When five Educate Together schools – with children of many backgrounds and denominations – unite for a Christmas play, what are the results? asks MARY RUSSELL
THE CLASS register reads like a membership list of the UN: “I’m Lithuanian but I was born in Ireland. I’m Romanian and Irish. I’m from Hong Kong. I’m Libyan and my mum’s Irish. I speak Twi (the main language in Ghana). I’m from here. My mother’s Malaysian and my Dad’s Irish. I’m Danish but I’m more Irish. I’m from the Congo but French Congo. I’m from Lucan.”
There are people from Moldova, Ukraine and Poland and oh look, here’s Eddie, who’s a Traveller, so he’s Irish.
Then everyone gets back to work, this is, after all, a school – the Griffeen Valley Educate Together National School, one of five such schools in Lucan. There are 440 students here and a total of 1,550. Not bad considering they started in a scout hut in 2004, with 12 students.
Work is watching a video about a boy who’s worried he may not be at the school concert because his father hasn’t yet been given his migrant worker’s permit, but finally he gets it and we’re all relieved.
Then, since school starts at 8.30am, it’s time for 10.30 lunch, which is really an excuse to pick up your bottle of juice and scoot around the classroom and sit in someone else’s chair when they’re not looking.
The thing is, everyone is hitting high doh getting ready for the big five-school solstice concert and yes, in another class, some people have been to Newgrange. So, what was that like? Lots of sheep mostly. And while everyone talks at the one time about Newgrange – it’s a bit like the Dáil on Budget Day except far more interesting – I notice the wall posters: “Many Christians have a crib in their homes at Christmas,” one reads. “Muslims wake up early at Eid and have a small breakfast,” says another. Gina, who’s Jewish, tells me about Hanukkah, and Claire, who’s a humanist, talks about what she’ll eat at Christmas and the good news that her dad cooks.
Educate Together schools are multi-denominational, so students learn that people have different beliefs, but no one is taught the doctrine of any particular belief system. The parents organise that themselves, in the school after class hours, which is why the solstice concert is multi-denominational and called “The Ceremony of Light and Giving”.
Meanwhile, apart from Newgrange, there are other things to discuss. “In Pakistan,” someone says, “there’s very bad snow.” And we all look at the lucky person from Pakistan except he’s really from Lucan. In Romania too, there’s “bags of snow”. But in Nigeria, “there’s never snow” and that makes us think because in Ireland it’s almost the same except that today there is snow.
And then it’s the solstice: the best of winter nights. The air is bitingly cold, the sky clear and the moon a perfect crescent. Calm and peaceful, if you can ignore the first-night pandemonium that appears to have broken loose.
Organised pandemonium, I have to tell you because, underneath it all, there is order. Children in tall yellow hats or pretty wispy skirts gather in groups. Toddlers in woolly hats and huge mittens gaze at the carry on of their older siblings. The braver ones whizz around the hall doing mini-wheelies.
There have got to be teachers in there somewhere (they’ll be the people taller than the children), but it’s hard to know because no one’s telling anyone what to do or what not to do. And we’re all on first-name terms. Joan is the deputy head and Tomas is the head. And here’s Aaron, who’s 10 and Indian, but comes from Dubai, which, he tells me, is beautiful to see at night, from a plane. He and his group are going to do a poem about light. Ethan wants a bit more money to buy something. He’s seven and his mother, from the Niger Delta, has chosen this school for her two children for a very good reason. “After the civil war in Nigeria,” she tells me, “the government set up schools which aimed to bring everyone together and when I came to Ireland, that’s what I wanted for my own children.”
FIRST UP IS A CHOIR SINGINGa song in Swahili and this is an opportunity for a bit of pushing and shoving at the back where you can't be seen because everyone else is standing up on benches. Later there's a troupe who do a mean rap and breakdancing routine, Diwali-style, and people with candles in their crowns singing Santa Luciaand some performers speaking poetry and weaving about with light sticks and small people talking about their future and what they want – an Educate Together Secondary School for starters – and someone even quoting the UN Human Rights Charter.
Jeez – if you’ll excuse my French – this is a crew to be reckoned with.
