Nuala O’LoanNuala O’Loan shares her vision of the truly faith-based school
I want first of all to define a pluralist society and to examine the extent to which we have such a society in Northern Ireland. A pluralist society by definition is one in which religious, racial, ethnic and politician groups can thrive. It is a society which enables its subsets to develop their traditions and cultures. One in which, subject to the law, all groups can flourish in a common civilisation. The society which does not permit such freedoms by definition is not a pluralist society.
The north of Ireland is undoubtedly a more pluralist society now, though I think it must be said that we are not actually particularly good yet at pluralism, even in so far as it affects those of a common racial and ethnic origin. There are those who react instinctively against ‘Brits’, and those whose identity is based on loyalty to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We have a long way to go.
There are those who dream of securing peace and harmony through integrated education and I support utterly the right of parents to seek integrated education for their children. But the reality is that it has been on offer in Northern Ireland since 1981 – some 35 years, and yet only 7% of our children are educated in integrated schools.
We have in Northern Ireland a total of 827 primary schools, 67 grammar Schools and 137 non-grammar schools. Nearly 170,000 children attend our primary schools. 141,000 attend our post primary schools of whom 78,000 attend our non-grammar schools. Our education profile has changed a lot. One in three children do post GCSE education in non-grammar schools. We have seen recently very positive developments in which schools share a site and common services whilst retaining their individual identities.
Integrity
Integrated education is a popular cause. When distinguished visitors come to Northern Ireland one tends to notice the presence of children from the integrated sector disproportionately to their numbers.
Huge work is being done to fundraise and one must admire the energy and integrity of those for whom educating children together is a most important cause.
Yet, as long ago as December 1969 a teacher wrote a long and impassioned letter to The Irish News, proclaiming the need for faith schools. Malachy Finnegan wrote that “the current debate on integrated education springs at best from the desire of some to solve the problem of the divided community by tackling it from the wrong end, at worst from those who wish to distract public attention from the real issue involved in the present divisions by putting responsible Catholic opinion in the dock and making it appear intransigent and uncooperative”.
That can still very much be the approach today.
The reality in Northern Ireland is that actually all our schools are faith based, some more so than others. There is no evidence that situation will cease. All schools provide primarily Christian education. Catholic schools are avowedly faith schools – many of them providing very fine education, and amid a plethora of activities and involvement in things like community and social justice, still achieving a situation in which the top 11 schools at A level in Northern Ireland were Catholic schools.
The top performing school in Northern Ireland has 26% of its children receiving free school meals. One school in the top 50, a Catholic Maintained all-ability school, has 72% of its pupils entitled to free school meals. Poverty is still not a total bar to achievement, as it was not in my day. Children need to know that. Parents need to know it too. They need to know that their children may rise to higher things than they were able to achieve, through education. We all know that there are statistics, damned lies and statistics but actually statistics do matter to parents, and clearly many Catholic schools are outperforming other schools in Northern Ireland, including the integrated schools.
Catholic schools have talked proudly for decades of their ethos though often when challenged both staff and pupils might have struggled to differentiate between the ethos of Catholic and Protestant schools, between Catholic and integrated schools. Yet we know it when we see it. My own diocese of Down & Connor has now introduced a project, written guidance with indicators to measure what is being done, to help schools articulate and live their Catholic ethos, with a charter that defines the Catholic ethos which derives from the great commandment ‘to love one another as I have loved you’: “A school which is Gospel inspired by love, respect, truth and justice; which is person centred, promoting the dignity, self-esteem and full development of all as persons made in the image and likeness of God; which is life affirming, which is reflective and worshipping, encouraging an open and inquiring approach to faith and learning; providing opportunities for reflection, prayer and celebration of the sacraments, and finally one which welcomes people of all faith traditions, personal circumstances and community background, contributing actively to the work of peace, reconciliation and sharing.” This is a significant resource, which properly used could richly enhance the ethos of all our schools.
The Catholic ethos is there in the recognition of the unique significance of each child in scriptural terms – “before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. It is there in the lived experience of Catholicism, lived by some of the staff, obviously not all, but also through the activities of chaplains and the close connection, particularly at primary level, to the Church.
So what is it that makes Catholic schools different, and what is it that makes Catholic education worth fighting for? Firstly, I think the message is clear – Catholic parents, though they may no longer be church goers, are still choosing in a huge majority to send their children to Catholic schools. Why is that?
I think it may have something to do, too, with our troubled history. For there can be no doubt that schools played an enormously important role in saving children from the Troubles. It may be hard to remember the contribution made by Catholic schools over the near 40 years of strife, but talk to people who lived through those years and they will tell you.
Yes, those years coincided with the worst years of child abuse, and I think that memory is, understandably dominant, yet for many children in the worst areas of Northern Ireland schools were something of an oasis. Eimear O’Callaghan wrote in her autobiography Belfast Days, about her teenage years in West Belfast during the worst of the Troubles. She talked of how the nuns and teachers in her school, Dominican College on the Falls Road, this year the top performing school in Northern Ireland, expected the children to come to school even after nights broken by gun battles, rioting, bombing. She talked of how the nuns cared for them.
Many people who grew up in that era, especially in the city, talked of the compassion and care and robust expectation that the children would do their best, of the generosity of the teachers.
Children in small country schools talk too of the sense of belonging and of expectations of them. All this was done in the name of the Lord. The children knew that, however imperfectly it was expressed, for the most part their teachers were motivated by and lived their faith. It mattered to them. It was real.
Our schools should be genuinely Christian communities, sharing deeply held faith, committed to authentic Christian values, united teachers and pupils alike in mutual respect for each other and with a sense of belonging to each other. Our schools should be places where God is experienced as a reality, where Christ’s Gospel is translated into daily action and life.”
Activities
One of my more pleasurable activities is to visit schools and speak there. I have visited many schools over the years and those schools which have impressed me most are the schools which take all Catholic children and educate them together.
Yes they stream them, so that the children are able to learn at an appropriate pace, but they also embrace each child for the goodness and the talent they manifest, so that each child can be a source of comfort, of learning and of growth for the other, no matter their abilities of disabilities.
I started off by talking of how well our Catholic schools do academically, but we all know that if you select children for entry to examination according to their prospective results, excluding those who are borderline or those for whom life has become a bit of a crisis you will do better. It does happen.
There is a challenge for all schools there. And there is a challenge too for those who do not see the pain of a child whose life has been turned upside down by some tragedy or other, and for whom school has become such a difficult place that they cannot conform, and so they don’t really fit in any more.
They are no longer biddable and cooperative, but may be very challenging in behaviour. If schools are driven by academic success, those children, for whom studying is not possible because there is not the necessary peace, maybe in their hearts and maybe in their homes, may well be gradually excluded. There are schools which do not want the children who may upset the examination statistics!
When that happens a school fails because their purpose cannot be mere academic success, but must be the development of the whole person, and a child who is loved and cared for in those situations, even when they reject that love and care may well become again a model student, may be enabled to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and be healed in the love of Christ made visible in that school.
I think that is what may have happened to a lot of children during the Troubles, as they lived with the daily murders, and they were daily in those days, we can forget; as they saw fathers and brothers imprisoned, engaged in violence, and so many atrocities all around them, they were able for a few hours a day to live with some normality, to know care and love, and so to survive so much. Maybe that is why the children who have become parents today still want Catholic schools, because they know that a truly Catholic school is just that, there for everyone, no matter what.
I know, you see. For I was a child whose life was turned upside down and who was enmeshed in my anger, until I began to realise that my school, which had been sorely tested by my resolute non-cooperation, was actually concerned about me as a person and really cared. That was my turning point.
In conclusion then: do we believe that educating our children in Catholic schools matters? I do. If we really believe that the most important thing in each of our lives is that we are close to God, then we must ensure that we do all we can to enable our children to grow close to God, and that I believe can be best achieved through the lived example and experience of Catholic education.
We have the right to believe what we believe. We have as much right as those who are secularists or atheists to proclaim what we believe, and we should do it, because if we don’t we will let go of something very precious.
I think our challenge today is to become even more people of God, to ensure that our children learn their faith in all its richness and that we provide that depth which will enable growth throughout the years. I believe that that will be done through Catholic schools.
If children are exposed on a daily basis to the lived experience of faith – to understanding of the Trinity – of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to Scripture which read repeatedly will enlighten the mind and draw the child closer to the Lord, to sacraments and the great graces which they bring, to an awareness of the wonder of God’s creation and to our responsibility for it as God’s creation, not just creation, to the need to act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with God, to the role of His blessed mother as mediatrix and mother of God, to prayer in many different forms, to church music with all the depth of some of the hymns we sing, to our call to holiness, to seek justice and peace and reconciliation, then they will be different people from those who grow up without all these blessings.
It is not indoctrination. It is lived faith, and children need the space and the time to grow in their faith, to question in safety and to move to a more profound understanding.
I think we have a job to do to ensure that our schools are all as good as they can be, and above all they continue to exist as one part of that triangle of family, church and school which will grow in each child the love of God, and the understanding that God first loved them.
That, I think, is the most important thing a Catholic school can do for its pupils, for from that flows everything that is good.