Chai Brady
Bishop Donal McKeown The restored NI Executive must focus on “human flourishing” in schools, the Bishop of Derry has said, warning that separating the teaching of mental and sexual health is not focused on children’s welfare.
Bishop Donal McKeown said that so far the biggest problem for the education sector in the North has been “the lack of direction in terms both of policy and of finance”.
Speaking of the new regulations regarding relationship and sexuality education (RSE) imposed on the North when Stormont was defunct, which mandates schools to teach about contraception and abortion, he pointed to the recent consultation on the issue which received more than 13,000 responses. The majority of responses, 73%, disagreed with the statement that “covering prevention of early pregnancy and access to abortion and these resources should not advocate, or oppose, a particular view on the moral and ethical considerations of abortion or contraception”.
Regarding the consultation, Bishop McKeown said an “overwhelming number of parents were quite clear that they wanted to take responsibility for what happens. The Department of Education has a structure in place where people can be withdrawn from that (RSE) should they so wish.
“Now that it’s legally binding, the Department of Education has to find some way of obeying the letter of the law, and yet recognising that the majority of parents aren’t particularly interested in this approach to education.”
The prelate said that it is “a very silly idea to separate sexual health from general mental health and treat it as though it were a separate subject that can be dealt with in isolation”.
“The problem for our young people actually is their general mental health. To separate sexual relationships from that seems to be an ideologically driven approach that is not something focused on the welfare of children and young people,” Bishop McKeown said, adding: “I hope that we can focus on the welfare of those who are being most failed by our current education system, we are losing too many of our young people in terms of mental health, we are losing too many who are in unemployment or under-achieving, who have a poverty if aspiration.
“I hope that we actually can have politicians who don’t just decide how to divide up the money but actually have a vision for human flourishing, promote virtue rather than just independence, and how we can be a cohesive society that supports everyone, because we lose too many young people for want of a reason for living.”