard, who has been on an Education and Training Board for a number of decades and who featured in last week’s edition of the paper speaking out passionately against the push to remove faith formation in schools, describing it as “terrible negligence”, said that he felt vindicated by the findings of the survey and that the insights needed to be built on in the future.
“Yes I do [feel vindicated by the findings],” he said. “I think there is a tendency to search for spirituality – a strong tendency. We should be building on them [the insights from the survey] very strongly. It’s an awful lacuna in education if the spiritual is neglected or put to one side. It has to be core in education – it’s holistic education. It’s the whole person: Body, mind and spirit.”