DUBLIN, November 10, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Ireland's primary students may be taking a new course on world religions and ethics that would squeeze the half-hour now set aside for faith-based instruction right out of the school day.
The powerful government-run National Council for Curriculum and Assessment has released a report called “Education about Religion, Beliefs and Ethics” (ERBE) calling for the same sort of allegedly neutral ethics and world religions course many formerly religious states have used (Quebec is the latest) to replace belief-based curricula.
This comes at a time when government officials are musing over whether Irish students' declining performance in sciences and math may require forcing century-old in-class catechetical instruction into after hours or the weekend.
The Iona Institute, a lay Catholic advocacy group, thinks the half-hour of daily instruction is crucial – and endangered. It says that the school system already has a “packed curriculum” so that, to accommodate ERBE, “the daily 30-minute slot currently afforded to religious-backed schools for faith formation will be curtailed.”
Others are concerned about the conflicting “ethos” of sectarian religious studies and faith-based schools. Bishop Brendan Leahy told the news media, “It is very important for denominational schools to be able to present their faith perspective and ethos.” Polling indicates that most Irish want religious schools to remain alongside secular ones.
Click “like” to support Catholics Restoring the Culture!
Professor Eamonn Conway of the Mary Immaculate primary teacher training college questioned why “a faith-based school would be required to offer what is essentially a secularist understanding of religious faith.” He argued that ERBE would “undoubtedly adversely affect religious instruction and a faith-based school's characteristic ethos.” Ninety percent of Ireland's schools are owned by the Catholic Church while receiving government funding.
But a humanist blog, anseo.net, argued, “It must be repeated again and again that if all the primary schools in the country switched over from [Church-run] to a non-religious ethos nothing bad would happen. The education given would be the same, the teachers would be the same. The children would be the same.”
Anseo.net reported that a recent government-Church agreement that the latter would “divest” surplus school properties to parental groups wanting secular education has produced meager results: just three offers of old, dilapidated buildings, although demand nationwide exceeds 300, according to one report.
The Iona Institute believes that many so-called Catholic schools are dominated by secularism and resist the sincere teaching of Catholicism. “I don't know how much more secularized we can be,” worried one Catholic teacher at conference Iona sponsored recently. “We are pretty much just doing First Communion and Confirmation. You feel oppressed because of the attitude there towards faith and the Catholic faith in particular. That creates a fear of sharing your views. There is a fear of fully expressing and fully living the Faith. Catholic schools are failing in their responsibility.”
Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (CFAM), called the imposition of a secular world religions course on religious schools “stem to stern a violation of existing international law. Freedom of religion is a bedrock aspect of hard law human rights. So, is the right of parents to determine the education of their children.”