John Colgan has a Letter to Editor in today’s Irish Examiner about the ‘Rules for National Schools (1965)’.nnThe letter needs to be read in the context that these Rules are not a true statement of the current rules governing our National Schools as no codification has taken place since 1965.nnThe education minister’s mention of the “Rules for National Schools, 1965” as archaic on the cusp of a general election truly exemplifies the expression ‘kicking the can down the road’.n
nFor while the rules have been in place for 50 years, they were, and remain, a detached, subversive piece of work, typical of the State’s biggest spending department, Education.nnNo act of parliament was made enabling them to extensively alter the preceding early 18th century legal arrangements.nnThey were never published as a statutory instrument under the Statutory Instruments Act, 1947, nor were they laid before the Oireachtas for the approval or amendment of the two Houses, which the 1947 Act required.nnThey were merely issued by the education minister of the day, Patrick Hillery. Parliament was sidelined by the department.nnThe back staircase in the department’s Marlborough St offices is called ‘Staighre na nEaspag’ — the bishops’ staircase — and clearly their hands are all over these rules.nnWho else would put in the hands of a minister of a Republic words that religion is the most important subject in a school?nnNo minister and no secretary general has the competence to make such a judgment for society. Ever since, there’s been a slide away from the national school system as established in the 19th century. This system was approved by the then Catholic archbishops of Armagh and Dublin.nnThen religious instruction and secular education were compartmentalised, allowing room for students of every faith and none to attend one school without being proselytised in the process.nnInterweaving religion with secular subjects never had any place in the State’s vocational schools; no harm came of it.nnThe invention of the late 1980s, ‘religious ethos’ — which finds no mention in the Constitution — undermines pupils’ constitutional rights in publicly funded schools. The bishops have clout disproportionate to their negligible stake in our national schools.nnThe next governments needs to reclaim them.nnLet us be a real republic for 2016.nnJohn ColgannnDublin Road StreetnnLeixlipnnCo Kildarennhttp://ow.ly/VLx7c
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