Church and schools: the public speak

In an 'Irish Times' survey this week, 61 per cent of people said the Catholic Church should cede control of primary schools – and 28 per cent said it should not. ROSITA BOLANDtalks to people in Portlaoise and Dublin, to explore the attitudes behind the statistics

THE IRISH Times/Ipsos MRBI poll published this week found that 61 per cent of those polled believed the Catholic Church should give up its control of the primary school system. Respondents in the greater Leinster area were found to be most supportive of the church’s involvement with primary schools. Those polled in Dublin were the least supportive.

In Portlaoise and Dublin this week, parents and guardians stopped to talk to The Irish Times about the findings of the poll, and their views on education and Catholic ethos in primary schools.

PORTLAOISE

“We know where we stand with a Catholic school”

IT’S LUNCHTIME, and Maria Murphy is shopping for clothes in Shaw’s with her daughter Dawn (10). “My mother was English, and an atheist,” Murphy says. “She changed over [to Catholicism] when she met my father, who was Irish. So we grew up with lots of discussion about religion in our house.”

Dawn goes to Gaelscoil Phort Laoise. “Those reports would definitely have had something to do with the way I thought about education for Dawn. That would be why we didn’t want her to go to a school with only nuns. Are gaelscoileanna under the patronage of the Catholic Church? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But Dawn’s gaelscoil isn’t all Catholic. There’s coloured children who go there, and Polish children, so that makes it a kind of a multi-denominational school, doesn’t it?”

In Londis on the town’s square, Ciara McDonagh is buying milk. She has her son Liam (2) with her. “Even before all these reports came out, it would have been my preference for my children to go to an Educate Together school, and definitely not to go to a Catholic school,” she says. “But there is no non-religious option where we live in Leixlip. I would much prefer if religious instruction was done outside school time. My seven-year-old is already at the Catholic primary. Liam will have to go there too, unless we move.”

Owen Lawlor is pushing his one-year-old niece in a stroller down Portlaoise’s Main Street. He doesn’t yet have children of his own, but says: “I wouldn’t send them to a non-Catholic school. It wouldn’t be right. Those other schools with no religion wouldn’t be my type – not that I have anything against them. But we are Catholics, and we know where we stand with what you get from a Catholic school. That’s what I know myself, and that’s where I went.” Lawlor describes himself as Catholic. He does not attend Mass.

At the shopping centre, Esmeralda Usiahon who is Dutch, is grocery shopping in Tesco with two-month-old Emmanuel. Her other children are six, four and two, and the eldest attends Scoil Muire NS in Abbeyleix. “We are not Catholic, but we felt forced to put our child into the Catholic school, because there is no choice. We don’t like it at all,” she says. Usiahon’s husband is African, and the family are Pentecostal. They teach the children their faith at home.

Eddie (2) is perched in the seat of a shopping trolley in Tesco, a few aisles away. His mother, Elaine Moylan, says Eddie will be going to the same local Catholic-run primary that she and her siblings went to. “I went there, he’ll go there too. My brother’s kids go there too, now. All our family went there.” She says she likes this continuity: that her child will have the same school experience she herself had. She does not attend Mass. “I haven’t the time.”

Maura Morrin, who describes herself as a regular Mass-goer, is sitting by the shopping-centre fountain, keeping an eye on her grandson, Ryan (2), who is running around. Ryan will be going to the Sacred Heart NS in Portlaoise.

“My own view is that it’s very sad religion is going out of schools,” Morrin says. “They don’t go into teaching it in the same depth as they did when I was a child. I would like to see more religious instruction in schools, not less.”

Les Szwaglis has two children already in Ratheniska NS, a village beyond Portlaoise, and is out on an errand with his other young children, Aoibheann and Adam.

“It doesn’t matter at all to me where the children go to school,” he laughs. “The day of Catholic schools are gone anyway. They don’t have the power they had. Sure, religion is gone. I wouldn’t even think about where my children go. Everything for me with schools is about the catchment area, or whichever one you can get into, not about what religion they are.”

DUBLIN 6

“I don’t think the Catholic Church should have any close contact with children”

IN DUBLIN, unlike Portlaoise, for the most part, parents are reluctant to give their names. They say they’re afraid that their views might make them unpopular with the school authorities, or within the community.

“I’m not going to give my name, because my children attend a small school,” explains one mother, shopping in Rathmines Swan Centre with her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. She was raised Catholic, and attended a multi-denominational school herself. Both her children attend “a small Church of Ireland school. It’s only very nominally under the auspices of the Protestant Church. We didn’t rule out a Catholic school, but there was a better calibre of people to choose from in the school they attend; better teachers. Choosing a school for us was was about the quality of the education they were going to get, not about the religion.”

“I want nothing to do with the Catholic church,” states Tadhg Coughlan, examining melons and aubergines in Dunne’s Stores with his son, Sonny (6). Coughlan himself attended Catholic-run schools. “Let’s just say, I didn’t want my son to go through what I did.” Sonny goes to the Church of Ireland school at Sandford Road. “I’m glad we had a choice of schools, because we live in Dublin, but it was actually the only one we applied to. Religious education should definitely be done outside school time.”

Áine O’Gorman (6) is riding her pink scooter through the Swan Centre, accompanied by her mother, Trish O’Gorman. Áine, who was christened as a Catholic, goes to a Quaker school in Rathgar. “I don’t think nuns should run schools,” O’Gorman says. “It’s okay for them to teach, but running schools is a professional’s job these days. Given the abuse reports, I don’t think the Catholic Church should be in a position of having any close contact with children.”

She decided to send Áine to the Quaker school primarily because she considered the education offered there was of a higher standard that other schools in the area, rather than for religious reasons.

“I lived in England for 20 years, and religious-run schools there were always considered better, and were much harder to get into,” she observes. “So here, most of our schools are religious-run, and a lot of people are obviously discontent with that. Is it that you always want something you can’t have as the norm, that we want to have a choice when it comes to schools?”

DUBLIN 1

“It was only when my son was in Junior Infants I found out what a big role the church plays in the school”

ACROSS the city, Eva Naessens is on her way into Marks & Spencer in the Jervis Centre with her son Philip (2). Naessens is from the Czech Republic, and her husband is Irish. They live in the inner city.

“The school system is so different to what I’m used to in the Czech Republic – you have uniform here, for instance. I haven’t signed Philip up for any school yet, even though most of my friends have their children of the same age down for four or five schools. They seem very panicked about schools, but the way I look at it, my son is only two, and it is still years before he has to go.” Naessens and her husband do not “practise any religion”. They “would like him to go to a multi-denominational school, but I don’t have any strong opinion on it. I don’t want to buy into the panic that if your child doesn’t get into Ranelagh Multi-D, that it is some kind of tragedy.”

A mother who doesn’t want to give her name has a 10-year-old son in St Enda’s NS on Whitefriar Street.

“I went to a Catholic school myself, but I consider myself agnostic. I don’t go to Mass,” she explains. “At the time, I thought St Enda’s was the better school, because they were offering free breakfast, but now I regret it. My son is taken to Mass on a very regular basis, and that was never discussed with me. He doesn’t like it, and I don’t like it. It was only in Junior Infants I found out what a big role the church plays in the school. Religion is being forced down his throat. His teacher is always singing hymns and praying. Religious education should be up to the parent, and not the school.”

Michael Barnes from Drimnagh is pushing his son Tadgh (2) through the Jervis Centre. Tadgh, like his two other siblings, will be attending a gaelscoil. “The gaelscoils pretty much run themselves. I think the Catholic system of schools is always going to be around. They’re never going to sell off all the land they own and disappear,” he surmises. Barnes did consider a couple of other school options, “but you really don’t have a choice, even if you do live in a city and have more options that down the country. It comes down to where you live, doesn’t it? Especially when both parents are working, you’re really only left with the school closest to where you live.”