Mary KennyBritish Catholic schools are a “very useful template for discussion” in Ireland writes Mary Kenny
The October Dublin conference on “The Future of Faith-Based Schools in a Pluralist Society” looks fascinating, and includes several knowledgeable speakers from Britain – university vice-chancellor Francis Campbell, Baroness Warsi and Dr Ruth Kelly, sometime education secretary.
The British experience in faith education is worth studying and it’s due to get an extra boost from the new Prime Minister Theresa May.
Mrs May is a serious and committed Anglican, and most of her values can be traced to the roots of her Christian faith: her campaigns against prostitution and trafficking: her belief in addressing the needs the less privileged: and her strong support for faith schools. For a short time she attended a Catholic convent school herself.
Under her remit, up to 40 new Catholic schools are now to be built in Britain, providing for places for some 20,000 Catholic school children.
Decision
It was Mrs May’s own decision to scrap the 50 per cent “cap” on allocation for school places by faith, whereby, under a previous 2010 regulation half of places in an over-subscribed Catholic (or other faith) school had to be allocated to children from non-faith backgrounds.
Because faith schools are so successful, and hugely popular with parents, there is always pressure for entry from both religious and non-religious parents alike. Parents in Britain want the “ethos” of a faith school, even where they do not subscribe to a faith themselves.
The Catholic Education Service is not opposed to children from a secular background attending faith schools, but say it should not be set at a rigid 50 per cent.
British Catholic schools are certainly pluralist – they are among the most ethnically and racially diverse in the country. They are also diverse in terms of social class. A child whose mother is an ophthalmic surgeon may well be sitting next to a kid whose mum is a Filipino cleaner.
Mrs May has her critics – especially from the British Humanist Association who seek to abolish all faith schools – but she will stand firm. The British experience in faith schools can be a very useful template for discussion about the future of faith schools in Ireland.
The best way to teach sex education
Is there any satisfactory way of teaching sex education to school pupils?
If you decide to teach the biological basics, you’ll be criticised for being ‘mechanistic’. If you decide to introduce a moral or ethical framework, you’ll be accused of being ‘moralistic’ and ‘judgemental’.
If you decide to approach sex education from the emotional or psychological perspective, you will surely be regarded as subjective, bringing all your own Freudian hang-ups to the subject.
An international survey – which included Ireland – on teaching sex education in schools, and published in the British Medical Journal, reported that young people were very grouchy about the way the subject was imparted, and criticised it from every angle.
They also didn’t like their own class teachers doing the job – it was embarrassing and ‘blurred’ the lines between the academic and the personal. Quite so.
They said the information ‘de-eroticised’ sex: well, dear ones, if you had an ‘eroticised’ sex education lesson, the teacher would be at risk of being placed on the sex offenders’ register for depicting erotic material.
Information
They said they wanted more information about homosexuality. They grumbled that the classes were ‘gendered’ (that is, portraying a difference between men and women) and that information too often portrayed men as predatory and women as passive. Yet surely that reflects the way rape and sexual harassment are now universally reported: it’s always the man who is accused of being predatory. That women might be seductive or provocative is now condemned as ‘sexist’.
Answer: there is no satisfactory way of conducting sex education. Young people should be equipped with facts but once you go beyond facts, you are into turbulent waters indeed.
One of the wisest comments on the subject was uttered by Dr Benjamin Spock, the baby and child expert. The best sex education a child can have, he said, was to experience a loving and kindly relationship between his or her parents. That is the first base. So true.
The inevitability of death…and taxes
It emerged recently that tax papers had not been remitted for the last year of my husband’s life, so I’ve spent more than a few days desperately scrabbling through old files looking for the relevant ledgers and bank statements.
Then I was informed that St Matthew is the appropriate saint when it comes to grappling with the tax authorities. Matthew (feast day September 21) was himself a much-despised tax collector for the Roman government at Capernaum, so he must surely be in a position to bestow succour.
I just called on St Anthony, as usual (who duly unearthed missing ledgers) and pondered on W.C. Fields’s pessimistic dictum that there are only two inevitabilities in life: “Death and taxes.”