An alien lands in an Irish Primary Classroom
If you were that famous alien that lands itself into various scenarios, and this time you landed into an Irish primary classroom, you’d be forgiven for cursing your bad luck that you forgot to pack your rosary beads for your space voyage. The first thing you would see at the front of the classroom is a crucifix, and likely the first thing you’d hear in the morning would be a prayer and all of the class including the teacher would be saying it. Should you raise your hand and ask for forgiveness for forgetting said rosary beads, the teacher would most likely laugh at you. “Oh you silly alien,” she might say, “we’re not religious in Ireland anymore.”
If this scenario seems far-fetched — in fairness, it features an alien — welcome to my experience of the Irish education system. Despite being a secular republic, 95% of Ireland’s primary schools are controlled by religious orders, 90% of which are Catholic.
As one of the very few teachers in the Irish education system from a religious and ethnic minority, I witness the cognitive dissonance that I see happening on a daily basis when Irish people discuss the primary education system — happily sending their children into a school where religion permeates the entire day, yet recoiling at the demands the same religion would have on general society. For example, Irish people overwhelmingly voted in favour of same-sex marriage in 2015. However, children are not allowed to be taught about same sex relationships in most primary schools. With very few exceptions, nobody sees anything strange about this oddity.
One of my favourite stories about Ireland’s cognitive dissonance involves an acquaintance of mine who vigorously campaigned for marriage equality in Ireland. She went door-to-door to her neighbours handing out leaflets as to why they should vote in favour of the referendum. She wore Love is Love and Yes to Equality badges everywhere she went and because the Catholic Church was against the idea that marriage should be between anyone other than a man and a woman, she spent an inordinate amount of her Facebook posts on not only criticising the Catholic Church but slamming its patriarchal structure, highlighting its history of sexual abuses against children, admonishing any priest who appeared in the media to explain the church’s stance in the most demeaning of language with, what I can only call, hatred.
When the result of the Marriage Equality Referendum became clear very early, she celebrated with the same ecstasy as if we had crumbled an authoritarian dictatorship as half the country descended on to Dublin Castle in rainbow flags to display a huge relief that Ireland had, without doubt, ripped away the control of a theocratic regime. She joined in the angry-celebrations where she let everyone know online what she thought of the patriarchy in language that would make a priest blush.
The next evening, I was scrolling Facebook in that aimless way one does on a lazy Sunday and I noticed she had shared a few photos. One was of her standing with her daughter. The daughter was wearing a Communion dress and they were at the altar in a Catholic Church. The girl had her hands clasped holding rosary beads and my acquaintance was beaming with pride.
When the National Maternity Hospital was being built on the land of St. Vincent’s Hospital, the State planned to gift the building to the trustees of the site: the Sisters of Charity. Irish people were horrified at the prospect that the hospital would be gifted to the Catholic Church. Protests were held with tens of thousands of people marching to #makeNMHOurs. Meanwhile, every year, dozens of primary schools are built, extended and rebuilt with public money and these buildings are also gifted to various Catholic trustees. So far, not one person has organised as much as a hashtag about it, never mind a protest.
If you ask Irish people why there are so many Catholic schools, they will usually tell you that they really aren’t that Catholic anymore. They will likely tell you that hardly any religion goes on in them, if any, and they are really only Catholic in name, or with a “small c.” They will say that there should be more multidenominational schools and some will go as far as saying that if we were starting all over again, that it’s exactly what sort of system we’d have. They will usually make it patently clear that they themselves aren’t religious and that they never go to Mass. Except maybe the odd Christmas.
Studies already show that the vast majority of Irish people believe there should be more multidenominational schools and recent studies also suggest the majority of schools should be free from religious control.
However, in almost every situation where a school has been offered the opportunity to leave Catholic control and become multidenominational, the vast majority of parents reject it. Two high profile cases were in the affluent and liberal areas of Raheny and Malahide in Dublin, which would require an essay in themselves to explain. The headline in the Irish Times, on 2nd April 2019, “Removing school’s Catholic ethos would be ‘Brexit-type disaster’, parents told,” tells you almost everything you need to know.
With fewer than 70% of Irish people now identifying as Catholic and over 14% now identifying as having no religion, the Irish education system is completely out of kilter with society. If our alien friend, walked out of the primary school he landed in, he would see a modern, pluralist society. If he found his rosary beads and took them out on the street, it’s likely he’d be ridiculed by passers-by.
Yet, the same people doing the ridiculing, will make sure their 8-year olds are gripping them on one day in May, as part of their Communion celebrations. And yes, they will claim that there’s really nothing religious about that either.
