Madam, – I was struck how John McKenna’s Opinion piece (Education Today, March 29th) and Tony Bates’s Mind Moves’ column (Health Plus, March 29th) were connected.
Dr Bates’s poignant observation that “Community means nothing until the people who are part of it experience belonging in times of pain and joy” is pertinent in the light of proposed destruction of communities under the guise of the “value-for-money” audit, threatening the survival of small schools (those with fewer than 50 pupils). Many of the small schools being audited are in rural communities and are the locus of the community.
At critical moments in this community, the school has been the centre of support, the place of spontaneous congregation, the repository of tears and laughter. Its trees have hidden many a smiling child; its windows have reflected many exciting gala days and its walls have supported many grim “guards of honour”.
What number will the “value-for-money” audit put on 152 years of belonging? Tony Bates asks, “Where is it possible for people to come together at critical moments?”
Where, indeed, in Skeheenarinky if the school is closed? Where, in the other communities like it? – Yours, etc,
