Godless classrooms in an amoral Europe?

SHORTLY before my retirement from teaching and close to the time of the first Lisbon referendum, I wondered to a colleague how much longer the crucifix would be allowed to hang on the classroom wall.

Recent reports seem to suggest that my wondering was not in vain. Is Europe about to insist that an integral public expression of the core definition of us as a people is to be declared illegal?

Nihilism is a doctrine that states there is nothing in the constituted order of things that is worthy of approval or preservation.

The first patently obvious contradiction in that doctrine is that it is expressed through the medium of the accepted every day language.

Nihilism is essentially about existing or subsisting in a terrible void where convictions or beliefs have no meaning other than those given by each individual to his or her own actions and antics.

It is an eternity of Waiting for Godot, who will never arrive, because Godot does not exist, cannot exist, because existence stripped of any social context has no meaningful or intelligible reality.

So strip the classroom of the crucifix (Irish Examiner, November 4) and let the children learn all things provided they are devoid of moral context or reference to an essential part of what defines our nationhood, culture and social coexistence.

Let us send our children forth into the world without the baggage of burdensome moral principles. Let them, with the passage of time, determine in a totally individualistic manner how to behave as they become like the leaf blowing in the wind.

I have often said that morality is fine, immorality is not too bad, but amorality is the blight that can condemn everyone and everything to an eerie nothingness.

I wonder has anyone ever succeeded in driving a car while it is in neutral gear, other than freewheeling foolishly down a hill.

Michael Gleeson

Clasheen

Killarney

Co Kerry