The Softening Stance on Religious Control of Schools
Today I listened to the latest round in the ongoing boxing match on the subject of religious control of schools. I guess I have to put Aodhan O’Riordáin in the red corner, who sometimes shows up for this fight when Michael Nugent from Atheist Ireland isn’t around. In the blue corner was the ever-present David Quinn, who never seems to miss the opportunity. No representative of the Catholic Church nor the Department of Education ever slug it out, which I think would make more sense.
I never like how these radio slots are framed, that is, removing religion from schools. The debate is about whether religious bodies should control schools. In any case, despite the title, the pundits did focus on religious control.
The neutral listener would have been disappointed because the fight had very little new in it. It was the same soft punches from David Quinn — parental choice trumps everything despite the majority of parents in survey after survey would prefer multi-denominational education. Aodhan tried to divert the conversation to single sex school before his line went bad, but when he recovered, in fairness, he made some decent points.
However, for me, there were two interesting things that happened in this debate. First, it was the continuing softening of David Quinn’s stance on the role of religious entities controlling schools. When Claire Byrne specifically asked him to name a figure of how many schools should remain Catholic, he went from 60% to 50% within the confines of the interview itself. However, seriously, his language was definitely much softer and he certainly wasn’t spouting the usual tropes about the excellence of Catholic schools internationally.
But it was O’Riardáin’s remarks that caught my ears. Labour, when in government, has always defended the right of parental choice when it comes to primary education. Today, that stance seems to have changed. He argued that schools should not be divided along religious lines.
While I’m obviously very happy to hear this, I wonder what his Labour colleagues think. It seems they have moved to the Social Democrats’ position on the role of religion in schools.
