OPINION:School patronage in a republic should hinge on turning out children who are good citizens
THE ESTABLISHMENT of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector by Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn has brought the question of religious denominational schooling into even sharper focus.
It is widely accepted that the current arrangement – where Catholic patrons run more than 90 per cent of primary schools – is inappropriate. Perhaps the most critical point to be considered by the forum is that it is inconceivable that the State could ever provide an array of denominational schools in every locality to cater for the particular religious or non-religious beliefs of every family in that area.
This belies the widely subscribed-to argument that the value of religious liberty requires the State to provide Catholic schools in every locality. Citizens of a republic enjoy religious liberty on an equal basis, and so, if the value requires the provision of Catholic schools in every locality, it similarly requires the provision of many different kinds of schools in every locality, simply by virtue of the fact that there is a diversity of religious and non-religious beliefs all across the State.
But there is a different argument that is often missed in this debate. This is that religious denominational schools, or indeed, schools of any kind, are permissible only so long as they satisfy a certain “civic mission”.
The idea of a republic, fundamentally, is the idea of a political community in which citizens enjoy equal liberty. In order to promote equal liberty, the State can and must inculcate particular civic skills and attitudes in its child citizens.
The legitimacy of religious denominational schools, therefore, depends on whether such schools are capable of developing the appropriate skills and attitudes in their students.
An assessment of this civic mission sheds some light on the relative merits of religious denominational as against non-denominational “common” schools. The skills and attitudes of citizenship may be assessed in four categories.
First, the State can promote a civic patriotism of some kind. This should not be an overly robust or unthinking patriotism. Rather, child citizens must become aware of the role and importance of the democratic institutions of the State. They must develop some commitment to these institutions, and a sense of the importance of at least minimal civic participation.
Second, good citizenship involves the idea of contesting power, and of keeping power-wielders in check. Child citizens must develop skills of contestation in respect not only of power wielded by actors in political or public contexts, but also by those in the so-called private sphere. Hence, they must be capable of critically assessing their own inherited religious or non-religious commitments, for instance, so that they are not permanently in thrall to those of their parents.
Third, the State must educate child citizens towards an awareness of how their own private good – and the good of their families and localities – is contingent on the common good.
They must become cognisant of the economic, environmental, social and political interdependencies of citizens.
Similarly, child citizens must become aware of the effects of differences in socio-economic conditions, culture, gender and religion on the prospects and on the substantive equality of citizens.
Finally, child citizens must be educated towards an understanding of the “fact of reasonable pluralism” (in John Rawls’s phrase). This is the idea that an inevitable feature of any free political community is that citizens hold different moral, religious and philosophical world views, or different “comprehensive doctrines”.
Flowing from this is the idea that child citizens must develop skills of “public reason”. That is, they must learn to engage in political debate based on reasons that are not grounded in their own comprehensive doctrines, but based on “public” reasons that they can reasonably expect other citizens – holding different comprehensive doctrines – to accept.
The non-denominational “common” school (such as the “Educate Together” schools) seems preferable to the religious denominational school in the light of this civic mission. Common schools tend to comprise staff and students holding different religious and non-religious commitments, and are not devoted to the promotion of a particular religious ethos.
This schooling environment seems more amenable to the inculcation of the skills and attitudes of citizenship. The Aristotelian idea – that moral virtue is best learned through the active practice rather than through the abstract teaching of the virtues – suggests that child citizens attending common schools are more likely to develop skills of public reason, understandings of interdependence, etc, as they share their educative environment with child citizens from a diversity of moral, religious and philosophical backgrounds.
Religious denominational schools, however, are not all “total” institutions devoted exclusively to the promotion of a particular religious ethos. It would go too far to argue that such schools are invariably incapable of and unwilling to inculcate these civic skills and attitudes in their students.
It is clear, of course, that in order to achieve the civic mission, religious denominational schools must be restricted in significant ways, and must be carefully regulated by the State.
For instance, they must teach most courses of study (including science/biology and social, personal and health studies, for example) independently of religious doctrine. They must deal in an unrestricted manner with matters (eg homosexuality) that may be in tension with the religious doctrine promoted by the school. The so-called “integrated curriculum” currently practised in Irish primary schools is in conflict with restrictions of this kind.
Similarly, such schools must also be open to staff and students from outside of the faith community. Not only that, but non-adherents must enjoy their positions in such schools on an equal footing. The exemptions from equality legislation allowing denominational schools to discriminate based on religion must therefore be abolished.
The main concern for the forum on patronage and pluralism is to find appropriate ways of moving away from a schooling system in which many parents have no choice but to send their children to schools promoting a religious ethos that they do not share.
Plainly, this concern demands the provision of non-denominational common schooling all across the State. These arguments concerning civic skills and citizenship suggest that, while religious denominational schools may not be illegitimate, there are additional reasons supporting much greater provision of non-denominational schools.
Tom Hickey recently completed a PhD on republican liberty at NUI Galway. This is an abridged version of a paper presented at the Burren Law School 2011. The theme of the law school was Imagining a New Republic.